Category: Blog

Nigeria is set to showcase its plethora of investment opportunities at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, Qatar on Monday, December 8, 2014 during its Investment Meeting.

A delegation led by the honourable Minister of Communications Ms Omobola Johnson is on the ground at the Qatar National Conference Center, QNCC, Doha to host potential investors and to showcase vibrant and exciting projects and innovations across the dynamic Nigerian ICT Sector.

Nigeria’s theme for this year’s presence at ITU Telecom World is BROADBAND NIGERIA: ENABLING ACCESS, TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES.

Speakers will include Joseph Tegbe, the principal partner of KPMG in Nigeria; Abdullahi Maikano, Secretary, Universal Service Provision Fund; and telecom operators giving an overview of the benefits of investing in Nigeria, including MTN’s Michael Ikpoki, MD/CEO and Ibrahim Dikko, Director of Regulatory Affairs at Etisalat Nigeria. The session will be moderated by Dr Eugene Juwah, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of the Nigerian Communication Commission.

Like most Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Vanuatu presents very specific logistical challenges for government, regulators and operators alike when it comes to establishing universal connectivity.

With a population of 255 000 spread over 83 islands in the South Pacific, simply transporting ICT equipment into remote and rural areas is a major issue. A fibre optic network is impossible in this topography, and satellite connectivity often prohibitively expensive. Many isolated areas have little or limited access to power; literacy rates, let alone ICT skills, are low.

But for Vanuatu, these challenges have become an opportunity to show what can be done with political will and stability, commitment and hard work. Between the landing of the first submarine cable in November 2013 and March 2014, all operators and ISPs active in Vanuatu were connected, reducing the cost of wholesale bandwidth by more than 50%. Users have higher quality, reliability and speed in broadband services, driving growth in a range of internet-dependent business sectors such as finance, real estate and tourism – and pushing up GDP.

This represents a major achievement in terms of increasing universal connectivity. But we’ve gone beyond far beyond that with an ambitious, government-backed social development project to provide broadband access to schools and health centres across the nation. Successful pilot schemes have proved that education and community centres are the best locations to establish local hubs of connectivity, bringing broadband to students, teachers, their families and businesses. Starting with 24 sites by the end of 2014, the aim is to connect 98% of all schools by 2018. It’s an holistic approach: ministry programmes are developing curricula, building online content, training teachers and students, ensuring the availability of services and content relevant to local communities.

Thanks to our developed ICT strategy, we’re on target to meet that 2018 deadline. Funding is provided from the government, from development partners and from the industry, with operators obliged to pay into a universal access fund and support connectivity in remote and rural locations as a condition of receiving a licence for commercially- viable areas. Our regulatory body is fair, fully independent, and committed to a light-touch approach, letting the market decide and interfering as little as possible.

We’re proud of our ambitious goals, and of what we’ve achieved in recent years: opening the market to competition, inviting foreign private investment, improving coverage from 16% to 90%, establishing fair, independent regulation and a fully integrated government broadband infrastructure.

We also have the first internet exchange in the Pacific, where we hope to establish a computer incidence response team to collaborate at a regional level on raising awareness of cybersecurity and dealing with cyber crime. The first draft of legislation on cybersecurity and privacy laws is currently on its way through parliament. Vanuatu will follow up its successful hosting of the first-ever ITU Child Online Protection workshop in the Pacific with a series of cybersecurity workshops bringing together governments, financial institutions and other SIDS across the region to discuss best practice and develop a common approach.

We’re at the cutting edge of cybersecurity in the Pacific – and also of disaster preparedness and emergency response. ICTs are vital both to monitoring, predicting and detecting the natural disasters to which we as a region are prone, and to managing emergency response. Our major projects include an SMS alert system in the event of disaster, the result of collaboration between major mobile operators and climate change ministers. We’re investing in automating the collection of all data in remote sites throughout the country on tides, tsunamis, volcanic activities and meteorological indicators. And we are working towards hosting a regional workshop on disaster preparedness and ICTs involving all development partners, operators, governments and disaster stakeholders across the Pacific.

