Category Archives: Telecom Policy

Telecommunications and access issues.

How To Make The Digital Dividend Pay Out In Africa

Current television spectrum allocation

Digital Divide, Digital Dividend, Digital Yadi-yadah. You would be forgiven if the term Digital Dividend didn’t immediately resonate with you given the proliferation of all things “Digital” in recent years. A quick reminder then. The Digital Dividend refers to the spectrum that is freed up in the conversion from analogue television broadcasting to digital broadcasting, also referred to as the Digital Switch-over (DSO), a change that has largely already taken place in the industrialised world and is slowly gathering pace in Africa. This involves deploying digital transmitters to replace the analogue ones and either new digital televisions or digital Set Top Boxes (STBs) for existing televisions. But the fact that more channels may become available or that you can receive television channels optionally in high-definition is less exciting to me than what can be done with the spectrum that is freed up. How much spectrum is being freed up? There is over 400MHz of television spectrum.

Digital broadcasting uses a fraction of the spectrum that analogue broadcasting does and in Africa, there are few enough analogue terrestrial television channels per country to begin with. What is more, it turns out that television spectrum exists within a very attractive range of the frequencies. What makes a frequency attractive? Propagation or the ability of a radio wave to go through obstacles. The lower down you go down the spectrum, the longer the radio waves and the less they are inclined to bounce off solid objects. That means that you can cover a larger area with a single transmitter and that means that the cost of building a communication network drops significantly. There are trade-offs however. Longer waves carry less information so you can’t pack as much data into the same channel but that is a very reasonable trade-off when it comes to planning rural networks where the cost of network deployment may be a bigger issue than ensuring >20MB/s download speeds. So the Digital Dividend spectrum is extremely appealing from an infrastructure cost-of-ownership perspective. It is unfortunate then that most of the debate around the Digital Dividend has largely been held within the broadcast community. Not that digital broadcasting isn’t important but the Digital Dividend is an extremely valuable resource that needs to be considered holistically in terms of its national strategic value.

At the World Radio Congress (WRC-12) last year, there was confirmation of 790-862MHz (popularly known as the 800MHz band) as a global IMT (mobile) band. There was also a move by some African countries to have the 694-790MHz band (popularly known as the 700MHz band) made available in Region 1 (Africa and Europe) on an accelerated basis, probably because there are lots of CDMA players already in the 800MHz band. 700MHz is likely to be confirmed as an IMT band for Region 1 at the WRC in 2015. So that’s good news for mobile operators except that the release of the 700MHz and 800MHz bands is being treated as contingent on the completion of the DSO. Given the delays that have plagued the DSO on the continent, this seems like a dangerous strategy. Why can’t one or both of these two new IMT bands be cleared for use while the DSO is going on in the lower end of the television spectrum? At the very least, preparatory work for release of this spectrum ought to be going on now.

What a future allocation of spectrum might look like.

But the situation is worse than just a disconnect between the broadcaster and mobile operators. There is also the prospect of missing out on an alternative access technology that could make a real difference for rural access. Television White Spaces technology has the potential to create a vibrant rural access industry in Africa.

Television white spaces refers to the guard bands left between analogue television broadcast channels in order to prevent interference. TV White Spaces technology is capable of serendipitously re-using that empty spectrum without interfering with existing television broadcast. The initial vision was that through spectrum sensing, the devices would automatically use whatever empty spectrum was available, as a secondary user. That means if a television signal suddenly turn on in a frequency being used by a TV White Spaces device, it would automatically cease using that frequency and find another empty frequency to use. The broadcast and wireless microphone industry in the U.S. were not satisfied with this solution and the concept of an geo-located authentication database was introduced whereby TV White Spaces devices would need to authenticate against a spectrum database to see what spectrum was available for use in the area it was being used. Very low power TV White Spaces devices are still allowed to use just spectrum sensing. In general TV White Spaces regulation in the US has been the victim of massive lobbying and the result is some extremely hamstrung regulation.

The UK has largely followed the US regulation with one significant improvement. The power output level of the devices is not fixed but can be dictated by the settings in the authentication database. This means that higher power output levels could be assigned in sparsely populated rural areas versus areas where there are many other spectrum users.

