“The UAE regulator, TRA, has demonstrated outstanding leadership and vision with its decision to allocate new spectrum bands for mobile broadband services, by moving quickly to allocate both the 700MHz and 800MHz bands to mobile. The mobile broadband market in the Arab States is set to increase by 255 per cent by 2017 to 142 million connections, with the potential to generate US$108 billion in GDP between 2015 and 2025. With such clear economic benefits, we hope other markets will follow quickly with similar decisions.

“Combining the 800MHz band plan for Europe, Middle East and Africa with the lower portion of the Asia Pacific (APT) 700MHz band is a significant step forward. Spectrum harmonisation delivers multiple advantages, including generating much-needed economies of scale, facilitating near-global roaming and limiting interference along borders. This will ultimately provide a broader choice of devices and more affordable mobile broadband services to the citizens of the UAE and across the Arab States.”

-ENDS-

Notes to Editors
Details of the announcement by the UAE Regulator TRA can be found here

Interview with Tariq Al Awadhi, Executive Director of Spectrum and International Affairs at the TRA on shaping international spectrum policy can be found here: http://www.gsma.com/spectrum/digital-dividend-qa-uae

Translation
Arabic

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com

Media Contacts:
GSMA Press Office
press@gsma.com

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London: At Mobile Asia Expo 2013 in Shanghai, the GSMA will unveil a new Connected City experience, building on the success of the Connected City at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Opening on the 26th June and drawing on the developments that have put the Asia region at the forefront of connected device and service uptake, the Connected City at Mobile Asia Expo 2013 will enable attendees to stroll down a city street of the future and experience the ‘Connected Life’ powered by intelligent mobile connections.

In partnership with China Mobile, Cisco, Ford Motor Company, Huawei, KT Corp. and SAP, the Connected City will be a life-like urban environment where attendees will experience how these companies are making homes smarter, motoring more intelligent, shopping easier and city living safer in the largest and most forward-thinking mobile market in the world. Each area will bring together the latest in cutting-edge products and services to demonstrate how a connected future, driven by mobile, will simplify and enhance people’s everyday lives.

“The mobile industry continues to develop at an unprecedented pace and nowhere is this more evident than in Asia – a region that continues to experience tremendous growth and by 2020 will lead the connected devices and M2M market, both in terms of the number of devices and in terms of revenues,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. “The Connected City in Shanghai will be a reflection of Asia’s market-leading position, where attendees will experience how the next wave of mobile innovation will deliver new business opportunities, enable disruptive products and services and ultimately drive economic growth.”

Demonstrations in the Connected City include top-of-the-range connected cars with the latest state-of-the-art, in-vehicle technologies; innovative remote health monitoring and diagnosis services that link people to healthcare professionals from their own homes; and intelligent city services that can track vehicles or provide civic and lifestyle information via mobile devices.

The connected products and services on show in the Connected City include:

China Mobile

• Wireless City – this application demonstrates the platform capability of China Mobile’s Shanghai Wireless City, which allows local residents to log onto the Wireless City website to enjoy nearly 50 types of urban information services covering government affairs, public utilities and personal life via mobile phones, personal computers and other internet-enabled devices such as tablets.

Cisco

• Smart + Connected Community – understand how smart communities are designed, built and managed through networking technologies that enable economic, social and environmental sustainability, including user experience demonstrations of mobile healthcare, smart shopping and many forward-looking innovations that are changing the way we work, live, play and learn.

Ford

• Smart Mobility – a showcase of Ford technologies featuring in-car connectivity and driver’s assist technologies such as Active City Stop, Active Park Assist and SYNC with MyFord Touch, allowing the driver to interact with systems such as climate control and radio through voice commands in Mandarin or English.

