Author: Digital World

Affordable prosthetic limbs for Sudanese soldiers manufactured on 3D printers, grandmothers bringing the know-how on running solar electricity generators back to their remote villages, electric light powered by a bag of earth and gravity alone, powerful yet cheap batteries to power drones used in disaster management. Projects such as these may not be the most visible face of the dramatic growth of new technologies – but their impact on local communities across the developing world is nothing short of revolutionary.

New technologies are not just about rampant commercialism and the spectacular success of a handful of internet moguls. There’s also the less recognized, and arguably far more important, aspect of social change: making technology affordable and accessible to all, using technology to make a difference, to improve lives blighted by poverty or disability and the social exclusion that ensues. It is a new way of thinking about the business of technology that moves beyond developing the next get-rich-quick app to emancipating, empowering, and encouraging individuals throughout the world.

This is the powerful message of this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, held annually in Linz, Austria, and its inaugural Future Innovators Summit, held in conjunction with ITU Telecom Young Innovators. The Festival itself has been mixing technology, engineering, social entrepreneurship and art for 35 years, using the city and its buildings as an open stage to engage and communicate with as many people as possible, bringing the ideas of change through technology into the public space.

The Future Innovators Summit focuses strongly on the younger generation who are innovating for the future, and developing projects and ideas to change the worlds of business, design, applied technology and the arts. It’s a trans-disciplinary melting pot of creative engineers, young entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, social start-ups, designers and artists. Such a broad approach, breaking out of the traditional narrow boundaries of each field, opens up tremendous potential for dialogue across generations, professional communities and disciplines.

And the presence of the ITU Telecom Young Innovators, young social entrepreneurs with technological innovations aimed at improving lives all round the world, adds a truly global aspect, extending the exchange of ideas even further beyond the Festival participants in Linz and its online followers. The Young Innovators will form part of the 24-strong Future Innovators Summit, actively presenting their projects and prototypes, taking part in mentoring sessions with technology and business professionals, and sparking creative discussions and co-created ideas on how to turn technology to positive social ends.

It was the highly successful collaboration between Ars Electronica and ITU Telecom at ITU Telecom World 2013 last November in Bangkok on The Lab, a future-in-action interactive exhibition space and workshop, which inspired the Future Innovators Summit. The Lab enabled delegates at the wider World 13 debates, showfloor and networking sessions to experience first-hand products and projects at the edge of technology, art and society – and brought Ars Electronica into direct contact with the winning Young Innovators and their commitment to social  innovation and responsibility in areas such as disaster management, health care and inclusive education.

It’s a collaboration set to continue at this year’s event, too, with the Future Innovators Summit presenting findings, innovative projects, applications and technologies at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, Qatar, in December. Artists, entrepreneur, engineers and developers will not just present, but will provide practical demonstrations and hands-on experience of creativity and innovation. More than an exhibition of stationary objects, it is a chance to explore new technologies, meet the makers, connect with creative sources – and hopefully come away enriched and inspired.

Because it is precisely this hybrid approach that is so potent. Hybridization of technology is the defining feature of our future: no longer telecommunications and information technology, but ICTs, the meeting of IT and telecommunications; no longer just a phone but a smart phone, a computer in your hand. Hybridization brings strength and breeds creativity in new directions; it is the hybridization of disciplines in the Future Innovators Summit and, later, in The Lab that promises to be so exciting.

From that innovative mix of experts, entrepreneurs and technologies will come ideas to change our world in a multitude of small yet vital ways, to iron out inequalities, to empower the disadvantaged. To enable the blind to engage with life-enhancing technology through tactile interfaces, to provide affordable clean water purified via solar energy, to create missing limbs for the victims of war and open up the advantages of cheap electricity to the energy-poor. This is what technology should also be about, after all.

We live in exciting times. Times full of the promise of progress, where the exponential pace of technological development is both visible and beneficial to ever more of the world’s population.  From e-medicine to digital education, next-generation transport systems to smart grid solutions, the near future looks to be healthier, smarter, greener, less wasteful of natural and financial resources.

