Category: Blog

Imagine a factory floor with no operators in sight, machines receiving orders, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) moving products from one machine to the next, machines performing self-diagnosis and predicting failures and finally delivering a unique, customized product based on the customer’s specifications.  This is the future of manufacturing!

The world of manufacturing is making a quantum leap with robots, self-organizing production, augmented reality and 3D printing. At the heart of this change is data – data from all these machines to drive outcomes – mass customization, predictive maintenance, products-to-services.

In smart factories where processes are fully digitized and connected, manufacturers can build and deliver orders more quickly. Customers are also able to personalize their purchases from a manufacturer with smart factory capabilities. This type of connected manufacturer, often referred to as Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution, is underway – and will be central to the debate at the plenary Forum session “The digital economy: driving industry 4.0” at ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok this November.

The Connected Smart Factory

Audi, Harley Davidson, and Siemens are among the smart factory leaders that are changing the business of manufacturing. A smart factory is defined by its level of connectedness.

Five levels of Connectedness

The first level is intra-company vertical integration where a company’s business systems connect to the shop floor systems. A large number of automobile makers have been producing cars with this level of connectedness for years. Instead of having separated systems for manufacturing planning, execution, tracking, and tracing, these processes are connected and integrated with corporate business systems to improve key metrics such as customer delivery, quality and costs.

The second level is machine-to-machine connectedness where intelligent machines self-diagnose and self-correct. In these smart factories, machines have built-in sensors or RFID chips that allow them to ‘talk’ to each other and adjust workflows.

eCommerce integration, or direct integration of online configurations, is the third level of connectedness. This type of smart factory caters to the consumer, providing personalized, highly configurable products that are managed from order entry to the shop floor.

The fourth level of connectedness is manufacturing collaboration, which supports collaboration with suppliers, contract manufacturing, design partners, OEMs and customers. Design partners can work on prototypes and test designs with real time integration to shop floor systems. With the advent of 3D printing, this gives design partners the ability to do rapid prototyping.

The final level of connectedness is when machines on the factory floor are connected to a machine cloud that enables remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and quality management. Operators and manufacturers of machines can manage their assets at remote sites, while having visibility into performance and usage. Predictive maintenance and service solutions allow equipment manufacturers and operators of machinery to monitor machine health remotely, predict failures and proactively maintain assets.

Harley Davidson Regroups with Digitized Operations

A Smart Factory is not limited to automation of a single production facility. It incorporates integration across core functions – from production, materials sourcing, supply chain and warehousing to sale of the final product.

Visionary companies like Harley-Davidson Inc. are at the forefront of Industry 4.0 innovation with its use of end-to-end digital engineering. In Harley-Davidson’s new manufacturing facility, every machine is a connected device and every variable is continuously measured and analyzed. Equipment provides performance data that the manufacturing system uses to anticipate maintenance issues before machines break, minimizing workflow interruptions.

eCommerce integration lets customers personalize their bikes by choosing paint colors, frame designs and gas tank sizes. Dealers connect online to the Harley-Davidson manufacturing process and customers place their customized orders immediately at purchase.

Harley-Davidson has experienced incredible improvements since moving to a smart factory. The company reduced its operating costs by $200 million at one plant alone and saw an efficiency in its production line.

The single biggest change is the speed of order fulfillment. Harley-Davidson moved from a fixed 21-day production schedule for new orders down to only six hours.

Make Way for Industry 4.0

The number of companies that have adopted Smart Factory technology is growing but manufacturers are still hesitant. Some claim they have invested too much in existing machinery that will still work for many years. They have also raised fears of security breaches and are pushing for more standardization.

For manufacturers who are dragging their feet, they are only delaying the inevitable. Smart factories are coming and will be prevalent in the future. A Mckinsey Report reveals that companies expect Industry 4.0 to increase revenues by 23% and productivity by 26% and many are preparing for changes to their business model. Those who don’t believe in the force of Smart Factories, will be left behind as new, smarter, more agile competitors enter the marketplace.

 

In today’s world, everyone talks about how to bridge the digital divide and connect the unconnected to vital ICT resources. The objective, especially in the international community, is to connect people to the adequate infrastructure to ensure that they have access to important services. However, gaining access to infrastructure is not enough. People also need to be taught how to access infrastructure and use these services. Capacity building and training programs are key to empowering people to harness the benefits that ICTs can offer.

