Electromagnetic spectrum is the crude oil of last-mile connectivity, especially in Africa where more traditional kinds of last-mile communication infrastructure are not especially well-developed. As in the oil business, anyone who has gained control of spectrum in the last ten to twenty years has made a great deal of money. But unlike oil, spectrum is something that is much harder to put your finger on. The struggle to understand what kind of thing spectrum is and consequently how it should be managed has led to a lot of disagreement, to the extent that we can’t seem to work out whether it is abundant or running out. In the past couple of years you may have seen articles with titles like these:

Apparently even with our remarkable technical capacity to manufacture smartphones that are more powerful than all of NASA’s computing power in 1969, we still can’t really get to grips with the elusive nature of radio spectrum.  To unpack this problem, let’s go back to basics.

What is Electromagnetic Spectrum and Why Does It Require Regulation?

Spectrum is not actually a thing, it is simply the range of possible frequencies for electromagnetic radiation.  By varying the size and frequency of radio waves, we are capable of sending information wirelessly.  This was first achieved with voice and telegraph but has now evolved into digital communication capable of transmitting anything that can represented digitally from documents to sound to video.

So what does wireless communication look like?  Imagine a still pond into which you have dropped a single pebble. It is easy to see the propagation of waves caused by the stone.  Now imagine twenty people dropping stones into the same pond at the same time.  Can you still see the waves caused by your stone?  Unlikely. This is called interference.  You can no longer see your waves.  While radio waves are not physical waves like water, they interfere with each other in a similar sort of manner.  When the signals from two television stations overlap, you can no longer distinguish the program you wanted to watch.  Counter-intuitively, radio waves are not destroyed when they collide with each other.  They pass through each other.  Thus if you had the magical ability to colour only the waves caused by your pebble, you would clearly see your waves again even though others were dropping pebbles at the same time.  The technical meaning of “interference” is at odds with its more colloquial meaning which is to block or obstruct.  When radio waves interfere they don’t impede each other but they can make the original wave form hard to recognise.

And that brings to the most significant reason why radio spectrum is regulated and that is to prevent interference.  Another reason to regulate spectrum is coordination to encourage people doing similar things and using similar technologies to use the same frequencies. In the early days of wireless communication, interference was an easy problem to solve. The range of available spectrum was vast and demand was comparatively small. Interference could be solved by making sure that people using spectrum in the same geographic region were allocated individual bands of spectrum that were well apart from each other in the spectrum band.  This strategy was reasonably successful for nearly 70 years.

And so things might have continued to this day had it not been for the explosion of demand for wireless spectrum from broadband service providers and mobile operators. In the last 15 years, spectrum has gone from an abundant to an apparently scarce resource. But is it truly scarce? It is certainly true that demand currently exceeds supply but there is debate as to the nature of the scarcity and that debate is rooted in the nature of what spectrum is and how, as a result, it should be treated.

So What Kind of a Thing is Spectrum?

A key consideration when looking at public versus private access to any resource is whether that resource is rival or not i.e. does use of it by one person preclude use by another. Rival goods tend to become private property whereas non-rival goods such as solar power, for example, are public goods that do not require explicit management. And of course there is a range of goods in between which are partially rival such as the oceans and nature in general which are non-rival as long as care is taken to ensure the resource is tended and non-overused. Historically, regulators have been obliged to treat spectrum as a rival good because of interference. In fact, in order to ensure the absence of interference for television broadcasters, regulators were obliged to establish spectrum frequency no-man’s-lands between television channels to reduce the chances of stray interference.  However, the now rapid evolution of both wireless and information technology obliges us to reconsider how we think about spectrum and spectrum management.  Is spectrum a rival resource?  The answer is fuzzier than it used to be.