But in the overwhelming commercial and governmental drive towards ubiquitous connectivity, the rush to develop, implement and monetize new technologies, it’s important not to overlook the very real dangers of over-connectivity.

Our addiction to or dependence on mobile devices, social networks, the internet in general is already eroding the concept of personal privacy, even before the onslaught of wearable technology and augmented humanity. We are already knowingly or blindly sacrificing our privacy for the ease and enjoyment of always on, always available services and information. Services and information which are free of charge, but which come at a price: our personal data.

We’re trading our data for the convenience of connectivity, and as technology moves inside us, as users and devices become integrated – from smart watches to health monitors to iris implants – the dangers are growing alongside the potential for collective good and wealth creation.

The technology is already there to lead us to becoming information ciphers, constant victims of marketing and surveillance, via ATM machines and mobile phones to drones, face recognition, policemen equipped with Google Glass. From instant recognition to the dystopian reality of your every action and decision predicted and judged on the basis of complex algorithms – without freedom or recourse.

As a result, privacy is fast on the way to becoming a paid-for product, such as the hotels charging a premium to ensure guests are truly unavailable and unconnected; encrypted mail services; or the private networks arising outside of the mainstream telco operators.  It’s a growing and lucrative niche market. But how fair is this? Should the world be divided by default in into those who can afford privacy and the majority who are stripped digitally naked?

And as awareness of the failure of privacy – the disbenefit of big data – grows, there is a very real danger of a retrenchment, of people withdrawing from the internet and its advanced products, applications and services, destroying the enormous potential of universal good through lack of universal participation.

Add to that the deepening in the near future of the divide between the digital haves and have-nots. If you think not having access to a mobile phone is a major disadvantage, imagine how great the inequality when you can’t afford the technological implants your colleague or neighbour has, the immediate access to information, communication and contacts.  It’s a whole new slant on the class system: the digitally augmented human versus the limited human-only human.

Technology itself, of course, has no ethics. And it’s no good leaving regulation of technology and its unintended consequences to the commercial world. Connectivity is big business, a giant money-making machine of equipment, services, advertising, analysis, products, an integrated and potentially enormous business system. Good for consumers, good for business, good for GDP.

It’s a set of complex scenarios that we cannot help to solve at the level of the individual user. The use and abuse of data needs urgent collective action, at governmental and intergovernmental level. It is down to governments to look beyond the benefits of connectivity to the downside of digital obesity: protecting its people from dangers and threats as far as possible is the duty of government, implicit in its contract with the governed.  Technology, like nuclear power, has tremendous potential for good, yet can also cause harm on an enormous scale.  Dealing with technology in the near future also calls, like nuclear power, for international standards or consensus, a digital bill of rights or citizens’ agenda to protect us from being over-connected or digitally naked.

Beyond the money and the perpetual spiral of technological advancement, we need to cleave to the principle of collective good. We need to see the human purpose beyond and above the scramble for monetization. Just because we can produce it and make money from it does not make technology good for people.

Increasing awareness of these factors, building understanding of the great new world of opportunity technology is opening up for us – and the need to be careful, to consider the consequences, to act collectively, to regulate fairly, wisely and in a timely manner – this is what the Leadership Summit on the Future at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December is all about.

I look forward to seeing you there!

More than 200 entries from 48 countries worldwide, hundreds of ideas, comments and unique perspectives on the creation of local digital content, many hours of serious consideration by our panel of judges – and the winners of the ITU Telecom Young Innovators Competition 2014 Challenge 1: Local Digital Content have been selected!

We were looking for the most promising tech start-ups aimed at inspiring the creation, aggregation or digitization of local content, whether through innovative technologies or a fresh angle on established technologies such as optical character recognition or translation software.

Demonstrating innovativeness, business potential and a clear social value proposition in meeting the Challenge, the winners chosen by our Selection Committee are:

• TeleMuseum – Lorna Okeng, Uganda
  Telemusuem aims to preserve and digitalize African local content, culture and history often traditionally passed on through the ancient informal education of storytelling. Local script content and analogue voice content from various sources will be aggregated and converted into fully independent, virtual cinema using a range of technologies from optical character recognition to abstract graphics algorithms. This is bringing storytelling to life – and preserving local history for generations to come.