What is exciting about this technology?

No spectrum license required or at least a very nominal one. This means new opportunities for small entrepreneurs to provide alternative access.
Great propagation. A typical TV White Spaces link can go 8-10km without any effort and is not obstructed by trees, buildings, etc.
Innovation. WiFi has gone from a niche spectrum for experiments to an industry that is expected to be worth over 6 billion dollars in 2015. ~70% of smartphone data traffic in the rich world goes over WiFi. This is what open spectrum offers. TV White Spaces has the potential to be another such industry because of the low barrier to entry.
No spectrum re-farming required. Because TV White Spaces technology is designed for secondary use of spectrum, there is no need to move the primary spectrum holder. This is a quick and easy win. Conflicts can be easily resolved by the regulator thanks to the authentication database.

TV White Spaces are finally gaining traction however. Google is sponsoring a pilot in South Africa and in Kenya, Microsoft are supporting a pilot in partnership with the Kenyan government and a satellite operator there. Those are good signs but in general the discussion of the Digital Dividend has been trapped in bureaucratic silos. There needs to be a broader acknowledgement of the strategic value of the Digital Dividend and a strategy that addresses it holistically.

Corporate Narratives, ICTs, and Development

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original image courtesy Once upon a time, a very long time ago, before even Google or mobile phones and long before Facebook, there was just the Internet. And folk who created the Internet and its early users were filled with wonder at its potential. They foresaw a day when there would be true equality of opportunity because everyone would have access to knowledge, access to markets, and true democracy would reign as everyone had a voice in governance.

For those working in the complex world of International Development trying to bring about more equality in the world, through means misguided or otherwise, information and communication technologies (ICTs) seemed to offer tremendous potential to accelerate positive change in the world. And so new aid programs were born that attempted to catalyse development activities through the use of ICTs.

As the Internet optimists had foreseen, ICTs turned out to be very useful for everyone, even and most especially the poor. But where there is utility, there is money and the communication infrastructure business soon became a multi-billion dollar industry. Technology companies rapidly outpaced development efforts and soon mobile phone infrastructure had spread across the developing world.

Slightly embarrassed by their own efforts, development agencies leapt on board with mobile and Internet companies to partner in bringing access to the developing world. A beautiful public private partnership was born. Sounds great doesn’t it? Everyone go to Davos.

What is missing from this picture is the fact that large technology companies are not in the business of saving the world. They are in the business of serving their shareholders. And that means that the story they tell the world about their involvement in the developing world, is one that serves their shareholders. What do I mean by “story they tell”? Narrative is the basic unit of human thought and everything we do is constructed in the context of a story that we tell ourselves and that we tell others about what is happening in the world and what our role is in it. Some years ago I was introduced to a beautiful quotation from Alasdair Macintyre (thank you Steve Denning) that has stuck with me:

“unless we have the critical tools to understand in which story we stand, our praxis runs the risk of prolonging not only the problem but the problem story. Often a problem will be solved only by dissolving the story”

In other words, if you don’t know whether your Hamlet or Rosencrantz or in King Lear or The Comedy of Errors, there is little chance of you successfully changing your role or the outcome of the story.

Corporations have been known to occasionally deviate from the very strictest truth in the stories they tell in order to serve their corporate interests. An energy company might de-emphasise the danger of certain kinds of energy sources because of the vast profits to be made from them. A mining company might obscure the provenance of minerals sourced from a conflict zone. Otherwise upright corporations pay bribes where there is a lot of money to be made and an opportunity to do so without getting caught. Where there is a lot of money on the table, corporations tend to act first in the interest of their bottom line.

And there is a lot of money in the world of telecommunications and the Internet. Carlos Slim didn’t get to be the richest man in the world by baking cakes. This turns out to be a problem because communication networks, thanks to the magic of network effects, naturally tend toward monopolies or at least oligopolies. This makes it much easier for communications corporations to extract more than their fair share of revenue from the average customer. Why do they do this? Because they can, because it is what they exist to do, to maximise profits for their shareholders.

This is not about the developing world in particular. It is true in the U.S. and Canada. For an insight into the U.S. watch this chilling talk by Susan Crawford about the state of broadband infrastructure. Communication companies have the chips stacked in their favour and absolutely require regulation in order to counter-balance the natural tendency toward monopoly.

