Author: Digital World

As I’m gearing up for ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok, I’m reminded of what a difference a few years make.

In 1999, I was in a start-up enabling content delivery through the mobile web. We had the future at our fingertips. In hindsight, little did we understand what would happen in the following years.

Even though 1999 was a turning point in mobile penetration—one handset was sold every four seconds in the UK—there were “only” 300 million mobile phone subscribers. And almost not a single one of them was going online (yes, the start-up failed).

Mobile hadn’t met the internet yet.

In 2008, I was residing in Tokyo, I was living in the future. Japanese carriers had standardized so many features unavailable for the rest of us that it truly felt like science-fiction. Some of the behaviours we dreamt about in our little start-up were happening in front of my own eyes.

Mobile hadn’t truly met apps yet.

“This is the year of mobile” has been muttered in every major ICT event of the past decade. Like a teenager in need of constant reassurance.

It’s not needed anymore. Mobile is a given.

WAP, monochrome screen and paltry speeds are signs of a bygone era. Japanese handset manufacturers have abandoned ship one after the other. The major players of 1999, Nokia or Motorola, have lost their shine. BlackBerry, that had released its first email pager that year, is suffering harshly.

It’s a tectonic shift. Mobility has taken over the world, using whichever metric you want to use. It’s the biggest platform shift of the past 50 years.

The mobile market is, though, not fully defined yet. Mobile web, apps, stores, all still feel embryonic, no matter how big those are. How we communicate, engage, learn, reach and diffuse knowledge over mobile is not truly set.

The land grab is in full force. Wave after wave. Some desktop web players are sent to oblivion. Others, from Google to Facebook, are adapting to a mobile world. Mobile-only players like LINE or WeChat are emerging fast. Just imagine: What’s App already sees more pictures shared daily than Facebook.

The change is happening fast.

Twitter, which just went public, was born right in the middle of that shift, with its 140 characters limitation borne out of the desire to communicate over SMS. But the most successful standardized method of mobile communication is threatened itself: What’s App alone sees 14 billion messages exchanged daily.

The change is happening extremely fast.

Where does that leave the telcos? They’re undoubtedly an integral part of the revolution, acting as gatekeepers—subsidies, data coverage and pricing are defining growth—, but their role has changed too, whether you benchmark it against 1999 or 2008.

Mobile technologies are changing the world.

In our pockets, we have much more computing power than a desktop PC of 2008. More computing power that the entire world in 1950. Can you imagine the next 15 years?

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

Paul Papadimitriou, Innovation Consultant, Digital Intelligence – Interview

Cybersecurity is a theme that requires immediate attention. Societies and nation states are moving towards a level of digital dependence in which trust plays a critical role. Without this core element, we are enabling the continued emergence of a dark world of unrestrained cyber threats and attacks that threaten to subvert the current success of our digital economies.

As an all-encompassing discipline, cybersecurity calls for the active participation of a multi-stakeholder society. Academia, governments, commercial entities, international organizations, and citizens all have a role to play in securing the digital future. The idea that cybersecurity is the remit of the technology professional is unacceptable. We are living in an era where cybersecurity is everybody’s business. Comprehensive security needs to include elements of pre-emptive, defensive, responsive, and offensive measures. But it is not just about technology – many of these elements require training and education, information governance, regulation, strategies, policies, awareness raising, information sharing and cooperation, among many other efforts.

With the advent of machine-to-machine communications, big data, smart cities and connected people, it would be a costly oversight to underestimate the importance that cybersecurity will play for driving next-generation technologies. To be able to take full advantage of the opportunities for economic development offered by information and communication technologies, trust has to be a key element of that technological evolution.

Nation states, educational institutions, and private sector players have a crucial part to play in enabling the implementation of cybersecurity capabilities. The biggest hurdle to overcome is setting down a viable strategy that can fulfil this purpose. This means understanding the vulnerabilities and designing achievable objectives that can be successfully applied in the short and long term. Benchmarking can help to align policies against a desirable goal, and provide participants a useful starting point for building cybersecurity capabilities.

For this reason the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) aims to provide guidance on the levels of national cybersecurity development in order to enable countries to drive forward their own domestic strategies. The GCI aims to take a broad look at cybersecurity, with five main elements underpinning the framework: legal measures, technical measures, organizational measures, capacity building, and cooperation. The ultimate goal is to help foster a global culture of cybersecurity and its integration at the core of information and communication technologies, and these five pillars serve as the baseline against which such a culture can be achieved.

