Category: Blog

With over 5 billion mobile users worldwide today and 700 million more expected to connect by 2020, the mobile revolution and digital economy are having a profound effect on our daily lives. Forward-looking policies and regulation will enable countries to reap the most benefit from this digital transformation. As this revolution picks up speed, new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G will become increasingly important, but the pace of change can make it difficult for policymakers and regulators to stay on top of this fast-moving digital environment.

Governments want to make sure that they put the right policies and regulations in place to encourage innovation and investment in digital technologies and services, while also ensuring that consumers reap the full benefits of these new developments. However, the ability to achieve this relies on policymakers and regulators having knowledge about new technologies and business models, and an understanding of the implications of different policy and regulatory approaches.

The GSMA Capacity Building programme draws on the GSMA’s industry insight and research to develop training courses to help policymakers and regulators tackle the key issues shaping mobile today and into the future. There are currently 13 courses on offer, which are delivered either online or face-to-face through a range of strategic partners including several academic institutions across Asia and Africa.

Partnerships with academic institutions are essential to the programme because these relationships allow the GSMA to bring industry insight, academic research and practical examples to the policymakers and regulators of tomorrow.

 

This year the GSMA established a partnership with Yonsei University Graduate School of Information (YUGSI), one of the top universities in South Korea. Through the partnership GSMA experts deliver training to graduate students at the Yonsei campus in Seoul. In July, 32 students and four professors from Yonsei University visited the GSMA offices in London to learn about issues affecting the mobile industry and for a series of industry visits facilitated by the GSMA. The students received briefings on a broad range of topics including spectrum, regulatory modernisation and IoT. They also benefited from briefings delivered by several organisations including Orange, Telefónica, BT, OFCOM and the OECD.

For YUGSI, this partnership provides the opportunity to enhance academic programmes by providing students with exclusive industry access and global insights into policy and regulatory developments around the world. YUGSI students already have visibility of cutting-edge developments in South Korea, but via the partnership with the GSMA, they also gain a better understanding of the policy challenges and innovative solutions that are being developed in every corner of the world.

This partnership is also of great benefit to the GSMA as it allows us to share industry insights with future policymakers and regulators at they start out on their career path. The GSMA is keen to support regulators and policymakers with the tools and skills that they need to make sure their societies benefit from the amazing changes in mobile and digital technology. The combination of the academic research and insights delivered by YUGSI and the industry expertise that the GSMA brings to the classroom provides an excellent training environment for future decision makers.

To learn more about GSMA Capacity Building courses and academic partnerships visit stand 1210.03 on the exhibition showfloor at ITU Telecom World 2017.

You can also hear from GSMA in the Forum debates – Natasha Jackson, Head of Public Policy & Consumer Affairs, speaking in the Data flows, policy and security: the role of data in smart digital transformation  session; Andy Hudson, Head of Technology Policy at GSMA, in the plenary session on The 5G opportunity: driving digital transformation; and Peng Zhao, Regional Spectrum Policy Director, in New trends in spectrum management.

What is the most important thing that smart cities and smart banking have in common? Both need (and have managed to acquire) plenty of data to become smart. Without data to test how good your models are, nobody can learn and become smart.

Smart cities hold the key to improving access to finance for SMEs and unbanked individuals. Not only are they host to novel technological solutions for sustainable urban development, but they exemplify the power and pace of digital innovation and data.

Limited access to finance has traditionally resulted from the lack of perfect information about a borrower’s ability and willingness to pay. Solutions to this challenge have been to focus on improving the quality of data and requiring collateral. Nevertheless, these solutions have not only proven costly but also highly inefficient. Historical sources of information, including data furnished by the firm, data purchased from credit bureaus as well as data generated from bilateral transactions between the borrower and the lender, have delivered incomplete and/or untrustworthy information, still preventing small firms and individuals from accessing credit.

New convergent technological developments are challenging the status quo of the financial services industry and have led to new business models with the potential of improving access to finance. Thanks to expanded broadband access, the growth of cloud computing and the internet of things, among others, new sources of trusted and low-cost information are becoming available, facilitating the management of collateral and offering alternatives to access to market barriers.

For example, new-entrant market lenders with alternative intermediation models and advanced credit scoring techniques are challenging traditional incumbent banks and pushing the financial services industry toward lowering lending spreads. They are also expanding the set of bankable firms and individuals just as the use of e-commerce, e-payments, and other digital channels is allowing firms and individuals to create a credible and transmissible digital history or identity. New techniques and procedures to handle collateral, supported by blockchain-based registries, are also making the use of collateral more efficient, cheaper, and more secure, further transforming the industry.

With the ability to gather and analyze massive amounts of data, smart cities like Busan are now creating an ideal environment to improve financial inclusion and to implicitly increase formalization and productivity of businesses. As information on energy consumption, traffic patterns, waste disposal, social media interactions, phone record etc. becomes available, artificial intelligence-based credit score engines can deliver more accurate credit assessments and further reduce asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders, thus facilitating access to financing.

