Industry News

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) lamented a “breach of trust” which allowed data mining company Cambridge Analytica to access hordes of user information for political gain.

Addressing the issue for the first time on Wednesday (21 March), Zuckerberg acknowledged in a post the social media company has a “responsibility to protect your data”. He noted actions taken years ago would prevent a similar occurrence from happening today, but added “there’s more we need to do” to keep user data safe.

Specifically, Zuckerberg outlined a new three-part plan which includes reducing the amount of user data collected by apps and revoking developer access to user data if an app hasn’t been used in three months. He also said Facebook will investigate all apps which had access to large amounts of data in the past and ban any developer that does not agree to a full audit.

Additionally, he revealed plans to roll out a tool at the top of users’ News Feed enabling them to see what apps have access to their data and revoke those permissions at will.

How it all started
Late last week, The New York Times and The Guardian reported Cambridge Analytica obtained information on as many as 50 million Facebook users, which was used to target voters ahead of the 2016 US election. The news prompted backlash not only from Facebook users themselves, but also lawmakers in Washington DC.

Zuckerberg confirmed University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan gathered the data via a platform app in 2013. He said Facebook learned Kogan had passed it on to the analytics company in violation of its terms of service in 2015.

The Facebook chief demanded Cambridge Analytica “formally certify they had deleted all improperly acquired data”. He conceded reports indicate Cambridge Analytica “may not have deleted the data as they had certified”, but said Facebook has hired a forensic audit company to investigate.

Zuckerberg added changes made in 2014 would “prevent any app like Kogan’s from being able to access so much data today”.

He concluded: “I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.”

Source: Mobile World Live, Facebook

Telecoms Giant, MTN Ghana has posted a 68% increase in total taxes paid to Government of Ghana in 2017 as compared to the previous year. The company’s total revenue soared to GH₵3.4 billion in 2017, as against the GH₵2.77 billion revenue recorded in 2016.

Speaking at a media forum to present the company’s financial performance, Vice-President for Southern and East Africa and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana, Ebenezer Twum-Asante announced the company retained profits of GH₵238 million last year, and had earmarked a ¢663m spend on capital expenditure for 2018.

Tax Breakdown
The mobile operator highlighted, in the face of a tough macro economic environment and a relatively stable regulatory environment, the company has had to accelerate new revenue streams to significantly contribute to National Development.

Efficient cost control to support their EBITDA was also key, but MTN’s clearly defined KPIs to ensure delivery with focus on customer experience, technology excellence, growing the data and digital agenda while igniting their commercial performance is clearly aiding the company’s remarkable performance.

Total payments to the Ghana Revenue Authority in 2017 was ¢1.06bn which translates into Communication Service Tax (CST), VAT, Duties, Corporate Taxes, PAYE, National Fiscal Stabilization Levy (NFSL) and Withholding Taxes (WHT) on Suppliers and Dividends.

The remaining ¢160m went to the Regulator (NCA) and Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GFIEC) as payments for Regulatory fees and Surcharge on International Incoming Traffic (SIIT).

MTN Ghana alone contributed to 3% of Ghana’s total tax revenue collected in 2017.

Job Creation
MTN Ghana’s commitment to employment both directly and indirectly is spiraling close to 600k. These are jobs created on the back of MTN’s ecosystem of partnerships and suppliers (500k), and through the business drive to go digital using mobile financial services as the payment backbone (90k+).

MTN Mobile Money
The mobile money (MoMo) business has an active subscriber base of 8.3m with direct relationship to 16 commercial banks. The company paid ¢71m to its subscribers as interests for using mobile money in 2017. Currently the MoMo business has an active agent base of 90k people who earned an average monthly commission of ¢89m cedis in 2017.

Ebenezer Asante, CEO of MTN Ghana, Vice-President for MTN Southern and East Africa

Capital Expenditure
Ebenezer announced, that MTN plans to spend ¢663m as its 2018 capital expenditure. This outlay would go into 695km fibre rollout, 1,100 new sites on its 3G network to improve population coverage by 27%. 230 new sites for coverage extension and capacity under LTE rollout and 300 new sites for coverage extension and capacity for the 2G networks.

