Reaching rural communities in Mongolia

According to a Cellular News report this week, Chinese telecoms equipment vendor ZTE has announced the world's first overlay of a W-CDMA network on an existing CDMA service to realise UMTS/CDMA convergence at the core network level.

The customer is Mongolian CDMA MNO Skytel, a joint venture company established by Mongolian and South Korean investors in 1999, the latter including SK Telecom. While this is a global first in terms of the UMTS/CDMA convergence feature, market-leading GSM MNO MobiCom has already launched 3G services, having launched the country's first high-speed mobile broadband network in the country in April, powered by HSPA technology from Ericsson.

Skytel, which has gone on to carve out a 20.08% share of the Mongolian mobile market (by March 2009, according to WCIS), also competes with Unitel (GSM standard) which has rapidly built a 22.01% market share since commencing operations in June 2006. In terms of eroding the market share of its longer-established competitors, the entry of Unitel has made a much bigger impact on MobiCom than on Skytel.

One more operator makes up the quartet of mobile service providers in Mongolia - G-Mobile, which won a Government tender in 2006 specifically to establish a CDMA service to connect rural Mongolians with the country’s main telephone grid. G-Mobile has since established a market share of just 6.25%.

Although Mongolia has become increasingly urbanised in recent years, with about 40% of the population living in the capital city, and a further 23% living in other towns, a significant minority continue to live in extremely small, remote settlements and on a semi-nomadic basis. As demonstrated by the G-Mobile tender, extending communications services to these people is important for the country's telecoms sector as a whole.

With this in mind, MobiCom signed a three-year managed services contract last year with Altobridge, an Irish company which has developed technology designed to minimise backhaul bandwidth utilisation, thereby making the delivery of mobile communications to small, remote communities a more compelling proposition for MNOs. This deployment won an award earlier this year from the country's leading tech publication and the national Information Communication Technology Authority, who wanted to recognise the positive impact the Altobridge solution is having on communities and enterprises in remote parts of Mongolia. The Altobridge CEO Mike Fitzgerald said at the time of the award that he was delighted that MobiCom had received praise for connecting people still cut off from the benefits of mobile communications. He stressed that this was consistent with a for-profit motive for the operator.

I am always encouraged to read of telecoms solutions improving lives in developing countries. Having met a handful of friendly people from Mongolia's operators at conferences, I'll be interested to see what impact Skytel and MobiCom's recently commenced 3G services have - I'm not yet clear if these services will be aimed purely at higher margin urban customer segments or whether a rural 3G services business case has been calculated.

Reaching rural communities in Mongolia

Rural VAS tipped to grow in India

Late last week, writing about mobile content/VAS in emerging markets, I wondered whether entertainment or highly practical applications offer the best growth prospects. With this in mind, I noticed today that back in February, Kunal Bajaj of BDA (a consultancy business which originated as an advisory firm specializing in China's telecommunications/media/technology sector) was tipping mobile applications that enhance productivity for people living in India's vast rural hinterland.

Kunal was a highly rated contributor to one of the first Com World Series events it was my pleasure to host while working with Informa Telecoms & Media - the COAI-endorsed GSM>3G India 2007 conference and exhibition in Mumbai. I found the presentation he made then (on an unrelated theme) highly compelling - the piece he wrote on February 2nd, which rounds up BDA's 2009 predictions for the telecoms sector is also a good read.

Kunal Bajaj believes that "rural VAS, especially affordable of ad-supported, local language application" of the productivity-enhancing variety "will emerge as a key differentiator in service offerings as operators pursue rural expansion more aggressively."

Kunal feels that a key driver for the development of such services is the already low level of tariffs and margins in rural areas. Basic voice and messaging, it seems, are not enough as operators penetrate the markets beyond the saturated urban centres. Of the applications I mentioned last week, Kunal appears to agree that "information-centric contextual applications, such as information about commodity prices, crop and weather data" look promising.

Rural VAS tipped to grow in India

Who provides telecoms services in states with limited recognition?

Late last year, I had more than one opportunity to chat with friends in the telecoms space who have worked for businesses with operations in Georgia - the transcaucasian country, not the US state. Inevitably, the subject of the August armed conflict with Russia and with separatist groups from South Ossetia and Abkhazia was discussed. I did not hear reports of very serious damage to telecoms infrastructure. This is confirmed by an extract from a statement by a shareholder in Magticom, one of the two mobile operators licensed by the Tbilisi Government:

"Magticom started the year with a strong performance compared to budget and last year. The conflict with Russia during August caused some damage both to the Georgian economy and to future economic prospects. The full effects of the conflict are yet to be determined. Magticom's physical infrastructure, however, was not badly damaged bythe conflict."

