Author: Digital World

In many parts of the world, mobile telephony coverage is quite simply a blessing. Largely by serendipity rather than planned strategy, its impact in many parts of Africa and Asia has been transformational. Beyond the commercial aims of operators, beyond the initial connectivity of communities previously too rural, too remote or too poor to be viable for fixed line telecommunications, the simple mobile phone has become a vital tool for social and economic development.

In part, this is due to the relentless pace of innovation in the telecommunications sector: in Nepal, a country bigger than all of Scandinavia put together, over 80% of the population have access to a mobile phone, compared to only 60% enjoying basic sanitation in the form of a modern toilet, a product which has evolved remarkably little over the course of the past century.

But much is due to the resourcefulness and inventiveness of local people, driven by necessity to high levels of creativity. All across southern Africa, for example, rural inhabitants use the mobile phone at the nearest kiosk to ring relatives in bigger cities – but without speaking. A complex code of unanswered rings instead conveys the message, whether asking for money or informing of a visit next week. Actually making a voice call is more of a luxury, as it costs more. So a carpenter or other workman fulfilling an order will agree all the details with his customer by SMS, finally speaking once to finalize the deal with a voice call that acts as form of signature on a contract.

These behaviours mean that ingrained poverty can be tracked by following patterns of denser data usage – and that reducing the cost of those text messages, which don’t require any extra resources on the operator side, is a powerful step to fighting that poverty in markets that represent the future.

For we are experiencing major demographic and economic shifts that are moving the balance of income and population southwards, away from North America and Western Europe. By the end of this century, fully 80% of a world population estimated at some 10 or 11 million will live in Africa or Asia, changing the dynamic of global trade and culture beyond imagination. Indeed, the IMF calculates that by 2035 already 75% of the high income population will come from the south.

And the telecoms sector is at the forefront of all of this, of course, driving change through the incredible range, speed and power of technological innovation. Mobile phones are opening up opportunities in those new markets, producing unexpected social and economic development, connecting people to each other, to knowledge and to the knowledge economy.

So this is what I would urge public and private sector leaders at the ITU Telecom World 2014 Leadership Summit on The Future to do: draw on the existing role of mobile telephony as saviour and single most important transformative agent in African and Asian markets. Draw on that to not only position your companies in new markets with quite astounding potential, but to expand the range and impact of the immense socio-economic benefits mobile provides. Reduce the cost of text messaging to allow increased usage. Release anonymized telephone records not for commercial or political aims but to aid projects such as Flowminder, mapping the spread of contagious diseases such as Ebola right now in western Africa, or tracking the mobility of survivors of natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti or floods in Bangladesh. The public health benefits are massive; the response to disaster greatly more effective.

Rather than using data from mobile telephone users to locate individuals or keep an eye on a section of the population and its activities, use that data to map the pockets of deep poverty and suffering where social unrest is more likely to arise in the first place. Understand the largely serendipitous power of mobile telephony to change lives, and adapt policies and strategies to enable it to flourish further. In many troubled parts of the world, cell phone masts remain standing and untouched in the midst of mayhem. Such is the importance of communications and connection to the wider world that those masts have more rights than human beings.

It’s a strange and unanticipated state of affairs. But the full power and impact of mobile telephony is overwhelmingly positive for social and economic development throughout the world, and for its poorest citizens in particular.

Imagine a relaxing bar or lounge space, rather like the business class lounge in an airport – but staffed entirely by robots. As you enter, you are greeted by name by the robot receptionist, who remembers your preference for sitting by the window in a non-smoking area. You are guided to your table by a robot steward, leaving you to discuss the range of available wines in detail with the robot sommelier, an expert in South American reds in particular. You might order from the robot bartender, or sit back and relax whilst the low-flying drones deliver your drinks to the table.

This the Robot Lounge, planned to open in a major Asia metropolis some time in 2016, providing us with a taste of the future and a chance to interact and get comfortable with robots.

Because robots have something of an image problem. The very word has negative connotations, conjuring up visions of cold machines replacing humans and stealing their jobs, emotionless Hollywood-style enforcers or merciless military drones. We tend to forget just how much we have benefited from those invisible robots behind the mass automatized production that has changed our world so fundamentally, bringing us mobile phones, televisions, cars, planes – all the toys we love and couldn’t imagine living without.

Now robots are moving out from behind the closed walls of the distant factory floor and into our living spaces, bringing us into direct contact with each other on a much more regular basis. Maturing technologies, microprocessors driving core functionality into ever smaller spaces, falling costs and the convergence of engineering, business and science interests have brought robotics to the edge of large-scale commercial viability.

And as robots become both more sophisticated and more affordable, managing our environment, performing tasks and vying for space to make our lives easier and more pleasant, we need to learn how to interact with them on an emotional, intellectual and practical level. This is the idea behind the Robot Lounge – and behind Roboy, the poster boy and messenger for a new breed of interactive robot.

What makes Roboy so special is the intelligence in his tendons and muscles, not just in his articulations, which allows him to mirror humans through natural movements and facial expressions. Roboy demonstrates simultaneously the advances and limitations of cutting-edge robotics: he is not a multi-functional humanoid robot doing all the housework for us, but an example of how pleasant, interesting and beneficial interactions with robots can be. He signposts future possibilities, dependent on development and investment patterns, but he’s also one of the first of his kind most people who meet him have ever touched or experienced.

It’s time to change that sometimes negative perception of robots, to understand better how we can interact with them and how they will influence our future. Both Roboy and the Robot Lounge aim to test current hypotheses of the future, allowing us to actively participate through our emotional and intellectual experiences and feedback. We can engage in their design, rather than acting merely as passive consumers; through deep learning and pattern learning methods, we can help to shape the next generation of robots.