He further stated, that the company has expanded its network to underserved areas from 44.5% to 70% between 2016 and 2017 and is looking forward to reach 400 additional communities at the end of 2018 by building another 200 of these rural sites for coverage extension.

At the forum, the Chief Technical Officer of MTN, Mohammed Rufai, bemoaned the state of fibre cuts to be one of their biggest challenges today, with over 1,200 cuts to their cables within the year 2017.

Corporate Social Responsibility
MTN Ghana Foundation, the CSR arm of the mobile operator, has over the last decade executed over 142 projects at a cost of about ¢60 million which has directly and indirectly impacted over 4million Ghanaians.

In 2018, the company will be building the New Juaben SHS library and ICT Centre, Nhyiaeso Basic 6 Classroom Block, Telecoms Lab in GIMPA, Juaso Palm Oil Production Unit and completing the Tema General Hospital Maternity Block and many others.

In his brief remarks, CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey commended MTN for a great financial performance within a challenging economic environment while providing jobs and scholarships to Ghanaians. He also lauded MTN on the several innovations that have under pinned their business, especially the SMART and cost effective rural telephony systems that won a global award at the just ended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Derek B. Laryea
(Head of Communications at the Telecoms Chamber)

The UK government is set to invest £25 million across six 5G projects as it pursues an aim of being a “world leader” in businesses based around the new technology.

Each project will receive between £2 million and £5 million in grants and will also be part funded by private companies. The six programmes have a remit to explore 5G rollout or applications deemed beneficial to the country, including smart farming with drones, IoT applications for healthcare in the home, and new manufacturing technology.

Margot James, UK minister of state for Digital and the Creative industries, said: “The ground-breaking projects announced today will help to unlock 5G and ensure the benefits of this new technology are felt across the economy and wider society.”

The six chosen projects are: rural initiatives the 5G RuralFirst Partnership and 5G Rural Integrated Testbed; 5G Smart Tourism – centred on the leisure industry; trial and testbed group the Worcestershire 5G Consortium; public sector research group Liverpool 5G Testbed; and AutoAir: 5G Testbed for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Digital strategy
The funding is part of the UK’s wide-reaching digital strategy, announced by the government in March 2017. The plan includes an aim to generate £1 billion in private and public sector funds to accelerate deployment of next generation digital infrastructure, and create new business opportunities based around 5G.

The UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said the progress made so far on its strategy had ensured the country remaing “the number one location for tech investment in Europe.”

Despite the new investment and ongoing schemes, gaining a global leadership in 5G technologies will prove a tough task, with other countries making rapid progress towards developing and harnessing the technology.

Several operators and regulators around the world are projecting 5G launches in 2018 or 2019, with tough competition even within Europe as countries across the continent talk-up their prospects.

Source: Mobile World Live

EE boss Marc Allera (pictured) suggested the main value proposition for 5G remains unclear, stating most of the industry is “wrestling” with creating a business model for the technology at this stage.

Allera, speaking to Mobile World Live, revealed the UK was realistically 18 months from a 5G launch. He explained the country’s largest mobile operator had stepped up trials over the past year and entered into discussions with handset and equipment vendors to build a 5G ecosystem.

As 5G moves ever closer, Allera highlighted a number of different areas where the technology could be useful, such as addressing demand from consumers and businesses for high capacity in urban areas, and low latency use cases for IoT and autonomous cars.

However, it remained unclear what service proposition the operator would launch with: “Everyone is still trying to figure that out,” Allera admitted.

Allera said this made it difficult to build a business model around 5G, while adding that “the reality will be that we will have to assume that consumers and businesses will be prepared to pay a little bit more for faster, higher quality access to the internet and that’s how the business case will be for everyone else”.

He continued: “There will be capex investments and spectrum investments to deliver 5G and, as a result, we are going to have to look for revenue streams and getting some sort of premium out of 5G, as we did with 4G.”

In the interview, Allera also spoke of the company’s convergence strategy with content and its work to address the UK’s rural divide.

Source: Mobile World Live

Implementing IoT should be simple: connect the thing, gain insight, take action, Microsoft believes.

Such moves to ease deployment will trigger a business revolution by enabling a digital feedback loop where connected IoT leads directly to action. However, Rashmi Misra, the company’s GM of IoT and AI solutions, readily accepts IoT is not at this level today and is a complex environment involving many diverse players along with significant challenges.