• Incept – Safouan Ben Jha, Tunisia
  Incept provides an interactive, multilingual solution for museums, historical and archaeological sites via augmented reality, including language translation, interactive guided tours, and adaptive content – all through a standard smartphone. By presenting content in a highly attractive, interactive manner, it enables you to experience history as never before – such as translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on tombs or pyramids into your own language via the smartphone in your hands, or watching the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Explaining the motivation behind her start-up, Okeng said, “I worry that with no local content reservoir, two centuries from now, these traditional stories will be extinct. TeleMuseum aspires to redefine the way local content is accessed by aggregating local script and merging it into one big screening room. It embraces the concept of cinematography married with virtual reality, moulding each legend narrative into motion pictures all tied together to create a mini-film or documentary.”

Taking the boring out of history and making our past accessible, relevant and interesting for all is the drive behind Incept. According to Ben Jha, “We must learn from the past in order to know where our future is headed, but in order to make people excited about knowing the past, we have to present the content in a new manner.”

Both winners of this Challenge will attend ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, where they’ll benefit from seed funding, mentoring sessions, workshops, networking and showcasing opportunities before a high-profile audience from across the ICT ecosystem.

For Okeng, it’s an exciting prospect: “ITU Telecom Young Innovators Competition stimulates creativity and innovation and taps into the inner child. There is no doubt this is the type of platform I’ve been looking for, where technology marries art, a place where my background, young experience and skills can be put to use to make real things happen.”

Ben Jha has a clear idea of what Incept hopes to gain: ” Our team is made up of engineers, so our main goal now is to establish a solid business plan. We’re looking forward to gaining from the mentoring at ITU Telecom World, and meeting up with potential investors and partners. The only way to take our idea worldwide is by starting working immediately.”

Digital content, in the form of text, images, video, software or apps, is what drives the internet, empowering users to benefit from knowledge, opportunities and e services – and to generate their own content. So it’s critical that digital content is available to everyone, regardless of the language they speak or script they use. But only an estimated 5% of the over 7000 languages of the world are currently on the internet. The uphill battle to overcome this content divide is every bit as important as bridging the digital divide; access and content, supply and demand, are two sides of the same coin. That’s why this Challenge is so vital, and why it is so exciting to have found two winners of such high calibre to bring to the world stage at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December.

The second ITU Telecom Young Innovators Competition on Open Source Technologies for Disaster Management is open now – find out more here on how to take part!

The current telco crunch is not new. Voice revenues have collapsed in developed and emerging markets alike, whilst data traffic from OTT players continues to increase exponentially. So costs are going through the roof just as revenues are vanishing. Life as telcos have known it is unsustainable – and change is inevitable.

In the words of leading internet academic Viktor Mayer-Schönberger at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok: “Telecom operators, if they continue doing what they are doing, will go out of business. It’s a commoditized business; it’s the end of the line. If I were a telecom operator, I would be extremely scared of the future. Extremely scared!”

Or, as former Zain Africa CEO Chris Gabriel said at the same event: “There’s no money in telcos and fundamentally organizations need to basically totally rethink the way they do their business processes.”

Change is inevitable, but what are the options? We understand the why, but not the how or where or whither.  What are the options for players in the ICT sector? This is the key question which ITU Telecom World 2014 will address in Doha this December under the theme of Confronting the Future.

Confronting means opening our collective eyes, becoming aware of the radical change transforming the ICT industry, ecosystem and indeed our whole world. Engaging with the new realities, exploring the major trends shaping our shared future, focusing on scenarios of the future and their potential for all the different players involved.

Confronting does not mean being aggressive or belligerent, unnecessarily scaremongering or sensationalist in approach. It certainly doesn’t mean predicting a promised future. But by working together to investigate the rich opportunities of that future, we can find paths forward, perhaps building in counter-mechanisms to, or even in part avoiding, the major ethical, regulatory, social and legal challenges ahead.