Magticom, which had a 42.28% share of Georgia's 3,352,100 mobile subscriptions by December(according to WCIS), launched a CDMA450 WLL network last summer. According to my fomer Informa Telecoms & Media colleague Gemma Bunting, writing for Mobile Communications Europe, Magti Fix is primarily aimed at people in rural areas with poor fixed-line access. As Gemma noted in her article, Magticom is also active 2G and 3G mobile services as well as Internet access via Wi-Fi and WiMAX.

The Magticom WiMAX offering caught the eye of Andrew Mitchell, writing for for Yankee Group's 4G Trends next generation wireless publication last month. Mitchell noticed Magticom's launch of a mobile WiMAX service offering on February 9, quoting the company's CEO David Lee: "The service we are launching is not only the country’s first WiMAX offering but also the fastest Internet connection available in Georgia to date." The carrier will deliver mobile WiMAX services to both consumer and business markets and plans to include VoIP as well, notes Andrew Mitchell, who also observes that offering wireless connectivity in a country like Georgia presents a number of unique challenges such as mountainous geography and the distribution of its population. Mitchell feels that WiMAX "has continually demonstrated an ability to rise to the engineering and business challenges that are unique to emerging markets."

As far as the Georgian Government is concerned, Magticom should be competing with only two other mobile operators. Of these, Geocell is the country's mobile market leader and is one of the CIS outposts of the Fintur Holdings/TeliaSonera Eurasia empire. The third officially licensed competitor is the Georgian subsidiary of Vimpelcom, which has managed to grab just a 6.78% share of the market since its launch in March 2007.

These are not, however, the only mobile operators active on land which the Georgian Government considers to be within its sovereign territory.

In the aftermath of the August conflict, Russia recognized the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Of UN member states, only Nicaragua has followed suit. Abkhazia, which lies at the eastern edge of the Black Sea, has been the scene of conflicts and tensions since the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, when ethnic tensions grew between the Abkhaz and Georgians over Georgia's desire for independence. The 13-month Abkhazian War began in August 1992, and hostilities flared up again in 1998 and 2001.

In the telecoms domain, Abkhazian desire for independence from Georgia is manifested in the form of two GSM operators which offer services in the disputed region.

One of these is A-Mobile, which started its operations on November 25, 2006. WCIS estimates that the operator now has just over 44,000 subscribers. The other, Aquafon, was established in March 2003, with its network becoming operational on July of the same year. WCIS market intelligence indicates that the operator now has around 82,000 subscribers. The population of Abkhazia is estimated to be be somewhere between 160,000 and 190,000. In September 2008, Aquafon officially launched its 3G network. 51% of Aquafon's shares are owned by Mondeo Holdings, an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands, in turn owned Bermuda-registered ComTel Eastern, which also owns 31% of MegaFon, one of Russia's 'big three' cellcos.

On January 23rd, the UK's Guardian newspaper gave space to an article which was extremely critical of what its author percieves as the Russian Government's desire to "revive a lost empire, the Soviet Union." The writer of this piece, the lawyer Anthony Julius, alleges that "Russian businesses have... been encouraged to collude with state and state-security entities in order to expand Russian influence in the region," adding that "the Russian mobile telecoms company Megafon has operated in South Ossetia since 2004, and Aquafon (Megafon's subsidiary) has been in Abkhazia since 2003." Megafon, writes Julius "does not have a licence to operate in either region [but] on the day that fighting broke out in August last year, the company extended its coverage further into Georgian territory."

Not long before the conflict of last August, Georgia's telecoms regulatory agency had fined Megafon USD 3500 over what it alleged to be an illegal network, operated without a license, according to a Global Mobile Daily article at the time.

Although Russia and Nicaragua are the only UN member states to have recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia, these two regions are also recognised by the de facto independent state of Transnistria, another disputed area within the former Soviet Union. Located mostly in a strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border, Transnistria declared independence after the dissolution of the USSR. This led to a brief war with Moldova that started in March 1992 and was concluded by the ceasefire of July 1992. As with Abkhazkia, Transnistria is home to a telecoms operator of its own. Interdniestrcom, founded in 1998, offers Internet access and operates a CDMA2000 mobile network whose coverage area includes almost all of the Transnistria region.

Another de facto independent state on former Soviet territory is the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a predominantly Armenian-populated region which was the object of a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan as far back as 1918, when both countries gained independence from the Russian Empire. In the final years of the Soviet Union, the region re-emerged as a source of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, culminating in the Nagorno-Karabakh War fought from 1988 to 1994. The country remains unrecognised by any international organization or country, including Armenia.