Technological increases in efficiency

First we have to acknowledge the steady increase in spectral efficiency in wireless technologies. Every year we are able to pack more data into less spectrum with less power. This efficiency is typically expressed as bits per hertz per km2.  While spectrum is not infinite, the trend towards efficiency increase shows no immediate sign of slowing down. In fact, wireless pioneer Martin Cooper has coined a law similar to Moore’s Law in which he argues that spectral efficiency has doubled every 30 months since Marconi patented the wireless telegraph in 1897.  The evolution of radio and antenna design has meant that with increased sensitivity we can now communicate the same information with much less power.  You can imagine old television broadcast transmitters as effectively having to “shout” at the relatively deaf television sets.  But sensitivity is only part of the story.  Engineers are making great strides in mitigating wireless interference. It is increasingly possible to design wireless technologies which are sensitive to other radio transmissions and which can operate in “noisy” environments.  The scenario described above where one might be able to recognise the pond waves from ones own pebble is now increasingly possible through techniques like beamforming with multiple antennas.

Administrative increases in efficiency 

Imagine having a hotel room permanently reserved for you in every city in your country.  No matter where or when you travel, you room is always ready.  Great for you but a bit of tough business for the hotel owner.  This is effectively how early spectrum regulation operated and it was feasible because capacity far exceeded demand.  With the situation now reversed, regulators have had to embrace a more nuanced approach to the different dimensions of spectrum.  Here are some of the different ways in which spectrum can be administered:

More control of radio propagation means that we regulate different for different regions in a country.  This might mean having different spectrum license holders in different areas or it might mean varying the allowable power output based on geography.

The proximity of devices to each other can make a difference.  Low power devices that are nearby each other can operate in the same spectrum as much higher power technology but below its “noise floor“.  Imagine two people talking to each other at a rock concert.  Their conversation doesn’t interfere with a the very loud concert yet they are close enough to communicate with each other “at low power”.  I am grateful to Sascha Meinrath for that extremely apt analogy.  

Some spectrum technologies have a specific orientation, that is to say as opposed to radiating generally, they are pointed in a specific direction.  Satellites are a great example of this.  They obvious point upwards.  This creates an opportunity for re-use of the spectrum in ways that don’t point up e.g. point-to-point terrestrial links.  Another means of reducing interference is to use antenna designs that polarise communication i.e. radio waves propagate orthogonally to each other and so reduce interference.

Spectrum can also be shared in time.  This could happen in big chunks such as someone using television spectrum late at night when the station is not broadcasting to sharing of micro slices of time.  Thanks to computing technology, it is possible for the same spectrum to be automatically shared in tiny time slices which give the appearance of continuous connectivity.

Letting Technology Handle the Administration

To date the regulation of spectrum has largely relied on human management and oversight.  This places a significant burden on the regulator and is necessarily somewhat slow.  New technologies offer the potential for the use of spectrum to be managed dynamically via a database.  This would not only lower the barrier to access but could be used to ensure fair play among spectrum holders.  Allowing computer systems to dynamically assign spectrum on demand could create both spectrum and organisational efficiencies. 

Not All Spectrum Is Created Equal

A final important thing to know about spectrum is that not all wireless spectrum is created equal. At the lower frequency end of the radio spectrum, radio waves tend to have better propagation characteristics than at higher frequencies. This means they have better reach because they are capable of travelling through solid objects with less signal loss. Thus radio spectrum at the lower frequencies are often considered quite valuable because fewer transmitters are required to cover an equivalent area at a higher frequency. There is a trade-off though: the physics of lower frequencies present bigger constraints to broadband capacity than higher frequencies.  So higher frequencies can carry more data but don’t propagate as well while lower frequencies have much better range but are more limited in terms of throughput.

So Is There a Crisis?

Perhaps crisis is the wrong word.  Are we running out of spectrum?  The answer to that seems to clearly be that ongoing innovation and efficiency increases will ensure we don’t run out of spectrum for some time to come.  So no crisis?  Well, not exactly.  We still haven’t worked out a very satisfying means of deciding who gets what spectrum and for how long.  As a result, there is an apparent scarcity of spectrum as debate about how best to make spectrum available leads to delays, confusion, and missed opportunities.  More about that in the next posts in this series.

