Mobile content provisioning
Its importance for Africa
Content Provisioning
Mobile content provisioning brings all of the capabilities of the internet to the mobile phone. This means java and browser to audio, video, and language settings are delivered to the cell phone through our provisioning system. Content provisioning is gaining increasing significance in African mobile markets due in part to falling ARPU s. It is also gaining significance due to the increase use of the mobile phones for data services and deployment of 3G networks.
With the introduction of new mobile services such as WAP, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), calendar and contact synchronization, as well as a multitude of other possibilities, we have an opportunity to leverage the power of the mobile phone to address poverty[some of the Millennium Development Goals].
In particular, mobile technology can address certain social issues of poverty such as:
- Lack of access to information
- Education
- Healthcare
- Political Power
The irony is that these same positive developments pose immense challenges for the poor in maximizing the benefits of these new technologies. The number of servers and portals providing services for mobile Internet terminals continues to expand. Further, there is an increasing number of features associated with these services, such as support for multimedia, location-based services, electronic payments, etc. Thus, new terminals supporting new network technologies and mobile Internet services will continuously be taken into use. The new terminals will increasingly require new or updated configuration settings before they can successfully connect to the network servers that offer applications over the network.
Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says: “Mobile communication is perhaps the single most transformative technology for rural African villages to improve access to health care and education, create new business opportunities and access to markets, and ultimately to help eradicate extreme poverty.
A 2005 report by Leonard Waverman of the London Business School, estimates that the average developing nations sees its economic growth rise by .06 per cent for every 10 per cent growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers. In 2007, the GSM Association applied Waverman’s methodology to a group of 57 developing nations and found that the impact was doubled, boosting economic growth by 1.2 per cent for every 10 per cent rise in mobile users.
There is now a strong case for early adoption of EDGE/3G/mobile broadband services in Africa, while at the same time significantly contributing to the improvement of social and economic conditions of the nearly half million people living in the villages.
The leading player in this business is Moota frontier Markets.
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