Showing posts with label Bharti Airtel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bharti Airtel. Show all posts

Friday, January 18, 2013

Africa Unite



Kenya is like South Korea, on the cutting edge of mobile.

Kenya's Startup Boom
the emergence of a tech-savvy generation able to address Kenya’s public-health problems in ways that donors, nongovernmental organizations, and multinational companies alone cannot. ..... a nation where one in 25 is HIV-positive (10 times the U.S. rate) and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are among the leading killers. ..... The health ministry wanted to let community health workers put information into the database directly from mobile phones ..... the Netherlands office of Bharti Airtel, the Indian telecommunications giant that also operates a mobile network in Kenya. The company proposed spending tens of thousands of dollars on mobile phones and SIM cards for the data-gathering task, and it said it would need another $300,000 to develop the data application on the phones. The total package ran to $1.9 million. ...... rounded up the four students. They spent the spring of 2011 at the CHAI offices, receiving internship pay of about $150 a month. They sat for days with the staff in the health ministry to understand the traditional way of gathering information. Then they pounded out the app and polished up the database software to allow disease reporting from any mobile Web interface. By last summer their “Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response” system was up and running at the ministry, obviating much of Bharti Airtel’s proposed costs ...... Mobile phones are lifelines for Kenyans. Some 26 million of the nation’s 41 million people have phones, and 18 million use them to do their everyday banking and conduct other business; most use a service called M-Pesa, which is offered by the country’s dominant wireless provider, Safaricom. If mobile phones could play as big a role in Kenyan health care as they do in Kenyan financial transactions, the effects could be profound...... the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which spends $500 million per year in Kenya alone. ...... Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than two-thirds of the 33 million people estimated to have HIV worldwide. ..... more might get done if local hackers would get together, write more code, and start some companies that had sustainable business models. ..... the country’s first truly mass-market Android smart phone went on sale in 2010, for $80. ..... “We can’t replace the doctors, can’t replace the hospitals, but we can improve access to relevant information.” ....... Soon it will be available through SMS—an essential feature, because 85 percent of Kenyan mobile-phone owners don’t yet have Web access. Kyalo hopes to aggregate other medical apps on the platform and ultimately sell sponsored messages from pharmaceutical companies, health-care providers, and others. ...... “Government is the hardest nut to crack” ..... Safaricom announced that it was launching its own doctor-calling service. In a nation with few doctors and no free 911 service for medical emergencies, residents can now at least speak to a doctor for about 25 cents per minute. ....... She had traveled 50 kilometers to see a specialist for her breast cancer, and now she was alone, exhausted, and at the wrong place on the campus. A pale blue cataract blighted her left eye, and a look of fear and pain shadowed her face as she rested her head against the pillar ...... Last year USAID, a major funder of health projects in Kenya and other developing countries, requested proposals for help creating a unified, Web-based national health information system that would be “host country owned.” The five-year, $32 million contract went to Abt Associates, a consultancy based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has done extensive work in global development projects. But although it has expertise, so does the new tech class back in the host country—which also has a long-term stake in the solution and no U.S. overhead. “If you talked about an RFP for $32 million at iHub, people would go nuts! You’d fund 500 startups for that,” CHAI’s Jackson Hungu says. “And this country’s public health delivery would be changed forever. I have no doubt about that.”
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Saturday, September 04, 2010

Social: Bigger Than We Think

Former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, make...Image via Wikipedia
The Economist: Mining Social Networks: Untangling The Social Web: From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly useful ..... People at the top of the office or social pecking order often receive quick callbacks, do not worry about calling other people late at night and tend to get more calls at times when social events are most often organised, such as Friday afternoons. Influential customers also reveal their clout by making long calls, while the calls they receive are generally short. ...... Companies can spot these influencers, and work out all sorts of other things about their customers, by crunching vast quantities of calling data with sophisticated “network analysis” software. ..... Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile operator, which handles over 3 billion calls a day ..... there are more than 100 programs for network analysis, also known as link analysis or predictive analysis ...... Bharti Airtel employs only about 100 analysts to keep tabs on its 135m subscribers. ....... broadening data mining to include analysis of social networks makes new things possible. ..... In some companies, e-mails are analysed automatically to help bosses manage their workers. Employees who are often asked for advice may be good candidates for promotion ...... If a person discusses a particular Department of Defence payment with an individual not officially linked to the deal, SRA’s software may notice it. ...... Richmond’s police have started monitoring Facebook, MySpace and Twitter messages to determine where the rowdiest festivities will be. On big party nights, the department now saves about $15,000 on overtime pay, because officers are deployed to areas that the software deems ripe for criminal activity. ..... turns out that the key terrorists in a group are often not the leaders, but rather seemingly low-level people, such as drivers and guides, who keep addresses and phone numbers memorised. Such people tend to stand out in network models because of their high level of connectedness ...... The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was due in large part to the mapping of the social networks of his former chauffeurs ...... Called SOMA Terror Organization Portal, it analyses a wide range of information about politics, business and society in Lebanon to predict, with surprising accuracy, rocket attacks by the country’s Hizbullah militia on Israel. ....... An authoritarian government, for instance, may have difficulties slowing the spread of a new idea in a certain medium—say, internet chatter about a book that explains how corruption undermines job creation. ..... diplomatic services are mapping the “tipping point” when ideas go mainstream in spite of government repression. ..... Riots, bloody elections and crackdowns, among other things, can be forecast with improving accuracy by crunching data on food production, unemployment, drug busts, home evictions and slum growth detected in satellite images. ..... In relatively closed countries, like Egypt, rapid shifts in social networks can trigger upheaval ......