Again, this is a de facto state served by its own telecoms company. Karabakh Telecom offers GSM mobile services, PSTN services and Internet access, covering 75% of Nagorno-Karabakh and almost 100% of the capital Stepanakert and its suburbs.

In Africa, one state stands out for existing largely in a de jure capacity. Somalia has a weak but largely recognised central government authority, the Transitional Federal Government, but this is only the latest in a series of ineffectual, externally recognized governing authorities. De facto control of the north of the country resides in the regional authorities. Of these, Puntland, Northland State, Maakhir, Galmudug, acknowledge the authority of the TFG and maintain their declaration of autonomy within a federated Somalia, while Central, Southern Somalia and Kismayo are in the control of the Islamic Courts Union and Al-Shabab. Baidoa is currently the seat of the TFG, and Somalia's commercial centre. On the other hand, the Somaliland region in the north, with its capital in Hargeisa, has declared independence and does not recognise the TFG as governing authority. Its self-declared independence is unrecognised internationally due in part to opposition from the TFG and other countries, such as neighbouring Ethiopia, which fear ensuing secessionist movements.

Golis Telecom Somalia operates in North East Somalia, offering fixed and mobile services in both Puntland and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.

I daresay this is not a truly exhaustive tour of telcos operating in states with varying degrees of limited diplomatic recognition. I just wanted to explore briefly the question of who extends communications services to people who live in the world's disputed territories. I enjoyed meandering around these curious places and if anyone reading this found it interesting that's even better.

Who provides telecoms services in states with limited recognition?

A mixed week for telcos in the UK press

Non-British readers will probably only associate the city of Liverpool with the Beatles and the city's red-shirted, iconic football (translation for US readers: soccer) team. Apologies to the blue half of Liverpool for reminding you that your local rivals are much more famous. You knew that anyway. It wasn't a jibe - I can't very well make sarcastic remarks about the profile of football clubs given that I am a dyed-in-wool QPR supporter.

Liverpool sometime attracts attention for more controversial reasons. British readers may recall the colourful then-Member of Parliament (now London mayor) Boris Johnson raising the ire of Liverpudlians for making some pretty strong allegations about the character of the city's residents. In October 2004, Johnson wrote that people in Liverpool "cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance about the rest of society". He said Liverpudlians "wallow" in their "victim status", adding that this is part of the "deeply unattractive psyche" of many in the city. I am sure this is untrue, and Boris did get quite a telling off from his boss. With these thoughts in mind, however, I did smile on seeing seeing the following:

"Phone giant BT charged a Huyton pensioner £100 for call out to replace two AA batteries", moaned a Liverpool Echo headline on Saturday. The accompanying article alleges that an elderly, cash-strapped and bed-bound BT customer was, without fair warning, charged £100 to have an engineer visit his home and pop a couple of new batteries into his phone. The article quotes a BT spokeswoman as saying that the customer had been advised the fault was in the phone, adding "we are satisfied from our customer service records the customer was properly advised about the possible charges ahead of the engineer's visit." If you can be bothered to watch the video clip below, you will notice the 'victim's' daughter admitting that she'd been advised to check the phone and expect a call out charge:

The Liverpool Echo doesn't let this get in the way of a good opportunity to stir local opinion about our national incumbent operator. This does make me wonder how much this paper might have contributed to the the city attracting the kind of criticism levelled by Boris Johnson.

I appreciate that a modern, competitive telco needs to be customer-centric, but I also feel that operators cannot very well cater to the whims of everyone with an unreasonable demand and a misplaced sense of injustice.

With this in mind, I was pleased to see our industry getting some praise in a UK newspaper this week. The Guardian ran a very upbeat article about how the mobile phone is helping to lift people in developing countries out of extreme poverty. It's a good read and filled with heart-warming anecdotes. This is my favourite:

"For much of his life, Mukeba didn't have an address. His corrugated iron house had no number and his volcanic ash street in the heart of Goma had no name. There was no postal service and the phone system had long since disintegrated. So when his mother died in 1995 on the other side of the Democratic Republic of Congo, her church sent a note marked only "Deograsias Mukeba, Goma". Remarkably it got to him - but three weeks after the funeral.

That was before. Now Mukeba's address goes with him everywhere. It has transformed the 33-year-old's life. It is an old Nokia mobile phone. "It was very hard discovering my mother had died and been buried and I didn't know anything about it for weeks," said Mukeba. "But that's how life was. If you lived in Goma, Kinshasa was another planet.

