Click here to view presentation slides.

In an interview with BizIT, Jaikishan Rajaraman, GSMA director of product and service development, said the number of users in Asia subscribing to HSPA will swell from 26.5 million to 53.5 million over the next 12 months. Fuelling this trend are soaring demand from both businesses and consumers, coupled with falling prices of mobile broadband services, he said. This trend is expected to be mirrored in other parts of the world, including Europe and the US.

In August, GSMA – a global trade organisation comprising more than 750 mobile phone operators around the world – reported that the number of HSPA subscribers worldwide had exceeded 50 million, from 11 million a year ago. There are 197 HSPA commercial deployments in 92 countries, with Asia currently accounting for 46 per cent of the global HSPA subscriber base, according to GSMA.

‘Mobile broadband has truly made socio-economic impact, especially in emerging markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka as well as developed markets like Australia, Japan and South Korea,’ said Mr Rajaraman.

Read the full story in Asiaone Business here.

This event, designed for South Asia’s top telecommunication players interested in building and managing a business-focused telecommunciations organization, is intended to provide an important platform for information exchange through dialogue between serious players in the region. The event will feature keynotes, thought-leadership presentations, interactive discussion panels and real-world case studies on ‘hot topics’ pertinent to the South Asian industry.

Rohan will make a presentation entitled, ‘Introducing broadband: investment conditions, regulatory challenges and addressing QoS’ at a session entitled, ‘Exploiting technologies for future growth and development’.  Rohan will also be among panelists at a discussion on ‘Leveraging on next generation technologies to extend the service offering’.

Other notable speakers at the event include Mehboob Chowdhury, Chairman of the South Asian GSM Forum, Bangladesh, and Ricardo Tavares, Senior Vice President – Public Policy, GSM Association, USA.

An on-line version of the full program is available here.

Asia Pacific telecom operators had a big party in Colombo this week. They were celebrating the 21 st anniversary of the global mobile standard, GSM. Despite a few puzzlingly sexist comments about the significance of the 21 st birthday to a “Young Girl” (as though it was not significant for a male) it was a good party.

Anyway, the point is that it was not just fun and games. The conference that followed was a serious one. In the industry leaders’ forum LIRNEasia was also given a place. I have been to many of these events, both at ITU Telecom when they used to be the preeminent industry gathering place and at other industry fora, and I have never seen anyone other than CEOs and government ministers or regulators invited for these kinds of headline sessions. I think industry is beginning to see the value of organizations such as LIRNEasia which bring evidence to bear on issues and allow for independent assessment of policy and regulatory actions.

Industry events can be, and are, used to stroke the egos of powerful government officials and build industry camaraderie. It is good that they are being used for more than that. Stroking egos is necessary when government officials hold so much discretionary power and the independence of regulatory agencies is a thin façade that only the ITU believes in. But it is important to try to get beyond this culture. After all, how can the telecom industry claim to be laying the foundation for a knowledge economy if it does not give weight to knowledge and evidence?

In addition to the Leader’s Forum, LIRNEasia organized a regulatory and policy session which had as participants Adam Denton (Head of Regulatory Affairs at the GSM Association), Samir Satchu (the Government and Regulatory Affairs head of Roshan, the heroic Afghan operator), M. Aslam Hayat (a regulatory expert from Pakistan) and Helani Galpaya of LIRNEasia. Helani’s and Aslam’s slides are worth taking a look at, providing new ideas on how to think about international roaming and license renewal among other matters.

The slides are here.

Aslam Hayat

Helani Galpaya

With Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, poised to propose a new round of price caps this month, mobile operators claim their capital spending has already slipped from 13% of revenues in 2005 to 11% last year – and could fall further.

The GSM Association – the global trade body representing more than 750 GSM mobile phone operators – citing data from a study by management consultants, says the industry’s return on capital employed was as low as 7% in 2007 or less than half that of other significant sectors such as steel and software.

Sources said this gives the lie to Reding’s claim that it is making excessive profits from “roaming” services in the EU.

Read the full stiry in the Guardian here.

The Association, which represents operators of GSM and 3G networks, says providers across Europe, Asia and North America are all reporting huge increases in the uptake of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), with the uptake said to have increased by 44 per cent in the past 10 months.

It says the number of networks offering commercial mobile broadband services has risen sharply in the past year. Broadband on mobile phones is available in 73 countries from 166 operators, up from 96 networks commercially deployed in 3 countries.

Meanwhile the Global mobile Suppliers Association, which represents the makers of infrastructure and end user equipment, said 637 HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) products have now launched, representing an annual growth of 150 percent.

Read the full story in EETimes here.

HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) is an advanced form of 3G deployed by cellular operators that use GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology. Worldwide, GSM is the most widely-used cellular technology; it is used by AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile in the U.S. HSPA currently offers speeds ranging from 1.8 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps.