Perhaps. But I never underestimated the importance of social. Individuals are like cells. When many cells get together, organs are forms. Cell behavior does not predict organ behavior. Organs are a whole new level of reality. Organs have to be studied as organs. I scribbled along those lines in the early 1990s.

The difference is now software is making collection and analysis of pertinent data possible. Now it is actually possible to connect the dots, and bring results to use, to make concrete impacts. Social is increasingly becoming science. One of my frustrations during college years was that social was not science. Social was like physics before Newton. There was just too much muss.

When you come across a big thing, the inevitable question is what is next? What is the next big thing after social? Social will stay big. But perhaps the individual might get more attention down the line.

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Friday, May 28, 2010

India Broadband Spectrum Bids

Mobile phone evolutionImage via Wikipedia
The beauty of the mobile space is best felt in markets like India where people's first introduction to any form of telecommunication comes in the form of a simple mobile phone in their hands that they use for something basic like making phone calls. This reminds me of the early days of the PC revolution in the US when software people wrote code for chips that were, well, not powerful at all. You ran simple programs. But they were novel and mesmerizing. You felt like you were at the forefront.

To make voice calls, no literacy is required. That is a revolutionary concept.

There is ample demand in India for the kind of broadband services that the average user in the US takes for granted. After all India boasts of the largest middle class in the world. And it has plenty of the super rich, the dollar millionaires and billionaires.

But for me the most fascinating aspect of the unfolding story is the way it impacts people who Bill Gates calls "the bottom two billion." Fully one fourth of those might be right there in India. And they aspire to make phone calls. Many of them aspire to make phone calls before they even own phones. An entrepreneur in a small village will purchase a phone. Next thing you know he/she is in business. Relatives far away will call up. They will be asked to call back again in an hour. In the mean time someone will go fetch the person in the village who will come wait by the phone. And they get to talk, for a small fee. That is revolutionary. It does not require literacy. It is real time. It is cheap. People don't just call in emergencies. They call to say hello, they call to make small talk. Why? Because it is possible, and they can afford it. If they can afford a cup of tea, they can afford a phone call. Suddenly a family member going to a far away city to work, or even to another country, is not that scary a proposition. Go do that, just make sure you stay in touch.

Between that and the FM radio, you got people who are super connected. And they are all ears. They are learning. The world is changing at a rapid clip.

That is the low end of the market. At the high end you have people who compete globally and often win. They  operate at global speeds, on global standards.