For more information about the Global Cybersecurity Index, visit us at the Cybersecurity Pavilion at ITU Telecom World 2013 – or join us for the debate on  Building Cybersecurity Capabilities in the Developing World, on the showfloor at ITU Telecom World 2013 on Tuesday 19 November.

 

It is not a secret that website security is essential for all types of organizations.

Member states and organizations of all sizes are increasingly challenged to adopt new technologies such as cloud computing, virtualization and IT outsourcing. To complicate this challenge, organizations face increasingly targeted and sophisticated attacks. Attackers now range from organized crime rings to advanced nation-states and are highly organized, skilled, and motivated. Despite the prevalence of firewalls, IPS, anti-virus and other security technologies, many businesses continue to fall victim to these attacks due to unintentional configuration errors. As a result, organizations are beginning to recognize the importance of human experience and analysis in a best-of-breed security architecture.

Ethical hacking companies offer tremendous value in their ability to share their advanced security knowledge and expertise with customers. This service enables organizations to adjust their security technologies, train their staff, and enact security practices that better protect critical systems and sensitive data. Ethical hacking services provide customers with objective and real-world assessments of  security weaknesses, vulnerability, risk, and remediation options. As a result, ethical hacking is rapidly gaining attention as an essential security practice that should be performed on a regular basis.

The fact that today theft of sensitive data is at greater risk than ever and web security is the most overlooked aspect of securing sensitive data.  According to DataBreaches.net and IdTheftCentre in 2013, hackers have infiltrated database aggregators like  Washington State court system, Yahoo, OVH, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Nintendo, National White Collar Crime Center, as well as Adobe’s recent security breach and the resulting theft of personal data from over 38 million users, serves to demonstrate that even the giants of the technology world can fall victim to cyber threats.

We think  ITU Telecom World 2013 is the best platform for innovation showcasing and networking with the global ICT community team and we are proud to be a part of this community and be able to share knowledge and experience in the field of Ethical Hacking.

To find out more on how to make your organization more secure, and on ImmuniWeb – one of the tools to be used by ITU for assessing security of governments’ websites as part of a project to assist Least Developed Countries to secure Critical National Infrastructures (CNI), join us at the Cybersecurity Pavilion on the showfloor at ITU Telecom World.

We are under a growing wave of cybersecurity attacks. This is putting the private sector, public sector and government bodies under increasing pressure to establish solutions for cybersecurity and investigations. In recognition and in response to this, during the 2011 World Summit for Information Society the United Nations put in place a dedicated arm within ITU, ITU IMPACT,  to deal with cybersecurity across all 193 member states.

Most member states face the same problem: the proliferation of Internet access and web-enabled devices is leading to an increase in the volume and sophistication of cybercrime. Yet the reality is that most cybercrime response forces are ill-equipped in terms of forensic staff and investigative technologies to deal with the nature, volume and velocity of these cases, leading to bottlenecks and huge backlogs.

The recent 2013 DBIR Verizon Report, which analysed over 47,000 security incidents globally, further confirmed that geographic borders are no protection against cyber-attacks. Data breaches from 27 countries were analysed as part of the report. The results demonstrated that the majority of financially motivated incidents originated in the US or Eastern Europe and espionage cases predominately originated in East Asia. The message is clear: cyber-attacks cross borders. It follows that a cross-border strategy and approach is essential.  The ITU, with its mandate to build capacity and set the global cybersecurity agenda, is uniquely placed to facilitate a strong, joined-up global response.

As partners of the Cybersecurity Pavilion at ITU Telecom World 2013, our aim is to enable this response and we look forward to seeing you in Bangkok.  Visit Nuix at the Cybersecurity Pavilion (G2) to find out more – or join us for the debate on Building Cybersecurity Capabilities in the Developing World on the showfloor at ITU Telecom World 2013 on Tuesday 19 November.

“Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

–Albert Einstein

Einstein’s often-quoted observation is a good reminder for how the industry should not address “rural broadband.” The last five years have seen a new wave of activities that work to “bridge the digital divide” and enable rural broadband. Yet we see the same mistakes from the past happening in many countries, even countries that should be setting the example for the rest of the world. For example, accusations are reported in the UK media that the UK government favours the “incumbent” as a means to expand broadband coverage, which has not delivered the desired impact.