Vanuatu is looking forward to showcasing the success of its ICT strategy at ITU Telecom World 2014 as a part of the Make Your Country an ICT Star forum session. For us, ITU Telecom World is the biggest ICT and telecommunications sector event in the world. All the major stakeholders and partners come together, from regulators to CEOs, vendors, suppliers and development partners. It’s the best event to attend to share your accomplishments, learn from the achievements of others and attract foreign investment and development partners. No other event offers so much opportunity for the ICT industry in Vanuatu.

In addition to our forum session, we also look forward to meeting colleagues, peers and other stakeholders from around the world, seeing what they are doing or intending to do, sharing experiences and expertise. We would in particular like to promote our regional leadership and upcoming activities in cybersecurity and disaster preparedness and response. Vanuatu is a rising ICT star in the Pacific – ITU Telecom World is our chance to shine out on a global stage.

Mobile broadband is booming worldwide, underpinned by a global footprint of 3G/HSPA and 4G/LTE networks. LTE is mainstream and fast developing with approaching 350 live networks today, and is expected to cover 70% of the world’s population by 2020.  Worldwide the number of mobile subscriptions grew 6% over the last year, while mobile broadband connections leapt 30% to 2.5 billion, of which 350 million are LTE users. The smartphone is the device of choice, accounting for an estimated 70% of all mobile phone sales in Q3 2014.

Data consumption on smartphones, tablets, MiFis and other connected devices is also booming, 60% growth in data traffic being reported during the last 12 months. Video is the main driver and estimates point to 70% of mobile data being video by 2020.

LTE operators are increasingly focusing on the user experience of mobile broadband and enhancing the capacity, coverage, capabilities and efficiencies of their networks. LTE Broadcast (or LTE Multicast) is a key and promising technology that is already standardised within 3GPP LTE Release 9 for supporting the predicted explosive growth of video services consumption. The evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) is the name of the LTE Broadcast technology and enables efficient distribution of point-to-multipoint content so that multiple users are able to receive the same content simultaneously. It could include HD video, mobile TV, digital radio, or push content.

LTE Broadcast creates a single frequency network (SFN) using part of an operator’s existing LTE spectrum to distribute broadcast streams into defined broadcast areas. All cells contributing to an SFN send the same data during the same timeslots to appear as a single cell. This is particularly useful for serving densely populated areas such as a sports stadium, arena, concert hall, shopping mall, etc. The SFN coverage area may be small, consisting of a few cells, or large – citywide, regional and even nationwide. Multiple users “tune-in” to the SFN for the best experience of the data stream content/service such as video, and in the most efficient way, allowing the operator to free up more capacity for other users on the network, and for more content and services. Broadcast and unicast radio channels co-exist in the same cell, sharing capacity and available radio resources are dynamically assignable for either broadcast or unicast delivery.

Many use cases are supported by LTE Broadcast technology. Mobile TV services are commercially launched using eMBMS in South Korea. LTE Broadcast technology promises new revenue sources for operators by distributing TV over mobile broadband systems, available to users with a compatible device, and allowing broadcasters and content providers to extend their reach to mobile users and enable new interactive services. Wide area TV broadcasting is being trialled now in Germany. But how much is the user willing to pay for mobile TV?

There are many other use cases for LTE Broadcast which are being studied and new business models will emerge. Around 20 trials are underway globally by several Tier 1 mobile network operators working with multiple content providers and partners such as the BBC. Many initial applications focus on coverage within stadia, but its potential is much wider, extending to smart cities, emergency broadcasts, software update downloads, video and music services, digital signage, connected vehicles (cars, buses, trains), and so on.

The role LTE Broadcast could play for TV broadcasters and other content providers will be discussed in the Convergence of Broadcasting and Broadband panel session. We shall consider the benefits for the various stakeholders including content providers, how broadband and broadcast technologies can be combined to deliver the most efficient video delivery solution, or whether cooperation rather than convergence is the path. While many broadcasters will be ready to embrace eMBMS, some will have a different perspective. Tensions may arise from demand from mobile network operators for spectrum which up until now has been allocated for terrestrial TV broadcasting, particularly in the 700 MHz band which has excellent mobile coverage properties. Some regulators are contemplating closure of terrestrial TV networks and delivering broadcast content over mobile networks. How will the competitive positioning between fixed and mobile network operators and cable operators evolve? Might cross-sector consolidation make sense? Can mobile TV overcome previous failed attempts?