GSMA

• Let’s Get Ready! – ‘Planning Together for Emergencies’ is an educational outreach effort by Sesame Workshop, Qualcomm, China Youth and Development Foundation, and China Telecom to provide tips, activities and other easy tools to help families with young children prepare for emergencies.
• BMW and China Unicom ConnectedDrive – step into a state-of-the-art BMW and experience how this mobile connected car makes navigating China’s mega-cities easier, enabling drivers to access location-based traffic navigation services by calling a 24/7 concierge service or via an in-car display.

Huawei

• Enhance efficiency through eLTE – see how eLTE solutions, which feature ubiquitous mobile network access and massive data transmission capabilities, can improve overall productivity and enhance efficiency for enterprise customers across key industries such as government and public sector, transportation and energy.
• Mobile Offices – BYOD (bring your own device) solutions feature enhanced levels of security and efficiency, optimising the user experience and enabling businesses to connect without borders or boundaries.

KT

• Smart Home – enjoy the connected life with technologies that make people’s lives at home more enriched through Kibot2, an edutainment robot and a Smart Home Phone with HD voice and video enabling real-time home monitoring and streaming entertainment services including music, TV and education.
• Smart Apps – live smarter with intelligent and unique applications including integrated mobile payments, mobile learning solutions delivering self-directed English learning programs and Genie, a mobile K-POP music application with a suite of digital entertainment content.

SAP

• SAP Precision Marketing – bringing together content and information about the consumer, the promotion and the in-store inventory into a real-time management engine to create unique and targeted offers for individuals via a mobile app.
• SAP Fiori – a collection of apps with a simple and easy to use experience for broadly used SAP software functions that work seamlessly across desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. SAP Fiori includes 25 apps for the most commonly used business functions, including workflow approvals, information lookups and self-service tasks.

Also on show in the Connected City will be the FIRE! (Firefighting Interactive Rescue Environment) solution, the winning entry of a GSMA-supported competition at the UP London Hackathon event in April 2013. Entries to the competition were given access to data from British public service organisations such as the police and fire brigade and tasked with developing a mobile-connected service that could aid these organisations. FIRE! will be able to save the lives of firefighters by providing critical onsite location and essential hazard and temperature information from mobile-connected fire helmets and equipment.
Mobile Asia Expo 2013 will take place 26-28 June at the Shanghai New International Exhibition Centre. For more information on Mobile Asia Expo, including details on how to attend, exhibit or sponsor, please visit www.mobileasiaexpo.com.

- ENDS -

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com.

Media Contacts
For filming and interview opportunities, please contact:

Palmer Wang (Beijing)
+86 10 8569 9946
pwang@webershandwick.com

Vivienne Wu (Shanghai)
+86 21 2411 0180
VWu3@webershandwick.com

Ava Lau (Hong Kong)
+852 2533 9928
alau@webershandwick.com

Alexia Da Silva (London)
+44 (0)75 183 714 59
Adasilva@webershandwick.com

GSMA Press Office
press@gsma.com

São Paulo: The GSMA today unveiled research that demonstrates the socio-economic transformation that mHealth adoption will have in Latin America, with findings indicating that more than 40 million additional patients could be treated in Brazil and Mexico alone in 2017 through the use of mHealth services. A new GSMA report, developed in collaboration with PwC and released today at HOSPITALAR 2013 in São Paulo, identified significant benefits of mHealth implementation in Brazil and Mexico in 2017 that will:

Empower poor and chronic patients

• Extend healthcare to 28.4 million additional patients in Brazil and 15.5 million patients in Mexico in 2017
• Equip around 16 million citizens to improve their lifestyle and reduce the impact of chronic diseases, prolonging lives

Sustain universal healthcare systems

• Enhance quality of care and efficiency of care delivery, saving $17.9 billion in costs ($14.1 billion in Brazil and $3.8 billion in Mexico)
• Create 200,000 jobs to support mHealth deployments across Brazil and Mexico

Improve quality of life

• Save almost 16,000 lives and add 23,000 life years, as well as save doctors 14.6 million working days through improved prevention, diagnosis and treatment
• Ensure that citizens constitute a healthier workforce, adding $ 12.9 billion to the GDP of Mexico and Brazil