There are now more than 32 million HSPA connections worldwide, compared with 3 million a year ago, according to the GSM Associaton.

Read the full report in ‘Computer World’ here.

“This is really the early days, but when you see the low banking penetration in emerging markets, compared to rapidly growing mobile penetration, the potential is very big,” said James Moberly, senior manager for payment solutions at Vodafone on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress here.

The GSM Association, the global mobile phone industry body, estimates that about a dozen such schemes involving money transfer services are in operation throughout the world, with 10 million users.

Vodafone plans to launch cash transfer services soon in India and other African countries.

“You can send money, withdraw cash, pay your bills or your loan, and all this is within seconds,” said Aleeda Fazal, head of product development at Afghan group Roshan, which is the partner for Vodafone in the troubled country.

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The agreement could have a big impact on global cross-border remittances, worth an estimated $500bn a year, and provide a springboard for mobile carriers and Western Union to offer other mobile banking services using “mobile wallet” technology. Cross-border money transfers valued at up to $100 in countries such as India, the Philippines, Mexico and China – which have large volumes of remittances from migrant workers – will be an early priority of the deal.

Thirty-five mobile operators with 800m customers in more than 100 countries have signed up to take part in the GSMA Mobile Money Transfer pilot scheme led by Sunil Mittal, managing director of Bharti Airtel. Other participants include MTN, Orange, Orascom, Smart, Telenor and VimpelCom.

Read full story here

Mumbai, Mar 27, 2007: Mobile penetration will penetrate the homes of bottom or pyramid (BOP) families in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a study instituted by LIRNEasia has found.

Titled, “Teleuse on a Shoestring- A Study of the Financially Constrained in Asia,” it interviewed and maintained diaries of respondents from Thailand and Philippines besides the above mentioned countries. A C Nielsen conducted the fieldwork. International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada funded the research.

The study notes that south Asia has the largest concentration of poor people in the world. It is an accepted fact that the new growth markets in telecom, especially mobile, are concentrated amongst the poor, or at BOP. According to the GSM Association, the next billion subscribers will come from such markets, a large share from India.

According to the study, 94 per cent of the BOP in India had used a phone in the last three months, 81 per cent relied on shared phones, 38 per cent of non-owners plan to buy a phone in the next two years, 28 percent of the mobile owners use second hand sets, 35 per cent used SMS, compared to 100 per cent in the Philippines and 60 per cent in Sri Lanka, and keeping in touch with friends and family was the biggest use of telephones.

“96 percent of BOP who do not own a phone in rural India. They can access a phone in less than an hour, and public phones are the most popular access mode, followed by relative’s/ friend’s phone, neighbor’s phone, own (fixed) phone, household member’s mobile and own mobile,” the survey points out.

Convenience is the key for using a mobile phone for BOP families, privacy is more of a concern for higher income countries, it notes. Most BOP families in India obtained a mobile connection early 2000s. Pakistan has seen similar growth as previous years, where as Thailand BOP has grown much more steadily, the research states. It says that coverage was more important in rural India, and tariff was a major concern role in urban India.

Distinguishing the needs of the urban and rural BOPs, it opines, “While urban India wants cheap incoming and out going rates, better and easy connectivity, customer service and wider coverage, rural India’s needs are focused on a handset with connection, availability of easy payment schemes, interest in a particular package, low connection charges, as also cheap incoming and outgoing rates, better voice clarity, range of services and wider coverage.”

The researchers feel that the BOPs are more interested in prepaid mobile to control expenditures and no monthly rentals. Miss call alert is a universal strategy to minimize call costs by owners. Majority still call from fixed line to a fixed line, while a few use mobile to mobile calls and some use phone only as an incoming device.

The respondents experienced efficiency in daily activities after using a phone. “Only India BOP perceives economic benefit activities vs ability to earn or save are significantly different at 95 per cent confidence interval,” the study states. Respondents in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan said that they benefited in services and agriculture by saving travel time and costs, checking prices information and sale of minutes. They added sense of security is the main benefit in the ability to act during emergency.

The study also notes that three billion people would use phones by 2008, of which 50 per cent users would be from Asia Pacific, including China. India would lead the pack with a possible 101 new connections at BOP in the next two years, followed by Pakistan at 30 million, Philippines at ten million, and Sri Lanka and Thailand at one million each. Most respondents replied that they wanted to buy a mobile phone citing better value proposition as the reason.

A brief comparison in the fixed phones growth since liberalization (post NTP 1999) shows that the fixed phones have grown at a CAGR of 9.5 per cent in India, as against 11 per cent in Pakistan, 18.8 per cent in Sri Lanka, 10.43 per cent in Thailand and 11.1 per cent in Philippines. Mobile phones on the other hand have grown at a CAGR of 87.8 per cent in India, 109 per cent in Pakistan, 50.8 per cent in Sri Lanka, 65 percent in Indonesia, 68.8 per cent in Philippines and 49.6 per cent in Thailand.

