Many Possibilities

Use Universal Service Funds to Pay for Civil Society Participation in Telecom Regulation

Steve Song — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:42:09 +0000

Not quite a level playing field.

Telecommunications markets are notoriously difficult to regulate effectively. Telecom operators wield a great deal of power thanks to their wealth and the effectively hold they have on their markets whether through landlines or spectrum licenses and they don’t hesitate to use all means at their disposal to ensure that regulator doesn’t do anything to interfere with their market.

One way that they achieve this is by taking advantage of the regulator’s function of public consultation to provide extensively-researched legal and economic arguments that defend their interests. On the face of it this is a perfectly reasonable proposition. Telecom operators should have no less a voice than anyone else and obviously they have a responsibility to their shareholders. The problem is that very often nobody is representing the public interest in these consultations.

Governments and regulators have attempted to level the playing field in various ways. Most notable perhaps is the introduction of universal service obligations for operators to ensure a baseline of access for all citizens. I will shock no one when I say that, on this continent, most universal service initiatives have not effectively realised their goal of balancing the affordable access playing field. Of all the mechanisms used to promote affordable access, Universal Service Funds have probably been the least effective.

Until a couple of days ago, if someone had asked my advice as to what to do with the manager of South Africa’s universal service fund, the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA), I would have suggested simply disbanding it, as I think the problem with universal service funds is as much one of design as anything else.

But thanks to a chance conversation with Michael Geist, well-known Canadian champion of telecommunications and copyright law reform, I was reminded that in Canadian telecom regulation consultations, the costs of any intervener is paid for as long as they are:

(a) …representative of a group or class of subscribers that has, an interest in the outcome of the proceeding of such a nature that the intervener or group or class of subscribers will receive a benefit or suffer a detriment as a result of the order or decision resulting from the proceeding;

(b) has participated in a responsible way; and

(c) has contributed to a better understanding of the issues by the [regulator].

These costs are born by the incumbent telecom operators and it means that NGOs, civil society organisations, consumer interest groups can afford the cost of research and legal advice to make well-informed submissions to the regulator. Here’s a link to the Rules of Procedure of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which contain the relevant details.

I believe that introducing this kind of support for civil society participation in telecommunications regulation here in South Africa would lead to better outcomes. It would open the door for research groups like ResearchICTAfrica, civil society groups like SANGONeT and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and consumer groups like the National Consumer Forum to effectively represent stakeholders that are currently rarely heard. This would be a much more direct and effective use of universal service funds as opposed to say subsidising the cost of millions of television set top boxes.

Open Access, Africa, and Yochai Benkler

Steve Song — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:00:05 +0000

Since the announcement of the EASSy undersea cable in 2005, Open Access has been a term of significant debate in the development of undersea cable initiatives and in the general strategic development of communication infrastructure in Africa. Yet, it is a term that is variously understood and often abused especially by the marketing departments of undersea cable initiatives. There is not an African undersea cable initiative that doesn’t claim to be Open Access but all operate on different ownership and pricing models.

Put simply, Open Access embodies the principle of enabling competition at every layer and every point of the communications infrastructure. Communications infrastructure depends on a chain of access and if even one link in the chain is controlled by a single entity, then the entire network is vulnerable to monopolistic rent-seeking behaviour. Thus to have Open Access, there must be competition in the provision international fibre access, national backhaul solutions, and last mile services, whether fixed, mobile, or nomadic. Not to mention competition in the provision of services over that network whether content or transaction related. The opposite of Open Access are vertical markets controlled by single entity or a small cartel of entities. A good example of this was as recently as 2007 when Telkom South Africa controlled access to the then only undersea cable, SAT3, and also controlled the fixed-line local loop. Now we have two and soon three undersea cables and a form of local-loop unbundling for Internet service provision.

On Wednesday morning, I shall have the good fortune to engage Yochai Benkler in a discussion on the topic of Open Access infrastructure in Africa and inspired by the range and thoughtfulness of the feedback that Erik Hersmann obtained recently when he asked “What would you say to Nokia Africa?“, I thought this might be another opportunity crowdsource some perspectives on Open Access in Africa. For the record, I am not referring to the Open Access initiative for academic publishing. That is an excellent initiative but unrelated to Open Access infrastructure policies.

