Author: Digital World

What makes the world’s top executives cringe? From our latest C-suite survey covering responses from 5,247 business leaders from 21 industries it is clear that it is the “Uber syndrome.” They expressed their fear that a competitor with a completely different business model enters their industry and flattens them.

Seventy-six percent of communications service provider (CSP) executives expect more competition to come from outside their industry in the coming years. In fact, competition from outside has already been a threat for traditional CSPs for many years, with digital disrupters as Skype, WhatsApp and WeChat destroying the so profitable revenue streams from voice and messaging. These trailblazing companies have reset the expectations for customer experience and many CSPs have yet to transform their business models to respond to these new expectations.

In an environment that is in a severe state of flux, the ultimate winners may be either the new entrants that move and scale the fastest or traditional CSPs that are willing to adapt and change. Successful CSPs will need to deliver superior customer experiences, disrupt their own business models and implement the cognitive and personalized paradigm to secure their footholds in a changing strategic landscape and an altering industry hegemony.

Making this Digital Reinvention^TM a reality requires simultaneous progress along two trajectories (see Outthinking disruption in communications). The successful CSP will emerge as providers along two digital service axes: The digital services provider (DSP) and the digital services enabler (DSE).

As a DSP, the CSP delivers high-quality customer experiences through online channels. It values data and analytics – and will embrace cognitive capabilities to further improve the customer experience and its operations. To become a DSP, today’s provider must overcome challenges. Siloed processes and divisions are the biggest obstacles in implementing customer experience initiatives for most CSPs, but also not understanding what makes good customer experiences and the lack of the right digital skills are clear hurdles.

Along the other axis, the DSE recognizes the growing importance of ecosystems and the associated market opportunities. Though the key focus of many CSPs still is on connectivity services and selling products, we see an increasing interest in playing a role in ecosystems. In the digital world, what eventually differentiates winners from losers is often not the best product – but the right business model. And the most powerful business models are based around ecosystems.

In this year’s ecosystem study, 54% of CSP executives told us engaging in ecosystems is the most effective way to access new markets and geographies. Fifty-five percent believe that partnering in ecosystems is essential for them to build new capabilities. And though there are different ways that organizations can engage in ecosystems, 57% of CSP executives want the role of platform provider by creating integrated environments that support and enable ecosystems to operate.

New, compelling customer experiences delivered through ecosystems are at the core of Digital Reinvention. Indeed, 54% of CSP executives we surveyed reported that the experiences customers now demand can only be delivered through business ecosystems. Digital Reinvention combined with digital intelligence enables radical new ways of interaction with customers and reveals powerful insights that transform businesses. Together, Digital Reinvention and digital intelligence create a Cognitive Enterprise

Digital Reinvention reflects a fundamental rethinking of the organization, reimagining structure, operations and governance from a customer-centric perspective. It is not not an easy journey and probably the hardest thing for CSPs to do. But in today’s evolving landscape, Digital Reinvention and becoming a cognitive company is no longer a choice: It’s a survival skill.

I look forward to exploring more on this in the Forum debate on The transformation of telecom operators: reinventing telcos at ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan, South Korea, later this month.

ulalaLAB is a startup company that envisions a world where happiness is driven by technology. With our goal of accelerating the transition into the smart future, we’ve set our mission to guide connected technology in the right direction by focusing on problems that need to be solved. And by doing so, we aim to change lives and improve industries around the world.

Back in 2016, we decided to take part in the ITU Telecom World Awards in order to win and gain more credibility – which we did.  ITU Telecom World provided us with a great opportunity to showcase our technology and capabilities on a global stage, and being one of the Award winners was a great credibility booster. For a startup, being able to prove yourself is a hard and challenging task. The audience has only a vague idea of how exactly your product works and what differentiates you from the others, so answering all those burning questions that our potential clients, partners and investors usually have, as well as getting important feedback from experts from around the world, was very useful and fulfilling for our project. We were able to get more from this event by meeting people from different backgrounds and increasing our business network.