When it comes to the developing world however there is an amazing dearth of critical discussion about the narrative put forward by communication companies. Development agencies treat these corporations as if they were their friends. They are not your friends. They may have temporarily aligned interests but they are not your friends. They may be staffed by excellent and well-meaning people but their collective interest, nay their responsibility, is to their bottom line and it is frankly amazing that development agencies have managed to maintain an apparent state of willful naivete for such a long time.

This obliviousness leads to pretty dubious activities like the funding of “mobile apps for development”. Oh sweet saffron, how the mobile operators must have chuckled when they heard that one. Honestly, they don’t need your help. Curiously there is little funding going into supporting good policy and regulation of telecom and Internet markets in the developing world, to ensuring real competition and fair pricing. There are some stand-out exceptions but they are just that, exceptions.

So when the ITU develops a global next generation broadband strategy and it fails to mention WiFi, do you think it might be because mobile corporations have an interest in promoting their own infrastructure rather? Do you think that when Google launches a campaign to Save the Internet that it is altruism or self-interest? When Facebook offers free access on mobile phones, is that because they care about the poor? Please don’t get me wrong, I am not some whining lefty moaning about how corporations are evil. Corporations are lovely. Google, in particular, in serving its corporate interest of having more bits consumed globally is in a position to do some very useful disruptive things in both the rich and poor worlds. Disruptive corporations in particular are lovely as they pry out the roots that monopolistic corporations dig in the ground. However, they are still not your friend. They need to be watched and called to account when they behave badly, especially when a big fat pile of money is on the table. And this is what the international development community is signally failing to do.

So what’s the tl;dr? Fewer apps and more support for ICT policy and regulation, please. It’s not sexy, it takes a long time, and often it fails to succeed against the massive advantage that huge communication corporations have. But it is where a more ICTD support should be going. Naturally I speak with a degree of self-interest. Simply making WiFi and VoIP legal everywhere would be a big leg-up for Village Telco. Where would I be without my own little corporate narrative? :-)

Original image courtesy Philip Martin.

Unpacking Our Mobile Broadband Future ITU Y U NO LIKE WIFI?

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The future is mobile. We all know that. We read it everywhere. In the UN Broadband Commission‘s recently published report entitled, The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion For All, ITU analysts boldly announce their belief that:

“mobile broadband could prove the platform for achieving the boost needed to get progress back on track – at end 2011, there were already almost twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions as fixed broadband connections.”

But what does it actually mean and is it really true? When talking about our mobile broadband future, it is essential to distinguish between devices and networks. The two things are not necessarily the same thing.

The Future is Mobile Devices

This future I believe in. Small, low-power wireless devices whether phones or tablets are taking over the way we interact with each other and with content. New markets and services are being created every day for mobile devices. The world of app and apps stores are creating new opportunities for innovation and adding value.

The Future is Mobile Networks

This is the future mobile operators would like you to believe in but the evidence is increasingly not in their favour. Here are some statistics that may change your perspective of our mobile broadband future.

Global Smartphone-originated Data Traffic
January 2012 – Source: Mobidia

A recent study by Mobidia revealed that about 70% of smartphone data traffic travelled via WiFi and not mobile networks. Keep in mind that this research was not done in Africa, it was done in the industrialised world. What we are seeing overwhelmingly is WiFi become the default form of data access and cellular access being relegated to those times when WiFi is not available, an increasingly rare phenomenon in the rich world.

The figures are even higher for tablet traffic. And while we’re at it, since when are tablets “mobile” devices? Of the fifty million tablets sold in the United States, only 8% have mobile capacity. The tablet is not a mobile device, it is a WiFi device. Google’s Nexus7 tablet is WiFi-only. Both Microsoft’s new Surface tablet and Apple’s new iPad Mini are likely to launch as WiFi-only devices. Why would Apple and Microsoft do that? Well, one reason might be to avoid the painful process of negotiating mobile carrier agreements. Imagine if computer manufacturers had to negotiate ISP agreements to connect a computer to the net. The latest tablet is also a whole lot cheaper than a smartphone. Compare a $200 Nexus7 tablet with an $800 Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.