Yochai Benkler, author of the Wealth of Networks, was also the Principal Investigator for a comparative study of broadband initiatives carried out by the Berkman Center and commissioned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Entitled “Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world“, it reviewed efforts, mostly in OECD countries, to strategically develop pervasive, affordable, high-speed access infrastructure. A key finding of the study was that countries that have successfully implemented Open Access policies tended to have better and more affordable access.

That brings to Wednesday. Yochai’s experience is more in the rich world. My goal is to provide an overview of attempts, successes, failures to implement Open Access policies in Africa. I know some of these stories but it would make the conversation that much more interesting to have other stories to draw on. In exchange, I promise to post back what I’ve learned from our conversation.

Help me out, please?

Facebook Zero Helps Ideas Multiply at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Steve Song — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:23:33 +0000

I am still frankly gobstopped by Facebook’s announcement. I vaguely caught the news of Facebook Zero but assumed it was just another mobile interface to Facebook. It was only when I read Erik Hersman’s post about it that I got the whole story. Not only have they launched a very lightweight mobile interface to Facebook but they have done something only a company the size of Facebook could… they’ve made it free.

They’ve negotiated deals with over 50 mobile operators around the world to make access for Facebook Zero free. Even as we speak MTN have announced that they plans to expand Facebook Zero from the eight countries they have launched in to all of the territories they operate in. This is huge. As Erik says… this is game changing.

Why is that? Why is this so amazing? Because access to communication is not just about increased efficiencies, better access to market information, etc; it’s about innovation. But innovation only happens when the cost of failure is so low that people keep trying things even though they fail. And that’s what Facebook Zero is… a zero-pain failure environment for the bottom of the pyramid.

And why is that important? Because connectedness has transformed the world into a place of serious unpredictability. And the best plan by the brightest minds in the world is doomed to failure because the world is so unpredictable. Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, argues that trial and error is the only way to cope with an uncertain world. He says “we are a lot better at doing outside the box than thinking outside the box”. He goes even further than that saying:

This is my mission for the rest of my life: figure out how to build a society in which people can make mistakes that are inconsequential. Want to encourage small mistakes, a discovery; an option.

But don’t just Taleb’s word for it. Here’s what Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks has to say:

[The] basic driver of what makes the net so innovative, creative, and fast-moving is the low cost of effective action: experimentation, adaptation, failure–very cheap. [The] model of innovation is not the long-term R&D lab in three organizations that are the major players and which one of them wins, but rather tens of thousands, millions, of experiments that are very cheap to try out and cheap to prototype and then implement and then fail and try again.

Not to mention Clay Shirky (apologies for recycling this quotation, it’s just too good not to):

You need a very low cost of experimentation, right? If things are expensive to try people will hold back from trying them and they’ll spend all their time trying not to fail. If the cost of experimentation falls though, and I mean falls precipitously, then people will spend a lot of time experimenting, and instead of not failing, the goal becomes to fail informatively to learn something from the things you tried.

and finally Matt Ridley, author of the recently published “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, who comes up with the beautiful meme of innovation being like “ideas having sex”. He says:

Evidence suggests that cultural evolution depends on exchange and trade to bring together ideas in much the same way that genetic evolution depends on sex to spread genetic mutations, or in the case of bacteria, on horizontal gene transfer. When starved of access to a large “collective brain” by isolation from trade and exchange, people may experience not just less innovation, but even regress. The capacity for ideas to have sex on the Internet is likely to accelerate cultural evolution still further.

If you can share ideas with friends on Facebook Zero, form groups, propagate memes, then you have an innovation medium that has been custom designed for the bottom of the pyramid.

The irony is that I despise Facebook. I hate the way they’ve been eroding the privacy settings on my account and I fear what they are doing with my personal information. But hey, I hate rapacious mobile operators too but they were/are game-changers too. Facebook is problematic, no question, but the opportunity that they are creating for people who can’t generally afford access trumps those issues hands down.

Erik points out in his post that the mobile operators are laughing all the way to the bank on this deal. That may be true but I predict they won’t be laughing for very long. How long will a company like Facebook put up with the costs they are being charged before they decide to do something about. This is a trojan horse inside the walled garden of the mobile operators.