"I didn't really have any work. When the cell phones came I found the money and bought one because it was cool to have. It cost me $25 (£18). It's a lot.

"My brother lives in Kinshasa where he is a trader. He called me and asked me to start finding some things for him that you couldn't get in Kinshasa but you could find in Rwanda and Uganda, like some electrics and car parts. Now I speak to him every day. I send a lot of stuff. Now we are making money."

One customer in Western Europe whines about the telephone company. Another in the Democratic Republic of Congo cannot speak warmly enough about his mobile service. Our industry can frustrate and delight in equal measure. I guess it depends on your sense of perspective.

A mixed week for telcos in the UK press

Infrastructure sharing to have a major impact in emerging markets in 2009?

More details are emerging about the long-expected infrasructure sharing deal between Indian cellcos Reliance Communications and Swan Telecom, the operator in which Etisalat took a 45% stake in September for USD 900 million. According to an Economic Times (India) article last week, the two companies are now expected to finalise a fifteen year deal.

Swan Telecom plans to launch mobile services in the second quarter of this year and has licences to offer mobile services in 13 of the total 22 'circles' (markets) in India.

The article also states that Reliance Telecom Infrastructure Limited (RTIL), which is the spun off tower business of the Anil Ambani-owned MNO, is also discussing similar passive infrastructure sharing arrangements with other new players such as Datacom, Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Loop Telecom.

The Reliance-Swan deal is not the only infrastructure sharing arrangement recently worked out in India. Another of the greenfield MNO's, Telenor-backed Unitech Wireless was reported by Global Mobile Daily in late January to be finalising an agreement with the Tata Teleservices tower arm Wireless-TT Info-Services Limited.

Globally, we might expect more deals of this kind. Back in March last year, the ITU expressed the view that telecoms regulators are increasingly agreeing on the need for infrastructure sharing. This was apparently a major topic of discussion at the annual Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR-08) in Pattaya, Thailand. "Pro-competitive and open access strategies are needed to cut the cost of deploying ICT networks - and thus take a big step towards achieving the targets set by the World Summit on the Information Society as well as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals," commented ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Toure at the time.

Led by Sethaporn Cusripituck of Thailand's National Telecommunications Commission, the Global Symposium delegates reached a consensus on a set of best-practice guidelines aimed at offering affordable broadband access through innovative infrastructure sharing and open-access strategies relating to spectrum. According to a Global Mobile Daily report on the Symposium, "one of the more-radical ideas... was that to encourage universal access to communications services and address the 'digital divide' separating urban areas with telecoms coverage from rural areas without, regulators should consider offering incentives for operators to share infrastructure, including financial subsidies on a competitive basis."

Presumably the two recently asgreed deals in India have met with the approvel of Nirpendra Misra, Chairman of the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India, who said at the Symposium that "sharing is key to promoting ICT access at affordable prices in rural areas" and recommended that sharing of both passive and active mobile and backhaul infrastructure be encouraged. "Operators will automatically receive subsidies for the deployment and management of towers, funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund, as long as operators share the towers with three other operators or service providers," said the TRAI Chairman.

This is in line with recommendations outlined in the ICT Regulation Toolkit, a joint production of infoDev and the ITU, which state that "because of the cost savings, infrastructure sharing may be a pre-requisite for receiving Universal Access and Service Fund (UASF) support into new areas."

Infrastructure sharing involving mobile operators, especially in emering markets, might not only be to the advantage of the cellcos themselves. In the same section of the ICT Regulation Toolkit, the argument is put forward that where mobile operators are dominant service providers, "at least one mobile operator may have a near-ubiquitous national transmission network that has potential usefulness beyond the narrow needs of mobile service provision. This network could include the provision of digital backbone facilities from widely dispersed POPs for ISPs. Even if the existing capacity is limited for broadband, an upgrade to provide broadband may be significantly more economic than a completely new network."

India is not the only South Asian market in which mobile infrastructure sharing has been embraced. In September 2008, Global Mobile Daily reported that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission had unveiled passive infrastructure sharing guidelines aimed at reducing network duplication. The guidlines read: "Operators shall jointly develop, build, maintain and operate new passive infrastructure for providing telecommunication services to the subscribers... However, an individual operator may build passive infrastructures with the permission of the Commission." Tariffs and charges for infrastructure sharing should be mutually agreed among operators, according to the BTRC.
"In case of any dispute regarding the tariff and charges the decision of the Commission shall be final and binding upon the parties," say the guidelines.

