INTUG - International Telecommunications Users Groujp
 International Telecommunication Union - Telecom Africa

Fostering local content and software development

Ewan Sutherland
6 May 2004, Cairo


ah saleem aleekum

Mesdames et Messieurs, bon apres-midi et bienvenue

This workshop will be exploring how we can encourage local content and software development


For this session we have interpretation in English, French and Arabic, the presentations will be made in English and in French, but discussion will be in all three languages.


INTUG

I am the Executive Director of the International Telecommunications Users Group (INTUG). INTUG  has been involved in the work of the ITU since 1979, representing the views of users from both national associations and from multi-national corporations. Ultimately, we are the people who pay the bills of the telephone companies.

The aims of INTUG are :
Our presence at Telecom Africa and earlier this week at the World Dialogue on Regulation are examples of that willingness to co-operate.

We maintain that users must have a choice of networks, devices, applications and services if they are to obtain the maximum benefit from new developments. It is for users and not for operators or for service providers to decide the time, place and device we use to achieve our purposes.

In particular, users must not find themselves in a "walled garden", where someone else has chosen the parts of the Internet or the ranges of value-added services that we can access. In our experience such efforts by operators ensure an early death for the service.


International traffic

This workshop follows on from one this morning in the same room where the issues of Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) were discussed. I spent much of last week in another ITU meeting on the closely related issue of International Internet Connectivity (IIC), where there was very little evidence that the current contractual arrangements for interconnection to the Internet backbone were going to change. However, this morning's discussion indicated that there was significant progress in the creation of new IXPs here, in addition to which there was a proposal for an "IXP in the sky", on a satellite over the continent. These actions are saving ISPs significant amounts of money in international transit and peering, they can be supported by further liberalisation in access to undersea cables and to VSAT.

An example of the content-related problems for IIC is of two individuals in adjacent countries or even in adjacent buildings using MSN Hotmail to send electronic mail messages to each other. It generates traffic to and from the Hotmail servers in the USA and generates advertising revenues there. While the service is free at the point of use, the costs are met from those advertising revenues. The international traffic it generates must be paid for by local ISPs.

This is compounded by the cheap web hosting services offered in Europe and especially in the USA. So that even if the content is created locally, it may be hosted on a server on another continent.

Solutions include the development of better systems for the exchange of traffic within Africa and within countries. It also requires the availability of "free" electronic mail, messaging and chat services in the city or country or region, rather than on another continent. Ultimately it requires cost-effective hosting for websites and applications. That presupposes companies able to offer the service on a commercial basis in a competitive market.

The mantra is that "local traffic should be exchanged locally".

However, we need to go further in order to create more local traffic, encouraging people to use local services and themselves to create content. We need to ensure it is hosted locally. These issues will continue to be addresses in the preparation for WSIS-II in Tunisia.


Languages

Languages are a vital part of the diversity of our cultures.

Yet, their multiplicity creates a challenge for software engineers to build different interfaces.

Where languages are used in several countries, it creates competition to produce the best content, for example, for Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swahili. Those who move first and who can sustain their edge in such markets, can generate substantial new areas of economic activity. Those who move more slowly, may miss this particular boat.

Each language group requires to be served with content. Many of the people running the radio stations and television stations have limited understanding of the Internet and of the opportunities and threats it brings. They need to seize the opportunities to create new forms of content for new services and for new types of audiences.

A source of revenues lies in the ex-patriate communities especially in North America and Europe. This can help to generate revenues for local services, in order to contribute to equipment and network costs. It may be voluntary donations or it may be charges.

Low levels of literacy can, to some extent, be compensated for by the use of content using sound and video.


Domain names

One useful step is to make national domain names easier and cheaper to register.

It is encouraging to people's vanity if they can register their own name with a national domain name. Ideally this should be in a friendly format, without too many acronyms intervening before the national two letter code. If I can register www.ewan.eg or www.ewan.bw then it encourages me to create a web site with content, perhaps personal content and even a web log.

However, it needs to be matched with cheap web hosting services in the country of registration rather than abroad. Otherwise, the "local" content might as well be foreign content, since it just aggravates the cost of international Internet connectivity.