“mHealth can help countries like Brazil and Mexico tackle the significant challenge of providing universal healthcare to a large, dispersed population,” said Jeanine Vos,Executive Director, mHealth at the GSMA. “The pressures on healthcare resources and the increasing burden of chronic diseases make it key to deploy innovative and cost-effective solutions. mHealth willenhance the reach, efficiency of spend and effectiveness of care to provide better quality health services to more people. Therefore it is critical that governments and regulators work with healthcare providers and mobile operators to drive mHealth adoption.”

Removing barriers to mHealth adoption
The benefits of mHealth will not be realised without decisive action from regulators and governments. If action isn’t taken then only 10 percent of patients that could benefit from mHealth adoption in Brazil and Mexico will do so in 2017. The impact of this would be:

• Healthcare savings in Brazil and Mexico could be limited to only $1.5 billion and $0.4 billion respectively
• Brazil and Mexico would be restricted to treating 3 million and 1.7 million additional patients instead of the potential 43.9 million total
• GDP gains could be limited to $0.5 billion in Brazil and $0.9 billion in Mexico, compared to the combined $12.9 billion if adoption reaches its potential in 2017

There are four main sets of barriers that will limit the adoption of mHealth across Latin America. These include:

Regulatory

• Policy and regulatory approaches are not yet developed to support mHealth solutions reaching patients and healthcare professionals quickly and effectively. The absence of clear regulatory frameworks that guide the development and deployment of these services is slowing down adoption

Economic

• Current healthcare systems incentivise individual treatments and medical prescriptions rather than focus on preventative and continuous care.
• It is important to build clinical evidence that demonstrates the positive impact mHealth can provide, in order to get buy-in from the clinical community and payors, such as governments and insurers

Structural

• The fragmentation of healthcare systems in Brazil and Mexico restricts the sharing of information and alignment of processes, preventing mHealth from scaling effectively

Technology related

• The lack of interoperability and standardisation of mHealth solutions can localise the implementation, limiting the scalability of mHealth

The GSMA is calling on regulators to create an environment that incentivises and encourages the use of mHealth. This will require regulators to work with governments and healthcare providers to ensure greater cohesion; advocate sharing of evidence and case studies; reward performance gains from mHealth to expedite its implementation; and educate and support citizens in adopting mHealth services for wellness and treatment.

For more information on the GSMA’s mHealth programme and to view the report, please visit: www.gsma.com/connectedliving/mhealth.

-ENDS-

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo.

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com.

Media contacts for the GSMA
Tatiana Cantoni (Brazil/Latin America)
+55 11 2858-9190
taticantoni@pimenta.com

GSMA Press Office (UK/Worldwide)
press@gsm.com

Nairobi: The GSMA today announced that it has opened a permanent office in Nairobi, Kenya. The office will be based in the heart of Nairobi’s Innovation Hub (iHub) for the technology community and will enable the GSMA to work even more closely with its members and other industry stakeholders to extend the reach and socio-economic benefits of mobile throughout Africa.

“It is an exciting time to launch our new office in Africa, as the region is an increasingly vibrant and critical market for the mobile industry, representing over 10 per cent of the global market,” said Anne Bouverot, Director General, GSMA. “The rapid pace of mobile adoption has delivered an explosion of innovation and huge economic benefits in the region, directly contributing US$ 32 billion to the Sub-Saharan African economy, or 4.4 per cent of GDP. With necessary spectrum allocations and transparent regulation, the mobile industry could also fuel the creation of 14.9 million new jobs in the region between 2015 and 2020.”

According to the latest GSMA’s Wireless Intelligence data, total mobile connections in Sub-Saharan Africa passed the 500 million mark in Q1 2013, increasing by about 20 per cent year-on-year. Connections are expected to grow by a further 50 per cent, or 250 million connections, over the next five years which requires greater regulatory certainty to foster investment and release of additional harmonised spectrum for mobile.