At least two of the country's six mobile operators already had network sharing plans in place. In June Warid Telecom's Bangladesh operation and CDMA operator Citycell signed a network infrastructure sharing agreement which sees the two operators sharing the passive elements of around 350 of their combined base stations. Warid Telecom also gained access to a fiber network operated by Citycell for backhaul and bandwidth purposes.

Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere, I know of one market where all four mobile operators competing there are set to share infrastructure. In Panama, as reported by BNAmericas in November, the local subsidiaries of América Móvil/Claro, of Digicel, of Telefónica/Movistar and of Cable & Wireless have worked out deals. The article indicates that Claro and Digicel have reportedly already agreed to sharing their infrastructure and that newer entrants Movistar and C&W, which entered the market last year, having been awarded the country's third and fourth mobile operating licenses in May, will also be involved.

Not all operators agree that infrastructure sharing will always offer them substantial cost savings. In a BNAmericas interview in December, Digicel's Luis La Rocca, said that the process is not without difficulties. Speaking about Panama, he said "not many towers were built in the past to accommodate two carriers, so structures will have to be put in place to make this sharing possible." La Rocca was asked if infrastructure sharing helps to reduce initial deployment costs for a greenfield operator, with the interviewer noting that the deployment cost for Digicel in Honduras was USD 450 million versus UDS 350 million in Panama. La Rocca replied that investment had been higher for Honduras because geographically it is a much larger country with a larger population. He indicated that infrastructure sharing had "not substantially" saved Digicel money in Panama.

Another concern could be maintaining quality of service. In August 2008, according to Global Mobile Daily, the local units of Zain and MTN in Zambia declined to share network infrastructure, with both operators claiming it would be difficult to maintain quality assurance. The GMD article indicated that the country's telecoms regulator the Communications Authority of Zambia had urged the sharing of infrastructure as a way of boosting the expansion of services in rural regions.

With varying degrees of enthusiam for network sharing across emering markets worldwide, I wonder how far developments in the largest market of the lot, China, will influence regulators which have yet to rule on this issue. Nicole McCormick of Informa Telecoms & Media wrote in October that the Chinese Government had issued a policy statement requiring mobile operators to share passive network infrastructure, expressing the view that the move could lead to a reduction of about 15% in the 3G capex of China's three operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. McCormick noted that a possible downside would be that this could add to the delays in the process of rolling out 3G networks, "since operators will have to spend time hashing out the terms and practicalities of sharing networks."

In the same month, another Informa commentator, Kriz Szaniawski, noted that at a recent conference he had attended, someone suggested that network sharing is a bit like healthy eating in the UK: Everyone talks about it obsessively and watches endless TV shows about the subject, but nobody actually does anything about it." Szaniawski feels that there have been "suprisingly few examples of successful deals worldwide, with a few in Australia, Spain and Sweden. Most others are still at too early a stage to fully assess, and some have clearly struggled." However, Szaniawski feels that an extended economic downturn could well drive network sharing deals worldwide.

With the governments of major markets such as China and India backing network sharing, 2009 may be the year that deals of this kind have a major impact on operators' bottom line and on the extended availability of services in emerging markets.

Infrastructure sharing to have a major impact in emerging markets in 2009?

How rural users gain from connectivity in emerging markets

The theme to which I have really warmed in the last few days is that of how telecoms and Internet services are improving the lives of poor people in developing countries, especially those who live away from major towns and cities. I have tried to examine how this kind of humanitarian objective can be reconciled with for-profit telecoms sector businesses seeing a solid return on their investments and thereby building shareholder value.

My most recent post, for example, mentioned Village Phone projects in Bangladesh, Indonesia and those involving subsidiaries of MTN in Uganda and Rwanda. This did include a video clip about the Village Phone initiative in Uganda, but I am conscious that I have otherwise been a bit vague about precisely how access to services makes a positive impact on the economies and social conditions of rural communities in emerging markets. In the following clip, which relates to the Rwanda project, we see how a small business works more efficiently by gaining the facility to order materials online rather than having someone travel to make a purchase. The same business has also gained from being able to access international markets for its products.


As well as showing us the benefits for users of services, we also hear echoes of a point discussed here. In the clip, MTN Rwanda CEO Themba Khumalo says: "we are creating a base of potential customers into the future. Not the very far future. The near future." This chimes neatly with the 2005 quote from Neil Gough of Vodafone which I dug up for Saturday's entry: "all of these results were achieved through enterprise rather than aid. A clear success story in commercial terms but one that also had a profound impact on the development of the economy and society."