India Broadband Spectrum Bids Reach $1.13 Billion on Fourth Day BusinessWeek India’s government got bids totaling 52.45 billion rupees ($1.13 billion) on the fourth day of an auction for licenses to offer faster wireless broadband for computers nationwide .... Qualcomm Inc., the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, and Vodafone Group Plc, the largest mobile carrier by sales ..... 22 regional zones in the world’s second-largest wireless market by subscribers ...... Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s biggest wireless operator
Broadband spectrum price touches Rs 5245 cr Hindu Business Line Value of pan India broadband spectrum has reached Rs 5,245.1 crore at the end of the fourth day of bidding. The auction picked up more intensity on Friday with eight rounds of bidding.
India broadband spectrum bidding hots up Economic Times Bids for one set of all-India wireless broadband spectrum licences reached 31.98 billion rupees ($670 million), or about 83 percent higher than the base price, on the second day of an auction ...... Eleven firms including India's top three telecoms firms -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar -- and US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, are bidding for broadband spectrum....... bidding for third-generation (3G) spectrum that ended last Wednesday after 34 days and 183 rounds. The sale fetched the Indian government 677 billion rupees in revenue, nearly double the total estimated from both 3G and wireless broadband spectrum auctions. .......
Bid to start discussion on 4G tech Calcutta Telegraph Auction of 3G spectrum raked in over Rs 67,000 crore for the government, while wireless broadband spectrum is expected to fetch around Rs 20,000 crore. Long term evolution (LTE) technology, or 4G, allows more data to be transferred over the same bandwidth used by 3G but at higher speeds....... Dual mobile service provider Tata Teleservices ..... Qualcomm has also sought large chunks of radio waves for advanced technologies like LTE. ..... Around 59 operators have committed to LTE launches in 28 countries with up to 22 LTE networks in service by 2010 and 37 LTE networks in service by 2011.
India's 3G spectrum auction raises $14.6 billion BusinessWeek The government had expected to get less than 350 billion rupees ($7.5 billion) ....... Two state owned companies, which were given advance spectrum, must also match the winning bid prices, making the total government take 677 billion rupees ($14.6 billion). ....... None of the seven winning operators will have a nationwide presence. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Aircel each won bids in 13 of 22 areas, more than any other company. Vodafone bought into nine areas. ........ Market leaders Bharti, Vodafone and Reliance Communications paid dearly for spectrum in the key markets of Mumbai and New Delhi, but will need to tie up with smaller players to provide nationwide coverage for their 3G customers. ........ The three winning bidders for New Delhi spectrum each paid 33.2 billion rupees ($715.5 million), while Mumbai's three winners paid 32.5 billion rupees ($700.4 million). ........ The auction hit in the middle of a brutal cellular price war in India, and paying for spectrum will hit already eroding margins. ...... India's mobile market is far from mature, adding 20 million users a month, many of them in rural villages ....... what many operators really wanted was not the 3G license, but the additional spectrum to serve India's fast-growing customer base. ...... My interest is in providing basic services, like voice ...... it could take five years before operators recoup their bids.
Spectrum fear fuels 3G craze Calcutta Telegraph Fears over the availability of 2G spectrum in the future, which could jack up its cost, have led telecom operators to bid over Rs 70,000 crore for third-generation (3G) spectrum in the ongoing auction. ..... Though the spectrum payout may put a significant strain on their resources, most operators are willing to take on “additional debt or dilution of stake” for assets, which will provide “long-term returns” ...... The telecom ministry has banned the allocation of 2G spectrum, or radio waves through which voice and data travel, till it finalises a mechanism for pricing the resource. ...... A single provisional bid for pan-India 3G spectrum today touched Rs 16,531 crore, beating all analyst estimates. So far, the government has earned Rs 66,802 crore, around 91 per cent more than the Rs 35,000 crore it had hoped to garner by auctioning 3G and broadband wireless spectrum. The Delhi circle received the highest bid of Rs 3,284 crore followed by Mumbai at Rs 3,183 crore. ....... operators with a 12-15 per cent 2G and 3G combined market share will have an internal rate of return of 15 per cent over 10 years.
Qualcomm Eyes Expansion with India LTE Bid Wireless Week Qualcomm is an enabler – a technology enabler, that is. The company has used its considerable financial resources to accelerate the development and deployment of technologies ranging from its core CDMA business to its mobile television subsidiary FLO TV. Yesterday, Qualcomm put this strategy into play in India, the world’s second-largest CDMA market. ...... It might seem a little odd for a chipmaker to want to get into the network infrastructure space, but it’s not out of character for Qualcomm. The company’s $18.2 billion cash stash can be leveraged to invest in areas that will accelerate business for Qualcomm’s cash cow – its chip making business. ...... CDMA technology will eventually stop being a growth generator for Qualcomm. ..... “They’ve really been pushing into LTE because they need that to keep growing their company… ....... if you look at the horizon in a lot of developed areas there isn’t a whole lot more coming. ........ Qualcomm also wants to prevent WiMAX from being deployed in India’s 2.3 GHz band ....... “Qualcomm wants to promote TD-LTE over WiMAX in India and they’re willing to put up big money for the auction” ...... India’s total mobile subscriber base is more than 580 million and the country is still working to deploy third generation wireless services on its recently-auctioned 3G spectrum licenses. ...... Qualcomm is taking a similarly proactive approach in China, which is using TD-SCDMA for 3G and TD-LTE for 4G. Qualcomm recently opened its second research and development center in China to help expand its presence in what it called an “increasingly important” wireless market...... China’s wireless market dwarfs that of the U.S. The country’s top operator, China Mobile, has 544.2 million subscribers. The country’s second-largest operator, China Unicom, has 544 million subscribers. By comparison, Verizon and AT&T have wireless subscriber bases of 92 million and 86 million, respectively..... What separates Qualcomm’s strategy from other players in the wireless industry is how proactive it is

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