Since its birth in 1981, when the first mobile telephony network was switched on in Scandinavia, the mobile phone has become one of the world’s great success stories.

As of the end of September there were operational networks in 224 countries around the globe, a figure that has increased from 192 in 1997 and 35 in 1987.  

Informa estimates that mobile networks covered 90 per cent of the global population by mid-2007. This means that some 40 per cent of the world’s inhabitants are covered by a network, but not connected, and leaves just 10 per cent with neither coverage nor connection.  

Although global mobile penetration – the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide – has reached 50 per cent, this does not mean that half of the 6.6 billion or so people in the world now have a mobile phone. Read more.

Phone credit low? Africans go for “beeping”
By Andrew Heavens | Wed Sep 26, 11:32 AM ET

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – If you are in Sudan it is a ‘missed call’. In Ethiopia it is a ‘miskin’ or a ‘pitiful’ call. In other parts of Africa it is a case of ‘flashing’, ‘beeping’ or in French-speaking areas ‘bipage’.

Wherever you are, it is one of the fastest-growing phenomena in the continent’s booming mobile telephone markets — and it’s a headache for mobile operators who are trying to figure out how to make some money out of it.

You beep someone when you call them up on their mobile phone — setting its display screen briefly flashing — then hang up half a second later, before they have had a chance to answer. Your friend — you hope — sees your name and number on their list of ‘Missed Calls’ and calls you back at his or her expense.

It is a tactic born out of ingenuity and necessity, say analysts who have tracked an explosion in miskin calls by cash-strapped cellphone users from Cape Town to Cairo.

“Its roots are as a strategy to save money,” said Jonathan Donner, an India-based researcher for Microsoft who is due to publish a paper on “The Rules of Beeping” in the high-brow online Journal of Computer Mediated Communication in October.

Donner first came across beeping in Rwanda, then tracked it across the continent and beyond, to south and southeast Asia. Studies quoted in his paper estimate between 20 to more than 30 percent of the calls made in Africa are just split-second flashes — empty appeals across the cellular network.

The beeping boom is being driven by a sharp rise in mobile phone use across the continent.

Africa had an estimated 192.5 million mobile phone users in 2006, up from just 25.3 million in 2001, according to figures from the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. Customers may have enough money for the one-off purchase of a handset, but very little ready cash to spend on phone cards for the prepaid accounts that dominate the market.

Africa’s mobile phone companies say the practice has become so widespread they have had to step in to prevent their circuits being swamped by second-long calls.

“We have about 355 million calls across the whole network every day,” said Faisal Ijaz Khan, chief marketing officer for the Sudanese arm of Kuwaiti mobile phone operator Zain (formerly MTC). “And then there are another 130 million missed calls every day. There are a lot of missed calls in Africa.”

‘CALL ME BACK’

Zain is responding to the demand by drawing up plans for a “Call-me-back” service in Sudan, letting customers send open requests in the form of a very basic signal to friends for a phone call.

The main advantage for the company is that the requests will be diverted from the main network and pushed through using a much cheaper technology (USSD or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data).

A handful of similar schemes are springing up across Africa, says Informa principal analyst Devine Kofiloto. “It is widespread. It is a concern for operators in African countries, whose networks become congested depending on the time of day with calls they cannot bill for.

“They try to discourage the practice by introducing services where customers can send a limited number of ‘call-back’ request either free of charge or for a minimum fee.”

There are plenty of other reasons why mobile operators are keen to cut down on the practice. One is it annoys customers, pestered by repeated missed calls.

A second is that ‘flashes’ eat into one of mobile phone companies’ favorite performance indicators — ARPU or average revenue per user. Miscalls earn very little in themselves – and don’t always persuade the target to ring back.

Orange Senegal, Kofiloto said, lets customers send a ‘Rappelle moi’ (‘Call me back’) when their phone credit drops below $0.10. With Safaricom Kenya, it is a “Flashback 130″ (limited to five a day — and with the admonishment ‘Stop Flashing! Ask Nicely’). Vodacom DR Congo’s ‘Rappelez moi SVP’ service costs $0.01 a message.