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Water images courtesy of Snappy.joneS 2006 BY-NC-SA and Marc Dezemery 2006 BY-NC-ND

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I’ve been thinking this week about the similarities and differences among the various TV White Spaces (TVWS) pilots that are currently underway in Africa, in particular about Kenya and South Africa, my favourite countries to compare in terms of ICT growth and competitiveness. For the last few years, Kenya has offered a great stick to beat South Africa with. With strong leadership in the Ministry of ICTs and a thriving entrepreneurial sector, they have provided a striking contrast to the internecine battles and lack of progress in the ICT sector in South Africa. Happily, TVWS technology provides a counter-example where South Africa now leads the continent.

TVWS in South Africa

In a few months I will mark five years of advocacy for TVWS regulation. My first blog post on the topic in September 2008 explored what was happening in terms of U.S. TVWS regulation and what potential impact that might have in South Africa. The issue was first picked up in the mainstream press in early 2009. By late 2009, I had begun to collaborate with the Wireless Access Providers Association (WAPA) to look for potential opportunities for change with the regulator (ICASA). We explored Lite Licensing, expanded ISM bands, TVWS, among other technologies. WAPA, in particular its chair Henk Kleynhans, became vocal advocates for TVWS spectrum. We formed the Open Spectrum Alliance which further brought the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) into a coalition of civil society organisations lobbying for regulatory change. Our strategy was to seek every opportunity to build mindshare for the idea of TVWS. You can see a list of articles published in the last 5 years which gives you a sense of how much work was involved in this. From late 2009 through 2010 we talked, we lobbied but not much happened. Then in early 2011, I was contacted by Ory Okolloh who had just joined Google as their Africa Policy Manager. She had picked up on a post I’d written suggesting that Google’s support for TV White Spectrum policy in the US could be extended to Africa to have even greater impact.

With Ory now strategising with us, we decided on our next move which was to convene a workshop bringing experiences from TV White Space regulation elsewhere in the world together with regulators, policy-makers, and representatives from industry and civil society. This workshop took place in October 2011. We invited regulators from South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, and Nigeria. Only CCK, the Kenyan regulator, declined to send a participant. Happily the Kenyan Ministry of ICTs and civil society group KICTANet were represented. Our timing was perfect as the South Africa regulator, ICASA, had already started to take notice of TVWS technology. A September 2011 presentation on strategy from ICASA highlights “white spaces” as part of their digital dividend strategy. The highlight of the workshop was Google’s announcement that they would consider supporting a TVWS trial in South Africa.

It is worth briefly pointing out why trials are important to TVWS regulation. Because TVWS technology is designed to operate as a secondary use of spectrum, it is critical to demonstrate that the technology will not interfere with the primary spectrum holder, the television broadcasters. There has been a lot of pushback on TVWS by broadcasters in the US who argued that TVWS technology would inevitably interfere with broadcast quality. A trial is essential for the regulator to have a body of evidence that shows that TVWS do not interfere. As time goes on and TVWS becomes more mainstream, it is likely that not every country will need to carry out trials as they will be able to draw on the increasing body of evidence from around the world. A trial is also important for the regulator to be able to assess the functioning of the TVWS authentication database that is the emerging default means of managing secondary TVWS use.

As we considered the potential for a trial, two key questions emerged. One, what sort of trial should it be, rural or urban, commercial or government, small or large, etc. Two, who would manage the trial. WAPA was a possibility but as an industry association, it was really set up for operational project management on this scale. Google insisted on not managing the trial themselves as they wisely saw the importance of the trial being a fully South African initiative. Happily through my association with TENET, the National Research and Education Network (NREN) of South Africa, I was able to interest them in taking responsibility for the trial. This led naturally to a decision to connect schools in the Western Cape, bringing in a partner organisation to TENET, the eSchools Network (ESN). TENET hired Henk Kleynhans, who had by then stepped down as WAPA chair, as its project manager and Henk was succeeded by Arno Hart, who manages the trial now. This also became a great opportunity to forge an strong relationship with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) who have taken responsibility for the accurate measurement of spectrum throughout the trial.