“There is a need for simplification and consistency within the IoT chain,” the Microsoft executive said during the Delivering the IoT Ecosystem session at Mobile World Congress.

“We need IoT to have access to edge and cloud-based intelligence along with the ability to maintain cohesive security throughout its managed life.”

“With some analysts forecasting 1 million IoT devices being connected every hour by 2020 there is a clear opportunity – and accompanying challenges. There will be a need for very large ecosystems, and we believe Microsoft will help simplify deployments by managing the provision of devices, provide secure systems that scale, and then enable rapid analytical insight.”

Andres Escribano, director of Telefonica’s IoT connectivity business, echoed some of what Misra had said: “While I might call IoT the Infinity of Things, it should be approached step-by-step: connect, collect, process, analyse. This last phase is the most important and where IoT adds most value to a business.”

He also emphasised the need to embed IoT security at the design phase, and that standardisation and certification were key to the IoT ecosystem become a global solution.

“But I caution all the involved players not to oversell IoT, and focus on reducing the overall price of the solution.”

T-Mobile US gave some indication of what its connection costs might be for IoT. “We’re looking to charge $6 a year per connection over our NB-IoT network,” VP of network technology development and strategy, Karri Kuoppamaki, said.

“We went live late last year with this service, and we believe IoT presents a very serious opportunity and that the network is a key component in its success.”

Source: Mobile World Live

Growing speculation surrounding a potential deal between Vodafone Group and cable giant Liberty Global appeared to get both Vittorio Colao and Timotheus Hoettges – the respective CEOs of Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom (DT) – hot under the collar at Mobile World Congress.

Vittorio Colao VF and Timotheus Hoettges DT

In a roundtable discussion, Colao hit back at his counterpart at DT for saying that he wanted to block the merger, which the Vodafone boss seemed to think was tantamount to wanting to shut down competition.

“I’m surprised by this comment from Tim Hoettges,” said Colao. “You should never look to shut down one of your competitors – you have to win by fair means. DT is the largest operator in the best market in Europe. But maybe he’s feeling a little nervous when you consider our results in Germany are pretty good and we’re now a co-leader in his home territory.”

Colao, somewhat playfully, warmed to his theme. “I find the logic that DT is promoting an interesting idea. Here you have a national player who says that a competitor should not buy a regional cable company because this creates some kind of threat to something. If you follow that logic, then DT should be split in two – perhaps an east and west Deutsche Telekom.”

Over at DT’s stand in Hall 3, where the Germany-based player was holding its press conference, Hoettges repeated his concerns about the merger, which he said would be “unacceptable” from a competitive point of view.

Looking at the German market, which he said would be affected “big time” by such a joining of forces, Hoettges claimed again that the tie-up would create a cable monopoly. Vodafone Germany already has the cable assets of Kabel Deutschland under its wing, which, if bolstered further by Liberty Global’s German cable company Unitymedia, would create a formidable competitor in the fixed-mobile converged services space – an area in which Hoettges is keen on making inroads.

“The dominance of the TV market, combined with a telecommunications provider, is something I personally find very tricky for democracy,” he added. “From my perspective, this deal is very unlikely to get approval.”

For his part, Colao made plain that he wanted fair competition in the German telecoms sector.

Source: Mobile World Live 

Industry executives at the Mobile World Congress highlight the leading role that the mobile communications industry is taking, and must take, in improving the lives of people all over the world, and how collaboration, partnership and leadership during this current period of digital disruption will be key to fuelling innovation, transforming industries and spurring new opportunities.

During the opening keynote session at Mobile World Congress, Mats Granryd, GSMA director general, emphasised the important role that mobile will play in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“As an industry, we have an opportunity – and, I would argue, an obligation – to leverage our mobile networks and services to help achieve the SDGs,” he said. “The mobile industry is helping people in times of disaster, reducing inequalities, helping to preserve the world’s resources, and we are positively impacting people’s lives every day.”

Marie Ehrling, chair of both Telia Company and security firm Securitas, said the industry must now lead and shape its future through a period of digital disruption, both in terms of strategy, actions and culture, and also emphasised the need for collaboration.