The region currently accounts for about two-thirds of connections in Africa but the amount of spectrum allocated to mobile services in Africa is among the lowest worldwide. Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa risk undermining their broadband and development goals unless more spectrum is made available. In particular, the release of the Digital Dividend spectrum – which has the ideal characteristics for delivering mobile broadband, particularly to rural populations – should be a priority.

The region also has some of the highest levels of mobile internet usage globally. In Zimbabwe and Nigeria, mobile accounts for over half of all web traffic at 58.1 per cent and 57.9 per cent respectively, compared to a 10 per cent global average. 3G penetration levels are forecast to reach a quarter of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2017 (from six per cent in 2012) as the use of mobile-specific services develops.

However, despite the high number of connections, rapid growth and mobile internet usage, mobile penetration among individuals remains relatively low. Fewer than 250 million people had subscribed to a mobile service in the region, putting unique subscriber penetration at 30 per cent, meaning that more than two-thirds of the population have yet to acquire their first mobile phone. Clearly, there is an important opportunity for the mobile industry to bring connectivity, access to information and services to the people in this region.

The mobile industry contributes approximately 3.5 million full-time jobs in the region. This has also spurred a wave of technology and content innovation with more than 50 ‘innovation hubs’ created to develop local skills and content in the field of ICT services, including the Limbe Labs in Cameroon, the iHub in Kenya and Hive Colab in Uganda.

Of particular note is the role of Kenya as the global leader in mobile money transfer services via M-PESA, a service launched by the country’s largest mobile operator Safaricom in 2007. What started as a simple way to extend banking services to the unbanked citizens of Kenya has now evolved into a mobile payment system based on accounts held by the operator, with transactions authorised and recorded in real time using secure SMS. Since its launch, M-PESA has grown to reach 15 million registered users and contributes 18 per cent of Safaricom’s total revenue.
To support this huge increase in innovation, the mobile industry has invested around US$ 16.5 billion over the past five years (US$ 2.8 billion in 2011 alone) across the five key countries in the region, mainly directed towards the expansion of network capacity. At the same time, given the exponential growth, Sub-Saharan Africa faces a looming ‘capacity and coverage crunch’ in terms of available mobile spectrum and the GSMA is working with operators and governments to address this critical issue.

GSMA research has found that by releasing the Digital Dividend and 2.6GHz spectrum by 2015, the governments of Sub-Saharan Africa could increase annual GDP by US$82 billion by 2025 and annual government tax revenues by US$18 billion and add up to 27 million jobs by 2025. In many Sub-Saharan African countries, mobile broadband is the only possible route to deliver the Internet to citizens and the current spectrum allocations across the region generally lag behind those of other countries.

“A positive and supportive regulatory environment and sufficient spectrum allocation is critical to the further growth of mobile in Africa,” continued Ms. Bouverot. “I am confident that now that we have a physical presence in Africa, we will be able to work together with our members to put the conditions in place that will facilitate the expansion of mobile, bringing important connectivity and services to all in the region.”

- ENDS –

Notes to Editors:
iHub is Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community, which is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part vector for investors and VCs and part incubator. More information can be found here: http://www.ihub.co.ke/about

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com.

Media Contacts
Charlie Meredith-Hardy
+44 (0)7810 050 576
CMeredith-Hardy@webershandwick.com

GSMA Press Office
press@gsma.com

“In the early 1990’s, European policy makers developed specific privacy rules for telecommunications services.  This action, taken before public access to the Internet was widespread, addressed specific concerns about the privacy risks of new services being delivered over traditional telecommunications networks. However, the situation today is very different and consumers now access a vast array of services over the Internet.  These new services, such as “messaging” and “search”, are delivered by a wide range of online companies, based around the world, and are made possible by the ‘open’ and global nature of the Internet.