I look forward to meeting you at ITU Telecom World 2014.

The telecom world has grappled with the digital divide since the publication of the Maitland Commission Missing Link Report in the early 80s. That report helped countries realize that telecom was a key tool for development, and since then telecom operators and regulators have struggled with how to provide access to telecom to all (universal access).

Definitions of universal access have changed over time. 20 years ago we talked about the walking distance to a telephone. Today we talk about universal broadband Internet access within reach for all. But, little has changed in terms of the methodology to make this happen. Some countries still rely on regulations to force universal service obligations on telecom operators to offer services to all. Other countries adopted universal service funds, to help subsidize telecom operators to offer universal service. Despite all these regulatory and financial incentives, the digital divide remains.

Why, one could ask? To a large extent, the cost of rolling out the infrastructure in areas with poor roads or electricity, the cost of customer acquisition, the cost of maintenance of the customer and the margins to be made from a low income customer, often make rolling out services to these regions difficult. These factors make regulations and financial incentives irrelevant to telecom operators. What we need today is an approach that considers the new technologies and new players that can facilitate universal service in a more cost effective manner. In fact, since the digital divide is so closely tied to the energy divide, we need to think out of the box when thinking of last mile access.

I currently live in Indonesia, a nation with 17,000 islands. Many regions have little or no voice services let alone broadband Internet. In today’s day and age of innovation and entrepreneurship, the last mile can only be provided more cost effectively by social or community based entrepreneurs. They are better partners in fulfilling the universal service obligations of telecom operators. These last mile entrepreneurs can provide business models than can be a more effective and efficient way of offering service, as they cut down many of the costs involved in doing it at grassroots level.

In some countries, social entrepreneurs or community-led cooperatives at the last mile are already being allowed to buy bandwidth in bulk from the telco, and then becoming the last mile provider to the end user. In India for instance, Air Jaldi uses WiFi mesh technologies to offer broadband Internet to schools in the highlands of Dharamsala, India. Green Wifi and Inveneo have been doing the same in many countries, but mainly only to schools or hospitals. With new technologies such as Open BTS, Open WIFI, raspberry pi computers, or energy efficient BTS such as produced by VNL, last mile operators don’t require huge capital investments to become last mile providers. VNL energy efficient BTS has even been developed for the last mile operator – for example, it can be transported by bullock carts and assembled by illiterate people using pictures as instructions. Necessity and scarcity is truly the mother of invention, and we should highlight these success stories from the developing world.

Regulators should be open to offering USO funds to these last mile social entrepreneurs or community cooperatives and allow telcos to partner with these operators to fulfill their obligations. The time has come to think out of the box, to ensure we can in fact bring broadband to all. The last mile grassroots entrepreneur is at the level in which innovation happens, and we cannot expect this of the telecom operator deploying high end expensive equipment and networks at massive scale.

We cannot do the same thing as the past and expect a different result to bridge the digital divide. As Albert Einstein so wisely put it, “stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. The developing world has so many success stories as a result of thinking creatively and differently, such as Grameen phone bringing voice service through women entrepreneurs. Today, communities and young entrepreneurs are eager and capable of innovating and solving their own problems, and regulations should stay ahead to bring the maximum benefit to all concerned.

Laina is a mentor for the Young Innovators Competition at ITU Telecom World 2014, and will also be moderating the Forum Closing Conversation on Wednesday 10 December, wrapping up the panel debates and Forum sessions of the previous four days.

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.

I will be chairing the panel on the Internet of Things: a Force for Good or Evil? at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha in December this year.

What is the Internet of Things? I would like to define it as anything that does not have a human involved. According to the GSM Association website we will have something approaching 5 billion connections by 2017, and the number of subscribers is increasing by over four times the amount of the population increase. Soon we will have reached the point where almost everybody has a mobile phone in the world, and has several devices that are also connected.

In order to expand and provide new services to the networks, the Internet of Things becomes increasingly important. So let us think about what might be involved in these things: we have smart energy, intelligent transport and cars, medical devices, fitness devices, even refrigerators and television sets. We may also wish to control our home devices, and of course there are safety benefits and energy saving devices that may also be introduced by the Internet of Things.

