- From: stephane boyera <boyera@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:38:47 +0200
- To: public-mwi-ec@w3.org
Let me try to make this list a bit more active ! I'm just back from 4 weeks around africa going to different conferences and events, and also meeting associations and visiting people. So It is time to make a quick summary. (beware, long mail ahead !). 4 parts: one about ist-africa conference, one about the W3C Southern Africa Office Opening, one on the 3GSM east¢ral africa conference, one about some data i gathered in Uganda about gsm cost and connectivity. 1-Ist-Africa Maputo, Mozambique (http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2007/ ) Audience This conference is funded by the EU commission (this one was the 2nd edition) to gather representatives from all over Africa and Europe, focusing on ICT for development. There were around 350 people. Program 4 parrallel tracks during the 3 days, with a mix of technical presentations, business presentations (about sustainability), research topics and use cases. Lots of different topics focused on how ICT can leverage countries development, mostly: e-learning, e-government, e-health, e-infrastucture (internet deployment) (also few other session of eu opportunity for funding, environmental risk management,...) My comments The biggest value of this event for me was about the networking. I met lots of very interesting people, representatives from governments, universities, or NGOs from all over africa (mostly southern). About the technical aspects of the program, i was more than surprised. All the people i met in Bangalore workshop were believing hard in the mobile platform, and its potential. They were all convinced that it would be almost impossible to deploy PC and wired internet. So i sincerely believed that this was a shared analysis. But this is not the case. As of today, most of the presenter, particualrly those representing governments, are still thinking that ICT=PC+wired internet And there are lots of project specifically focusing on developping tele-center with few PC around the countries. All those projects always emphasis on the limited impact of such solutions to reach rural communities, and particularly nomad populations, and also the problem of maintenance of PC, availability of wired internet,... Just few presentations are considering the mobile platform for the future. Just 2 presentations were about using mobile phones but for e-learning only. About my talk (http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_ist/all.htm ), there were about 40-50 participants in the room, but i didn't attract the right crowd imho, because i was in a session called e-infrastructure, burried between people talking about satellite networking and the eu-africa research network. so clearly, nothing related to the topic i was addressing. However, the chair of the session was very interested, and, in order to seed the mobile web idea, i will explore how to organize a track next year on the topic of using mobile phones for ICT. 2-W3C Southern Africa Office Opening, Pretoria, South Africa (http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item94 ) My talk: http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_saopening/all.htm This event was organized by W3C as the launch event for its new office opened in South Africa, and covering the whole Southern region of Africa. Attendance: ~70-80 people, majority from Meraka Institute, but also people from country around (Mozambique, Botswana,...) Industry and academic. The format was quite successful: 3 sessions: one on the opening itself, then 2 more technical. For me it was the most successful office opening meeting, for the format, but also because at the end of the day the office has a roadmap defined by the discussion during the day (a workshop, with a defined audience and defined set of topics). This successful output is imho due to the presence of a meeting facilitator. I never heard before of such existing job, but the guy drove all the discussion session and he was really good. For me, i discovered lots of the activites taking place at the Meraka Institute(http://www.meraka.org.za/ ), and i was impressed by the whole organization, thier strengths, and their outgoing work. I dind't know before that there was a research center of this quality. That's encouraging to have contacts with people that will play an important role of relay between W3C and local activities. This relay will be bi-directionnal, promoting the usage of W3C standards and also to provide requirements, uses case, applications to W3C. Relying on such strong players locally is, imho, a key success for any work we will do in the area of the digital divide. 3-3GSM east & central Africa, Nairobi, Kenya (http://www.gsm-3gworldseries.com/newt/l/gsm/events/ecafrica/ ) My talk: http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_3gsm/all.htm Attendance: quite a small audience *about 250 people-almost 90% salesman afaik, around 100 people in the conf room (plenary) and about 50 people in my session (2 tracks the second day) *about 20-30 booths: 80% on network technologies(tower, antennas, sim card producers, how to place the relay,...), nobody from the content providers side (except music as such or as ringtone and games). mobile web browsing is almost 0%. Overall comments Some of the talks, particularly the plenary were very interesting to get the picture. An interesting talk from the Africa chairman of GSMA V. Olunga. few excerpt from his talk: -integration of internet access in strategic plans -africa mobile subscribers: fixed line vs mobile ration 1:10 -a tool of business and administration -60% of africa covered - 70% by the end of the year 10 countries has more than 90% coverage -problem is still rural africa Another one from Mrs Mbongue (research analyst) -200 millions subcribed reached 1Q07 (1 year from 100 to 200): nigeria, SA, Algeria top 3 big markets -growth drivers is mobile browsing From Marc Rennard (orange, responsible for Africa Asia & middle east): - the trend is to go to free simcard (free subscription) and charge on service use - 95% of revenue from africa is voice and SMS Except these plenary talks, in terms of contacts, it is disappointing. No real interest now, despite what said in plenary talks, on developing internet access from mobile phones among participants. Just one very interesting (ie relevant to the mobile web topic) presentation made by Dr Fisseha Mekuria, head of telecom engineering dept, GSTIT (telecom schools) in Ethiopia, about specific usability context in Africa, and usability of mobile applications in rural areas . What was really disappointing for me was the current trend of considering mobile browsing only for high-end phones and 3G network. People may be interested to read mu thought on this topic in an article i wrote last week : http://www.w3.org/blog/MWITeam/2007/06/06/enabling_web_browsing_on_emerging_market Eventually i made one very interesting contact with someone working exactly on the same area of the work i presented : Dr Fisseha Mekuria,head of telecom engineering dept, GSTIT (telecom schools), Ethiopia fisseha.mekuria@gstit.edu.et . He is a potential host of one of our workshop in africa. He is focusing on usability of mobile applications in rural areas. My overall feeling is that it is not really worth the cost and the time to participate to such localized event. I will focus on the big 3GSM Africa event taking place once a year in Cape Town. I will give a talk there next november. 4-Uganda I was there mostly for vacation but i found lots of very intersting data i wanted to report. I was amazed to see that almost 100% of the zone i visited (the whole west uganda) was served by gsm, including national park ! What was also a discover is the most widespread phone is the motorola c113, the one who won the GSMA emerging market handset program, sold at 25$ (i thought about buying one for myself !) in phones shops (without any operator deal). I was also interested to see the price of internet cafe in rural area: around 100shilling/minutes (0.05eur) while phone credit is around 200shilling /mn (0.1eur) so this is not a so huge difference. In town, internet cafe are around 20shilling/minute (0.01) and here the phone cost is then 10 times higher. I will try in the future to make this list more active by posting information about future events, or new relevant to this topic. I will also in the next few weeks rework the wiki and try to make different sections as i've a bunch of ressources to share on different subject (some events, emerging market handsets, ...). I encourage also other participants to also post information, comments they have ! Feel also free to tell me if you think that such report are useful or useless. cheers Stephane -- Stephane Boyera stephane@w3.org W3C +33 (0) 4 92 38 78 34 BP 93 fax: +33 (0) 4 92 38 78 22 F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Monday, 18 June 2007 11:39:06 UTC