Finally, what rankles with me is that Google, who have been in Africa for over two years, and in spite of being told (gratuitous “I told you so” available here), have missed the boat on the whole cost of access issue. Usage of their innovative SMS project in Uganda plummeted as soon as the operators started charging for the SMSes. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It’s the cost of access, stupid!” and Facebook have figured this out. All is not lost though. There is still a chance for Google to do this for voice in Africa. Operators are standing by.

The Death of Fixed Lines in Africa

Steve Song — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:29:23 +0000

Zulu telephone wire basket image courtesy of Ethekwinigirl

Today I want to push back a little (just a little) against the conventional wisdom that mobiles are the only communications infrastructure future for Africa. There is an implicit understanding in ICT4D work in Africa that mobiles are the future and fixed lines are an archaic hangover from an inefficient, monopolistic, state-run, colonial past. Perhaps I exaggerate for the sake of effect but it is hard to argue with when development agencies are racing to jump on the “mobile for development” train.

So let’s look at the evidence. Mobile infrastructure continues to grow beyond all expectation in Africa while fixed line infrastructure has mostly remained static or even declined in some cases. On the face of it, this appears to support the case for Africa’s “mobile” future. The implicit understanding in this is that mobiles are just better on so many levels that natural selection will cause fixed lines to atrophy like some vestigial evolutionary accident. I don’t want to challenge the remarkable value of mobile phones but I do want to challenge the notion that they are a complete replacement for fixed lines. Fixed lines are a complementary technology that have a role to play in any communications ecology.

What is a Fixed Line?

Before I go into detail why, it is worth unpacking what is a fixed line. Fixed lines in Africa are generally understood to mean the legacy copper infrastructure held by the former incumbent monopoly telco. So fixed lines already start off with a bad rap, being associated with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and incompetence. It gets worse though because the value of copper as a commodity has made existing phone lines a popular target for theft. This has the dual effect of making copper phone lines seem even more unreliable than when they were simply being poorly maintained and also disincentivising the fixed-line operator from continuing to invest in copper infrastructure. The final nail in the coffin is that telcos don’t offer copper phone lines on a pay-as-you-go basis. Pay-as-you-go is well-known as one of the key enablers of the mobile revolution but copper fixed lines are just too expensive too offer on a pay-as-you-go basis. Arguably things don’t look good for the fixed line.

But copper wires are just one kind of fixed line. A fixed line is just communication connection that doesn’t move about. Fixed wireless, such as the CDMA-based service being offered by Neotel and others on the continent is another kind of fixed line. One particular benefit of this technology is that it typically operates in a different spectrum range from mobile services which means that operators can deploy fixed wireless solutions without having to have or compete for expensive and scarce GSM spectrum licenses. WiFi also has the potential to offer fixed line services. The increasing availability of WiFi on mobile phones point to interesting possibilities in terms of mixing communication infrastructures.

So Why Fixed Line?

But still, why would you bother? The mobile phone so personal, so ubiquitous that it trumps the fixed line in every way… or does it? Here are a few reasons why I think the fixed line, if it overcomes currrent technological challenges, may be around for a while.

1) Sometimes you don’t want to call an individual. For any institution, be it school, police station, hospital or corner shop, when you call them you are generally more interested in being connected with services associated with the institution rather than a particular person. This is not limited to institutions. When I call home, I am happy to talk to whoever is home. There is almost a happy serendipity to whoever answers the phone. Your brother that you don’t always get on with perhaps… a connection made that maintains social ties.

2) Fixed wireless can be cheaper than mobile. Not having to deploy ubiquitous mobile coverage means that fixed wireless can be rolled out at a much lower cost that mobile infrastructure as it can be done in a more boot-strapped fashion than mobile services. The fact that fixed wireless is currently mostly deployed by existing telcos using relatively expensive CDMA gear means that the full benefit of this option has yet to be realised. Full disclosure: I am betting that the Village Telco can offer fixed WiFi voice and data services in a manner which is both affordable and complementary to mobile services.

3) A full-size handset can be a beautiful thing. A handset that comfortably isolates the ear are not necessary in a fixed line solution. I note with interest companies like Native Union and SparkFun that connect a traditional handset with your mobile technology of choice.

Summing Up

This post was triggered by reading that Rwandatel recently reported a seven percent increase in fixed line subscribers. When you think about it, it’s obvious. Both fixed and mobile solutions are useful. The challenge for fixed line provision is to be as cheap and payment-flexible as a mobile solution. As I have said before, the future is not mobile but rather a seamless experience over an ecology of heterogeneous networks. Emerging IEEE standards such as 802.21 and 802.11u offer the promise of interoperability across WiFi and mobile networks. See recent blog posts by David Isenberg, Bill St. Arnaud, and Brough Turner that point in this direction.