Harsha de Silva, lead analyst at LIRNEasia avers the telecom operators should think about leveraging benefits of direct access, convergence, collaboration on meaningful content, SMS based services and innovations to enable cheaper calls for eg: any amount prepaid balance top ups. He also calls upon handset manufacturers to develop affordable handsets with local language SMS capabilities and ultra low cost phones with a warranty’.

Quoting C.K. Prahalad, “. if we stop thinking of poor as a burden and start recognizing them as value conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up,” he lists benefits from direct access as income generation through the sale of telecom services similar to the Grameen model. Indirect access includes use of a phone by an auto rickshaw driver, obtaining agricultural information by a farmer and cost savings made by making a call as opposed to taking a bus ride into town.

De Silva notes that the expectations of initial cost do match affordability and the mismatch between need and affordability has to be addressed. Most respondents expect the monthly usage charges to be below $5. He concludes adding, ” Wide PCO availability in India is perhaps protecting Indian BOP from paying poverty premium that Sri Lankan BOP has to face, those who use other people’s or public phones are being charged high rates.”

 Read story at CXOToday.com

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.

The first Keynote speaker, Zhengmao Li, VP China Unicom, described the efforts of the Chinese govt and his company in building a harmonious digital society. Thanks to the govt’s policy to provide access to ICTs on an equitable and affordable basis, more than 97 percent of administrative villages in China have a phone.
The second Keynote speaker, Tom Philips, Chief Regulatory Officer at the GSM Association forcefully argued that USO programs in most parts of the world have not resulted in improved access but have rather harmed the objective of connecting those who currently do not have access. Mobile telephony provides service to 2.5 billion people, 80 percent of them are connected via GSM. The GSM Association identified the cost of a handset to be the single biggest barrier to ownership. In order to reduce that barrier, a new initiative was launched that resulted in the $20 mobile handset developed by Motorola.

However, some of the other barriers to access revolve around governments. High taxation on mobile services has been identified as one such barrier. In some countries, mobile providers are the single biggest tax payers. In Mr Philips’ view, USO funding policy is holding back ubiquitous telephone service rather than promoting it. A study of 90 different countries found about a third of them collect USO funds. Mobile networks currently cover 80% of the world’s population. Mr Philips asserted that 100% coverage of population is achievable if USO fund can be directed for mobile network deployment rather than to landline and fixed infrastructure. Of the $6 billion that is being collected in USO funds from around the world, excluding the USA, only quarter has been spend on the telecom sector. By the end of the decade, USO funds globally will rise to $10 billion.

Although the mobile industry has contributed $2 billion out of the $6 billion in USO funds collected, Mr Philips argued that only $75 million, or less than 1 percent, has been put back into the mobile sector. This is especially surprising considering that mobile technology is seen to be 10 times more cost effective than fixed in providing connectivity to the unconnected.
Mr Philips argued that USO programs should be phased out over time. The $4.4 billion in unspent USO funds should be spent for what it was collected for–for connecting those who are not connected today by the most cost effective manner.

An excellent panel discussion followed where Martin Hilbert from ECLAC, Roger Marks from IEEE and Rob Frieden from Penn State participated. The video from this session can be found here [140MB!]

Roger Marks, Chair of the IEEE 802.16 Working Group discussed the initiative to develop a nationwide broadband wireless acess system for low cost access by finalizing a new standard.
Martin Hilbert, disagreed with Mr Philip’s view that USO programs should be phased out. According to him, GSM Association’s $20 Motorola handset was too expensive for the vast majority. Hence, he argued, that universal access funds are absolutely necessary to provide access to everyone. He estmated that higher end of society can spend about $50 a month on ICTs versus $2 a month for the poorer people. In his opinion, a poor person would have to spend a year’s salary in order to buy a $20 mobile phone.

Rob Frieden, Professor at Penn State University while assessing United States’ USO program seemed to agree with many of Tom Philip’s arguments. The US has the world’s largest USO program that has collected around $30 billion over a 20 year period. In his view, any USO mechanism based on voice minutes per use will trend to “0.” He argued that you cant
fund universal service if the service costs nothing, as voice calls move to the Internet.