“Silo thinking is not only unadvisable, but also wouldn’t work. From every company I’ve worked with today, collaborative working environments are rich across industries and across markets. It’s one of the most important catalysts of success,” Ehrling said.

Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, called on mobile operators to engage in a “global conversation” with one another and relevant digital players to drive innovation.

He also echoed the views of other keynote speakers in that 5G would help boost economies worldwide, provided mobile operators cooperated with what he called “ICT industries”.

“No single company can do it all alone,” he said. “By working together we can make the cake bigger.”

This was especially true in developing ecosystems surrounding big data. “We want to create win-win digital ecosystems,” he added

During the keynote, NTT DoCoMo provided concrete details of its mid-term strategy, “Beyond”, which will take the Japan-based mobile operator into the 5G era from 2020 onwards. The operator plans to launch 5G in 2020 to coincide with the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

In common with other keynote speakers Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, emphasised the importance of “co-creation” strategies with partners to establish what he described as a “richer future with 5G”, also ensuring that people will be able to use 5G services on new 5G networks “from day one”.

To support this strategy, the operator has launched the DoCoMo 5G Open Partner Programme, and has already received expressions of interest from 610 entities that wish to participate.

As well as 5G, Granryd highlighted artificial intelligence as a new area of innovation, fuelled by the availability of high-speed connectivity, the mass-market adoption of smartphones and the power of machine learning.

However, both Granryd and José Maria Alvarez-Pallete, chairman and CEO of Telefonica, once again stressed the requirement for a regulatory environment that supports the communications industry’s enormous contribution to society and global economies.

“This industry makes huge investments every year and employs millions of professionals,” said Alvarez- Pallete. “In order to efficiently make all our contributions, we need an investment friendly framework. It is not about regulating others; it is about having a level playing field.”

Granryd echoed this message, saying: “We need an environment that provides higher levels of certainty and consistency,” including the timely release of harmonised spectrum, approval of effective consolidation, an even playing field for equivalent digital services, and the ability to harmonise international privacy and data protection rules.

“All of these are crucial to the development of a rich and vibrant digital economy and to the very future of our industry,” Granryd concluded.

Source: Mobile World Live

The coming 12 months are expected to be an active period for mobile IoT technologies, with further network rollouts and the ongoing construction of a “vibrant” ecosystem to drive growth.

According to Cheng Zhu, president of the Huawei cellular IoT product line, 2018 will see a “big bang” moment for networks based on narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT), with the number increasing to 100 from 28 in 2017, connections rising from 10 million to 150 million, and the number of ecosystem partners tripling to more than 3,000.

The mobile IoT journey is well underway, proclaimed Mohammad Chowdhury, partner at PwC Australia, with the number of commercial network launches based on both NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies now standing at 41 (32 NB-IoT and nine LTE-M).

Yet panellists at the 6th Mobile IoT Summit agreed that much more still has to be done to ensure than existing challenges with regard to cost, roaming, scalability, the simplification of services and devices, and security aspects are overcome.

Lory Thorpe, head of innovation & prototyping at Vodafone Group Enterprise, stressed that what has been made clear with mobile IoT is that collaboration has been and will continue to be key.

Shen Hong Qun, deputy general manager in the marketing department at China Mobile, agreed, saying that cooperation and a win-win ecosystem will drive the future prospects for mobile IoT.

Johannes Kaumanns, vice president IoT – strategy & business development at Deutsche Telekom, added that an important approach will be to develop services with the customer in mind from the beginning.

The panel agreed that NB-IoT and LTE-M are not in competition with other and are both required because they serve different use cases – such as lower power requirements with NB-IoT.

“We don’t see them converging,” added Vodafone’s Thorpe. “There is still a lot of work to be done in understanding how these technologies can work in the most optimized manner.

Source: Mobile World Live

Accra; Wednesday 14^th February 2018.

The Accra Regional Police Command (ARPC), led by DCOP Alex Mensah engaged with the Industry Association together with its Mobile Financial Service heads in a quest to build stronger collaboration to combat Mobile Money fraud and service security.

Greater Accra Regional Police Command with Mobile Money Heads

Mobile Money fraud and attacks on agents continues to grow, which is a huge concern for the Mobile Industry and the Ghana Police.