Broadband

We now have offers of ADSL in South Africa and along the coast of North Africa, here in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Algeria and in Morocco. While these are not cheap, it creates the beginnings of a market in broadband.

In terms of the deployment of previous generations of technology, it is a vastly faster than we anything we saw with other retail services, such as International Direct Dialling (IDD), X.25, ISDN, Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS), Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and even GSM. It is several years ahead of when it might have been expected.

ADSL creates a potential market for content users and purchasers. More importantly and especially before it becomes a mass market, it provides a vital tool for potential content creators who can use the bandwidth to upload their material onto servers. We need to encourage content creators.


Wireless

There was a workshop yesterday on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). One of the many consequences of the deployment of these new technologies and new business models is the decline, sometimes the sharp decline, of prices. While in developed countries this is likely to lead to a steep drops in total revenues, here in Africa it can lead to wider use of cheaper telephony and a growth in minutes of use, even a growth in revenues. That is good news.

Nonetheless for some established users, especially subscription accounts, there will be a decline in voice revenues. Consequently, mobile network operators need to find new applications in order to generate new revenue flows. This is not something they can do alone, there are important roles for third parties and for individual users in this. We will see more peer-to-peer applications. Some of that content will be global, some will require to be localised and some will be entirely local, even within a few metres.

Content needs to be tailored to screen size and to the current network being used by a customers, implying sophisticated servers and software.

The revenues must be more than "phone decoration", that is ringtones, backgrounds, screen savers and the like.

They also be better value for money than SMS, which is often the most expensive means to transmit data on any network in a country.

You will forgive me if I talk vaguely of wireless and mobile, since there are many potential technologies, these include the obvious such as GSM and CDMA2000, some that are becoming more familiar such as CDMA-WLL and 3.5GHz fixed wireless access, plus some less well understood players such as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB). Each will have a role to play, but what that will be is hard to say.


Conclusions

Firstly, I must thank the speakers and those who contributed from the floor. We have covered a lot of important material, though the debate is far from being closed.

One of the prerequisites of success is competitive markets which we need to foster on several levels in terms of infrastructure, networks, services, applications and content.

Markets imply economies of scale, so that very small markets are unlikely to be able to attract investment or to sustain businesses. So there is work to be done in building up markets to commercially interesting sizes. In doing so, we need to recognise that the world is increasingly globalised, especially in the service sector.

We need training on many levels. For younger people at schools, colleges and universities, not only those being trained specifically in ICTs, but in all academic disciplines. For those who did not get opportunities for such training during their formal education, we need to provide new opportunities which are attractive for them to take up. For those who have special needs and for whom ICTs can make significant improvements to their lives, we need to make particular efforts.

We need to create a sufficient confidence in use. This has several aspects, encompassing appropriate measures of privacy, the capacity to make secure payments and the ability to avoid content that we do not wish to see. Harmful content, such as "spam", "phishing", viruses and trojans, devalue and ultimately drive out the good content and devalue the whole system of telecommunications. We need appropriate technological tools and the coordinated implementation of policies to support this.

We need openness for the unexpected. Few predictions about telecommunications are accurate, so we need to ensure that we do not block, even inadvertently, the unexpected successes that certainly will come.

Given the importance of GSM for Africa, we need to encourage the creation of business models for broadband delivery that is on wireless or mobile networks. We need to see how the pre-paid card and the Internet café can be translated to work for access to content on wireless broadband networks. This is no small challenge. It is one that, I am sure, will be addressed at ITU Telecom Asia in September.

We need to have an understanding of comparative advantage. Deploying ICTs will do some good for every country, often the benefits are considerable. In economic competition, in the search for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), it is necessary to have more, to possess a "comparative advantage" and to understand what that is. For example, there is little purpose in attacking India head-to-head as a hub for call centres, when it is already so well established and has learned so many lessons. It is necessary to find something different or complementary.


Drawing all of this together, we need regional, national, provincial and even city strategies for ICTs, that set out aims, objectives and targets for all the players.


Once again my thanks to everyone and I look forward to seeing you at other ITU events and especially at WSIS-II in Tunisia in November next year, if not at Busan for ITU Telecom Asia.


copyright © INTUG, 2004. http://www.intug.net/talks/ES_2005_04_africa.html

last updated 6 May 2004