So what’s my point here? My point is that the UN Broadband Commission’s recently published report on Achieving Digital Inclusion mentions WiFi exactly twice, both times parenthetically. Mobile operators would like you to believe that the future of mobile broadband lies in the LTE networks that they are building. And certainly that is partly true but only partly. If the Mobidia stats are to be believed, about 30% true.

Mobile operators have no interest in WiFi because they currently have no control over WiFi networks although that is beginning to change in the U.S. And we get reports like the one from the UN Broadband Commission because the dialogue at the ITU is dominated by operators. The Broadband Commission itself is chaired by Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world. The irony of putting the richest man in the world in charge of a commission to connect the poor appears to be lost on the UN.

In any discussion about the mobile broadband future of Africa, WiFi is simply not part of the discussion. Yet the evidence is before our eyes of the strategic importance of WiFi to our “mobile” devices. It’s cheap and fast and grew to solve the problem of affordable access by chance not by design. It happened because WiFi is an open space for technology developers to innovate. No carrier agreements required.

Also not mentioned in the UN Broadband Commission’s report is the potential of Television White Spaces spectrum, a space for with the potential for massive innovation in rural access. Another area not controlled by mobile operators.

The benefits of WiFi go beyond just cheaper access. They also create the opportunity to eliminate the weakness of a single point of failure that mobile networks create. WiFi infrastructure can make it harder to wilfully shutdown communication in a given geographic region. The key to resilient networks is plurality of access and WiFi is already embedded in every smart device you can think of.

It would be nice to see WiFi recognised for the powerful role that it is already playing in mobile broadband and to see it figure in national strategic broadband plans for the future.

35 Reasons to Worry About Privacy in Africa

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Over the last five years there has been a steady trend for African governments to implement mandatory SIM card registration policies. This means that you can’t buy a SIM card for a mobile phone without producing an ID document and proof of address. South Africa was one of the first African countries to do this but many have followed including Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and many others. At last count, no less than 35 African countries (see list below) have implemented obligatory SIM card registration.

The implementation of mandatory SIM card registration has been justified as necessary in order to assist law enforcement agencies in tracking down criminals. Images are conjured up of thieves executing elaborate plots with the aid of disposable mobile phones. In the post 9/11 zeitgeist, this is an argument that most find easy to digest. Indeed, so much so that I am unaware of these policies being buttressed by any research evidence linking SIM card registration to a drop in crime or an increase in solved criminal cases. Most news articles seem to provide as rationale the fact that other countries in the region are implementing such policies. A search through Google Scholar reveals very little research on this. And indeed the only research I could find on mandatory SIM registration in Africa focused primarily on its economic impact on subscriber growth.

So what’s to worry about? The classic rebuttal to objections to this kind of data collection is that if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. And indeed, the “intent” of most legislation around SIM card registration is to clearly define and control when and how this information might be accessed by law enforcement agencies. But what is worrying is not so much lawful interception but rather when those rules get bent or broken. We have seen countless examples now around the world of sensitive data being unlawfully accessed from email accounts to credit cards.

The very act of collecting data carries the responsibility to provide adequate methods and oversight for securing that data. When organisations propose to collect potentially sensitive data, the burden of proof should be on them to justify the need for such data collection as well as their ability to keep that information secure. I don’t believe the case has been clearly made for SIM card registration. Certainly I don’t think the benefits outweigh the dangers. Here is an example of why.

IMSI Catchers

There is a paradigm shift going on in the world of electronic surveillance. It has gone from complex, expensive, and sometimes unreliable to simple, inexpensive, and highly accurate. Increasingly surveillance technology has become commoditised. The device advertised at the left is a great example of this. It is an IMSI catcher, a device that listens passively to mobile phone traffic and picks up the identity of all of the phones in a given area. It can be purchased for a few thousand dollars. About the size of a suitcase, it can be installed on the bottom of a helicopter or on top of an apartment building. In many countries, the passive nature of the IMSI catcher often means that using one does not legally constitute interception and thus they can be used with oversight by law enforcement agencies.