MORE THAN MONEY

But beeping is not only about money. Donner’s ‘Rules of Beeping’ suggests a social protocol for the practice.

“The richer guy pays,” he writes. It is acceptable to beep someone if you are short of cash and they are flush with credit. Never beep someone poorer than you.

Never beep someone you are tapping for a favor. You don’t want to risk annoying the person you are trying to win over. Never flash your girlfriend, unless you want to look cheap.

“Most beeps are requests to the mobile owner to call back immediately, but can also send a pre-negotiated instrumental message such as pick me up now,’ or send a relational sign, such as I’m thinking of you,’” the paper says.

It can go even further than that.

Cameroonian researchers Victor W.A. Mbarika and Irene Mbarika identified a different kind of beeping-powered relational call in a study for the technology association the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

“Lovers often communicate with text messages or beeping’,” said the study. “One party dials another’s number and then hangs up. One ring could mean, I am here,’ two rings, Call me now.’”

And the name they gave this new entry in the beeping lexicon? Borrowing a street slang term for an appeal for sex, they christened it “the booty call.”

Rural cellularization may not sound like much, but Mr. Bose is a follower of Clayton M. Christensen, the management guru, who also happens to serve on Vanu’s board. Mr. Christensen told him that the best place to start a new business is where there isn’t yet an established market. So Vanu is starting a project, its largest yet, in Alaska, and is involved with I.B.M, on a demonstration for a project to bring villages in India onto the cellular network.

No longer, then, is Vanu Bose building the world’s most expensive cellphone. In fact, he may help make the cellphone possible everywhere.

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JAKARTA: The Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers urge network operators to lower leased line tariffs to allow a healthy competition in providing Internet services for retail customers. Chairman of the Association Sylvia W. Sumarlin said that network operators, which also provide direct internet services to customers, have disturbed ISP
businesses.

“Every day, a lot of ISP customers switch to network operators because they provide cheaper tariffs to access Internet,” she said to Bisnis yesterday. Internet tariffs from network operators are cheaper than ISP’s because those operators apply very high leased lines, forcing ISPs to charge higher retail prices, she said. Leased line is the network that connects ISP with the customers. This network is hired by ISPs from network or telecommunication operators with a specific rate.

A study of Learning Initiatives on Reforms for Network Economies (LIRNE) Asia showed that high leased line price is the main factor that pushes ISPs to use wireless fidelity (WiFi) network to connect Internet users. LIRNE Asia noted that leased line prices in Indonesia are three to four times more expensive than in India or Europe. In the local network with the capacity of 2 Mbps, Indonesia’s price is even 48 times more expensive than India.
Sylvia emphasized that the association doesn’t object network operators providing direct internet access for users, as long as they also apply low rates for ISPs, so both can compete on a level playing field. “The number of customers of each (ISP or network operator) will then depend on services with relatively equal tariffs,” she said.Not to Compete Separately, Teddy A. Purwadi, president director of Access.Net, said that the government should draft
conducive policies to ensure that network operators don’t compete with telecommunication service providers for similar products, such as multimedia and Internet.

Network operators are companies that provide local telecommunication network, closed network, cellular network, and satellite network which also provide multimedia services like ISP. Teddy asserted that telecommunication network operators should not provide Internet services, because it would guarantee unfair competition.

The Indonesian Infocom Society (Mastel) estimated that leased line tariffs that each Indonesian ISP has to cover annually reach US$18,000. According to the ISP association, the costs reach 13.5 million rupiah per 2 Mbps per month, or equal to 10 Mbps provided by one of cable TV operators.

The ISP association projects that the ISP businesses are worth 200 billion rupiah this year, not including the businesses of the network operators which provide Internet services. According to the association, there are about 200 ISPs in Indonesia. Only about 100 companies are still active in serving their customers. Twenty of these are categorized as big ISPs, while the rest are medium- and small-scale ISPs, with some not even operating yet.