USO funds are a distortion of the marketplace especially if it is not spent. It tends to perpetuates the status quo and voice services. He gave the example of the US, where for many years wireless service didn’t even qualify for USO fuding. This is the case in many developing countries currently. The other major problem is that USO disbursement is not calibrated to the expendable income of the beneficiary. Any US rural resident is eligible for USO subsidy disregarding the person’s income and ability to pay for communication services.
Rob Frieden upheld the Grameen model as something all USO programs should try to emulate. The Grameen Phone model
is private, not govt, its entrepreunerial, its foward-looking, its inexpensive its self-sustaining, its streamlined and its successful. All the criteria one would want to see in an USO progran. When juxtaposes with USO programs in the US and elsewhere he finds that they are: Government driven, distorts the marketplace, promotes interest of incumbent carrier and status quo, bureaucratic, complex, vulnerable to fraud, and not necessarily successful.
He concluded by describing what USO programs ought to be. In his view, USO programs ought to be technology neutral that promotes universal access, create incentives for demand aggregation by community champions, encourage competition by reverse auction for access to subsidy etc.

Figure 1:

Goswami, lead researcher on LIRNEasia’s Indonesia ICT sector and regulatory performance study, chaired a session that included keynote presentations by Dr Sofyan Djalil, the Indonesian Minister of ICTs. Samarajiva’s session on universal access included keynotes by the Vice President of China Unicom, Dr Zhengmao Li, and Tom Philllips, the Head of Regulatory Affairs at the GSM Association.

LIRNEasia has an ongoing research program that covers India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand, in addition to capacity building work across the entire Asia Pacific. The invitations to chair the said sessions demonstrated the high recognition that LIRNEasia has achieved in the two years of its existence. Samarajiva and Goswami are the only representatives from non-profit research organizations invited as session chairs, outside the US, the UK and the host country.

Samarajiva was an invited speaker at previous Forums– Telecom Asia 2004 (Busan, Korea), Telecom Asia 2002 (Hong Kong), Telecom Africa 2001 (Johannesburg) and Telecom World 1999 (Geneva)—, and chaired the ITU expert workshop on fixed-mobile interconnection in 2000 and served on the ITU Secretary General’s Expert Group on International Telecommunication Regulations, 1999-2000.

Ecology and economy is equally critical for mobile phone coverage in the less lucrative emerging markets. Diesel generators energise the base stations at remote locations. Supplying fuel across the unfriendly terrain is also a logistical nightmare. Such expensive exercise, however, inhibits the operators to invest in the low-yield regions.

These grueling problems have prompted the three organisations to set up a first of its kind pilot project in the world. They hope that bio-fuels may replace diesel as a source of power for mobile base stations located beyond the reach of the electricity grid.
 

They are setting up a supply chain designed to benefit the local population by sourcing a variety of locally-produced crops and processing them into bio-fuel in Nigeria. Groundnuts, pumpkin seeds, jatropha, and palm oil will be used in the initial pilot tests.
 

This non-fossil alternative gasoline also has a much lower impact on the environment than conventional diesel. Bio-diesel, being the cleaner burning fuel, results in fewer site-visits and also extends the life of the base station generator, reducing operators’ costs.
 

“In order to reach the next billion mobile users, we need to reach lower-spending segments of the population profitably,” said Ericsson’s sales and marketing vice president Bert Nordberg. “By using locally-produced bio-fuels, we could significantly lower the cost of operating mobile base stations in rural areas.”
 

The GSMA and Ericsson will draw on the findings of the pilot to help operators across the developing world to figure out they can use Bio-diesel to power their networks in the rural Nigeria.
 

Only 25 percent of this oil-rich country is connected to the electricity grid. MTN has invested in Y’ellowWatts, its own power system made up of an extensive grid of generators designed to keep the entire MTN network at an optimum level of performance.
 
“The early adoption of bio-fuel-powered mobile networks would place Africa at the forefront of a new wave of innovation that is making mobile communications affordable and accessible across the developing world,” said Karel Pienaar, CTIO of the MTN Group.
 Bio-diesel has several important advantages over conventional diesel as a power source for base stations. It can be produced locally, creating employment in rural areas, while reducing the need for transportation, related logistics and security.
 
“The extension of mobile networks into rural areas is vital to boost the social and economic welfare of the developing world,” said Rob Conway, GSMA’s CEO. “Bio-fuels have the potential to make that happen by giving mobile operators local access to a commercially and environmentally sustainable power supply.”
 

Bio-diesel has several important advantages over conventional diesel as a power source for base stations. It can be produced locally, creating employment in rural areas, while reducing the need for transportation, related logistics and security. “The extension of mobile networks into rural areas is vital to boost the social and economic welfare of the developing world,” said Rob Conway, GSMA’s CEO. “Bio-fuels have the potential to make that happen by giving mobile operators local access to a commercially and environmentally sustainable power supply.” The GSMA’s Development Fund finances this pilot project while Ericsson and MTN are setting up a pilot Bio-diesel-powered base station solution in Lagos and will later deploy Bio-diesel-fueled base stations in rural regions of south eastern and south western Nigeria.

GSM Association Press Release 2006 – GSMA announces shortlist for the first Asia Mobile Innovation Awards