At ITSO, our Capacity Building Initiative, which is implemented through partnerships with other international organizations like the ITU, is structured to do just that. In addition to teaching people how to best use important resources such as communications satellites, we also ensure that our member states are equipped with information about the technical and regulatory aspects of satellite communications.

The ITSO Executive Organ has developed a training programme for three separate courses on satellite communications:  firstly, a combined technical and regulatory course; secondly, one intended for policy makers and regulators; and, thirdly, a course for earth station operators and engineers.  This programme can also be carried out in cooperation or back-to-back with other events through short duration events like seminars or workshops. ITSO has also been arranging tailored courses that respond to specific concerns from Member States. Over the implementation period 2010 to 2016, a total of approximately 1500 participants have been trained at the various locations in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

In addition to this training programme, ITSO has also collaborated with American University’s Washington College of Law (AUWCL) to create a Program on International Communications Regulation and Policy, headed by ITSO’s Director of Legal Affairs and AUWCL adjunct professor Renata Brazil David. The programme includes an online course on “Basic Principles of International Communications Regulation and Policy”; a summer course on “International Communications Law: A Comparative Perspective”; and a semester course on “International Communications Regulation and Policy”.

Programs like ITSO’s Capacity Building Initiative are an important reminder that bridging the digital divide does not just mean giving people access to infrastructure, but also training them to use these resources to get the services they need.

And the emphasis on regulation and policy in communications underlines the importance of getting the regulatory environment right for the digital economy to flourish worldwide.  The ICT sector will be crucial to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)  – but success will require greater collaboration between the ICT sector and other vertical sectors, in particular in the field of regulation. I look forward to exploring these themes and more in the session on “Collaborative Regulation: the key to smart infrastructure in the digital economy” at ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok later this month.

Start-ups along with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a key force in the innovation ecosystem worldwide, and in emerging markets in particular. They understand local customers’ needs and can develop solutions to their problems in very agile ways, sometimes bringing disruption to century-old businesses. Some have made incredible breakthroughs in the past few years and changed the lives of many. Like M-KOPA Solar who have equipped hundreds of thousands of African homes with pay-as-you-go solar systems, or ride-sharing platform Ola providing extra livelihood to hundreds of thousands of drivers in India. However, such success stories should not conceal the fact that for the majority of them, reaching scale is a real struggle.

Mobile operators on the other hand have touched the lives of billions in low- and middle-income countries in the past couple decades. Mobile phones are ubiquitous and the main way to access the internet and other important services. They are a vital lifeline in the case of disasters. They provide communication channels – like voice, SMS, or USSD – that are easy to use and accessible to anyone who owns a mobile. With mobile money services, they have offered a payment solution with over 400 million accounts worldwide, that addresses the shortcomings of many local banking systems. On the ground, they have deployed powerful distribution networks that employ millions. Nevertheless, they face challenges that make it hard for them to keep up with the accelerating pace of innovation.

On paper, this is a perfect match: mobile operators can help start-ups and SMEs unlock scale, and in return stay on top of the game when it comes to innovation. Unfortunately, the reality is that this type of collaboration does not always happen naturally. That being said, there are some very encouraging signs that mobile operators are taking significant steps. Here are a few examples:

• Access to finance is still limited for local tech start-ups. In 2015 in Africa they raised a mere USD185m. Mobile operators are using Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) activities to help bridge this funding gap. Safaricom for instance set up its spark venture fund to support local start-ups in Kenya, while some groups have adopted a more global approach, like Orange with their Orange Digital Ventures fund.
• Mobile operators hold the key to channels they should open through APIs: voice, SMS, USSD, career billing, mobile money etc. Enabling technical integration is a vital first step, and it needs to be coupled with outreach and support to the local developer community, like Dialog is undertaking in Sri Lanka with Ideamart or Orange with their Entrepreneur Club. Mobile operators as a community can also work together to standardise their APIs and facilitate interoperability, which they are currently doing on mobile money with the support of GSMA.
• There are many types of synergies to be explored. As stated above, mobile operators in emerging markets usually have one of the strongest local distribution networks, payment solutions, brand, marketing power etc.,that a start-up can leverage to build its reach and credibility. The collaboration between MTN and Jumia in Nigeria for example spans most of these dimensions and has been mutually beneficial to both parties.
• Mobile operators are also being inclusive of the broader ecosystem. For instance, we found that 13% of tech hubs across Africa and Asia have formed a partnership with a mobile operator, such as Vodafone with MEST in Ghana. Some operators might also chose to launch their own structure (e.g. Telenor Velocity in Pakistan) or team up to run challenges (e.g. Singtel/Airtel Accelerator Challenge) to support new talent. In other cases they work with local governments on ambitious projects such as the Connecting Start-ups Bangladesh initiative in which banglalink is actively involved.