“The impact of the Internet’s growth in the last two decades has been profound and it is now time to rethink the way user privacy is protected.  It no longer makes sense to have specific regulation focussed on telecommunications infrastructure, as was first conceived.  Instead, policy and regulation should focus on addressing the specific privacy risks faced by individual users, irrespective of the way a service is delivered.  Privacy regulation fit for the 21st century should be technology and service-provider neutral.  The current situation is a legacy of the pre-Internet era and has created market distortions, with different privacy rules and consumer rights applying to the same services, simply because they are delivered by different technologies and/or different types of company.  This is bad for consumer confidence and could undermine the market’s development.

“Recent GSMA research has shown that users also believe the same rules should apply to any party using their data.  Policy makers should therefore move quickly to establish a level playing field.”

-ENDS-

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com

Media contacts:
For the GSMA:
William Parker-Jenkins (Brussels)
32 (0) 490 443 977
williamparker@webershandwick.com

GSMA Press Office
press@gsma.com

Chicago: The GSMA and i3forum today announced that they have launched a deployment initiative to accelerate the take up of IP eXchange (IPX) based interconnect through live commercial pilots for voice traffic. Use of IPX creates the future pathway for interoperable voice services based on IP networks, such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE), and also provides an alternative to today’s current best-effort IP interworking. Mobile and fixed operators including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone will be conducting pilots of voice over IPX this year.

“As we move to an all-IP world, customers will continue to demand high quality and high reliability for their voice services,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA. “By providing global interoperability, this initiative will help to drive the widespread deployment of services such as VoLTE, with the same quality of service that consumers have come to expect.”

“Working together, i3forum carrier members have developed for the benefit of the carrier industry a solid base of IPX implementation guidelines and best practices,” said Philippe Millet, Chairman of the i3forum. “By partnering with the GSMA, we can share that knowledge with the mobile industry to quickly deploy IPX interconnects to scale, delivering enhanced quality and reliability for existing and new IP communication services.”

An already standardised interconnection solution from GSMA and i3forum, called IPX, is to be used to provide a global, private, secure IP network that supports end-to-end quality of service. IPX is an interconnect platform that is offered by a variety of carriers on a competitive basis but with common agreed technical specifications and using consistent commercial models.

IPX delivers an end-to-end managed network solution that offers openness, focuses on quality and provides an extremely efficient multi-service connectivity regime, with the principle of one contract and one single network interface providing many connections and multi-service end-to-end relationships. For all stakeholders, this means they can be confident that the IPX’s commercial and technical benefits will be delivered in a way that minimises investment and maximises business opportunities.

The pilots will pave the way for the technical and commercial agreements necessary to use IPX to interconnect any voice services. The key end result of these pilots will be the effective migration of live voice traffic to IP-based interconnect or using IPX as the interconnect for new voice services, therefore providing a major stepping stone towards interoperable communications services such as VoLTE and RCS.

The initiative will also foster more IPX offerings from carriers and encourage IPX providers to expand their footprint and establish more interconnections with network operators. The greater the number of IPX interconnections that exist, the greater the number of IP-based services that will interconnect in the future, offering better choice for consumers.

-ENDS-

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com.

About the i3forum
The i3forum brings together the communications expertise of more than 49 telecommunication providers, representing a combined retail base of over 1.5 billion customers across more than 100 countries.  The goal of the i3forum is to develop collaborative recommendations for an industry-wide transition of voice and related services to Internet Protocol (IP). The forum’s unified effort to expedite global IP-based voice implementation supports widespread access to innovative and high-quality IP-based services and applications.  Please go to www.i3forum.org.  

Media Contacts

For the GSMA:
Charlie Meredith-Hardy
+44 (0)7810 050 576
CMeredith-Hardy@webershandwick.com

GSMA Press Office
press@gsma.com

For the i3forum:
Isabelle Turcotte
Communications Chairman, i3forum
isabelle.turcotte@tatacommunications.com

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