These robots will improve our lives through emotional exchange, through happiness and interaction rather than merely cleaning or cooking for us. If that sounds strange, consider how we currently get happy staring into the small screens in our hands all day, or driving our cars. Robots are in some ways just another machine, albeit with a higher degree of autonomy than the phone, which is only mobile as a parasite in our pockets, and with much more sophisticated, higher-quality interaction.

Robots extend our ongoing emotional engagement with machines. It’s been demonstrated that a human experiences real pain at a neurologically-measurable level when his or her new car, for example, is scratched. The hugely personal relationship we have with our mobile phones – accompanying our every waking moment, source of information, communication, entertainment, even identity – shows just how much we both depend on and invest in machines.

On the one hand, robots are simply more complicated bits of technology, bigger machines, machines with tremendous potential to change our daily lives and make us happier, but on the other, there is a fundamentally new quality to them because they are physical systems moving – to some extent autonomously – in the real world. It’s vital that governments, private sector companies and individuals understand their potential. To foster and fund technological developments in artificial intelligence. But also to interact with robots, and use that experience to actively engage in shaping the future.

Which is why I am looking forward to speaking to public and private sectors from across the global ICT community at the Leadership Summit on the Future at ITU Telecom World 2014 – and introducing them to Roboy, of course.

The business models on which telcos grew fat and happy over the years are coming to a natural end. Building out network infrastructure as quickly as possible, and then selling access to it at a profit in an engineering and finance-driven model is no longer viable in mature or saturated markets. With estimates of over 300bn US dollars coming out of the mobile sector globally in the course of the next 6 years, it’s more than time to make a change – and to adapt to the digital world.

This is neither news, nor a shocking revelation. For years, analysts and industry-watchers have been urging a dramatic rethink of business models and priorities. So why have telcos not yet done so? And what options might be open to them?

Complacency amongst key decision-makers within many telcos is certainly a part of the picture, combined with a reluctance to rock the established and profitable boat, and a lack of understanding or awareness amongst governments, regulators and investors of the need to change, let alone of the potential alternatives. Increasingly irrelevant data metrics still used to measure success frustrate would-be agents of change; out-dated regulatory regimes threaten to throttle innovation at the outset.

Much time and momentum has been lost playing around with digital units, either externally or within companies, exploring digital services, products and opportunities as a side-line or start-up rather than as a fundamental component and driver of business in the new economy. Innovation is too often siloed rather than integrated across a company. And the arrival of OTTs, the internet companies making money over the top of the telcos’ networks, has famously provoked outrage, hostility, and energetic defence of a model that is no longer defensible, rather than any attempt at engagement, cooperation or constructive dialogue.

Cross-sector partnerships are, however, vital to the future success of telcos. ICTs are the backbone infrastructure and enabler of developments in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, energy distribution, transport, agriculture and civic engagement – bringing tremendous opportunity and the need for new approaches to commerce and public sector delivery. Telcos are sitting right in the middle of this explosion of potential new markets, between the organizations, enterprises and individuals that want to use the power of digital services and the service, content and application providers with the digital products, solutions and innovations to sell. By partnering with new stakeholders, or renegotiating existing relationships with government, for example, telcos can be the critical facilitators of growth, enabling interactions that are both more efficient and more effective in a win-win-win scenario.

It does mean moving beyond the traditional embedded models of connecting people via voice and internet in a quasi-monopoly set up. It means leveraging the latent power of the networks, playing to the telco strengths of subscriber base, billing and customer services as a platform for new partners from vertical sectors as diverse as finance, medicine and logistics. And it means moving away from competitive tension towards mutually-beneficial cooperation. All of which calls for open dialogue, new ways of thinking and new skill-sets, in particular in data science.

The other major area where telcos hold the cards, even if they may not yet be fully aware of it, is in the enormously important field of big data. The analogy between data and oil is familiar but, like all good clichés, extremely valid: data is an immensely powerful resource that must be extracted and made useable to release its value. Telcos, of course, have privileged access to the immense volumes of personal data generated each day by each and every customer – and telcos are implicitly trusted with that data.

This role as trusted custodian represents a huge opportunity. Personal data on who I am, where I was, what I like, what I do, who I know or speak to and so on is a rich stream of real-time information that can be analysed, utilized and monetized, from targeted advertising to personalized services and products to efficient energy use and smart cities. As consumers become aware of the value of their data and their role as data generators, they will become increasingly empowered, seeking to control what happens to this information, which third parties have access to it and to what extent, how they can directly benefit from or monetize these interactions – with telcos as the trusted intermediaries.

The key to all this is trust. Without guarantees on privacy and security, without transparency, understanding of the use of personalized services, exchange values and regulatory safeguards, this new opportunity for both telcos and the wider economy will fail before it has properly begun. Recent EU regulation on data, coming into force next year, is an important first step in protecting the consumer, obliging the business community to consider how to add value to data users rather than merely extracting it.

But we need to move forward faster, to understand more clearly, to work together. This is why I see the Leadership Summit on the Future at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December as the ideal wake up call to the global ICT community. Governments need to re-evaluate what telcos can do for social and economic growth beyond simple connectivity, understanding the latent capabilities and potential of the industry to drive digital development, social inclusion, economic growth. Regulators need to balance data security and privacy with an openness to new ways of thinking, new organizational cultures and collaborations. Telcos need to work to their strengths, refine their offerings in the digital world, engage in dialogue with government as regulator and major customer. It’s time to move away from the frustration of government and industry running in parallel rather than together, moving in a spirit of creative co-innovation.