Even though more still needs to be done to realise the full potential of collaboration, the examples above are very positive indications that mobile operators are taking concrete actions to address the challenges local start-ups and SMEs face, and to create mutual trust. The GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator is committed to working with all stakeholders in the ecosystem to ensure more partnerships are built, and as a result more products and services are able to bring positive socio-economic impact to local citizens at scale. And we’re looking forward to discussing some of the ways in which we can make that happen with a whole range of stakeholders in the B2B Dialogue on Harnessing Disruptive Innovation at ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok this November.

I am delighted to have been asked to moderate the session on “Making money from meeting the SDGs?” at ITU Telecom World in Bangkok on Monday 14^th November (4:45 PM – 6:00 PM, Jupiter 10), although I wonder a little why I have been chosen for this task given my past criticisms of the SDGs!  Perhaps the “?” in the session title will give me a little freedom to explore some of the many challenges and complexities in this theme.  Following in the footsteps of the Millennium Development Goals (2000), the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) still generally focus on the idea that economic growth will eliminate poverty; indeed, they assert that poverty can truly be ended.  This is a myth, and a dangerous one. For those who define poverty in a relative sense, poverty will always be with us.  It can certainly be reduced, but never ended.   It is therefore good to see the SDGs also focusing on social inclusion, with SDG 10 explicitly addressing inequality.  We need to pay much more attention to ways through which ICTs can thus reduce inequality, rather than primarily focusing on their contribution to economic growth, which has often actually led to increasing inequality.

This session will explore the implications of such tensions specifically for the role of ICT businesses in delivering the SDGs.  Key questions to be examined include:

• How can the ICT sector contribute to accelerating the achievement of the SDGs by providing ICT-enabled solutions and building feasible business models?
• Is the SDG agenda relevant for the ICT industry?
• What roles should the ICT industry, and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments in particular, play in working towards the SDGs?
• Can the SDG framework provide an opportunity to accelerate transformative ICT-enabled solutions around new solutions like big data or IoT?

Underlying these are difficult issues about the ethics of making money from development, and the extent to which the ICT sector is indeed sustainable.  All too often, the private sector, governments and even civil society are now using the idea of “development” to build their ICT interests, rather than actually using ICTs to contribute to development understood as reducing inequalities; we increasingly have “development for ICTs” (D4ICT) rather than “ICTs for development” (ICT4D).  To be sure, businesses have a fundamentally important role in contributing to economic growth, but there is still little agreement, for example, on how best to deliver connectivity to the poorest and most marginalized, so that inequality can be reduced. As my forthcoming book argues, we need to reclaim ICTs truly for development in the interests of the poorest and most marginalized.

We have a great panel with whom to explore these difficult questions.  Following opening remarks by Chaesub Lee (Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU), we will dive straight into addressing the above questions with the following panelists (listed in alphabetical order of first names):

• Astrid Tuminez (Senior Director, Government Affairs. Microsoft)
• Lawrence Yanovitch (President of GSMA Foundation)
• Luis Neves (Chairman Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and Climate Change and Sustainability Officer, Executive Vice President, at Deutsche Telekom Group)
• Mai Oldgard (Head of Sustainability, Telenor)
• Tomas Lamanauskas (Group Director Public Policy, VimpelCom).

Magic happens when people from different backgrounds are brought together to discuss challenging issues.  This session will therefore not have any formal presentations, but will instead seek to engage the panelists in discussion amongst themselves and with the audience.  We will generate new ideas that participants will be able to take away and apply in their everyday practices.  Looking forward to seeing you on the Monday afternoon of Telecom World in Bangkok!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help us in many ways: it can perform hard, dangerous or boring work for us, can help us to save lives and cope with disasters, can entertain us and make our daily life more comfortable.