What other issues can we expect from the growing Internet of Things? Well, firstly we have standards: there are a number of national and international standards groups worldwide addressing its use, such as oneM2M, but there is also a large number of industry groups, which is creating a proliferation of standards that may be incompatible or do not include essential elements.

There are also of course issues around privacy and security. There are many examples in the hacker community where security failures can lead to the loss privacy, including webcams that are open to the Internet and can be viewed by anybody, television sets that reveal your viewing habits, medical devices that can be interfered with and have potentially serious consequences, and cars that can be opened and in some cases started and stopped. Some of these can cause disruption to national and international infrastructure, for example, a denial of service attack on the electricity system, food supplies or water.

As an individual you might be concerned that the fact that you were at home using electricity or devices may be revealed for a third party, as well as your driving habits, shopping baskets, and many other aspects of your life.

The panel will discuss many of these issues, and suggest ways in which they may be tackled and in some cases even put right. What is needed it is for manufacturers to think about the security and privacy issues, and the underlying technology being used, and use these principles to produce safe devices. There are many examples that are weak in the areas of security that have clearly missed out this essential stage of the development of the product or service.

There also needs to be a better understanding of the legal framework in which an individual may give up much of the data gathered by these means for his own benefit, and be able to control it.

I will be looking forward to an interesting panel discussion covering some and more of these topics.

As a society, we’re poised on the edge of radical, deep-rooted technological and scientific advancement unlike anything we have previously experienced.

A range of highly innovative developments will transform literally every aspect of our world – and the process has already begun. Consider how the smartphone, now a ubiquitous tool and toy, has changed the very fabric of our daily lives in the course of just seven years. Now multiply that impact with the simultaneous arrival in daily life of developments such as immersive multi-sensory internet services, the connection of everything via the Internet of Things, the rise of artificial intelligence with the prospect of systems that can outsmart humans and large-scale adoption of digital currencies that no government controls.

In parallel to a wave of largely digital developments, the physical world will also be reshaped by innovations such as home-manufacturing through 3D printing, robotics in every sector from manufacturing to driverless vehicles, intelligent materials that change their properties over time and human augmentation encompassing physical, genetic and cognitive enhancement. We could continue with this list of potentially transformative new technologies and techniques on the horizon, but the examples cited here should give you a sense of the pace, depth and scale of disruption we will experience in the coming decades.

In a world of disrupted development, economic changes will be driven by scientific and technological opportunities, innovative services and products and new production methods. As a result, jobs, professions and even entire industries, will emerge, grow, be radically refocused, shrink, or disappear completely. Whilst we can’t be sure exactly how things will play out, what we do know is that society needs to be better equipped to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing reality. The impending tsunami of change creates an urgent need for us to upgrade our skill sets, encourage life-long learning and invest in meaningful, extensive adult education programmes. This could in part be structured through incentivising tax breaks offered to companies dedicated to equipping their workforce with new skills, and to individuals taking part in continuing education courses and learning experiences. The volatility of the commercial environment and the rise and fall of industries will place a growing focus on the importance of small businesses for sustainable economic development. Hence, facilitating local innovation and entrepreneurship will be vital to economic success.

Governments of emerging nations have a real opportunity here to scan the trends, forces and ideas shaping the long-term future and understand the coming disruptions. It is critical that they learn how to respond to these developments and position their societies and markets to best benefit in terms of employment, welfare, education and lifestyle. The most astute and forward thinking emerging nations will see the value of investing in future-proof infrastructure, technologies and education programmes that can accelerate growth – potentially leapfrogging generations of development.

Effective strategies for investing in entrepreneurship should draw on successful practices already being adopted by the voluntary sector, charities and NGOs already active in the field, often working at the very bottom of the pyramid. Whilst effective nation-wide innovation and entrepreneurship programmes may need to be co-ordinated and funded through a central strategy, the key to success is local execution. There are a wide range of proven examples of the third sector working at grassroots level to improve literacy, build capacity, and nurture business skills relevant to the requirements of the local market. By supporting and sharing current successes from the voluntary sector, learning lessons from their experience on the ground and following and scaling-up proven pilot projects, governments can build larger, effective national strategies for innovation and entrepreneurship – without reinventing the developmental wheel.