And that is where my involvement stops. I relocated from South Africa to Canada shortly after the trial began and now simply cheer on the sidelines and look for more opportunities to advocate for shared spectrum approaches in Africa and beyond. Please forgive the somewhat “Steve-centric” description above. Think of me as just one of the blind men describing an elephant. The TVWS trial is the result of a truly collective effort with people from Google, WAPA, ICASA, CSIR Meraka, TENET, eSchools Network, APC, and ComSol all playing critical roles.

TVWS in Kenya

My version of the Kenyan TVWS story is less complete as I have only observed this from a distance. In July of 2011, as we were organising speakers for the October TVWS Workshop, Ory and I were introduced to Jim Beveridge and Paul Mitchell of Microsoft who have been leading Microsoft’s work in TVWS for some time. Microsoft not only agreed to attend the October workshop but also to share a panel on spectrum at the the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Nairobi in Sept 2011. Microsoft were able to talk about their work in TVWS and also to briefly demonstrate TVWS technology at the event. I think it was at this time that Microsoft were able to connect with the Ministry of ICTs and CCK about TVWS. Once again, there was support from the then Permanent Secretary, Bitange Ndemo but little buy-in from CCK.

Fast forward about 18 months and Microsoft have announced Mawingu, a TVWS initiative that is a partnership between Microsoft, Indigo Telecom, and the government of Kenya. USAID are also an important partner having contributed both money and equipment to the project but they don’t appear to get much of a mention.

As I mentioned in a previous post, this project was inspired by one of the true pioneers of connectivity in Africa, Malcolm Brew. Years ago Malcolm was the CTO of Bushnet Uganda, a company building HF radio links into rural Uganda and the DRC to deliver email into areas previously considered inaccessible except by satellite. Having since moved back to the Isle of Bute in his native Scotland, Malcolm convinced British Telecom to run a TV White Spaces trial on the Isle. Paul Henderson, chair of Indigo Telecom, happened to call Malcolm and was amazed by the quality of their Skype call over the TVWS connection. He immediately saw the potential of TVWS and the result is the project you see today.

One glaring fly in the ointment, however, is the fact that in spite of official support for this project from the Kenyan government, CCK are still reluctant to support the project in any way. To this day, as far as I know, the Mawingu project does not even have an experimental spectrum license to be able to carry out their trials. This is a pretty big deal. Without regulatory buy-in TVWS are going nowhere in Kenya.

So what is behind CCK’s reluctance to embrace TVWS technology and regulation? One Kenyan gov’t representative I spoke to back in 2011 seemed to imply that TVWS was seen as an “American” technology that was being pushed on them. There is an element of truth to this. TVWS technology has largely been developed in the US and US companies do have an element of first-mover advantage with TVWS. However, Huawei are busy developing TVWS equipment and because it is standards-based, it is open to competition. That feels like a bit of a red herring to me.

My gut feeling is that TVWS is, at best, perceived by CCK as an unnecessary added complication to the already complex Digital Switchover process. At worst, there is a lot of lobbying for television spectrum and I suspect that regulators are getting an earful from both broadcasters and mobile operators about why they should ignore TVWS.

Happily this is not the case everywhere. In Tanzania, Microsoft’s pilot with Costech is going very well with full support from the regulator. In fact, on Wednesday next week, Prof. John Nkoma, Director-General of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) is chairing a sesion on TV White Spaces at the Global Symposium for Regulators in Poland. I hope someone from CCK is attending.

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In the field that has come to be known as Information and Communication Technologies for Development or ICT4D, the management and regulation of electromagnetic or wireless spectrum has evaded most donor programmes and debates. Broadly speaking ICT4D is a field that looks at the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on development and explores how equity, rights, and social and economic development can be positively affected by access to ICTs. ICT4D embraces both policy and technology in a quest to create equitable access for all. In this article, I will make the case that the absence of debate or action on the regulation and management of wireless spectrum now stands as a gap in development thinking about ICTs.

Why Worry About Spectrum?

