Bevil Wood­ing

Mo­bile net­works hold­ing back mo­bile in­no­va­tion:

Ac­cess to the In­ter­net on mo­bile de­vices af­fords brand new op­por­tu­ni­ties to trans­form in­dus­tries and im­prove liv­ing con­di­tions in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Yet in the Caribbean, where most coun­tries boast of hav­ing greater than 100 per cent mo­bile pen­e­tra­tion, or more than one mo­bile hand­set per per­son, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers have been way too slow to pro­vide the qual­i­ty high-speed mo­bile In­ter­net ac­cess nec­es­sary to build a ro­bust mo­bile con­tent and ap­pli­ca­tion ser­vices in­dus­try. A re­cent study by the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum's Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil con­firms that im­prov­ing ac­cess to mo­bile com­mu­ni­ca­tions can bring about a pos­i­tive im­pact on eco­nom­ic and so­cial growth in terms of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) and hu­man de­vel­op­ment in­dex (HDI). The fact is the Caribbean sta­tus quo of slow mo­bile In­ter­net speeds and ex­pen­sive mo­bile da­ta plans are ham­per­ing de­vel­op­ment of in­dige­nous mo­bile con­tent and ser­vices. Most mo­bile net­works in the Caribbean still run the old GPRS/EDGE tech­nol­o­gy. This makes it dif­fi­cult for con­sumers to ex­pe­ri­ence or ap­pre­ci­ate the full val­ue of the mo­bile web, par­tic­u­lar on the high­er-end phones which sup­port In­ter­net-based ser­vices, apps and mul­ti­me­dia stream­ing.

Smarter phones need smarter net­works:

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices providers and reg­u­la­tors are well aware that in­fra­struc­ture up­grades are need­ed to ac­cel­er­ate the pro­vi­sion of uni­ver­sal and ubiq­ui­tous mo­bile In­ter­net ac­cess. Re­gion­al mo­bile providers have to re­think the pace of in­fra­struc­ture up­grade, be­cause if cur­rent traf­fic and tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion pat­terns con­tin­ue, there will be in­creas­ing­ly over­loaded ur­ban net­works and un­der­served rur­al ar­eas. Reg­u­la­tors have to re­think their role in en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens get the ser­vices they are pay­ing for (which many don't al­ways know they are sup­posed to re­ceive) and the qual­i­ty of ser­vice they de­serve. Reg­u­la­tors al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment de­ci­sions are not sim­ply on the ba­sis of prof­its and re­turns, but in the best in­ter­est of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket growth. More ag­gres­sive roll­out of 3G and 4G tech­nolo­gies is re­quired and head­line-grab­bing an­nounce­ments are not enough; nor are lim­it­ed ge­o­graph­ic roll­out of 3G and 4G for the hol­low boasts that "we have it here" suf­fi­cient. What is ur­gent­ly need­ed is full na­tion­wide mo­bile broad­band cov­er­age.

Lo­cal smart­phones need lo­cal apps:

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments at­tend­ing the rise of the smart­phone is the evo­lu­tion of the mo­bile app. Mo­bile apps are soft­ware pro­grammes spe­cial­ly de­signed to run on mo­bile de­vices. The mo­bile app mar­ket has ex­pe­ri­enced ex­plo­sive growth glob­al­ly. Busi­ness large and small are join­ing the rush to stake their brand claim on the mo­bile land­scape in the form of apps. The usu­al sus­pects among glob­al In­ter­net com­pa­nies and cor­po­rate brands are al­ready tak­ing ad­van­tage, pro­duc­ing apps tai­lored for the rapid­ly grow­ing range of mo­bile de­vices. Now it's time for lo­cal firms and re­gion­al com­pa­nies to join in and reap the ben­e­fits.

Sad­ly, an un­for­tu­nate but not en­tire­ly un­ex­pect­ed trend is al­ready de­vel­op­ing.

Lo­cal com­pa­nies are turn­ing to for­eign de­vel­op­ers and for­eign de­sign­ers to build their mo­bile dreams. If this trend con­tin­ues, re­gion­al de­vel­op­ers will be de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly par­take in what is ex­pect­ed to be one of the largest growth ar­eas in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. Writ­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for mo­bile phones opens the door to ex­cit­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and in­no­va­tors to gen­er­ate jobs, dri­ve growth and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and se­cure long-term eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness. How­ev­er, none of these ben­e­fits can be ful­ly re­alised un­til busi­ness en­gages lo­cal tal­ent and con­sumers have faster, more re­li­able mo­bile broad­band ac­cess di­rect­ly on their phones.

New era, new op­por­tu­ni­ties:

In a re­gion world-renowned for its cre­ativ­i­ty and with one of the high­est lev­els per capi­ta of smart­phones on the plan­et, the mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion presents a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of prod­ucts and ser­vices tai­lored for Caribbean so­ci­ety, Caribbean in­ter­ests and Caribbean needs. En­tre­pre­neurs, gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions can lead the way by op­ti­mis­ing their in­for­ma­tion and ser­vice de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty to take ad­van­tage of the pow­er in the hands of cit­i­zens and con­sumers. The wave of smart­phones flood­ing re­gion­al mar­kets presents ex­cit­ing prospects, both for op­er­a­tors and con­sumers. Both con­stituents now have the op­tion to look to a range of apps tai­lored to re­gion­al au­di­ences and tuned for re­gion­al net­works.

Seiz­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty will nei­ther be cheap nor straight­for­ward. For Caribbean mo­bile op­er­a­tors like LIME, Dig­i­cel, Telesur and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T, shift­ing con­sumer ap­petite from SMS and BBM ser­vices to al­ways-on da­ta plans will re­quire strate­gic in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, new val­ue-added ser­vices and con­sumer aware­ness ini­tia­tives.

The in­dige­nous ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port Caribbean mo­bile in­no­va­tion al­ready ex­ists and the re­gion al­ready has the proven ca­pac­i­ty to de­vel­op apps that ser­vice glob­al needs. An­tigua once had a strong gam­ing soft­ware de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try and Bar­ba­dos was once a hub for Y2K pro­gram­ming ser­vices. T&T and Ja­maica al­so have a sol­id his­to­ry of in­dige­nous soft­ware de­vel­op­ment. There are al­so le­gions of in­de­pen­dent soft­ware de­vel­op­ers scat­tered across the re­gion. To­geth­er, these rep­re­sent the foun­da­tion for a po­ten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant Caribbean mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try. What is now need­ed is aware­ness, en­cour­age­ment and in­cen­tive to ac­tive­ly be­gin build­ing the Caribbean mo­bile mar­ket­place.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and an In­ter­net strate­gist with US-re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House.

He is al­so the founder of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ing Caribbean-fo­cused dig­i­tal con­tent, apps and train­ing pro­grammes.

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