The Internet of Things, new advances in artificial intelligence and the deployment of intelligent software and machines, big data-centric applications and business models, social media and social commerce, cloud networking, wearable computing – these are just some of the principal trends and developments that will not wait for us to catch up, that demand urgent attention.

And all this glittering promise brings such immense global challenges as privacy, data protection and surveillance, inequality and the digital divide, the ethics of machine intelligence and the human-machine relationship.

Creating a responsible and effective regulatory regime for the future will not be easy, but the need for it becomes more and more apparent in an era dominated by immensely powerful, unregulated and unaccountable organizations with no history of social responsibility. This is far removed from the traditional culture of the telecoms sector: that of responsible regulation designed to protect both societies and individuals.

Preserving this heritage, re-establishing trust, building upon past achievements rather than dismissing previous regimes in their entirety  – this is a key part of Confronting the Future.

 

Following the success of challenge 1 on Local Digital Content, which attracted 205 ideas from 48 countries, the ITU Telecom World Young Innovators competition is launching challenge 2, calling for innovations using open source technology for disaster management. The competition seeks 18-30 year old entrepreneurs from around the world with start-ups that use open source technologies for disaster preparedness, early warning, emergency communication and response, and recovery from natural disasters. If that describes your work, log on to https://ideas.itu.int and submit your idea for a chance to showcase your work at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, and receive seed funding and mentorship from top experts in technology and entrepreneurship.

Often, the areas and communities which have the hardest time preparing for and recovering from natural disasters are also the poorest parts of a country. For these areas, open source technologies can prove the ideal solution in disaster and emergency situations, as they are inexpensive, adaptable and easy to replicate across different circumstances.

Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, storms and epidemics, and other natural disasters pose a growing threat in terms of both frequency and the levels of damage associated with them. Disasters, in addition to causing death and injury, can destroy infrastructure and shatter communities, displacing people and devastating economies. As human populations rise in numbers and density, and as the effects of global warming cause more frequent and powerful natural disasters, these risks are only set to increase.

We urgently need new tools to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters on this increased scale. The types of tools we need could include communication technologies, teaching tools, new equipment to save lives during a disaster, and new tools to help clean up, recover and rebuild after the event.

Open source technologies such as 3D printing, UAVs, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and other open source computer programs and systems could hold the key to providing solutions in the poorest and most vulnerable areas, and are already a critical element of the emergency management systems of many countries. The current generation of young social entrepreneurs, with their ambition, creativity and innovative mindset are perfectly placed to develop these ideas. Plus, a focus on open source tools is a call to a new tech-savvy generation, since the technology is created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes with the community.

In addition, we are also looking for innovators who have ideas for taking the iconic technologies of the community of do it yourself inventors, creators and designers known as maker culture and applying them to saving lives, in combination with low cost, low entry barrier technologies to help reach the most vulnerable communities around the world.

The closing date for entries in this challenge is July 31^st 2014. Two winners will be selected per challenge, and will receive up to USD 10,000 of seed funding, in addition to mentorship, dedicated workshops and an opportunity to showcase at the InnovationSpace of ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, Qatar. We look forward to seeing your ideas!

Welcome to the launch of ITU Telecom World 2014 – and welcome to the new event website!

World 2014 will be held in Doha, Qatar, this December, a city committed to the future and the ideal location for an event focused on confronting that future and its implications – for the ICT industry, for society and for us all as global citizens.

The future is of course always uncertain. Anything and many things can happen to take plans off course, disrupt ideas, and alter directions. Ours is an industry that has always by its nature been about the future.  We have talked over the past two or three years at ITU Telecom World events of a time of great transition, an industry in the throes of dramatic transformation. Now is the time to consider what the future might look like, the post-transition future.

Maybe it will continue in transition for months and years to come. Maybe it will shake down to one or two main competitors, an oligopolistic vision of back to the seventies. Maybe it will break down completely, to many thousands of service providers, to an end to the universal, global certainty of one system of telephony. One completely discrete communication system to speak to your bank, one button connecting directly to your dentist, one tool for talking to your mother, and so on.