Finally, it is slightly ironic that from an ICT development policy perspective, we urge regulators and policy-makers to adopt a technology neutral stance so as to accommodate the always unpredictable evolution of technology. A more technology neutral stance on the part of development agencies themselves might not be a bad thing.

Africa Burns for a Village Telco

Steve Song — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:36:12 +0000

“Africa Burns for a Village Telco” is the subject line of an email sent to me from Bruce Strover. And really who could resist a subject line like that especially if the Village Telco has been your passion for the last two years and if you happen to be a fan of Burning Man and the South African variation on Burning Man called AfrikaBurn. AfrikaBurn “is a creative arts and freedom of expression festival that aims to build temporary community through collaborative arts projects, in a completely non-commercial environment.” It is based on a gift economy, no money is used at AfrikaBurn but participants are encouraged to trade goods, art, performances, services with each other in a manner that promotes engagement and community.

In that spirit, Bruce proposed to establish a Village Telco at the “Burn” by creating free-standing, solar-powered Mesh Potato phone booths that would bridge distance in the two kilometre span of the event. Well, not just Bruce but an eclectic band of hackers and artists. I think the original idea may have been Bretton Vine’s. I remember him mentioning the idea of a Village Telco for AfrikaBurn back at iWeek last year. He and and graphic designer Diaan Mynhaardt hooked up with Scarborough Mesh founders David Carman and Antoine Van Gelder who have been involved in one way or another in the Village Telco since its conception. Bruce was the tipping point that pushed the idea from concept into action. He got me and the Foundation involved, albeit in a very nominal way in underwriting some of the costs of the setup, and Isigidimi was born. Isigidimi means important message in Xhosa and is the name the group chose for the AfrikaBurn phone network.

In the spirit of standing on the shoulders of giants, it is worth saying that Bretton and this group’s inspiration came from David Burgess’s amazing work in setting up his OpenBTS GSM base-station at Burning Man in the United States in 2008 and again in 2009.

The Isidigimi collective brought a unique combination of talents to the challenge. Bretton’s anarchic imagination, Diaan’s brilliant Isigidimi design for the phone booths, David’s serious 12Volt systems hacking, Antoine’s mesh networking design, and Bruce’s creative but sturdy and re-usable phone booth design all combined to make a seriously cool AfrikaBurn happening that is definitely worth repeating. Re-reading the above I feel like I have done the group a disservice in describing unique contributions as they are each so multi-talented that I have failed to do them justice.

David Carman has a wonderful narrative of his experience at the Burn which also covers a lot of the technical challenges experience in setting up this network.

My own observations, based on a very short stay at AfrikaBurn, are on the social use of the phones and what worked and what was a surprise. While the original design was just to have five phone booths dotted about AfrikaBurn, it quickly became evident that Isigidimi could add value by connecting key elements of AfrikaBurn. So, from the start the Isigidimi camp had a support extension on 999 but it rapidly became evident that it could be useful to set up the Medic tent on extension 911. The main gate for AfrikaBurn also needed a way of communicating with the organisers at the main AfrikaBurn site.

However, the really interesting behaviour for me was the use of the public phone booths. Because there were so few numbers to call and most of them were other “public” phones, people ended up doing a lot of random calling. It was kind of a ChatRoulette for phones. Given that “engagement” is the norm for AfrikaBurn, this worked surprisingly well. I got invited to breakfasts, gatherings, gifting events and also had my share of strangely philosophical conversations with complete strangers.

By the time I left, my head was teaming with ideas how this experience might be improved. An obvious next step would be to offer voicemail services for all participants. But that opens the more complex question of how offer directory services, how to find people on an improvised phone network. This is easy to solve for each camp as they are all numbered on the programme and one could use the camp numbers as extensions but you would also want to offer the possibility for individuals to set up their own voicemail. Number discovery is a hard problem just waiting for some creative minds to apply themselves to it. Next year’s AfrikaBurn would be the perfect place to experiment…

P.S. There are some more photos from AfrikaBurn on my flickr page and you can also explore the AfrikaBurn tag on Flickr.