Role of Mobile Phones in Disaster Management

I have been reading a report on “Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs” and it explains how PeaceNet, an NGO and Oxfam-GB, a relief agency employed text messaging strategies to prevent and minimize ethnic strifes and violence in a hyper-sensitive post-poll Kenya.
I will just list down a few SMSs which people mailed to PeaceNet for timely action and intervention.

“We have been alerted that it is not safe tonight, in Bamburi, Utange, home area. We a
asking 4 security here please.”
“Over 400 people with no food or water holed in Huruma PCEA church in Eldoret for
three days. Help needed immediately.”
“I humbly ask for security in the church we are in, Elgon view, Eldoret as we have heard
of the killings in the Kiambaa church.”
“People evicted from their homes in Saboti, are starving no basic needs, food, blankets,
etc. People are camping at Kiungani, Kiminini and Sikhendu Kitale.”

The NGO reacted to such help alerts and many tragedies were averted. Proactively peace messages and information were SMSd to people to maintain harmony.

Coming back home to Mumbai I am reminded of 28th November afternoon when suddenly there was a spate of rumours that another round of firing had occured at the CST station and near the RBI.Immediately there was paranoia among masses and people were seen rushing back home and talking frantically on the phone for confirmed information. This lasted till there was an announcement on the television confirming that the rumours were untrue.

It would have been much more simpler if you received an SMS on your phone from Mumbai police mentioning the truth. Tele-density in Mumbai is around 75%. Which mean the message would immediately reach most people and the rest would be informed by word of mouth. Such information could be sent to citizens on a periodic basis during the crisis to alert them appropriately.
For example on the 28th the message could simply be
"There are rumours of fresh firing at the CST station which are untrue. Kindly remain calm and inform people around you"- The sender name would be Mumbai police/Mayor office etc. That would immediately calm things down. SMSs could be also sent cell site wise where in people in the vicinity of the affected area could be warned on priority.

And how would this be implemented? At the heart of this system will be a platform which will take information feeds from the authorized governement body and with connectivty to all Mobile service providers. Whenever faced with an emergency situation authorized government personnel can load vetted information on the platform for timely delivery to people.

The reason this would work is ubiquity of the mobile device and the benefit would be accurate and consistent information during crisis.

The platform could be extended for two-way communication for receiving information from people on the emergency site. The information from people would be collated and stored on the server and displayed to authorities on an interface to analyze the ground situation.

This could also serve as means for people to report suspicious activty in their vicinity. People are generally apprehensive to call up the police and talk, however sending an SMS does not involve direct contact and people would be more inclined to report.

The Service Providers would be more than willing to help in this regard. The commercial considerations would need to be worked out because mass messaging would put additional pressure on network resources. Celtel in Kenya charges half the commercial rate for messages to and from PeaceNet. A similar model could be worked out with Indian Service Providers.

Telecom and Terror

After the recent spate of terror attacks in Mumbai I bagan wondering how telecom service providers can contribute to minimizing such attacks. Strict documentation requirements and legal interception tools are already mandatory requirements. In legal interception the role of the Service provider is reactive wherein it records conversations for telephone numbers provided by the IB. However, Service providers can work on a number of proactive measures to help Intelligence agencies.

Intelligent tools can be employed which trace each and every call for keywords like "bomb", "ammunition", "blasts" etc. These could be specifically applied on calls to and from hostile nations. The tool would throw results on a weekly basis and by mapping results to subscriber profiles a suspicion list could be developed and tracked. It is interesting to note that call volumes to a hostile nation have dropped by 30% in days after the Mumbai carnage. This is difficult to dismiss as a co-incidence.

Advancements in LBS and GIS technology can be used to track device locations with pin-point accuracy. This would be invaluable in close combat situations where location information would be the key.

Additionally the DoT will need means to track satellite calls originating and terminating into Indian mainland. An article in this regard is available on http://in.news.yahoo.com/241/20081129/1264/tbs-dot-looks-for-ways-to-track-satphone.html

The cost of employing such techniques might be large but ther are vast unutilized USO funds which can be utilized for the purpose. Even a single 26th November like attack averted would be worth the effort!

Generation Gap

While Service Providers and Vendors across the world plan 4G and 3.5G deployments, in India we are still dabbling over when the 3G auctions should occur. As of now the 3G auctions should occur in January 2009. However with mud-slinging over the under-pricing of the 2G spectrum continuing, this might get delayed. Currently we are stuck with 2.5 G technologies which are a generation behind the world.

The question facing GSM operators is that as and when the 3G spectrum is allotted should they launch with vanilla WCDMA or straightaway move to HSPA or even HSPA+. It would make sense as HSPA and HSPA+ are backward compatible to 3G and require only software patch upgrades.