But one thing is certain. The very human need to communicate will remain. Hyper personalization, hyper connectivity, multiple suppliers, services and identities all drill down to this: our need to talk, write, exchange images, share ideas and communicate with each other. The end user has been unleashed at the edge of the system driving the news and the debate. Social media as we currently know it rules, and its potential successors, too. There is no end to our need to communicate, and no ending it. Someone somewhere will make money from that, whether alone or in partnership.

Add to that the billions of unconnected devices coming online in the Internet of Things across multiple sectors and situations, and the explosive potential of communication – whether machine to machine or machine to person or person to machine to person – is clear.

That’s as near to a forecast on the future of the industry as you will get from me. Or indeed from ITU Telecom World 2014 :we will not be forecasting the future, but visions, scenarios, potential developments, important trends to shape the strategies and policies of the future, futurists, ideas and innovations – those we’ll be sharing a plenty!

In the months leading up to the event, I hope you will be able to enjoy the website, explore The Outcomes as background reading for Doha, read the details on the important and exciting Leadership Summit, discover how to gain invaluable visibility on our showfloor and network with fellow leaders from across the entire industry spectrum, public and private sectors, emerging and developed markets alike. Because sharing insight and increasing awareness and understanding of the new realities is the best way to confront the future –  and ensure we all stand to benefit, wherever and whoever we are.

ITU Telecom World 2013, which took place between the 19th and the 22nd November in Bangkok/Thailand, was a great success – not only as a conference. Ars Electronica Export curated the exhibition The Lab which presented different artistic positions related to the topic. Philipp Huemer was one of the Infotrainers who travelled to Bangkok from Linz, and this is his report on the largest telecommunications event in the world.

“Who , me?” – this was the question we all three asked ourselves when we were informed that we should travel to ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok to present “The Lab” , a project of Ars Electronica, as Infotrainer. Strangely, we had previously rarely or never worked together at the Ars Electronica Center, which placed high hopes on our journey: Would I be able to sleep for five nights with Mathias in the same hotel room? Spending 24 hours a day with each means tackling things like eating and sleeping habits as well as their side effects , which for everyone of us was not always easy. So we started on November 17 in the early afternoon on the main train station of Linz. Katharina, Mathias and I – one having a good command of Thai language, a birthday child and one who was looking ahead to his fifth stay in Thailand’s capital.

The title of this article is the formulated plan of the platform to create an Asian economic region modelled on the EEC, the  Asean Economic Community or AEC (see photo). After punctual landing in Bangkok-Suvarnabhumi we jumped into a taxi and had our first disillusion. I had located the wrong Novotel and so we were not stationed far away from Bangkok Downtown (Silom) but far outside on the opposite end of the city airport. Anyway, somehow we would experience our evenings in Southeast Asia’s pulsating metropolis, undoubtedly our fixed plan for the few hours of free time per day which we could hope for.

Arriving at the hotel about 2 pm local time, for 4 pm an introduction and training in the LAB was planned in the huge halls of the IMPACT Arena. Even the way there gave a glimpse of what we could expect here: without leaving the building, it took about 10 to 12 minutes a day to cover the distance from the hotel lobby to the exhibition hall. It could be compared to an enormous airport, including baggage check and control points.

Then the first impression of the ITU Telecom hall itself : Immediately upon entering an optical tidal wave in the form of the Thai king pavilion was setting in – gold , glitter and gigantism in perfect exhibition architecture.

Interestingly, North America and Europe had not much to offer on this floor, apart from the organizers of ITU Telecom itself. The main representatives of the telecommunications industry came from Asia and the Arab countries. Many Central African pavilions gave an impression about where CEOs have set their focus of interests, from infrastructure to know-how. In the middle, an exhibition stand as raw as aluminium trussing, barely disguised, a construction site as a symbol of transparency and movement, for development in the original sense, without pomp or gloss, a workspace – the Lab!

We were pretty flabbergasted. So here and in THIS way we want to stand the dance of the vanities? It would prove to be the best way. After briefly shaking hands with Karl Schmiedinger, the technical director, and Regina Sipos, who was responsible for the area, called the “Innovators Space”, we spontaneously took the initiative as Martin Honzik was the victim of an air shift. Based on the experience at the Ars Electronica Center and the information material prepared by Veronika Liebl, we started training on our own about 10 Thai workmates who would be at our side in the coming days.