Advances in AI are occurring at high speed. The potential risks and problems of AI technology are filling newspapers (e.g. Observer, 2015, the Guardian, 2015) with discussions ranging from killer robots to privacy concerns, the consequences of AI for labour and social equality (Daily Express, 2016), or superintelligence (CNN, 2014). However, rather than being a threat to our existence or plotting to take over the rule of the world, AI is already changing our daily lives, almost entirely in ways that improve human health, safety, and productivity.

In the coming years we can expect AI systems to be used increasingly in domains such as transportation, service robots, healthcare, education, low-resource communities, public safety and security, employment and workplace, and entertainment (100 Year AI report). But these systems must be introduced in ways that build trust and understanding, and respect human and civil rights.

There is, in fact, a lot to be positive about. Currently, over a million persons die annually in traffic accidents, more than half of which are caused by human error. Even if intelligent self-driving cars do cause accidents and deaths, forecasts show a sharp decrease in road casualties associated with the increase in self-driving cars. Similarly, jobs will be lost – but maybe repetitive, monotonous, demeaning jobs should be lost, freeing up people for more meaningful and joyful occupations.

AI developments will contribute to a much-needed redefinition of fundamental human values, including our current understanding of work, wealth and responsibility – all of which will be part of the debate in the panel session AI: is the future finally here? at ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok this November.

Work: As AI systems replace people in many traditional jobs, we must rethink the meaning of work. Jobs change, but more importantly, the character of jobs will change. Meaningful occupations are those that contribute to the welfare of society, self-fulfilment and the advancement of mankind. These do not necessarily equate with current ‘paid jobs’. AI systems can free us up for these occupations, allow us to be rewarded for them, to care for each other, engage in arts, hobbies and sports,  enjoy nature, meditate –  all those things that give us energy and make us happy.

Wealth: Technological developments in the last century led to mass production and mass consumption. Until very recently, having has been the main goal, and competition the main drive: “I am what I have”. Digital developments, including AI, favour openness over competition: open data, open source, open access, and so on. The drive is now quickly shifting to sharing: “I am what I share”. Combined with the changing role of work, this novel view on wealth requires a new view on economics and finance.

Responsibility: As AI moves from a tool to a teammate, perhaps the most important result of AI advances is the need to rethink responsibility. Developments in autonomy and machine learning are rapidly enabling AI systems to decide and act without direct human control. Greater autonomy must come with greater responsibility, even when the notions of machine autonomy and responsibility are necessarily different from those that apply to people. Machines are already making decisions. We need to deal with longer chains of responsibility, and with responsibility being extended to refer to machines and corporations.

Responsibility contributes to trust and includes accountability, i.e. being able to explain and justify decisions. Our trust in other people is partly based on our ability to understand their ways of doing (by putting ourselves in their place), but this does not hold true for machines. Trust in machines must then be based on transparency. Algorithm development has so far been led by the goal of improving performance, leading to opaque black boxes. Putting human values at the core of AI systems calls for a mind-shift of researchers and developers towards the goal of improving transparency rather than performance, which will lead to novel and exciting algorithms, turning deep learning into valuable learning.

Several initiatives are currently focusing on the ethical and societal aspects of AI development, including the IEEE Initiative on the Ethics of Autonomous Systems and the Partnership on AI.

I foresee an exciting future coming forth from AI developments. We are ultimately responsible. As researchers and developers, to take fundamental human values as the basis of our design and implementation decisions. And as users and owners of AI systems, to ensure a continuous chain of responsibility and trust encompassing the acts and decisions of the systems as these learn and adapt to our society.

The World Economic Forum has identified Artificial Intelligence (AI) as one of the top 6 trends shaping our society. Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies has the perceptual smart machine age as a top 3 trend. And Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said that “we should be very careful about artificial intelligence … it is perhaps our biggest existential threat.”

But what is AI, and is our wariness of unintended consequences obstructing our view of the great benefits it could bring humanity? What are the implications to society, economic development, and our paths to prosperity?

The ‘AI of Everything’ era

The near future will see large parts of our lives influenced by the AI of Everything (AoE) – an inflection point for humankind.

It’s an unprecedented era of:

1. Hyper time compression in the emergence of new disruptive innovations — measured in days and weeks rather than years.
2. Extreme convergence of multiple domains: physical, digital, biological – where there is overlapping amplification of value.
3. Exponential acceleration of automation – triggered by smart sensors and the IoT
4. Connectivity linked by a digital AI mesh – through the rapid deployment of machine learning.