Obvious hurdles – including regulatory challenges – arise with the introduction of disruptive technological advances and new business models. In this regard, The Connectivity, Markets and Finance Division of the Inter-American Development Bank is committed to leading the effort to adopt regulatory frameworks and public policies that assist Latin American and Caribbean countries to transform their ecosystems into smarter places able to improve financial inclusion.

The pace of innovation is inevitable and the power of data unstoppable. The potential of smart cities is thus endless and can improve the lives of many of those who remain underserved in the financial sector.

Juan A. Ketterer will be speaking at sessions on The value of smart banking: the operational key to making smart cities work and Tech SMEs and innovation: Boosting investor confidence in emerging and frontier markets at ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 25 – 28 September.

Looking back a few decades and focusing on the previous generations of mobile systems, we can identify one common denominator which has led to success – global standardization.

Without open global standards, it would not have been possible to get the global reach and the economy of scale that have made it possible for a large part of the global population to access data and services wherever they happen to be. Having a global standard is not enough. To be successful and enable growth, you must also have other factors in place such as high performing networks, coverage, affordable terminals and attractive services and applications.

Looking forward we see the dawn of a new generation – 5G. Like the previous generations of existing services and applications, it will improve and enhance the user experience. But the telecom industry will also face the challenge of new industries using 5G networks in their ongoing digitalization process.

To set the standard for the next coming 10-20 years, it is important to define the requirements that will be needed. We cannot today foresee all the requirements that will be needed, but one thing is certain; requirements for different industries will be different, and that demands FLEXIBLITY. Interfaces should be specified to enable future services to be introduced, services which will fulfill future demands and desires.

Standardization is one process that will make this possible, but other areas also need to evolve at a similar pace. Technology, applications, standardization, regulation and the evolution from 4G to 5G need to play in harmony. New industries utilizing a common network will place high demands on regulatory issues that support innovation, but must also ensure that security and privacy are handled in the right way.

A challenge that we have in the standardization community is that specifications are not only developed in one standardization body. Future networks or 5G systems will include several organizations as well as different ways of working. Both specifications and open source software will be the base when developing 5G. Well-specified interfaces will be a highly important tool to enable a successful evolution.

When will it happen? Even though many organizations are involved in this, it is the ITU and 3GPP track that is the main vehicle and sets the pace. Current 3GPP work will be input to the specifications that are submitted to ITU, and we will have a commercial 5G system up and running within the timeframe of 2019-2020.

To operate and make equipment available on a global base, it is also critical to identify and make available global spectrum within this timeframe. Very good progress has been made in this area. Spectrum has been identified which indicates that it is possible to have spectrum for 5G available in the different regions in the given timeframe.

Once again: we cannot today foresee all requirements that are needed to fulfill future desires and demands. However, if we use global alignment, flexibility and high performance as guiding principles, we will be as prepared as we can for the future!

I look forward to discussing all this and more in the debate on The 5G opportunity: driving digital transformation at ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan, South Korea, late this month.

 

The creation of Arcep in 1997 marked the end of an era: the era of State control over communications infrastructures in France. But let us not misunderstand: public authorities did not withdraw but rather reinvented themselves. Relinquishing none of its ambitions for the telecoms networks that are so vital to the life of the nation, the State was able to decentralise their operation, through the emergence of an independent regulator — the transmission belt between the public interest and the market — and through new forms of solidarity at the national and local level.

Twenty years later, telecoms stand out as a successful example of this new alchemy of public authorities, which uphold the interests of our fellow citizens, and public service requirement by relying on economic forces, local initiative, innovation. And the need for regulation only continues to grow, as the many recently adopted national and European Acts demonstrate, not to mention the postal sector which Arcep has also been regulating for 10 years now.

As enduring as it may be, this need for regulation must not prevent us from rethinking how we go about it. We have already seen it in other areas: the rise
of digital culture is ushering in a new era of government action, based on sharing and agility. Herein lies the very crux of the “360° outlook” in which Arcep has been engaged since the strategic review it performed in 2015.

Regulating with data

In a complex and ever-changing environment, it is harder to anticipate
the future, which can hamper the regulator’s ability to use its traditional toolbox.

But digital technology can also forge new channels. By publishing the right information, we can make every user a “mini regulator” who will reward virtuous market behaviour through the act of purchasing, and so steer the sector in the right direction.

Regulating with data is thus an approach that goes well beyond mere transparency. It means “unbundling data”, in other words looking for data deep in economic stakeholders’ “bellies”; or relying on crowdsourcing as
cities are doing with their “fix it” tools. As it works to promote the smart and abundant processing of information, the regulator may opt to become the hub of a “RegTech” community composed of specialised companies and members of civil society.

“Pro-innovation” regulation, continually opening new doors

Telecoms regulation has enabled talented entrepreneurs to access the resources  –  numbering, frequency, copper local loop, interconnections  –  they needed to build new networks and services, and unlocked innovation well beyond anything previously imaginable.