This policy aspiration vs. policy impact is a recurring theme. How different is our current conversation today about rural broadband to the ones we had about bridging the digital divide? How are the conversations today different from the dialogue before and after the 1982 Maitland Commission Report?

The key difference in today’s conversation is that we have moved from discussing “why” we should bridge the divide to discussing “how” we should bridge the divide. The question however remains about “what” do we use to bridge the divide? What approach is the most appropriate and have the biggest impact? Thesewill be some of the opening questions of the panel debate on “Delivering Broadband to Rural Areas” at ITU Telecom World 2013.

Meanwhile, we need to ask “what is rural broadband”? In many emerging markets 256kbps is already broadband, while in many developed countries, broadband is expected to be anywhere between 10Mbps to 1Gbps. Does rural include sub-urban areas or only remote areas which are usually scarcely populated? The definition does impact the debate about regulations and technologies. Are we talking about bringing fibre or LTE to rural homes, should the government fund this? If so, how should it be funded, and last but not least should it be best addressed in a technology and business model agnostic way?

What is key to keep in mind is that in rural areas, especially in emerging markets, the cost of acquisition and maintenance of a rural customer is very high, leaving very low or little profit margins. Universal service funds therefore have not been able to solve the universal service problem. It is time for a new conversation. It is time for BUSINESS UNUSUAL.

For example, it is often easier and cheaper for grassroots entrepreneurs to bring rural broadband to rural communities and there are many success stories around the world to showcase this. However, regulators may need to intervene to encourage telcos to enter into business arrangements with small rural providers, to provide policy exemptions enabling other smaller players to become “telecom operators” in rural areas and even give preference for any universal service funding to smaller operators, wherever possible. It is actually a win-win for the telecom operator as they can now reach rural customers but deal with the small provider as one customer and hence get a return without the headache of managing each rural customer. This is not unlike a household “offering” bandwidth it buys to the people in the house and buying more bandwidth if there are more people or bandwidth demands to be serviced.

Another aspect of an unusual business model involves tools to bridge the energy divide and the digital divide jointly. In many rural areas, you cannot bridge the digital divide without bridging the energy divide. Approximately 1.4 billion people live without access to electricity and about 1.6 billion without access to telecommunications, and so in many ways the link is very obvious. For telcos, the energy line item for rural telecom cost ranges anywhere from 35% to 75% of OPEX making rural broadband even more unprofitable. The use of energy efficient-technologies and the use of alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind, battery backup and other hybrid solutions are now proving to make better business sense. Yet many telcos and tower companies don’t feel it is their core competency to manage power. In India and Indonesia, there is a rising number of energy services companies offering rural electricity, where the telecom operator, tower company or grassroots telecom entrepreneur is the anchor tenant. More countries should consider policies to encourage this new business model, which will support the spread of broadband as well as renewable energy. In fact, many investors today believe that telecom can be considered to be the “killer app” for renewable energy (telecom needs reliable 24/7 energy and the energy provider gets a consistent anchor tenant).

Ultimately, the key to rural broadband involves innovative technologies, innovative regulations/policies and innovative financing/business models. It is indeed time for BUSINESS UNUSUAL if we are ever to truly bridge the broadband digital divide, let alone just the narrowband digital divide. Policy makers should recognize that they cannot bridge the digital divide without also addressing the energy divide when it comes to rural broadband in emerging markets. Hence policies and funding that favour energy efficient-technologies and/or solutions that run on green energy, and also grassroots entrepreneurs to thrive through win-win relationships with telcos, will help effectively to bring rural broadband for the prosperity of all.

From an innovation perspective, I have always been convinced that “the language we use defines the horizons of our imagination” and so it struck a chord with me when I read in a recent ITU document that “voice calls are no longer the preferred communication mechanism between people”.

This phraseology implies peril for the telecoms industry and a golden opportunity for the internet world. Voice is, however, still the preferred mechanism of human communication but voice calls via a fixed or mobile telephone system are now not the only option available.

This glass half full, myopic misperception leads me to suggest that the business models of telcos are overly focused on the delivery of “coms”. While this has been a highly successful strategy throughout the 20^th century, it is rapidly running out of steam as the internet world and telecoms collide to create the new mobile cloud world of today.

Maybe we should learn from Max Frisch (1911-1991), the Swiss author and critic, who said: “We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes—or rather we have seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are tele-viewers, tele-hearers, tele-knowers”.