Indeed, AI is creating a digital quake where 80 percent of companies and jobs may need to change or fail. Machines can execute repetitive tasks with complete precision, and with recent advances in AI, machines are gaining the ability to learn, improve and make calculated decisions in ways that will enable them to perform tasks previously thought to rely on human experience, creativity, and ingenuity.

AI will also come to support emerging applications in the IoT space, with billions of devices, things and objects gaining the ability to learn from patterns observed in their environment and communicate these learnings to a larger ecosystem of intelligent devices.

AI: central to achieving the SDGs

AI innovation will be central to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by capitalizing on the unprecedented quantities of data now being generated on sentiment behavior, human health, commerce, communications, migration and more.

For instance, machine learning and reasoning can extend medical care to remote regions through automated diagnosis and effective exploitation of limited medical expertise and transportation resources (SDG 3). Methods developed within the AI community may even help to unearth causal influences within large-scale development programs, helping us to build a better understanding of how we might design more effective education systems (SDG 4). Ideas and tools created at the intersection of AI and electronic commerce may uncover new ways to enhance novel economic concepts, such as micro-finance and micro-work (SDG 8). AI will also serve as a key resource in curbing greenhouse gas emissions in urban environments and supporting the development of smart cities (SDGs 11 & 13).

ITU and AI standards and regulation

Global partnerships (SDG 17) will offer crucial support to our pursuit of all of these goals and a draft report by the European Parliament strongly encourages international cooperation in establishing regulations and standards for the governance of AI technologies under the auspices of the United Nations.

ITU has responded with plans to hold a series of talks on AI that I will have the privilege of moderating at the upcoming ITU World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Hammamet, Tunisia; as well as at ITU Telecom World and the ITU Kaleidoscope academic conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

ITU also recently signed a partnership with the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE. The 5 million USD prize aims to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies from diverse and open sources, and spark creative, innovative, bold demonstrations of technologies with the potential to become truly scalable and capable of solving some of the most pressing challenges to our societies and economies.

The development and adoption of relevant international standards can help us to realize the benefits of AI advances on a global scale, assisting us in the pursuit of the UN sustainable development goals. However, despite widespread understanding of the benefits we could draw from a set of internationally accepted standards, we have yet to make any significant progress in our attempts to agree such standards. We are in need of a better understanding of where AI innovation is leading us and what this means for international cooperation, in the domains of both regulation and standardization.

ITU has created a new LinkedIn group for debate on cutting-edge AI technologies and related ICT applications and services, with the aim of promoting discussion on the future course of AI innovation and its implications for technical standardization and governance. I encourage you to join the discussion to share your views on how you would like to see the international community approaching the biggest questions surrounding the future of AI and, by extension, the future of humanity.

Our world is a connected one. A world where we increasingly have the power to reach anyone else, any time, wherever they may be, through voice, text, photos or videos. A whole new world of communication opening up new potential for working together to overcome problems and find solutions, facilitating innovation and collaboration.

That collaboration is at the very heart of ITU Telecom World. For over four decades, it has been bringing together the global ICT community to share ideas, exhibit new technologies and solutions, debate key trends and network across governments, industry and nations. As the ITU’s flagship event, its unique selling point has always been its ability to put ministers, regulators, evenheads of state and government, into direct contact with CEOs and industry leaders from across the ICT ecosystem and around the world. ITU’s status as the leading UN agency for ICT issues, and the event’s focus on structured and unstructured networking events, spaces and tools, has ensured its success.

Where else, after all, could you join in a debate in one single location with the Director of Global Innovation at UNICEF, the Head of Startup Europe in the European Commission, the COO of RwandaOnline Platorm, the Russian ICT Minister and the head of a Singaporean investment firm?

Or have morning coffee with a Korean startup, lunch with ministers from three Smart Africa countries and dinner with a major Chinese operator?

As John Davies, former World Ahead VP for Intel and long-standing ITU Telecom World participant, puts it: “If you look at the number of people here, if I were to get on a plane to try and meet the people I meet here this week, it would take me a year of flying.  They are all here, the decision-makers, sharing best practices.”

ITU Telecom World 2016, taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, this November, will continue to facilitate important connections across public and private sectors, nations, individuals and ideas. But it will also focus concretely on developing those connections into meaningful collaboration – on how we can work together to make positive change happen faster, to make the world better, sooner.

