🚀 go-pugleaf

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
telephone" � Bjarne Stronstrup, Microsoft


"VoIP is legitimate", said Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, "and NCC is not
against it". The regulatory stand by the Chief Executive of the
Nigerian Communications Commission is indeed very pragmatic and an
admission of the fact that when technology speaks, we all better
listen.

The declaration by NCC at the Nigerian Telecoms Summit held in Abuja,
October 2003, on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), an invasive technology that
enables voice calls to any destination at extremely cheap rates, was
joyously received by stakeholders and operators in Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT) in Nigeria.

Technology is so pervasive and changing at such dizzying speeds that
quasi-traditional business models are giving way. Users are daily
getting empowered with tools and devices to improve the quality of
their lives. Indeed there has never been a time in the history of the
earth that we have had so many new and exciting technologies available
in such great quantity, at such high value and at such low cost.

Innovative startups all over the world are making technology solutions
and equipment more powerful, and cheaper than previous models.
Wherever technology impacts, the reality is of falling prices and
lowering margins, whether it is for connectivity, mobility, storage,
terminals, bandwidth, etc. Indeed, we are in the middle of a massive
global revolution.

With many technology companies creating solutions from within the
largely unregulated (or unregulateable) IT industry, regulated
telecoms operators are beginning to discover disruptive technologies
that are threatening established business plans.

Take the voice telephony business model for example. ISPs in Nigeria
have been carrying international voice traffic ambiguously on their
data networks for years. But with NCC's recent declaration, nothing
stops them from now exploring possibilities of carrying local and
national voice calls as well. That would have been sacrilegious just a
few months ago. Now competition to the Private Telephone Operator
(PTO) is also from without!

Internet Protocol (or IP) and increasing mobility are the biggest twin
threats (or twin opportunities � depending on which perspective you
take) to conventional business strategies today.  IP is the enabler of
the Internet and all the applications that are packed into it,
including VoIP. IP is changing the world and revolutionizing every
business process as the platform upon which virtually "all things are
possible".

IP is enabling the ability of all types of devices to communicate and
interact with each other at exceedingly low cost. It is becoming the
platform for all forms of human and machine communications. Any
business that ignores IP technologies and solutions would soon find
shortly that it is no longer in business.

On the other hand, mobility or ubiquity is driving the take-up of
cellular phones, Personal Digital Assistants, Notebooks, Wi-Fi, etc.
People no longer call places; they call other people. The power to
communicate no longer now resides at a location; it now dwells with
the person. Presently, it is in his palms and on his person. Soon, he
will soon be his own mobile phone.

Unlike elsewhere on other continents, the first telephone the average
African will ever see or use is the mobile. He turned mobile right
from day one!

The evidence for ubiquity in Africa comes from the mobile revolution
in Nigeria. Annual mobile telephone subscriptions has grown by 503%
since 2001, with Nigeria, from nowhere, emerging the fourth dominant
GSM network in Africa and the fastest growing in the World.

Interestingly, Nigeria is not the sole proof of current trends in
pervasive mobility. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
recently released figures for mobile subscriptions in developing
countries. Wait for this: 46% of all mobile users are in developing
countries! In other words, for every mobile user in a developed
economy, there is a counterpart mobile user in a developing country.

There are several implications of this trend. First is that there is
no longer a digital divide of any real sort in mobile communications
between the West and the Rest of the World.

Second � for entrepeuneurs, if the world's population is going mobile,
and your business is not, you will soon lose your customers. Business
must have delivery channels and service applications of processes that
can reach the mobile user without the need for him to be physically
present at a service point.

New technologies are like locust invasions, they are so disruptive in
their sweep that they leave the business landscape barely recognizable
afterwards.

In Nigeria, as in many other African countries, the days of queuing
for hours sweating in order to make a 1-minute call at a public
payphone booth now appear like centuries ago. No one likewise
remembers the paging companies that were the brides of the moment just
a decade ago. Who knows, maybe in another decade no one will remember
the GSM companies that are the brides of this moment.

When technology speaks, will you listen?


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Fola Odufuwa is Executive Director, eShekels Limited, one of Africa's
foremost technology research firms based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Email: fola.odufuwa@eshekelsnigeria.com . 
Article is available for free circulation. 
Kindly email a copy of publication to the author at address above.