This is taken from the Autumn 2008 edition of Ericsson 's online magazine 'Telecom Report' and is part of a longer video article on Corporate Social Responsibility. In my last post, I looked at the enthusiasm of Ericsson's rival Nokia Siemens Siemens Networks for work of this kind, quoting the company's Head of New Growth Markets, Rauno Granath who is adamant that "there is still a lot of pure business sense for operators to reach the rural areas." With that in mind, I do wonder why the presenter of Ericsson's video magazine saw the need to round up the item by asking whether the case of the basket weavers of Rwanda is "a marketing ploy or sincere commitment", particularly because it's not immediately clear whose possible 'marketing ploy' he is referring to. Does he mean a marketing ploy on the part of MTN? It is hard to tell, not least because I am not sure who commissioned and produced the film from Rwanda. MTN? Ericsson? Some third party? Whatever the story, I feel sure that Ericsson would not want the remark to suggest any cynicism on their company's part regarding the idea of bringing communications services to poor people in rural areas in the developing world - not least because in late 2007, the Swedish vendor announced its own partnership with the United Nations and The Earth Institute to provide connectivity to African villages through the same Millennium Villages project mentioned in the Rwanda clip.

In the clip, and via Ericsson's November 2007 announcement, we can see that as well as improving the efficiency of the villages' nascent entrepreneurs, access to the Internet is being used to benefit the education of children. Ericsson's Millennium Villages announcement also emphasised the health benefits, quoting Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a key partner in the Millennium Villages project: "A mobile phone is one core breakthrough technology; it won’t end malaria by itself, but it can make it possible for a mother whose child is dying of malaria to access a community health worker to ensure that her child gets the emergency treatment they need to stay alive."

I only wish these points were always so clearly articulated in the general news media. The UK's Guardian newspaper supports development work carried out by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and Farm-Africa in Katine, a rural sub-county of north-east Uganda. The project was launched by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and is being funded by donations from Guardian and Observer (the paper's Sunday edition) readers and Barclays Bank, which initially gave £500,000 to the project and will match fund donations over the course of the project up to £1m.

The Katine project is more than just a fundraising push. Via the Guardian's dedicated Katine website readers can follow how the money is spent, how development works (the successes and the failures) and how the lives of the sub-county's 25,000 inhabitants are changing.

While this all sounds very good, something I did find rather frustrating was an article earlier this month, which I felt made a fairly weak case for spending donors' money on providing Katine resident with Internet access. I felt the flippant title ('Learning to surf') and the fact that the piece does not really go into how Internet access will benefit the villagers makes it an unhelpful contribution to the debate around this.

Last month, however, there was a better Katine article covering mobile phone use and how "the latest technology is enabling villagers to bypass middlemen and find out the prices their crops will command." I also noticed that Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net fame responded to the article's point about how mobile users in Katine charge their phones. There is more about this issue from Ken on one of his 2008 blog posts.

That's all for now. In the next hour I have to head for the airport to take the last family vacation before starting my challenging, exciting new assignment. I daresay that by the next time I am on online there will be plenty of news emanating from Barcelona worthy of comment here.

How rural users gain from connectivity in emerging markets

Emerging markets to get a deserved look in at a downturn-themed Mobile World Congress

An averagely busy life does not allow for blog entries as long as novellas. I also doubt that posts as long as that would be read from start to finish by equally busy readers. Some topics, though, are worth exploring at length, and I was conscious yesterday of having downed tools before getting close to sharing more than a tiny fraction of what I've learned about the theme I was discussing - how successfully the telecoms sector is reconciling its for-profit commercial imperatives with a desire to improve the lives of poor people in developing countries. What follows today, therefore, is a little more exploration of this broad topic.

A company which got a mention here yesterday was Grameenphone, the cellco which owns the largest share of the mobile market in Bangladesh - 46.75% by December 2008, according to Informa Telecoms & Media's World Cellular Information Service. We considered the idea that the MNO's owners, Telenor and Grameen Telecom, have been at odds, with Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate behind the Grameen family of companies apparently claiming that Telenor's need to build shareholder value has not always sat comfortably with the social and non-profit agenda of its Bangladeshi partners.

For many, I will be rehashing a very familiar story as I take a look at the form this agenda has taken. Some readers may know the story less well and not be fully aware of how cellcos elsewhere in the world have been inspired by Grameen Telecom/Grameenphone initiatives. The tale is one of my favourite examples of the telecoms industry changing lives for the better so I will indulge myself by repeating it, hoping that there is something new here for at least one reader of this blog.