In the past year, we have started mass producing our industrial IoT devices and increased our device portfolio, as well as considerably upgraded the hardware and software capabilities of our core technologies. We have signed partnership deals with many prominent companies and institutions such as Atlas Copco for joint ODM product release, Penta Security Systems for IoT security collaboration and Sogang University’s Department of Industrial Mathematics for joint machine learning development.

WimFactory, our smart factory platform has already been implemented in several factories here in Korea as well as Nike and Adidas shoe factories in Indonesia, China and Vietnam.

We are currently seeing significant business growth and are already in the process of expanding beyond the WimFactory business to other areas where our IoT device ‘Wicon’ can be implemented synergistically, such as in smart farming – our ‘WimFarm’ will pilot in China sometime this autumn. But as a priority, we are concentrating on strengthening our smart factory business with joint ventures in strategic regions and further R&D investments with Series A investment round funding happening in the second half of next year. We have added a regional office in Beijing, China, which oversees all partnership and buyer relations in that region. And we are actively seeking partners in North America and Europe both in terms of R&D and distribution collaborations.

We believe that there are still many small and old factories in India, Southeast Asia, South America and East Europe that need our technology. We aim to expand our business both home and abroad with any form of business cooperation (JV, business collaboration, branch, etc.).

SMEs are crucial for our business and even more important for ICT ecosystem. Comprising over 90% of all enterprises, SMEs drive the economy and are main GDP contributors in many countries. However, important shifts such as 4th Industrial Revolution remains largely a dream for the majority of SMEs. Industry 4.0 puts most of the industries in a dilemma in terms of cost, human power, complexity and time. Continuous innovation in the area of ICT makes it possible to address these issues by producing better and more affordable products that can increase productivity and the quality of production process for those SMEs, significantly benefiting the world economy itself as a result. At ulalaLAB, we aim to bring innovative solutions for all manufacturers whether they are small, medium or large.

With that in mind we are returning to ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan, Republic of Korea, this September to further expand our global network and seek potential partners from strategic regions in Asia, North America and Europe.

Between September 25^th and 29^th I will be attending ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan (South Korea), and speaking at the session on “When connectivity is not enough: driving meaningful digital inclusion”. This is a great opportunity to discuss the design of a sustainable digital agenda for the development of the digital economy in Latin America. Learning from the experience of countries like South Korea, and learning from the experiences of the global tech industry attending the event, could be part of the effort to move the digital needle in the Latin-American and Caribbean (LAC) Region.

The digital revolution is transforming our societies at an unstoppable pace. From finance to education, health and government, virtually every sector or activity is being changed thanks to technology. The discussion on digital infrastructure, digital skills and digital business is therefore very relevant not only due to the expected impact in terms of macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, productivity, and employment, but also because of the social impact to improve people’s quality of life. This is the reason why the Inter-American Development Bank, along with the Government of Korea, is also organizing the third ministerial meeting[1]. A meeting with the ultimate goal of bringing together leaders from the LAC region to discuss the challenges and opportunities that technology brings to the digital economy.

Nowadays, the LAC Region – home to 600 million people – is facing significant challenges in terms of digital infrastructure, access and use of ICT across the different sectors of the economy. For instance, according to the International Telecommunication Union, fixed broadband penetration is only 10% in LAC while the average for OECD countries is 28%. Similarly, whereas 30% of the population is connected to mobile broadband in the LAC Region, the average in the OECD is above 72%. But as we know, the digital economy is more than just connectivity, it is also pretty much about having the required quality to enjoy the benefits of having internet access. In this regard, it is important to highlight that average broadband speeds in LAC are 6 times slower than in Korea and 4 times slower than OECD countries. And last but not least, the affordability of services is a major driver for the population in the base of the pyramid to have internet access – indeed, LAC citizens dedicate 10% of their monthly income for both fixed and mobile broadband compared to 2% for mobile broadband and 3% for fixed broadband in the OECD countries.