In addition, we received quite funny stories about the various technical problems and communicational challenges for our technical team during the previous week, and how they had managed to bring everything somehow to play that hadn’t seemed possible in the first moment. The technicians had supplied more than their required work, this was troubleshooting with simple means at the highest level!

As a team we were solution-oriented. In an environment that is entirely different from our European world this is not a disadvantage. The time was well used, all were halfway “on subject”, our helpers also seemed motivated and inspired by the otherness of our project. The mood was always very good. We all had the feeling that we could rely on each other.

The next morning, the inflammatory speech by Martin Honzik: project meeting in the morning and the largest, THE burning question: What are we doing here? Martin gave an answer that turned on our switch: “We are here in a Gallic village, we are the only ones here who sell nothing but good stories and inspiration. This is our weapon and we will get them all! “Maybe not in exactly those words but this was the content and thus the slogan was issued. We had already hoisted the sails for open source , file and mind sharing, storytelling and inspiration through the interplay of art, technology and society in the “Vent of Data”.

What was happening then the next four days was equivalent to what is referred to by Urban Gardeners as “seed bombing”. Whoever entered The Lab left intellectually fertilized again. No one could believe that the objects and installations were not exposed for sale, and that they were constantly being kidnapped by us to meta-levels. It was wonderful to see people, whose primary interest in this social gathering was for the next 100 million dollar deal, standing there with astonished eyes like children with dollar signs in their eyes.

“Individual Prototyping”, the focus of Gustavo Valera, who transformed his ideas of 3-D printing to demonstrations on spontaneity, creativity and individualism in general sense, seemed to literally shake the world pictures of some visitors. Above all, because, as a tool, he used a dirt-cheap 3-D printer, the Maker-Bot.

The possibilities of using the BCI, available only as a mock-up in different versions, astonished the head of the ITU so much that he extended his short visit ultimately to about three quarters of an hour to think for himself about usage forms and stood stunned when  Martin presented the shooting star of The Lab: “Gravity Light” – the winning project of [the next idea] voestalpine Art and Technology grants this year, an assembly of simple art techniques in a novel form, captivating in its simplicity, so one has to wonder why such a thing doesn’t already exist: in principle, it is a pendulum system like a mechanical clock, only that there is no clock work but a generator is operated with it – once raised, a bag filled with whatever pulls a band for about 30 minutes through a coil – electricity by gravity! Hitchhiking and camping without a battery!

Again, it’s not the solution of our Western “energy problem”, but a substantial alternative for individual needs especially in rural areas. Especially for the retail price of $ 5 each. About a third of the exhibitors at ITU come from Africa, about half of Asian exhibitors come from poor countries and / or countries with infrastructural deficiencies. And so you can imagine what has triggered this idea in the minds of CEOs, ministers or presidents. Since human resources are available in just such areas sufficiently, it is easy to spin the idea of Gravity Lights forward: Take a large generator, weights which may have to be lifted by 10 men, but afterwards generate enough electricity to supply a small village with light, or depending on the torque also operate electrical equipment!

Moreover, many visitors were attracted by the primary aesthetic play of Oribots by Matthew Gardiner, as they were also seen in the Ars Electronica Center. The form of presentation attracted much more attention, as people almost like moths flew to its light, and so a constant giggling and lots of “ahs” and “oohs” from the direction of Oribots could be heard. We often simply had to tell the context of tradition (origami, folding the umbrellas) and modernism (3- D printed parts), and another one was infected: “What else do you have to show here?”

Well, apart from old acquaintances such as the Spaxels of Futurelab, the Transparent Specimen, Necomimi, Paro and Kazamidori, I found the “Blind Robot” by Jean-Phillipe Demers still very interesting: he also plays in this installation with questions about the tolerable huminoidity of robots, based on the question, what does it feel like when robots develop something like sensibility and touch us tenderly, or, like a blind man, feeling with the fingers. Interesting to note how much the cultural background is reflected here, where and how we want to be touched and what we categorize as unpleasant, and the associated thought of how well would a robot have to operate, for example, as a nurse. With appropriate documentation this art project probably could also be explored from a sociological point of view.