The most famous Grameen Telecom/Grameenphone project must be Village Phone, an inititative which provides telecoms services to underprivileged people in rural Bangladesh. Prospective Village Phone subscribers must first become members of Grameen Bank and take out a small loan. This loan is then used to purchase a handset and SIM card. Once given a phone, the subscriber is encouraged to provide services to people in the adjoining area. In this way, the borrower repays the debt to the bank and earns a profit. In 2006, I welcomed a representative of Grameen Telecom to a conference I hosted in Dubai. Participants watched a moving video which showed how the Village Phone project was transforming the lives of poor Bangladeshi villages, mostly women.

This model has been replicated elsewhere in Asia and also in Africa. I think the most recent example is that of the Village Phone project launched in Indonesia by the Grameen Foundation, Qualcomm and Bakrie Telecom, a CDMA WLL operator that is seeking to establish a national presence with its Esia brand.

In July 2008, Global Mobile Daily reported on the project, whose name, 'Uber ESIA', means 'joint cooperation' in the Indonesian language, and which is aimed at delivering affordable access to remote rural areas using 3G CDMA technology. Similar to the original Bangladeshi model, the plan is to work with local Indonesian microfinance institutions to enable clients to borrow sums needed to purchase a Village Phone 'business in a box' consisting of a mobile 3G CDMA-based device and charger, marketing materials, tariff posters, business cards and training materials.

Earlier examples of the Village Phone model being exported are those of the Grameen Foundation's collaboration with MTN's Ugandan subsidiary (launched in 2003) and with MTN Rwanda (launched in 2006).

This clip (in Dutch, with English subtitles) tells the story of the Ugandan initiative:



Qualcomm's involvement in the Indonesian Village Phone project is further evidence to support a point made in yesterday's post - that telecoms operators are not the only communications services ecosystem participants which can support initiatives designed to improve the lives of poor people in emerging markets.

Another example of this is the 'Village Connection' system developed by Nokia Siemens Networks. I remember this being discussed in an email-only publication to which I was once a regular contributor, the weekly 'Telecoms Vision' newsletter associated with the Informa Telecoms & Media Com World Series. In February last year, this carried an article based on an interview with Rauno Granath, NSN's Head of New Growth Markets. Granath explained that the Village Connection solution, which is comprised of GSM access points located in villages, connected via IP links to regional access centres, was "carrying live traffic in many villages in India." The article stated that the system lends itself to new business models such as operators potentially franchising parts of their business to local village entrepreneurs.

Granath was keen, however, for NSN not to be prescriptive about business models, saying "the Village Connection solution enables new thinking in sharing the responsibilities as well as the business between the new stakeholders, but it doesn't mandate it. I would expect to see a whole variety of ways of working." The article suggested that as different business models emerge, so too could different operator approaches to charging, and went on to discuss other offerings in the NSN portfolio designed to make taking on new subscribers even more viable. An example given was that of improved radio performance and planning through which it becomes possible to allow a reduction in sites, saving money on hardware and, in isolated areas, on power. Also discussed were further ways of reducing power consumption, and thus the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for prospective new subscribers from among the poor of the developing world. These included base stations that can work without air conditioning and combined solar and wind power systems.

Another efficiency measure discussed by Granath concerned airtime distribution purely on an SMS basis rather than scratch cards. "It sounds trivial," said Granath, "but when we think about the tens or hundreds of millions of vouchers that operators need to distribute throughout their subscriber base every year, it starts to get big effects."

The article made the point that these are all admirable attempts to make supplying services to rural populations viable but asked the question of whether such potential subscriber additions are really worth the effort for operators. Granath was adamant that "there is still a lot of pure business sense for operators to reach the rural areas, particularly in markets like India where even the rural population is dense." Apart from which, it may be unavoidable if, as Granath pointed out, universal service obligations are imposed by governments.

For more on the Nokia Siemens Networks view on extending service availability in emerging markets, I would heartily recommend a look at the latest edition of the company's Expanding Horizons newsletter. With an editorial co-authored by Rauno Granath, this is a useful round up not only of NSN's activities in this field, but also related material such as an interview with Gabriel Solomon of the GSM Association, who worries that high taxes on mobile communications are threatening to suppress economic and social development in sub-Saharan Africa.

As I continue to tease former colleagues at Informa Telecoms & Media whose Facebook status updates suggest they are gearing up for a week of very hard work at the Mobile World Congress (while I head off for a family holiday in Florida), I was pleased to note that a senior figure at the company is predicting that the effects of the economic downturn notwithstanding, emerging markets will get a look in during the various conference sessions and workshops and in the countless discussions between individual participants.