Now imagine that the government of the beautiful democracy that you live in does the unthinkable and implements some legislation that you object to. You decide to exercise your free speech by participating in a public rally objecting to this legislation. A helicopter hovers in the distance with an IMSI catcher attached to it. Now your phone is in a database that has been collected of everyone who participated in the rally. Without mandatory SIM registration, that database is just a list of phone numbers. With it, it is potentially a list of names and addresses of people who the government has now identified as troublemakers. Perhaps that sounds a little paranoid? For a healthy democracy it probably is but there is plenty of evidence of authoritarian regimes using these tools and others. And maybe your country is a democracy now but will it always be?

Naturally such violations of privacy couldn’t happen if the rules for accessing the SIM registration database were observed but that is precisely my point. I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that the rules won’t ever be broken in the name of “security”.

Time To Ask Questions

The point of this post is to suggest that the time is now for civil society organisations in countries where mandatory SIM card registration has been implemented to starting asking questions, such as:

Does adequate technological and policy oversight exist to prevent SIM card registries from being misused?
What evidence is that that SIM card registries are actually contributing to crime reduction?
Are law enforcement agencies already using passive surveillance technologies like IMSI catchers?
Are passive surveillance technologies covered under existing legislation concerning the interception of communication?

And of course this is just the tip of the iceberg as we begin to understand the many ways in which in which the ever smarter mobile technologies create new possibilities for the invasion of personal privacy. In the rich world, organisations like Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are working hard to ensure that rapidly evolving communication technologies do not end up compromising our right to privacy. Every country in Africa needs a civil society voice to ensure that individual right to privacy is not eroded with a phone call.

A List of African Countries with Mandatory SIM Card Registration

Country	SIMRegistration Required?
Algeria	Yes
Benin	Yes
Botswana	Yes
Burkina Faso	Yes
Burundi	Yes
Cameroon	Yes
Cape Verde	Yes
Central African Republic	Yes
Chad	Yes
Cote d’Ivoire	Yes
Egypt	Yes
Eritrea	Yes
Ethiopia	Yes
Gabon	Yes
Gambia	Yes
Ghana	Yes
Kenya	Yes
Liberia	Yes
Mauritius	Yes
Mozambique	Yes
Niger	Yes
Nigeria	Yes
Republic of the Congo	Yes
Rwanda	Yes
Senegal	Yes
Seychelles	Yes
Sierra Leone	Yes
South Africa	Yes
Sudan	Yes
Tanzania	Yes
Togo	Yes
Uganda	Yes
Zambia	Yes
Zimbabwe	Yes
South Sudan	Yes

How the ANC is Squandering South Africa’s Digital Future Give us a leader!

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The release last week of ResearchICTAfrica (RIA)’s report on mobile phone pricing in Africa has provoked a little controversy in South Africa. The facts are quite damning. South Africa has some of the highest mobile costs on the continent. This is odd given South Africa’s comparative wealth and infrastructural advantages. By rights South Africa ought to have the cheapest phone calls and the fastest bandwidth on the continent. We don’t. Why would that be? Well in South Africa we are very good at finger pointing. Industry points to government and the regulator. The regulator points to industry and government. And the government points at the regulator and industry. And so this merry-go-round has gone on since the turn of the century.

So whose fault is it? Where does the blame lie? Lloyd Gedye from the Mail & Guardian interprets the report to mean that ICASA has failed and indeed the reports clearly states that

“The regulation in March 2011 by ICASA of the termination price that operators charge each other to terminate calls on each other’s networks has not had the intended outcome of creating a fairer competitive environment and a reduction in prices for consumers”

But for me this is like blaming a man with a wooden sword for failing to conquer a lion. ICASA is terribly mismatched in terms of its ability to go head to head with the telecoms industry both in terms of independence and resources. So perhaps ICASA has failed but whose fault is that?

Predictably the RIA report provoked a storm of obfuscationese from industry. Vodacom spokesperson, Richard Boorman, says

“Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs) are not an industry-wide cost that the consumer bears — the net cost of MTRs to consumers is and always has been zero,” he said. “MTRs are paid by operators to each other to terminate calls on the other’s network.”

