Industry News

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

According to data from the Bank of Ghana and mobile money operators,the amount of money mobilized outside the banking system through mobile money reached a record GH¢2.3 billion ending December 2017, The amount represents a growth of 84.6 percent over the December 2016 amount of GH¢1.3 billion. These funds mobilized through mobile money are currently held by partner banks.

Mobile Money Service Providers operating in Ghana

Mobile Money Accounts
The data also showed that mobile money accounts reached 23.95 million accounts compared with 11.43 million accounts as at end December 2017.
This could also mean that an individual might have had more than one account as a subscriber of any of the Telcos and comparing this assertion to market penetration data from C-GAP ( a world bank affiliate working with more than 30 leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion).

The value of mobile money transactions was GH¢155.8 billion at end December 2017 showing a growth of 98.5 percent over December end position of GH¢78.5 billion in December 2016.
Largest share of deposit
MTN came on top as having the largest share of deposits, accounting for more than 90 percent of mobile money accounts held at commercial banks. MTN as at October 2017 had GH¢2.1 billion representing 93.5 percent of deposits held at commercial banks.

Airtel/Tigo followed with GH¢79 million accounting for 3.56 percent share of the deposits. Vodafone had 2.52 percent of the market share with GH¢57 million deposits.

Banks holding the Major Floats
Fidelity Bank led the pack in terms of the banks holding the largest share of mobile money deposits with GH¢583 million. ECOBANK had GH¢470 million, while CAL Bank held GH¢229m.
These were the top three banks out of the 19 banks captured in the Bank of Ghana data holding the mobile money deposits as at October 2017.

Impact on job Creation
Details of mobile money performance report also shows that direct jobs created by mobile money through engagement of mobile money agents was 194,688 in December 2017 compared with 136,769 in December 2016.

Regulatory Regime
With the Payment Systems and Services Bill coming into force later in this year, there is general expectation that the ecosystem will be provided additional support for the deepening of the payment landscape by creating job opportunities for the youth, facilitating international inward transfers, providing convenience and choice for consumers.

Source: Joy Business

The ongoing retrenchment exercise at AirtelTigo, following the merger of the two companies which came to a standstill over the alleged use of a wrong formula to calculate packages, has been corrected and resolved.

The first batch of senior staff who received notice of their retrenchment packages rejected it outright, accusing management of using a strange formula that shortchanged workers significantly.

Following the rejection, a group of workers, calling themselves the Concerned AirtelTigo Workers, put out a write up accusing management of several things, including side-stepping the provisions of a workers handbook and an agreed formula.

CEO of Airtel Tigo – Roshi Motman

The CEO of AirtelTigo, Roshi Motman, met the Network of Communication Reporters (NCR) last week and assured the journalists that she was taking a closer look at the handbook and possibly work with it, following the initial agitations.

She promised her commitment to ensuring that deserving workers get matching positions in the merged company, while those who have to leave are given proper career counseling and requisite retrenchment packages.

Following these comments from Roshi, there has been renewed excitement with staff and some top management persons confirming currently management is using the handbook plus a bit more exciting packages added.

Mobility Centre

CEO Roshi Motman stated that the company has established a special Mobility Centre, where all workers are going through a process to either be employed on merit or let go with a deserving retrenchment package.

The Mobility Centre is manned by experts from Deloitte and Touch, who take workers through hours of question and answer period, plus one-on-one counselling sessions to determine how each person can fit into the roles available in the merged company or move on smoothly.

So far, over 100 workers have been through the Mobility Centre and just a few of them have been affected by redundancy.

Management explained that the process started from the senior level staff it is gradually trickling down through the ranks so that once the leaders of each department are confirmed, they can now help in the selection of the team they will work with.

“We have a very skilled human resource from both Airtel and Tigo so we are taking our time to ensure that we extract the best of the best and that is why the process seems to be taking time,” she said.

Way forward

On the way forward for the merged company, Roshi Motman said they are currently working on merging the customer shops, cell sites and data centres in a strategic fashion that would provide customers with the best experience on the network.

She is confident that with the combination of Airtel’s strength in intra-city fibre spread and Tigo’s strength in the inter-city fibre network, the merged entity will be a force to recon with in the industry.

Recapitalisation

“This merger is good for this country because soon we will be recapitalizing the company to bring a boost in the economy and also ensure some decent competition that inures to the benefits of consumers in the long-run,” she said.

She noted that examples around the world show that where just a few telcos operate in a country, there is value for each of them, so she trusts that the merger would, in the long run, create value for all industry players and stakeholders.

Roshi Motman said the company would also be combining the strengths of Airtel Money and Tigo Cash on the mobile money market to provide customers with the best of service backed by enough liquidity in the hands of merchants.

“We will pay a great deal of attention to making all our processes very easy for customers so that their experience on our network will be the best one,” she said.

AirtelTigo has 18 months to complete the merger at all levels, and management says even when the merger is completed they will still maintain the two sets of number blocks of 026/056 and 027/057.

Source: Myjoyonline