The Forum debates will explore collaboration in new technological developments, such as 5G and the Internet of Things, which are powering solutions from the connected car to smart cities, ehealth or digital financial services. All of these solutions have the potential to change our lives dramatically for the better; to drive industry growth and socio- economic development. But none of them can happen without collaboration. Regulators, businesses and government ministries need to work together across vertical sectors – it’s not just about ICT or finance, for example, but a combination of the two very different cultures.

Standardization, interoperability, and security call for new partnerships, new approaches and new ways of thinking to develop and take to scale new solutions. In a digital ecosystem made up of ever more stakeholders, from governments driving policy and regulation to established, major ICT companies, disruptive new OTT players and innovative SMEs, working together is the only way to meet these challenges.

Who might work with whom in which sector, why and to what end? Will it be possible to move beyond long-established mindsets and industry cultures, to embrace disruptive technologies and unorthodox new partners? The stakes are high, the outcomes uncertain. Whether collaboration will trump competition, or work in parallel with it, will be the subject of much debate.

What is sure is that coming together at ITU Telecom World, making connections, communicating, sharing opinions, experiences and ideas, is an important first step to working to find solutions together – to making that connected world a collaborative one.

 

LTE for bandwidth and GSM for voice are a match made in heaven for subscribers.

But as subscribers and operators race for bandwidth, many remote and rural areas remain underserved, and a range of applications (like IoT, evidently) continue to depend on coverage rather than bandwidth. And the technology to best provide it is GSM.

Our approach to making ends meet is a mixed base station (SatSite) which can provide GSM (using YateBTS software) and LTE (using YateENB) at the same time, in the same spectrum, and using the same radio hardware.

The software-defined 2.5G/4G LTE base station will be showcased during ITU Telecom World 2015, where SS7ware Inc. will exhibit for 4 days.

Using software-defined radio and off-the-shelf hardware, SatSite provides access for both GSM/GPRS and LTE from the same equipment. A live demonstration will be held at our stand P13 on October 14, at 11:00.

The technology behind SatSite was achieved by designing a software-defined base station that supports mixed 2G/4G spectrum allocation, and which is based on Yate telephony engine.

Software-defined BTS

In Satsite, we replaced commonly used FPGA and DSP boards with a generic Intel chipset. Both the GSM and the LTE layers are implemented in software, allowing the base station to be reprogrammed or reconfigured to support new protocols. A base station can run GSM at first, and then be software-upgraded to LTE, running multiple air interface protocols using the same radio, at the same time.

Mixed 2G/4G spectrum allocation

Based on the subscribers’ activity (data or voice), operators can assign in software the spectrum priority for either LTE or GSM, so LTE gets a higher priority if there is a lower use of voice services. This optimizes the resources allocation in the network and supplies better access to users.

YateBTS and YateENB – Yate modules

Yate telephony engine is an underlying part of the software architecture of our mixed 2G/4G RAN. It has a highly expandable architecture that provides unified management and monitoring. Both YateBTS and YateENB are software modules based on Yate.

Using off-the-shelf hardware and a generic operating system (Linux), SatSite facilitates an easy adoption of new standards or technologies, like 5G as it becomes available.

More details can be obtained during ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest, October 12 to 15, at stand P13 in the exhibition area.

Enabling more of the world’s population to access and participate in the digital economy – and all the socio-economic benefits it entails – is critical to ITU’s mission. Finding the best approach to do so is an ongoing process of discovery, trial-and-error and collaboration. It calls for understanding and adapting to the changing realities of information and communication technology (ICT) and its ecosystem – an ecosystem which has undergone radical transformation over the past decade.

Major international carriers and long-established national organizations with their homogeneous working culture and traditions are no longer the only players in town. The ICT industry today consists of a complex and diverse amalgamation of ideas, technologies and stakeholders, of new partnerships, new markets, and new cross-sector engagement with fields as diverse as health, education, transportation or agriculture.

Increasingly, it is also an industry driven by local entrepreneurship at the grassroots level, creating local solutions for local challenges, addressing local needs within specific local contexts. Impactful ideas are no longer just born in a few global centres, but spring from a wide variety of places.

At the forefront of both industry disruption and economic growth in both developed and developing markets, entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in this new ecosystem.

Whether established micro-businesses or fresh start-ups, already operating at optimal capacity to fill a specific niche, or with a high-growth potential to scale, replicate and move from local to national or international, SMEs are a major economic force-  representing more than 95% of enterprises and ensure up to 70% of jobs globally, and providing two-thirds of all formal jobs in developing countries and as much as 80% in low income countries.

