Bevil Wood­ing

Peo­ple are start­ing to use their mo­bile phones for every­thing from check­ing e-mail to play­ing games and watch­ing movies.

As dig­i­tal lifestyles in­creas­ing­ly move from lap­top and desk­top com­put­ers to smart­phones and tablets, tele­com providers are rac­ing to up­grade ag­ing mo­bile net­works to keep up with the stag­ger­ing growth in end-user de­mand for both fixed and mo­bile broad­band ser­vices. Web brows­ing, au­dio and video stream­ing, so­cial net­work­ing and a host of oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions are all dri­ving In­ter­net band­width con­sump­tion. A Nokia Siemens Net­work study points out that glob­al mo­bile broad­band us­age is "set to ex­plode." Glob­al mo­bile broad­band da­ta con­sump­tion is ex­pect­ed to rise from 15 megabytes per user to­day to one gi­ga­byte by 2020. That's the equiv­a­lent of 1,000 e-books or 4,000 Face­book pho­tos or 50,000 e-mails per per­son per day.

An­oth­er re­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Da­ta Cor­po­ra­tion (IDC) fore­casts that end-user de­mand for world­wide wire­line and mo­bile broad­band traf­fic will in­crease from 9,665 petabytes per month in 2010 to an as­tound­ing 116,539 petabytes per month in 2015. Ac­cord­ing to IDC, by 2015, voice call­ing will shrink to just 0.4 per cent of over­all us­age, while video is ex­pect­ed to sky­rock­et to near­ly 65 per cent. The re­sult is by 2015, we can ex­pect an in­crease in mo­bile broad­band traf­fic of 2,600 per cent. This in­sa­tiable end-user de­mand for In­ter­net-based ser­vices is tax­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work re­sources to the lim­it, and in many cas­es, past the lim­it.

In­ter­net ser­vice providers and mo­bile op­er­a­tors have no choice to deal with this new re­al­i­ty.

Want­ed: Faster mo­bile In­ter­net

A Com­puware-com­mis­sioned a sur­vey of 4,000 mo­bile In­ter­net users from around the globe con­firmed what many have in­tu­itive­ly known: user ex­pec­ta­tions are not be­ing met. Mo­bile In­ter­net users in de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries were all found to be frus­trat­ed with the per­for­mance of Web sites on their cell­phones. The need for high-speed In­ter­net ac­cess on mo­bile de­vices is not just the con­cern of da­ta-hun­gry end-users, nor is it on­ly the pri­or­i­ty of high­er-mar­gin-seek­ing tele­com op­er­a­tors. The sur­vey ti­tled, What Users Want From Mo­bile, al­so re­vealed how un­sat­is­fac­to­ry mo­bile web and ap­pli­ca­tion ex­pe­ri­ences can neg­a­tive­ly shape a con­sumer's opin­ion of an or­gan­i­sa­tion. With end-user al­ready clam­or­ing for more ap­pli­ca­tions and ser­vices, it is no sur­prise that mo­bile op­er­a­tors are rac­ing to up­grade their net­works de­liv­er faster speeds.

Need­ed: Lo­cal con­tent

With the mo­bile web peo­ple ex­pect quick ac­cess to da­ta.

A mo­bile ser­vice that is slow, or worse, not func­tion­ing as in­tend­ed can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on own­er of that ser­vice. Poor mo­bile ser­vice can lead to re­duced rev­enues, in­creased cus­tomer sup­port costs and, dam­age to the cor­po­rate brand.

Busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, li­braries, me­dia hous­es, ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er ser­vice providers must step up and de­liv­er the lo­cal con­tent mo­bile users crave. It is point­less to talk about build­ing knowl­edge-based so­ci­eties if the tools to build it are not matched with the con­tent that fu­els it. In the Caribbean, mo­bile providers are tak­ing the nec­es­sary and ex­pen­sive steps to up­grade ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture. In­creas­ing­ly, there are an­nounce­ments of 3G and 4G net­works be­ing launched. The roll­out of mo­bile broad­band is not tak­ing place as quick­ly as every­one would like, but it is hap­pen­ing.

The high mo­bile pen­e­tra­tion rates the re­gion boasts of are fi­nal­ly be­ing matched by in­fra­struc­ture to take ad­van­tage of it. Users must now be prop­er­ly in­cen­tivised to take up mo­bile da­ta plans to ac­cess new, need­ed ser­vices.

Most users do not use da­ta ser­vices on their phones due to cost. That should change, how­ev­er, as pol­i­cy mak­ers place greater scruti­ny on as ser­vice providers pric­ing schemes.

Af­ford­abil­i­ty is key to wide­spread adop­tion of mo­bile ser­vices. Mo­bile op­er­a­tors will al­so do well to take the ini­tia­tive and of­fer more com­pet­i­tive da­ta pack­ages, hand­set pric­ing and ser­vice bun­dles. Still, in­fra­struc­ture and de­vices must be matched by lo­cal con­tent, lo­cal ap­pli­ca­tions and lo­cal ser­vices. As busi­ness­es in­creas­ing­ly recog­nise the po­ten­tial and sub­stan­tial val­ue that lies in the mo­bile web, we can ex­pect greater in­vest­ment in de­vel­op­ment of ser­vices to meet pent up de­mand. The con­flu­ence of ro­bust in­fra­struc­ture, af­ford­able ac­cess and lo­cal con­tent will be the cat­a­lyst for new in­no­va­tion.

Syn­chro­ni­sa­tion of these el­e­ments al­lows the Caribbean ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion. It al­so pro­vides the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fit users and busi­ness­es seek and that we all de­serve.

In Sec­ond Opin­ion, we in­vite you to send in your ques­tions: sec­on­dopin­ion@guardian.co.tt for ob­jec­tive analy­sis and ad­vice.