Presentation slides can be downloaded here.

The panellists included:
Maria Del Rosario Guerra, Minister for Communications, Colombia
Binali Yildirim, Minister of Transport and Communications, Turkey
Daniel Pataki, Chairman European Regulators Group (ERG)
Mickael Gosshein, CEO Orange Jordan
Sol Trujillo, CEO Telstra

The Government Mobile Forum is a unique platform where ministers, regulators and industry leaders come together, face to face, to discuss the opportunities that the mobile industry offers for economic growth and social development and the barriers it faces in meeting this challenge.

Smart Corporate – Smart Padala – About Smart Padala

SMART PADALA is the first cash remittance service via text. It is a faster and cheaper way of remitting cash from a sender abroad to the celfone of a beneficiary here in the PhilippinesHow does SMART Padala work?

FOR SENDERS ABROAD:
1. Go to any SMART Padala Remittance Partner. Fill out an information sheet about your beneficiary in the Philippines, especially his SMART Celfone number / SMART Money number.
2. The Remittance Center will transfer your remittance to the SMART Money number of your Beneficiary. (NOTE: if you’re using SMART Padala for the first time, your beneficiary will be assigned a SMART money number to which the remittance will be transferred).
3. After a few seconds/minutes, the Remittance Center will confirm that the transaction has been completed.

FOR BENEFICIARIES IN THE PHILIPPINES:
1. You will receive a text message indicating your 16-digit SMART Money number. Another text message will be sent to confirm that the money has been received through the SMART money number.
2. To encash, go to any SMART Padala Center.
3. You will be sent a SMART Money card or you have the option to get a SMART Money Card in any SMART Wireless Center. Using the card, you can withdraw cash in any Banco de Oro, Expressnet or Megalink ATM’s nationwide

LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO

Making affordable phones and targeting consumers with smaller budgets have now become priorities for the largest companies in the sector who were all present at this week’s 3GSM trade show in Barcelona.

“There are between 2.5 and 2.8 billion people who have a mobile phone: the next billion will come from the high-growth market,” said David Taylor, strategy director for Motorola.

The areas representing the most opportunity are Asia, Africa and the Middle East, he said.

According to European telecommunications institute Idate, the average spending per user is about 26.50-37.50 euros (34.8-49.2 dollars) per month in industrialised countries, but this figure falls to about 8.20 euros in the newly targeted emerging countries.

India has been selected because of its success in establishing a framework of policies and regulations, which have stimulated the growth of mobile telecommunications over the past three years.

The latest data from the Indian government shows that India’s mobile operators are now collectively adding six to seven million new subscribers each month.

GSMA’s CEO Rob Conway presented the award to Thiru Dayanidhi Maran, India’s minister for communications and information technology. The presentation took place at the GSMA’s Leadership Summit in Barcelona.

The Indian government’s policies have not only helped revive but stimulate the country’s mobile industry, whose growth, only a few years ago, was stifled due to various challenges.

Since then, the government has done various policy and regulatory reforms. Relaxing rules on foreign direct investment, raising the limit for foreign investment in a telecoms company from 49 percent to 74 percent is a major milestone.

It has liberalised the domestic and international long-distance markets, facilitated the sharing of network infrastructure, increased the amount of commercially available radio frequency and secured spectrum for third generation mobile in the IMT-2000 core band.

The GSMA’s Government Leadership Award was given to Brazil in 2005 and to Pakistan in 2006.

Our friend and colleague Abu Saeed Khan is reporting on a major development on these lines from the GSM Congress in Barcelona:

:: bdnews24.com ::

Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than one trillion dollars by 2012.

To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while GSMA is setting up a pilot project with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorisation, clearing and settlement.

GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks.

The hub will enable migrant workers to transfer money and notify their families via mobile phone.

“The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80 percent of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries,” said Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA.

“The programme will resonate with governments because it makes the international payment market more transparent, encourages financial inclusion, reduces crime and boosts the flow of hard currency into their countries,” added Conway.

de Silva presented some findings contained in a paper written with LIRNEasia researcher Ayesha Zainudeen on the costs and benefits of access to telecoms and the expected next billion subscribers. A particular finding of interest to local policy makers was that almost a quarter of Sri Lankans at the bottom of the pyramid believe that direct access to a phone (i.e., through ownership of one) in fact worsens their financial situation; this is in stark contrast to the findings in the other four countries. According to de Silva a key reason for this could be the island’s Receiving Party Pays tariff policy.  The presentation provided several recommendations to global telecom operators and handset manufacturers on how to develop business models that could result in win-win situations for both private enterprises and the poor based on what Indian management guru C K Prahlad’s work on the ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.’

The study was conducted in mid-2006 and will be formally launched in Mumbai in January 2007 at GSM>3G India, a prestigious conference which will attract leaders in the mobile industry. The field work for the study was carried out by AC Nielsen Lanka and their affiliates in each respective country.

ESOMAR is the world organization for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies. With 4000 members in 100 countries, ESOMAR aims to promote the value of market and opinion research in illuminating real issues and bringing about effective decision-making.