If they do start with HSDPA the next year will change the way people view mobile internet in India. Currently the peak download speed one experiences on the EDGE network varies from 30kbps-100kbps. However if operators launch with HSDPA this might zoom up to 10Mbps. Basically implying that the 5 MB video which took an eternity to download would reach your device in 4 seconds! Now that is lightening quick. The good news continues with uploads speeds reaching 384 kbps. Ofcourse these speeds will come with riders like handset type, base station backhaul capacity, signal strength, subscribr location entwork loading etc. Every factor accounted for the user experience will still be far better than what is currently delivered.

This is good news for content providers and application developers who can develop rich mobile content for better customer experience. Mobile operators on their part will need to come up with data tariff plans which encourage more data uptake and are easy on the customer's pocket.

You have Won...

Off late a lot of mobile subscribers have been receiving SMSs saying they have won some lottery or prize and to claim the prize they need to call a particular number. The number is generally international and the prize money is large enough to coax the subscribers in to giving it a “try”.

The subscriber dials the number and is generally led to an IVR which guides the subscriber through different menus which try and keep him/her engaged for as long as possible. Unsurprisingly generally there is no prize received. However a surprise awaits the subscriber at the end of the month when the service provider bill is received. The international number dialed would generally belong to a group of countries which the Service Providers categorize as ROW II or remote destinations. The per minute tariff to these countries is around Rs 40/min. So all the while the subscriber is on the IVR menu he/she is being billed at Rs 40/min. Service Providers keep a tab on these numbers and try and block them, however new numbers keep cropping up every month. These numbers are advertized by individuals who have revenue share arrangements with some shady operator running this service abroad.

So next time you get that message try and resist the temptation to “try” and inform your Service Provider immediately.

TPM

TRAI of late has been examining whether intergrated service providers are passing more of their Mobile STD revenues as NLD revenues and saving on license fee. Also RCOM has been alleged of booking its mobile data revenue as ISP revenues. In both the cases service providers have been charged with passing revenues to entities which is less taxed.
These are classic cases of Transfer Pricing Manipulation (TPM) or in common parlance Transfer Pricing. Though the governement by the Finance Act 2001 is within its right to probe such pricing mechanisms, Service Providers are within their right to pass a higher Carriage fee as long as it is within 65p.
The solution could be to adopt a cost plus approach and reduce the maximum carriage charge. This however will hit BSNL Carriage revenues the most and thus again hit governement coffers. The trick would be to arrive at the optimum maximum Carriage Charge which would maximize governement's earnings.

India Calling

Today NTT DoCoMo joined the bandwagon of foreign operators investing in India with a 26% stake in TTSL for a whooping 2.7 bn dollars! Interestingly the investments are meant for Tata's GSM roll out. This has been on the heels of investments by Telenor in Unitech and Etisalat in Swan telecom.
The two factors driving these investments are a large population and low penetration. India with a population of 1.3 bn has penetration levels of around 30%. Pundits believe that this penetration will rise to 80% over the coming decade. With Television the most penetrated white good in India reaching 70 mn households,this seems like a distinct possiblity. The mobile phone is a personal device while a Television meant for the entire family. There will eventually be more number of mobile phone connections than cable TV.
By the time the new operators launch late next year the penetration levels would be around 40%. Thus they would have an opportunity to compete for the balance 40% pie. Assuming ten active players in the market gaining a fair share of the incremental subscriber growth the new operators would have around 40 mn customers each. These new customers would be primarily from the low income group and would fetch an ARPU of around USD 4. Thus with the market saturating these operators would be lookingat an annual revenue of USD 1.9 bn.
Thus the new entrants have plenty to fight for and it will be interesting to see if in the near future the rule of 4 will apply in this industry. The coming years are going to be intense..

World's first Virtual Country Code

Yesterday Voxbone launched "iNum" the internet's first Global Country Code. Traditionally numbering plans had been alloted geographically and this had worked fine till the concept of portability emerged in US in 1996 when the first movement towards binding the number to the subscriber rather than geography/service/provider occured.

Voxbone has extended this portability concept to the global level with a "glocal"country code. The series used is the ITU series +883 for International Networks.

The key to the popularity of this service will be the cost incurred byPSTN customers to call these numbers.The cost of terminating to the iNum series needs to be lesser than termination charges for most countries in the world which is not the case as of now. Carriers supporting calls to +883 charge more than a dollar as of now. Add to this the retail margin and calls will be prohibitvely expensive.

Even if Voxbone Carrier partners carry calls to iNum numbers for free it will remain a challenge getting the code series opened across retail networks without an established revenue model.

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