So is it time to pivot this focus? Given the colossal change that convergence has forced within a concatenated time frame, the answer should most definitely be “yes”. The challenge for the telecoms industry is to shift its mindset to focus less on the delivery of “coms” and innovatively focus on “tele” – literally meaning “at a distance”.  This demands a focus on innovation that leverages the assets already in place, the layered technology developments of the last 5 years as well as the new ones that are emerging; most importantly, a focus on the evolution of global consumer and business usage needs and patterns. It means combining capabilities and services to “enable engagement over distance”. Now the question to ask is: what is it that tele-consumers and tele-enterprises really need in this 3.0 world?

As an entrepreneur, I have learnt much over the past five years about the concepts and practices of lean startups, and I realize that some of the challenges they face are very often closely aligned to those of the telecoms companies: namely, having to pivot and adopt a change in strategy without changing the vision, as well as creating multiple iterations of minimum viable solutions to solve customers’ real problems; in essence, getting back to what mobile operators were doing naturally in the early days of cellular. This may require smaller out-boarded organizations but, more importantly, a return of the visionary leaders and problem solvers to replace the accountants and managers before they succumb to the same fate that awaits many startups – running out of resources!

So, in conclusion, the ITU World 2013 panel on innovation that I am moderating is about the need for new mindsets and a reevaluation of the telecoms landscape, chiefly because the current map and strategy no longer accurately represent a territory that has been ripped up by the convergence forces of the last five years. I have no doubt that innovation will thrive in the converged industry but the questions still remain: who will the players be and where will this innovation come from?

See Steve’s video on this session  and catch up on the perspectives of many other panel moderators!

My panel session at ITU Telecom World 2013 is about privacy and security.

I would define privacy as the right to keep information about yourself from others. It is often thought to include anonymity and confidentiality of your information. There are many other variations of this basic thought. You may wish, for example, to keep your identity private, or you may wish information to only be available to your close friends and not to anybody else. You may also wish to move or remove information, or be able to change inaccurate information about yourself.

Let us think about the mobile phone. Your operator clearly knows where you are and who you calling, but depending on the services you may be using, other people or applications may also know information about you. This information could be your location, the contents of messages you are sending or numbers you have dialled. It is truly revealing to look at privacy messages that you may agree to when you download and use a particular App on your mobile phone platform. I know of one very common game, for example, where everyone has agreed for it to look at your last number dialled. I am still not clear as to why this would be required!

Another example is a large email provider, who inspects all the words in your emails both sent and received, and targets advertisements at you. Would you say that this is a breach of your freedom, or is it a legitimate use?

It is often argued that information can be anonymised, but this has been proved many times to be ineffectual –  and one can find many examples of inferring an individual’s behaviour from anonymised data. So equally, there must be guidelines for data aggregation as well as data collection.

Naturally, there is a balance between the individual and their right to privacy. If you are a criminal or terrorist, for example, would you have equal rights? Of course all of this becomes more difficult because one person’s terrorist may be another person’s friend. This becomes even more interesting when we look at countries, where what from one viewpoint might be terrorism is from another viewpoint freedom fighters in action.

People also have rights to have their information forgotten. We do not want our fun or holiday pictures to be taken into account when future employers look at our prospects for a job. So should you have separation between your identity as a person with your own legitimate personal activities, compared to somebody in a role or position of power? We all have something that we wish to keep private from others!

The interesting question is: how do we ensure privacy and security in the various services and communications that we might be using? I believe that there should be clear guidelines and easy-to-understand, clear language to offer guidance to the individual. There are many examples of services that keep on changing security settings where it is extremely difficult to secure communications and ensure privacy. Services and products should also have adequate controls with regards privacy and security to protect the individual. For the present, this is not universally true. We need to think carefully to develop clear guidelines and protocols for doing this.

And so the panel should have a very interesting debate on the individual’s rights to privacy and security, and how to balance this against the detection of any illegal activities. We only have to think of recent events to realise what a delicate balance this can be.

Zimbabwe is a land rich in diversity ranging from low-lying semi-desert regions to lush highlands strewn with forests and lakes. It is a country situated on a high plateau in Southern Africa and covering 390 245 km. Zimbabwe’s ICT sector has over the past years entered a new age of opportunity and growth which four years ago would have seemed most unthinkable. This sector has proved to be a key infrastructural enabler for economic growth and has acted as a catalyst for propelling the country into a knowledge society with ubiquitous connectivity.