Mark Newman, the business information and events firm's Chief Research Officer begins his preview of this year's Barcelona show by asking how how exhibiting vendors "can... showcase new mobile Internet devices, mobile applications and next generation mobile broadband network technology while at the same time satisfy[ing] operators' overriding single objective in 2009 - cutting costs as the mobile industry faces up to the global economic downturn."

All very austere. Almost as harsh as my wife returning from a lunch with friends today and sharing with me the news that several people present have either been made redundant or are expecting the axe to fall very soon.

My own view of the downturn, however, is to be grateful for the fact that however long or deep this recession proves to be, none of us living in the developed economies of Europe or North America will experience the levels of absolute poverty suffered by people in what we call emerging markets. I was therefore heartened by the final comment of Mark's MWC preview: "Growth potential in emerging markets has been a regular theme over the last few years and will remain so at this year's event". For me, that's exactly as it should be, especially if we take the view that telcos and vendors making a profit in developing economies is compatible with improved lives for the poor.

Emerging markets to get a deserved look in at a downturn-themed Mobile World Congress

India's WiMAX/3G debate revisited

It does seem to be India week here on Developing Telecoms Watch. When I posted a link to this blog at the Mobile Consultants LinkedIn group, a member who has worked as an RF networks engineer for a number of the country's cellular operators was very keen to assert in response that his market is "the blue eyed baby for the [global] telecom sector nowadays and adding 8 million subs per month". In my respondent's view, interesting developments to look out for in India will include:

• Site sharing to save OPEX and CAPEX, with "some operators [having] set annual targets of 50-60% incremental sharing".
• As a result of looking at carried traffic and site utilization, "operators are taking a call to switch off some sites during night time to save OPEX".
• Single billing systems for all services provided by an operator, such as mobile, DTH, data usage, IPTV etc.
• Operators identifying common weak coverage areas and areas in high security zones - and planning single sites instead of deploying multiple sites in those areas.
• Operators waiting for number portability "to be deployed ASAP to maximize their revenues".

I concluded Sunday's India-themed post by choosing to infer from a recent report by consultants BDA that there seems to be reasonable case for WiMAX and an even stronger one for 3G in India. Since then I've read articles in which the prospects for both are enthusiastically talked up.

Making the case for 3G, in an interview in an interview with Business Line yesterday was Mr P. Balaji, Ericsson India's VP of Marketing and Strategy. Balaji asserts that Indian operators will be able to roll out services with minimal additional infrastructure costs and that 3G will help to bridge the urban-rural digital divide. "Telemedicine, e-education and e-governance can be offered through 3G in rural pockets," says Ericsson's Balaji, "and this is bound to improve the quality of life of the people."

Asked how 3G stacks up against WiMAX, Balaji states "we believe the Government should leave it to the market forces and not dictate technology choices" and that in his opinion "3G will score in the Indian telecom market because it offers greater economies of scale, faster time to market and multiplicity of handsets".

This is not very surprising. Outlined in a white paper released last month, the Ericsson view of comparisons between WiMAX and HSPA can is as follows: "While the peak data rates, spectral efficiency and network architecture of HSPA Evolution and Mobile WiMAX are similar, HSPA offers better coverage. In short, Mobile WiMAX does not offer any technology advantage over HSPA. What is more, HSPA is a proven mobile broadband technology deployed in more than 100 commercial networks... [and] can be built out using existing GSM radio network sites and is a software upgrade of installed W-CDMA networks. Compared with other alternatives, HSPA is the clear and undisputed choice for mobile broadband services."

The Swedish vendor certainly seems to have lost enthusiasm for the IEEE 802.16 family of standards since making extremely positive noises when joining the WiMAX Forum in December 2004.

Feeling more upbeat about WiMAX in India is research and consulting house Strategy Analytics, whose recent study sees the country's WiMAX subscriber base hitting 14 million by Year 2013 and growing annually by nearly 130%. An Economic Times article on Saturday indicated that the Strategy Analytics report predicts initial investment in WiMAX ventures will top $500 million in India. The US-based research firm feel that after initial deployments primarily in major urban areas pockets, "WiMAX will find relatively greater utility and less competition from competing technologies in smaller towns and villages."

This last point seems to go head-to-head with the claims made by Ericsson's Balaji regarding his envisioned role for 3G networks in India's rural areas. I wonder who will turn out to be right? Or will it be a case of both being half-right?

Another thing for me to wonder about: I wonder if tomorrow will be the day when I finally managed to discuss something other than India's WiMAX and 3G prospects here...

India's WiMAX/3G debate revisited