With the continuous progress of the days we transformed to a closed unit, everyone supported each other, we all talked a lot and in the Production Office invitations and business cards piled up. Ultimately, none of the responsible persons cared that the press event on one of the last days had to be cancelled, the success of the show could already be seen before.

The evenings we spent with visits to the city center. With delicious food (it may be that Thai food is one of the best in the world?) and good tasting drinks we exchanged ideas and motivated each other for the next day, the trio, with the technicians, two artists and also with the local volunteers who guided us through corners of the city where any tourist would arrive in the first place. The last day we took advantage of visiting the Chatuchak, the largest market in Southeast Asia, a therapeutic massage in the traditional school in Wat Pho (Wat = Buddhist temple), and a final dinner with technician Simon, artist Gustavo and two of their Thai friends before we then returned home from our journey.

Conclusion: 9.6 out of ten for The Lab (the best part of the pursuit of perfection is the knowledge to always make it a little better next time) and thank you for the trust!

Philip Huemer is Infotrainer at the Ars Electronica Center Linz.

Operators are selling more smartphones than any other device category. Around 55% of all mobile phones sold worldwide in Q3 2013 were smartphones. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions is expected to pass 2 billion in 2013, having grown 40% over the past year, and this figure may quadruple by 2019. The increasing number of smartphone subscriptions, which is expected to triple by 2019, is the main driver for mobile data growth that is expected to increase 10x over the same period.

The vast majority of mobile broadband users are served on HSPA networks, 532 of them being commercially launched in 203 countries (GSA – October 2013). LTE is also a mainstream technology. To handle future growth, operators are investing in LTE because of its higher spectral efficiency, improved performance, capacity, and operational efficiencies to ensure the best user experience. 225 LTE networks are commercially launched. Smartphones are now the largest LTE device category. LTE smartphone users generate more data traffic than users on older systems. The number of LTE subscriptions is set to accelerate from 150 million today to 2.6 billion by 2019 (Ericsson Mobility Report – November 2013).

Radio spectrum is the lifeblood of the mobile communications industry. Bands must be internationally harmonized to ensure the greatest economies of scale can develop, especially for user devices. Finding spectrum to satisfy the growing demand for mobile data is getting more difficult, especially in the right combination of low and high frequency bands to enable nationwide coverage serving both dense urban and the rural areas. New spectrum such as 2.6 GHz (3GPP band 7) for LTE systems is best for capacity in cities and has the biggest devices ecosystem. However most operators focus on geographical coverage initially, for which lower bands are more useful. A technology neutrality policy has increasingly been adopted by regulators, meaning spectrum that was originally assigned for e.g. GSM (900 MHz, 1800 MHz) can be used for LTE. 1800 MHz has become the most widely used band for LTE deployments. Allocations arising as part of the digital dividend from the switch by TV broadcasters from analogue to digital transmissions have created regional fragmentation, with North America adopting 700 MHz (e.g. bands 12-14 and 17) and EMEA allocated spectrum in 800 MHz (band 20). LTE device manufacturers, faced with over 40 frequency bands for which LTE has been standardized, would appreciate less complexity in this area to enable them to produce terminals with the largest economies of scale, and to enable roaming.

Asia needs to decide on its key LTE bands. The APT700 band plan (703 – 803 MHz) looks to be the most promising way forward for regional and global harmonization, having secured backing from regulators in several Asian, Latin American, African and Middle East countries. The FDD configuration (2x 45 MHz plus 10 MHz guardband) has attracted most support and is standardized by 3GPP as band 28. APT700 spectrum has been awarded to mobile operators in Australia and New Zealand. The lower duplexer (703-733 / 758-788 MHz) could be used in Europe and is proposed for Region 1 for alignment with APT700.