Investing in education and entrepreneurship on an emerging nation’s budget calls for more creativity and flexibility than in deeper-pocketed countries, perhaps, but here again lessons can be learnt from the charities and foundations that have proved themselves to be experts in getting results on limited resources. Tapping into this expertise, bringing existing local projects to national scale and partnering with other initiatives are smart ways to upgrade the skills of society at large in the face of future disruption.

Innovation and entrepreneurship will be critical to the development of a nation’s ICT industry in particular. The sector will be the backbone of technological change, the bringer of unparalleled opportunity and the harbinger of an entirely new job market. Much of the development will take place in pioneering start-ups and small firms which will need all the help they can get to turn good ideas into sustainable employment – creating businesses. Hence, government support for the creation of new sectors, new SMEs and new educational and training programmes will be essential to the viability of the ICT industry of the future – a strategy driven out of pragmatism as much as philanthropy. Without this support, where will skilled workers and affluent consumers be found if adult education, innovative start-ups and new routes to employment are not adequately funded?

Over the next 5 to 10 years, widespread disruption in society will begin to take hold, cast-iron job certainties will disappear, current industries will shrink or disappear and new ones will emerge. A decade from now, we will be able to look back from, say, ITU Telecom World 2025 and see where we, as government and industry leaders were prescient in our response, where we were slow or naïve, and the consequences for our society.

Join me at the Leadership Summit on The Future at ITU Telecom World 2014 to start that journey.

On September 25, the ITU Telecom World Young Innovators Competition launched a challenge in partnership with the IEEE IoT Initiative, looking to work with our community to co-create ideas for new startups using the Internet of Things for social good.

Once the internet used to be all about connecting people to other people. Now the advent of the Internet of Things, or IoT, has moved the focus from human communication to connecting machines and devices, enabling billions of physical objects around the world to interact digitally – creating an enormous new market and radically transforming industry sectors from healthcare to transportation, energy to agriculture.

The IoT brings together sensing, communications and information infrastructures on an unprecedented scale. Connected devices generate data; that data is rendered actionable through big data analytics; the results of that analysis are used to change processes and, as a consequence, improve peoples’ lives.

According to speakers at the Internet of Everything panel session at ITU Telecom World 2013, the total market value of IoT is estimated at over USD 14 trillion, representing between 15 and 25 billion connected devices by 2015. With this prize in mind, most IoT developments to date have been commercially-driven. The heavy demands on infrastructure, costly technology and need for strong, widespread connectivity have also largely limited IoT systems to the developed world.

But IoT has tremendous potential to be harnessed for social change in developing economies in particular, such as amplifying the effect of limited resources in healthcare, revitalizing agriculture to reduce risks from natural disaster and famine, or enabling smart grids to improve the efficiency of electricity production and consumption. IoT solutions and systems are a hugely exciting prospect for driving social good in developed and developing markets alike, vastly improving the lives of people all over the world.

Which is why we’ve launched our latest ITU Telecom World Young Innovators Challenge on exactly this theme: using the Internet of Things for social good.

We’re looking for the best ideas for new businesses or innovations that can take advantage of the IoT’s potential for the greater good. This could involve methods for spreading or expanding access to existing technology such as near field communication, sensors, RFID or QR codes in emerging or developing countries. It might focus on the application of IoT technology to issues and fields of particular interest to emerging or developing economies, such as agriculture, water management, transportation, or predicting the outbreak of disease. And we’re particularly keen to welcome ideas on an “Intranet of Things” – local networks of IoT devices functioning on a smaller scale to serve a concrete social purpose.

We’re particularly delighted to be working on this challenge with the IEEE IoT Initiative, which aims at driving the evolution and deployment of successful IoT solutions in academic and industrial environments. In addition to a vital role in the expert facilitation online, development of ideas and selection of the winners, IEEE IoT Initiative chairman Roberto Minerva will be speaking at panel session on the Internet of Things at ITU Telecom World 2014.

This is a co-creation challenge, meaning we’re asking you to submit ideas, discuss, exchange ideas and contribute in a collaborative process through our crowdsourcing platform at ideas.itu.int. The ideas with the greatest potential will be developed into concepts under the guidance of expert facilitators, before being whittled down to two winning finalists. Those winners will join ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December, where they’ll pitch their ideas before industry and government leaders, benefit from workshops and ongoing mentoring, and win up to USD 5000 in seed funding.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!