The gaps in terms of digital infrastructure – the basis of the digital economy – in LAC is evident. It will take much to bridge it, but, in my view, countries should start with updating telecom regulatory frameworks. In the majority of countries, laws and regulations for telecoms belong to the late 1990s or early 2000s. Outdated legal frameworks cannot provide the right incentives and stimulate investments in the market which is among the most dynamic in the entire economy.

ITU Telecom World 2017 and the IDB Ministerial meeting will be an opportunity to discuss regulatory aspects which contribute to achieving the dual objective of maximizing private investment without neglecting the most disadvantaged or remote areas. In this direction, debate on the efficiency in the allocation of resources (e.g. radio spectrum policies) and in the use of available infrastructures (infrastructure sharing) combined with the effective use of universal service and access funds for promoting the development of infrastructure in less-favored areas will be a key part of the discussion we expect to bring to the table with the final aim of identifying specific recommendations based on best practices and success stories among the different participating countries in both events.

It is time to become sustainable, it is time to move farther, it is the time to go digital…

[1] Every two years the IDB hosts a ministerial meeting with the Ministers and President of Regulators from the 26 IDB member countries.

In the movie The Terminator, directed by James Cameron and released 33 years ago, artificial intelligence or AI was already showcased. One of the scenes shows how the AI robotic killer, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, welded the damaged parts of his body together in a motel room. A cleaner passing by noticed the smell and asked if there was a dead cat inside. A few options for the response popped up for Arnold in the movie:

“Yes”/”No”/”Please come back later”/”Piss off!”

The intelligent robot picked the last answer which best suited the situation. As a result, the cleaner went away without any suspicion. Interestingly, we are still developing such sophisticated AI.

AI has a broad meaning. From a technical perspective, it includes:

• Deep learning – learning from a large pool of data to assimilate human intelligence, such as AlphaGo in the Go world;
• Robotics – responsible for pre-determined extremely difficult or dangerous tasks, such as surgery, dismantling bombs, surveying damaged nuclear power plants, etc;
• Digital personal assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, Facebook’s M;
• Querying method – finding information from a huge database speedily and accurately, such as IBM’s Watson, which takes only 10 minutes to identify a rare leukaemia after searching through 20 million medical papers; or the Al-DR from China, which is said to diagnose lung cancer cells in 0.1 seconds through X-ray films;
• Natural language processing, such as a chatbot called Ali Xiaomi (Ali Assistant) at Alibaba’s Taobao. Ali Xiaomi handles both spoken and written queries, including providing answers to frequently asked questions and questions about specific transactions such as delivery status;
• Context-aware processing, such as when we move the mobile phone from vertical to horizontal view, and screen view is automatically rotated.

However, what are our expectations of AI? In “The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence”, the author points out that there are 3 stages of development in Al:

Basic — Artificial Narrow Intelligence or Weak AI, i.e. AI specializes in a certain scope, IBM’s Deep Blue can beat the world’s invincible hand in chess, but I am afraid it’s unable to guide you to the nearby restaurants or to book a hotel room for you. The same logic applies to bomb disposal robots and the AI which identifies cancer cells within seconds.

Advanced — Artificial General Intelligence or Strong AI, i.e. the computer thinks and operates like a human being. How does a human think? I have just read a column from a connoisseur. “There are many factors affecting us in choosing a catering place, like our mood, type and taste of food, price, time, etc. The determined factors are not the same every time.” See, it is really complicated. There is a so called Turing Test. Alan Turing, a British scientist who was born over 100 years ago, said: “If a computer makes you believe that ‘it’ is human, it is artificial intelligence.”

Super Advanced – Artificial Superintelligence. Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, has been thinking about Al’s relationship with mankind for years, and he defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”

Apparently, we are mainly at the stage of Artificial Narrow Intelligence. Even so, human beings can largely benefit from it, and not just in the limited fields of high tech, telecom and financial services. Education, for example, is a sector where an AI-enabled approach can facilitate greater learning experiences through personalized learning for each student, replacing standardized classroom teaching. As such, we may be able to train our young people how to make best use of AI, rather than trying to compete with it.