Just a few years ago, thousands would gather outside our stores, waiting in endless queues for the chance to purchase a simple SIM card. This was the most visible result of years of low investment in telecommunications. Zimbabwe was among the lowest in terms of internet penetration those years and yet, today, a revolution is sweeping across Zimbabwe’s telecommunications industry and the internet penetration rate has risen to just over 35%. While less than 14% of Zimbabweans had access to mobile phones in 2009, today, close to 90% of our people are connected to cellular technology and a significant number has adopted mobile money technology. Zimbabwe today stands as one of the top five nations with the fastest internet speeds on the continent, with the latest 4G LTE now available to ordinary customers. High speed broadband has become the backbone of the knowledge economy as well as a significant contributor to economic growth. The World Bank estimates that a 10% increase in broadband penetration could raise GDP by 1-2%, so Zimbabwe’s ICT industry is on the right track.

According to a report by Opera Mobile, Zimbabwe has been consistently ranked in the top 10 mobile internet users and the biggest African market in terms of page views per user. According to the Zimbabwe Investment Authority, there are a number of investment opportunities in the Zimbabwe ICT sector which range from e-business to business process outsourcing and many others. Beyond telecommunication services, Zimbabwe is a hive of mineral wealth, arable agricultural land, and manufacturing, with great investment opportunities in these sectors. With the ever changing technology, Zimbabwe stands ready to adapt and develop to the future of technology.

This year 8 companies are taking part in ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok Thailand and these are Africom, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, Liquid Telecom, Telecel Zimbabwe, Netone Cellular, TelOne, Zimbabwe Investment Authority and Potraz the regulator. Zimbabwe is also sponsoring a networking cocktail this year for exhibitors on the 18th of November 2013 in the Gandhi Palace.

Tsunami is a nasty word in Asia; a word that carries the idea of impending disaster. However, it is accurate to say that this is exactly what is facing telco networks in APAC as they struggle to cope with a tidal wave of data generated by their customers.

According to Cisco, global mobile data traffic grew by 70 per cent in 2012, to a level that corresponds to almost 12 times the entire Internet traffic in 2000! The word zettabyte, or one trillion gigabytes, has been coined to describe the new scales that apply in the fixed market. Cisco have stated that they expect that by 2016 global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year. This is ten times more than all IP traffic generated in 2008.

The issue for the operators is how to scale their legacy networks to be able to meet this customer demand. In APAC, fibre and LTE are possible technology solutions – however, this comes at a cost that commercial operators find hard to bear. In Australia, the previous government made a national broadband network a cornerstone of its election policy, claiming that only government had the long-term vision and access to capital required. The NBN Co plan involved the expenditure of US$36 billion over a fifteen-year period to June 21 to bring high-speed broadband to all Australian households, businesses and enterprises, through a combination of Fibre-To-The-Premise (FTTP), Fixed Wireless and Satellite technologies. Promising speeds of up to 100 Mbps, the project was to enable a variety of innovative industries and facilitate the delivery of essential government services.

However, the project is now under threat with the recently elected Australian government claiming that it is too expensive and that by utilizing the legacy copper network for the last tens of metres it can be done cheaper and faster. Whether this is possible is still the subject of vigorous debate with the final outcome not known until after independent reviews.

In many APAC countries, though, due to either geography or economics, wireless will be the only answer to burgeoning data demand. Key to this solution is access to adequate spectrum resources. In Thailand, access to critical 3G spectrum was held up for years due to complex regulatory issues. Now the Thai operators are rushing to implement 3G and 4G technologies simultaneously. In Taiwan operators are battling each other to secure vital 3G/4G frequencies with bids in round 340 currently more than three times reserve prices; while in India, the GSMA has urged for more efficient allocation of scarce spectrum resources.

The evolution of wireless technologies over the past decade has been extraordinary considering that the original standard for 3G specified speeds of 384 kbps for mobile devices, whereas now evolved 3G (3GPP Rel-11) is promising peak data speeds of up to 336 Mbps! In parallel with this development we have the newer LTE standard promising even faster speeds due to its more efficient protocols and all-IP architecture.

Of course, customers couldn’t care less about such details: they simply want to upload and download information and entertainment where and when they want and at an affordable price. With mobile data traffic in APAC forecast to grow 17-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 76%, this represents a formidable challenge to operators and regulators alike. Will they be riding the wave… or underneath it? This is what we’ll be discussing at the panel session Riding the Data Wave at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand.