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.”

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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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The first and foremost objective is to raise awareness of diabetes and the possibilities for people living with the disease. According to Phil Southerland, co-founder and CEO of Team Novo Nordisk, “When diagnosed with diabetes, many people think that it means they won’t be able to live a normal life and realise their dreams. As an all-diabetes sports team, Team Novo Nordisk shows that, with good blood glucose control, anything is possible and the mHealth Grand Tour is an excellent opportunity to educate, empower and inspire more people.”

The tour also aims to mobilise the GSMA ecosystem to address the global challenge, collaborating with partners to showcase mobile health solutions that are on the market now and ready for large-scale deployment, and in so doing, create a new cross-industry channel for mHealth.

Orange will be the official connectivity partner for the ride, providing services that will capture, store and securely share patient health records during the ride, spanning five European markets. ANT+ will be the official technology partner and use its ultra-low power wireless technology to provide rider performance data and enable biometric statistics to be captured and shared via ANT+ partner devices and ANT+ enabled smartphones.

To date, there are 82 riders registered for the Grand Tour, cycling anything from one to all four stages through Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France and Spain (somewhat fondly known as The Epic). Some are cycling as individuals, some representing their companies and some are riding for their local diabetes organisations. People still interested in taking part or companies wishing to sponsor a team should visit the Web site now.

There are also two official patient teams taking part.  Riders from Team Novo Nordisk’s development team, all of whom are living with type 1 diabetes, will participate alongside Team Blood Glucose (TeamBG), a not-for-profit social enterprise that aims to inspire people with diabetes to achieve their sports and exercise goals. We’ll shortly be able to update you on the mHealth trials to which they’ll be contributing during the ride.

If you would like your company to be involved, please contact Peter Montgomery, who can tell you about the partnership options.

You can follow us on Twitter @mHealth4D and Facebook.

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