With personal, academic, and professional data, such as mouse movements, eye movements tracking, and monitoring expressions to see if students are engaged, confused, or bored, collected through sensors and various Internet of Things devices, teachers can better understand individual student’s learning difficulties and learning preferences, and choose the most effective methods to motivate students with the assistance of deep learning algorithms and prescriptive analytics.

McKinsey Global Institute, a business and economic arm of consultancy firm McKinsey, pointed out in a recent report that high tech, telecom and financial services are leading the adoption of AI. Outside these sectors, however, adoption remains low. It is always hard to change the “status quo” mode of working which appears to have been progressing smoothly for some time. Therefore, amid all the technical fantasy afforded by AI, human factors still remain the last frontier to be overcome. As a start, the mindset of government officials and educators has to change now.

Demis Hassabis, the mastermind behind AlphaGo which defeated the world Go champion earlier this year once said, “If we can deploy these (AI-enabled) tools broadly and fairly, fostering an environment in which everyone can participate in and benefit from them, (then) we have the opportunity to enrich and advance humanity as a whole.”

Issues such as these will be at the heart of debates at ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan this September, including AI in smart cities: power, potential, ethics and education

What is the challenge?

As we are enjoying a fantastic summer, we are all frustrated when we plan to meet friends in the city centre and end up in a traffic jam. When we finally reach the centre, we look for a terrace to benefit from another sunny day, but the experience is not optimal: the constant flow of cars next to us makes the environment very noisy, and we worry about air pollution levels. So the challenge is the following:

How can we improve the accessibility and attractiveness of our city centres?

The city of Fribourg, Swisscom, and the engineering company Transitec decided to address this challenge using sensor and mobile data.

We have focused on a specific and important district of a city, the train station area. Generally in the centre, as a tourist, it is the place where you gain your first impression of the city; and as a citizen, it is the place you pass by most often.

In the past, the train station area in Fribourg looked like this:

A couple of decades later, this is the way it looks now, allocating a lot of space to cars:

And here is a possible design to make it more attractive:

How do we transform?

Even if it seems obvious that the changes will make the city more attractive, merchants are concerned that accessibility will be reduced as the flow of cars will be limited and parking spaces removed. It is a fair concern, and that’s where an informed decision-making process, leveraging all available data, can help.

Can we make the centre more attractive and at the same time maintain or even improve accessibility?

What measurements do we need?

City centre accessibility is affected by three types of traffic: exchange traffic, internal traffic and transit traffic. The last one, people going through a city without stopping, is the critical one in that it is unnecessary for the city. This traffic should be steered away from the city centre.

Therefore, we need a cost-efficient way to measure transit traffic. More exactly, we need to have an indicator which focuses on transit traffic by car, since transit by public transport is fine.

To find this insight over a long period of time and with a high level of representation, we need to combine three sources of data.

Which source of data should we use?

We can combine three available data streams:

1. Road sensors, providing an accurate measurement of the volume of traffic and differentiating between cars and buses.
2. Bus sensors, counting the number of passengers on a bus.
3. Mobile phone traces, providing information on the origin and destination of passengers and drivers.

All interactions between the phone and the mobile networks are captured. The anonymized and aggregated data are transformed into the traffic indicators we are looking for: exchange traffic, internal traffic and transit traffic. Our algorithms classify the traces and provide the correct proportions. We then calibrate it with the road sensors and adjust it with the public transport data to calculate the indicator we are looking for.

The visualization of this flow demonstrates the challenge that cities face during peak hours, as you can see in this video demonstrating the movement of people in the city of Zurich from 1.00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

What is the outcome?

By combining and analyzing these three sources of data, we obtained the following results for our project: there are 120 000 cars entering the city every day. For the period considered, 48% of this traffic consists of cars which go through the city without stopping more than 30 minutes i.e. transit traffic.

This new insight is enabling the city to convince the population to execute this urban transformation whilst taking actions to reduce transit traffic. The action to reduce transit traffic includes the construction of a new road to better connect the south of the city to the highway entry in the north.  Furthermore, traffic light management optimization can also support steering this traffic away from the city centre.

Developing a hyperawareness capability 

By leveraging the data generated by our connected environment, cities can:

• Understand better the traffic dynamic
• Communicate their learning to citizens and increase project acceptance
• Measure the impact of projects
• Adjust their project along the way based on continuous monitoring

Cities that are embracing this new hyperawareness capability are well positioned to reach the Sustainable Development Goal defined by the United Nations and improve the quality of life of their citizens.

Finally, looking to the future, additional data can be added as our environment becomes more and more connected:

• Our infrastructure is generating more data – for example, Swisscom and partners are currently deploying 300 CO2 sensors (https://carbosense.wikidot.com/) in Switzerland
• Vehicles are becoming increasingly connected and full of sensors
• In addition to mobile phones, people are starting to carry wearables that provide additional data about their health condition and environment, including the impact of pollution, security, noise, and stress levels.

A dedicated session – Data flows, policy and security: the role of data in smart digital transformation –  at ITU Telecom World in Busan, Republic of Korea, on 26 September, will address some of the hurdles and accelerators when executing a data-driven digital transformation such as the one in Fribourg, comparing insights, case studies and experiences from around the world.

A decade ago, smart phones brought a whole new meaning to a popular adjective. But ‘smart’ has not stopped there – from smart fridges to smart cars and smart cities, we are living in an ever-smarter world. A world where applications, solutions, products, and increasingly whole industries are making innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the quality of our lives and the efficiency of our services.

The potential is enormous. In a smart city, for example, everything from transport to urban planning, electricity supply, local government services and the management of resources and infrastructure can be improved through the use of ICTs.

As more and more of the world’s population moves to cities, it is essential to make use of smart technologies to encourage sustainable urbanization, protect the environment and manage living spaces, traffic and utilities effectively.

Smart banking – digital financial services – has the potential to use ICTs and mobile technology to reshape financial transactions and processes, provide universal, secure services and bring large numbers of the 2 billion currently unbanked adults into the world economy. Smart connected cars will improve road safety, reduce congestion and emissions, and increase mobility options for the elderly and disabled; smart health solutions can transform healthcare through personalized medicine, and mobile or remote health delivery.

The growing trend to integrate manufacturing with smart technologies promises tailored products to meet individual customer requirements at low cost and in high quality, with huge impact for companies, economies and societies across the globe. This is Industry 4.0, or the 4th Industrial Revolution, demonstrating the enormous transformative potential of smart technologies in all aspects of life.

But reaching that potential involves a range of challenges in the realms of technology, policy, regulation and business.

The new technologies that will power our smart future require international standards in order to provide seamless, interoperable services on a global scale; fair and meaningful allocation of spectrum; and unqualified privacy and security. Standardization, as well as policy initiatives and new regulatory approaches, are essential to address the unique needs of the developing world – to avoid the digital divide deepening into a digital chasm.

ITU Telecom World 2017 will bring together public and private sector leaders from developing and developed markets around the world to exhibit, debate and network on the theme of smart digital transformation, its impact and opportunities – and on many of the challenges outlined above. The event takes place in the pioneering smart city of Busan, a global leader in enhanced technology ecosystems in one of the world’s most technologically-advanced nations, the Republic of Korea.

Busan is an exemplary model of IoT-based public services across a whole swathe of urban infrastructure, from traffic control to environment and safety management, smart transportation to reduction of energy consumption, tourism infrastructure and disaster management. Busan’s smart city experience is a citizen-driven project to improve quality of life for all through IoT technology. As such, there could be nowhere better to host these important discussions on our smart future – and the global opportunities it offers.