Err what? So it doesn’t matter what mobile operators pay each other, it is always the right price? Holy magical thinking Batman! They also argue that call quality is higher in South Africa and that South Africa’s geography is more expensive to service than countries like Kenya and Tanzania. Having travelled in Kenya and Tanzanian recently, I can say this does not bear out in my experience. And did I ask for higher call quality? Could I please have a cheaper, crappier call option? There is some truth to the argument about geography but not nearly enough truth to explain the call cost disparity revealed in the report. Really this is just the standard litany of excuses that the likes of Vodacom and MTN trot out every time more evidence is presented of market failure in South Africa.

So is industry to blame? Well, yes but it is like blaming the lion for eating the wildebeest. They are accountable to their shareholders. They employ all the tricks available to them to maximise their advantage, except they don’t have teeth, they have lawyers . Now when government was a major shareholder in Vodacom, this got to be pretty muddy ground indeed. Happily that is done with. You could wish for industry leaders with a little more vision who see both the social and economic benefits of driving down costs and increasing access but there we would need to blame the shareholders who opt for self-interest.

So, if it isn’t really ICASA’s or industry’s fault, where does the blame lie? The fault lies with government and in South Africa the government of the last eighteen years is the ANC. I hate saying negative things about the ANC. For such a long period in my life, the ANC has represented the spirit of justice, of resilience, of endurance in the face of overwhelming odds that it is hard to bring myself to criticse the ANC openly. But like William Shatner in a corset, sometimes you have to recognise that things have changed.

What have the ANC done wrong? It is quite simple. They have failed to take telecommunications seriously. They have consistently relegated communications as a junior ministry and appointed ministers for reasons other than their competence and vision. The result has been the unhappy, bitter, finger-pointing environment that we have today. And sure, I too am pointing the finger here squarely at the ANC. But the buck has to stop somewhere and I believe that we would be in a very different South Africa had someone with vision and leadership been given the helm of the Department of Communications some years ago.

And things are getting worse. Minister Dina Pule recently announced a full review of South Africa’s ICT policies kicking off with a two-day Colloquium which starts tomorrow in Midrand. On the surface that sounds pretty good and about time. Well, it would be if it had not been outsourced to Deloitte. Outsourcing to large consulting firms is basically an announcement saying I have no idea what to do and will need someone else to blame if things go wrong. Government and industry alike find it hard to resist the siren call of the big-name consulting firm. Pay me. I have the answer you need.

So all of the planning has been handled by Deloitte and some industry insiders. But perhaps that’s not so bad. The incumbents are forever making the point that they are the only one’s deserving of more spectrum because only they really have the capacity to roll out infrastructure nationally. There is a certain simple plausibility to this but really it is like saying money should only be given to the rich because only they know how to manage it properly.

More insight can be found in a new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson called Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. The book is an ambitious, sweeping look at history providing a theory of why some countries have prospered and other haven’t. They divide countries into those with inclusive versus those extractive governments. There is a good review of the book in The Economist and a good interview with Daron Acemoglu on Econtalk. I’ve only just started reading it but one story that has stood out for me is how Venice went from hugely influential city-state to tourist backwater. It is summarised well here:

“Upward mobility drove the city-state’s wealth and power. Its innovative commenda, a partnership in which capital-poor sailors and rich Venetians shared the profits from voyages, allowed those of modest background to rise through the ranks. This fluidity threatened established wealth, however. From the late 13th century the ducal council began restricting political and economic rights, banning the commenda and nationalising trade. By 1500, with a stagnant economy and falling population, Venice’s descent from great power was well under way.”

When a wealthy elite stifle the rise of new players, bad things happen. That is a good description of where the telecommunications industry is in South Africa at the moment. We need to create opportunities for new blood to enter and rise in the telecoms sector. It will be good for everyone in the end. And that’s why the incumbents are NOT best placed to implement South Africa’s broadband future, at least not on their own.

So how can we make this happen? I believe it is simple. The ANC need to appoint new leadership in the Department of Communications and to elevate the ministry to frontline status. It probably needs to be a young minister who understands the potential of the sector and that the digital age is not just a twitter acount managed by a digital consultant. Stick that in your Colloquium Agenda.

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Postscript for ICT4D funders: If you want to make a difference in Africa, you should be funding RIAs’ work. Seriously.

Many Possibilities

In the beginner's mind there are…