The fundamental shift in technologies, user behaviour and business models in the ICT sector, in particular the significant growth of mobile and open source culture, along with repositioning the locus of innovation from the centre to the edge of the network, have fed into and enabled the rise of SMEs developing and delivering ICT products and services. At least in theory, anyone anywhere in the world with effective connectivity and the necessary skills can innovate with potentially global significance.

Supporting local development, digital entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs throughout the world is therefore critical not only to address local challenges, but to power growth in the ICT industry, help bring online more of the 60% of the global population that remain unconnected, and share the benefits of the digital economy, enabling social and economic development. Local context is paramount, but local solutions may often be fit for purpose elsewhere in the world – globally scalable and replicable – if they can first be discovered.

Recognising the importance of fostering ICT entrepreneurship and local innovation in driving job creation and the digital economy, many national governments have created and facilitated initiatives such as innovation hubs, accelerators, incubators and tech parks. But a huge gap in skills, funding, tools and knowledge remains – a gap between good ideas and good investors, between local solutions and established players eager to uncover unexplored potential.

ITU is ideally positioned to contribute to closing this gap, promoting digital entrepreneurship in collaboration with other major international stakeholders. As the UN specialized agency for ICTs, it combines the necessary authority, expertise and convening power to bring together ministers, regulators, industry leaders, academia, innovation hubs and accelerators, as well as start-ups and SMEs themselves from emerging and developed markets around the world to share knowledge, break down silos, encourage new partnerships, and make valuable connections.

By bringing in SMEs digital entrepreneurs, and supporting the governments of Member States in promoting initiatives such as hubs, accelerators and incubators, ITU is responding to the realities of the new ICT ecosystem and the expressed needs of its Members. Recognising the importance of this sector in creating innovative, sustainable economic and social impact, ITU is actively working to support it.

ITU’s flagship event, ITU Telecom World, has drawn high-level representatives from private and public sectors from all over the globe for more than 40 years to showcase innovation,  network and exchange knowledge-. ITU Telecom World 2015 will continue to be both a meeting place and a market place, a platform for debating core industry issues, exhibiting innovative solutions and making valuable connections. But the event will also bring SMEs, start-ups and supporting initiatives to the table, to the meeting rooms, panel discussions, networking occasions and exhibition floor, as important stakeholders in the new ICT ecosystem.

Exploring experiences, solutions and approaches from new players around the world will open up new routes to the funding, knowledge, expertise, technical, business and marketing skills which are sorely needed. It also promises exposure to the most promising innovative ICT ideas – sometimes in surprising places – opening up a two-way dialogue with and between emerging markets.

Meeting face to face, discussing key industry issues, discovering hands-on the solutions, projects and applications with the potential to make a huge difference, enriching the industry through networking and knowledge exchange: these have always been the core activities of ITU Telecom World, and indeed of ITU itself. Encouraging the active participation of ICT-related SMEs and their support networks, actively striving to accelerate innovation in the ICT sector and thereby stimulate industry growth and socio-economic development – this is the logical and necessary next step towards achieving global access to, and participation in, the digital economy.

This blog was previously published on the ITU Blog: https://itu4u.wordpress.com/2015/10/07/why-smes-are-at-the-heart-of-itu-telecom-world-2015/

With the UN’s SDG goal to “significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020”, the debate reopens on whether access to the internet is a human right. And furthermore, the exact definition of what the access includes, and what is “affordable”?

We know that solving the challenge of internet for all will require innovative approaches; new forms of collaboration; and ultimately, a new business model, if the changes are to be sustained and scaled. We know that an ecosystem approach that looks at challenges and opportunities related to infrastructure, affordability, content, and skills/capacity (to name just a few) will be required. But how can innovation and new business models be encouraged if internet access is a right that every person on this planet has a right to?

At the World Economic Forum, the challenge of “Internet for All” comprises one of the key projects under the Future of the Internet initiative launched earlier this year. Through a multi-stakeholder and collaborative process involving dozens of key organizations in the internet development space, including the ITU, one of the key objectives of the initiative is to ensure the internet develops in a way beneficial for all humankind.

A collaborative approach that engages multiple organizations and actors will be critical. At ITU Telecom World 2015, we look forward to further exploring how this can be done in the Wednesday plenary session on “Internet for All”.