Find out more about ITU Telecom World 2017 here.

Industry, innovation and infrastructure should not be imported into the world’s emerging economies. Instead, investments should be made into growing sectors, seeding applied research and allowing the local economy to create and grow their own base.

If we’re going to solve local problems, then we should also look locally for the solutions, and support them.

The United Nations’ ninth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 9) — to improve industry, innovation, and infrastructure — presents us with one of the most interesting of all the SDG goals, as it is truly a foundational one that undergirds almost all of the other SDGs.

The underlying technologies that support most other verticals are power and connectivity, so if you hope to achieve the SDGs at scale, these two areas require focus.

The numbers are staggering globally. Some 3.9 billion people are still not connected to the Internet, most in emerging markets. We’ve seen from ITU reports alone that while we see 84% of households connected in Europe, we only have 15.4% in the African region. Almost one quarter of the world’s unconnected population sits in Africa. It’s a hard problem to solve, because it’s not just a technology problem, it’s also a business model problem.

McKinsey released a fascinating report on “digital globalization” where they show that increasing flows of data and information now generate more economic value than the global trade in goods.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

“Homegrown technology companies like BRCK, based in Nairobi, provide some of the best solutions to local problems.” — Erik Hersman, CEO of BRCK

They’re saying that an industry that was practically inexistent 15 years ago can now bring in more value to a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than the centuries-old trade in goods. But while Africa is moving forward — the Internet is more available, and devices for accessing it are getting less expensive — we’re still far behind. We’re simply not moving fast enough or staying close enough to the rest of the world. And that has profound consequences.

Still, increased access to the Internet is bringing real economic change in Africa. And there is only one investment needed: digital infrastructure. This is the undersea cables, the terrestrial cables, the Internet exchange points, data centers and content distribution points.

Just as regular commerce isn’t possible without physical infrastructure like roads, neither is e-commerce possible without digital infrastructure which gives us accessible Internet.

With a faster, cheaper and more reliable Internet, the entrepreneurs amongst us find our buyers and customers, serve them well, grow our business, and create jobs. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Kenya’s growing digital economy — where homegrown technology companies like BRCK, based in Nairobi, provide some of the best solutions to local problems.

My world at BRCK revolves mostly around connectivity. Our products are used by students in completely off-grid schools, help to track vehicles at airports, and more importantly are getting ordinary Africans connected to the Internet on free public WiFi.

For the last four years, the BRCK team has continued to create some of the most innovative products in Africa, marrying up hardware and software. We do this so well because we live, work and are from Kenya — we know the challenges and opportunities inherent in our country, and can translate the ideas these inspire into products that aren’t just used in Kenya — or even Africa. BRCK products are sold as far away as Mexico and the Solomon Islands, as well as 50+ other countries around the world.

The newest device we make is called the SupaBRCK — a small, self-powered router that provides local Internet service, saves content locally, and connects to the Internet using whatever is available, either cable, cell tower or satellite. We set up these devices as a free, local WiFi network to which anyone nearby can connect. It isn’t just Internet that people are getting, but locally stored content as well. With the TV shows, music and books stored locally, this means anyone accessing that content via their device gets it quickly and reliably and it costs us nothing to deliver, dramatically improving the economics.

We use this technology in schools, too, in a product called the Kio Kit, which was designed to instantly turn a basic schoolroom into a digital classroom — even in remote, disconnected environments. The Kio Kit consists of 40 rugged tablets, an integrated SupaBRCK server, and digital educational content. By including all of the critical components necessary to effectively introduce technology into the classroom, the Kio Kit solves the challenges of the many failed efforts at designing computers for African schools.

With such an Internet infrastructure, paired with a proper business model, we have a chance to change one of the very basic infrastructure issues on our continent, paving the way for so many other companies to build products and services that make the next 800 million Africans lives better.

BRCK won the ITU Telecom World Global SME Award at ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand​. Find out more on their Awards experience here.

Originally published on ITU News