In the digital era, “pro-innovation” regulation will remain more crucial than ever before. Because it is almost always marginal players who discover and create new worlds, innovation must not be confined to incumbent players or pre-existing models. For the regulator, this means working to guarantee that the internet remains open, so that everyone can interact and innovate, without bias nor silos. It means accepting abundance and uncertainty, giving everybody a chance, creating room for experimentation and the emergence
of alternative models, inside or outside the market, free of all preconceived notions.

Sébastien Soriano will be speaking in the debate on The 5G opportunity: driving digital transformation at ITU Telecom World 2017.

This article was originally published in Medium.

On the 27^th of September, I’m moderating a panel discussion at the ITU World 2017 conference in Busan, South Korea, on the theme of “The transformation of telecom operators: reinventing telcos.”

This is a topic we’ve heard discussed for at least the last 10 years in various forms, yet we still seem to be at or near the starting point. The panel will look at what can we do differently, to change the dynamics. In particular, it will focus on the internal organisation and processes of the telecom industry, both within and between telcos. Other conference sessions will consider new services, industry verticals, and the customer perspective.

Across the globe, traditional CSPs are trying to adapt their cultures and operational models, in the face of ever-increasing competition and substitution from new players. As well as other rival service providers such as cable operators, telcos now face challenges from Internet-based peers, niche specialist SPs (for example in IoT), and even enterprises and governments building their own networks. On the horizon, new technologies such as AI threaten to change the landscape even more. The nature of what it means to be a “service provider” is changing.

This goes beyond just implementing next-generation networks, whether fixed or wireless. While these are necessary, they are not sufficient for true reinvention – and they also require enormous new investment. The real question is what options exist for operators to best-allocate scarce resources (money, skills and time) to maximize the value from such investments in infrastructure. There is also a risk that emphasis on the “hard challenges” of raising finance, acquiring spectrum or sites, and building networks, means less focus on the “softer” problems of culture change, service design, organisation, customer-centricity and partnership.

This in turn poses problems for regulators, especially at national levels. Usually driven by domestic politics and local economic situations, they somehow need to ensure a strategically-important sector remains healthy, while also recognising the huge global-scale advances from many technologies and services that transcend national or regional boundaries.

It is not realistic for every country to have three or four competing local providers of social networks, IoT management tools or future AI platforms. Citizens and businesses expect similar functions to work internationally and immediately, with rapid incremental improvements. Unlike networks, innovation in services and applications often favours fast-evolving proprietary platforms, rather than committee-led interoperable services like the PSTN.

Telcos – and their regulators – have until recently been poorly-suited to this new world, although some are making interesting attempts to “turn the super-tanker”.

The session will touch on four or five key areas:

• Innovation: What is the best way for telcos to innovate, given regulatory & cultural constraints? Arms-length subsidiaries? Huge retraining programmes? Business units targeted on verticals / technologies? How much freedom should product units have, for example should they be forced to use the company-wide core network & NFV platforms, or should they be able to go “off piste” and act independently? Are “platforms plays” viable in telecoms, or just unrealistic wishful-thinking?
• Regulation: What should regulators be doing, to simultaneously encourage new entrants/innovators, but also allow telcos to make enough returns to take long-term investment views? And how can regulators deal with the overlaps, competition and tensions between very distinct groups, such as traditional infrastructure-oriented telcos and Internet-based “web-scale” platforms? One group has huge capex and strict regulatory constraints, the other huge R&D and greater risk of failure: how can one set of rules span both, where they intersect?
• Industry coordination: How do the current pan-industry structures (eg bodies like ITU & GSMA & 3GPP) need to change? Can they be made faster, more willing to take risks, faster to acknowledge errors, bring in non-traditional stakeholders?
• Technology catalysts: Are 5G & NFV really “transformational” enablers of re-invention? Or will prolonged hybrid/transition phases from older tech mean there can’t be fast shifts? How should telcos deploy technologies such as AI, blockchain or IoT internally, as part of their reinvention?

One other thing should frame the debate: language – how we describe the problems, or wider communications environment. Words, analogies and narrative arcs are psychologically important – they shape the way we perceive problems, and can either enhance or misdirect our responses. We should recognise the unhelpfulness of terms like:

• “Digital”: Morse Code was digital in 1843. Telecom networks have used digital technology for decades, as have most businesses. It’s about steady progress and evolution, not a “digitalisation” step change.
• “OTT”: usually said in a negative tone, I believe this prejudiced description of Internet services has hugely harmed the telecoms industry over the last decade. For example, it obscures the fact that larger Internet companies do more deep technology than telcos: they make network equipment and chips, build infrastructure and conduct billions of dollars of R&D.
• “Level playing field”: telco executives, regulators and lobbyists use this phrase with abandon. Yet the analogy is meaningless, when everyone is playing different sports entirely.

The narrative needs to change substantially. My ITU Telecom World 2017 session aims to reset the debate, and catalyse thoughtful (but rapid!) future action by operators, regulators and industry bodies alike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

What is the challenge?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do we transform?

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

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

What measurements do we need?

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

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

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

Which source of data should we use?

We can combine three available data streams:

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

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

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

What is the outcome?

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

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

Developing a hyperawareness capability 

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

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

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

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

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

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