This will be the focus of the panel on The Impact of Spectrum Choices on Device Availability I am moderating next week at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok. I will ask the panel for their views on this, and how firm industry commitment to APT700 could help to deliver low-cost LTE user devices, extend the geographical reach of mobile broadband services, thus potentially close the digital divide, assist roaming, uncover conflicts, challenges and needed actions, and attempt to determine the likely timescale for wide scale commercialisation.

It promises to be a very interesting session.

Nigeria is all set to bring a top delegation to ITU Telecom World, held in Bangkok from November 19 – 22, 2013. Our mission there is to unfold the final phase of the country’s readiness to introduce competition into the broadband sector of the telecommunications industry and also place on the table incentives from the government to support investors – local and international – who will be coming into the sector.

Also, the wife of the President, Dame Patience Jonathan, who is Champion, ITU Child Online Protection, will be the special guest of the ITU as she features in a number of ITU programmes and also sets aside time to play special matriarchal roles at Nigerian events.

In the Nigerian team are the Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Olusegun Aganga and the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr Eugene Juwah.

The theme the country is taking to ITU Telecom World is: e-Novation, Digital Economic Transformation. In very high profile events like the Leaders Lunch, Nigeria Day and the opening of the Nigerian Pavilion, the President, represented by Mrs Johnson, will have milestone opportunities to address the international community and discuss the contents of Nigeria’s National Broadband Plan 2013 – 2018 which sits at the heart of his administration’s transformation agenda.

Nigeria will enjoy a special spotlight on November 20, 2013 as Dr Aganga discusses investment opportunities in Nigeria and also tell some success stories the country has recorded in recent times.

Chief Regulator of the telecommunications industry, Dr Juwah, while appraising the exponential growth of the sector which has recorded over $25bn dollars worth of investment in a little over a decade, explains that the country has more capacity for growth, adding that details of opportunities, broadband roadmap and incentives by the Nigerian government will be unfolded in Bangkok.

 

The history of technology is one of efficiency and control. Technologies are the art and skill of making tools, techniques, systems and methods to solve a problem.

Technologies are the results of human dreaming of a better world.

Technological innovations are also a deflation game. It’s when a technology becomes cheap enough, either by means of its build or because demand makes its supply possible, that it starts its reach.

Mobile technologies are thus a natural evolution of computing power, miniaturization and falling prices.

The history of technology is also one of convenience and empowerment. Money gave us convenience: exchange goods and services without the headache of, say, comparing poultry to milk. Printing offered empowerment: the diffusion of decentralized knowledge.

Tools like the washing machine freed time for us to focus elsewhere. The VHS tape offered the same: controlling time.

Controlling our destiny.

Though it won’t wash your clothes, mobile has become your address book, your calendar, your camera, your TV, your library.

In other words, your social network, your assistant, your memories, your source of entertainment and knowledge.

The history of technology is finally one of disappearance. Disappearance of obsolete technologies, but also, disappearance of existing technologies: how often do you look at your washing machine with wonderment (besides when you have to figure out how to change the clock, that is)?

Mobile technologies will see the same fate. They will disappear in the background. They will be all around us. When you hear words like “the cloud” or “internet of things”, what you’re hearing is that disappearance.

As 5 billion smartphones will land in pockets in the next to three years. As the biggest growth will be seen in emerging countries. As more than a billion women will enter the workforce in the next 10 years, just imagine how transformative mobile technologies are.

The history of technology is one of enablement. The tipping point of truly allowing individuals all around the world to take control of their lives is coming.

There will be resistance, inertia, the age-old battle of the ancient versus the new. But I believe that an emerging generation is arriving, with emerging values enhanced by those emerging technologies. A generation that disrupts the centralized power of knowledge, reach and diffusion. New marketplaces, new consumption models, new business designs will be emerging.

Mobile is the biggest human opportunity of both convenience and empowerment. The biggest opportunity to control our own destiny.

Whilst it might simply be the result of the history of technology, it’s a dream worth witnessing.

I’ve gathered a group of fascinating individuals to share their stance on the mobile disruption: Benedict Evans, Robbie Hills and Oscar Veronese. Join us at ITU Telecom World in Bangkok.

Read the first part of this article here.