DCOP Alex Mensah observed that, “since the start of the year 2018, the ARPC has recorded over thirty (30) cases of attacks on Mobile Money agents and countless reports of Mobile Money fraud.”

The Ghana Police Service believes that, a concerted effort to enhance collaboration between the Mobile Industry and the Police would provide the necessary strategies to combat the menace.

Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey reiterated the Chambers commitment to working with the Police to mitigate the menace.

“Our members are more than willing to work with the Police to fight all mobile Industry related crimes as it hurts our members’ revenues and reputation” said Kenneth.

The meeting discussed other critical security issues and parties agreed to implement some key plans, while working to engage the media and general public to boost education about the service to enhance safety.

Ghana’s early experience with mobile phones dates back to the early 1990s.
Within a spate of about two decades, we were touted as one of the countries with the widest mobile penetration not only in Africa but the world at large.

Following this, the smartphone was introduced by a Japanese firm and there has been no looking back. Smartphones became widespread in the late 2000s and today, there are over a billion users worldwide.

The reason why we embraced the mobile technology so heartily has been traced to the low landline penetration in our part of the world and the plethora of functions it plays. Smartphones are fulfilling most people’s need for a telephone, digital camera and video camera, GPS navigation, a media player, clock, news, calculator, web browser, video game player, flashlight, compass, an address book, note-taking, digital messaging and even an event calendar.

The proliferation of the smartphone in our society has had a lot of advantages. The phone has not only aided communication for socialisation, thereby keeping us in touch with our family and friends, but it has made possible the transfer of information and pictures instantly. It seems to be even complementing the efforts of the walkie-talkie used by our security personnel, aiding in communication during their day-to-day operations to prevent and fight crime and to regulate traffic flow. The smartphone is able to transport us from wherever we are located into the world of another through shared videos and pictures.

Economically, it has allowed the transfer of money from one place to another to the extent that it saves time and money. These are only a few of the positives this technology has made possible.

But this same device has come with a lot of negatives too. The very desire to own one has landed many in jail after they had stolen it or attempted to do so. Those in jail have even been the lucky ones as those not so lucky have been lynched. The smartphone has been the source of instability and quarrels in relationships as snooping partners have found their partners cheating and partners seem to spend so much time on chats to the dissatisfaction of their partners. The device seems to have a way of easily getting and keeping attention to the extent that some become addicted and simply can’t put it down.

This is to the extent that people don’t seem to listen anymore because they intend to call to ask same things you are telling them once they leave your presence.

With it also has been the zeal to be the first to share stuff. Whether appropriate or not, there seems to be some uncontrollable urge to share messages received to make one feel “ in vogue” perhaps. There have been many occasions where people who have rushed to an accident scene have done so not to help the accident victims but to capture videos and pictures of the scene in order to be the first to share them, giving them some unexplained gratification.

Then comes the worrisome trend of the circulation of leaked sex videos which naturally has varied and wide consequences.

Scandals resulting from leaked sex tapes and other materials are becoming too many for comfort in a society where openly discussing sex seems a taboo. Recently, and in close succession, we are seeing in circulation videos recorded by those supposed to be victims of the scandals that have emerged from such acts — they privately recorded the videos themselves but somehow, these videos end up circulating in the public domain.

Examples of such videos are many. A few of them which readily come to mind include the video dubbed: “Begoro Limping man,” and then came that of the Tamale Sex Scandal and “Rashida Black beauty” who recorded herself nude. Among the recent ones is that involving the headteacher and Senior High School (SHS) student and the case of a pastor’s wife who reportedly mistakenly sent explicit videos to her church members instead of her husband.

I am wondering what it is that seems to be making some Ghanaians so eager to record what they do in private. Is it worth the trouble to record that which is likely to fall into the wrong hand and circulate in public space?

The mobile device is likely to keep transforming the way we do things because of the many advantages it presents and, therefore, it is not even possible to think about life without it. It is the abuse of the device that is the problem.

It seems the device is in the hands of many who don’t really understand completely all that it can do and can’t do.

We will, therefore, need to do some education on this to prevent the kind of unacceptable incidents we are witnessing. As individuals, we need to be circumspect about the kind of things we are so eager to share. After all, the smartphone was made for man and not man for the smartphone.

Source: Graphic.com.gh