Why should wireless spectrum be given special consideration? For much of the developing world, wired technologies, especially in rural areas, are simply not practical. In the industrialised world, wired technologies feature heavily in the last mile for high-speed data whether via an ADSL-enabled copper telephone line or via a the co-axial copper cable provided by a cable television operators. However copper-based last mile solutions present particular challenges in poor countries. The roll-out cost of copper infrastructure is comparatively high, and often not practical in lower-income countries, even less so in sparsely populated rural areas. The steadily increasing value of copper as a commodity also makes it a target for thieves.  Fibre optic cable infrastructure is another important connectivity technology especially for national and international communication backbones but it is currently only viable as a last-mile solution in wealthy communities. Satellite-based infrastructure is also a powerful technology for delivering access in remote areas but it too is currently not cost-effective as a last mile technology.

This means that when talking about affordable, ubiquitous access to communication in developing countries, wireless technologies offer the most hope for effectively bridging the digital divide. And indeed, the mobile phone has become more or less synonymous with access in the South.

Much has changed since mobile networks began rolling out in the early-to-mid nineties in the South. When the first mobile operators were granted licenses to use wireless spectrum to build their networks, they were simply given the spectrum at no charge. There was plenty of available spectrum to go around. Today popular spectrum bands are auctioned for large amounts of money, often running into the billions of dollars.

Because so much money is now at stake concerning spectrum, the process of making new spectrum available has become complex. It is increasingly hard to ensure that spectrum is made available in a timely manner and to the entities that are most likely to serve a country’s strategic interest.

As ICTs become increasingly valuable to government, industries, and citizens alike, demand for spectrum has steadily increased. Yet the process of making spectrum available and managing it as a resource still fails to feature in ICT4D initiatives and strategies.

So Why Don’t We Talk About Spectrum?

One possible answer to why spectrum doesn’t feature significantly in ICT4D lies in its multi-dimensional complexity. It’s a daunting issue to address, requiring technical, economic, and legal expertise. Here are just a few of the ways in which spectrum is a challenge to understand and manage.

Technical complexity. What we understand about wireless spectrum is flux. Eighty years ago the only way to manage spectrum was to give exclusive rights to a spectrum holder and ensure that significant “guard bands” or gaps between spectrum holders existed in order to prevent interference. Transmitters were obliged to operate at comparatively high power outputs in order to reach the comparatively “deaf” receiver devices. Today wireless communication technology continues to increase in efficiency and in its ability to mitigate interference. There are limits to this, however, and understanding how to maximise the efficient use of spectrum is an ongoing technical challenge which attracts a lot of R&D investment. Understanding the trends and changes in spectrum technology is essential to understanding how to regulate it.

Money and Corruption. As the business of telecommunications has become more lucrative, an increasing premium has been put on access to spectrum. As a result, regulators find themselves managing a resource worth millions of dollars to interested parties. Where that much money is on the table, ensuring fair play in the national strategic interest can be a challenge. Spectrum auctions have emerged as the de facto mechanism for dealing with licensed spectrum yet effective auction design and execution is a challenge even in well-resourced regulatory environments. Success in this area doesn’t just involve designing an optimal auction but also creating a sufficiently well-organised and disciplined process that doesn’t attract legal challenges from disgruntled parties.

Market and Manufacturing Complexity.  Spectrum usage is dependent on having technology capable of using a given set of frequencies and this, in turn is entirely dependent on manufacturers producing transmitters and receivers for those frequencies. Many technologies only become practical when manufactured at scale so there is a kind of catch-22 with new technologies that requires commitment from manufacturers to support specific standards and frequencies. In the past, the trend in spectrum allocation has been to tie a particular spectrum band to a particular technology. This has led to chunks of spectrum lying fallow because the markets and manufacturers did not follow the path that regulators expected. Today, there is an increasing emphasis on technological neutrality in spectrum allocation but this can be challenging because some technologies, for example those that require paired spectrum, are dependent on spectrum allocations being organised in a particular manner.

The Challenge of Coordination. Prior to the advent of mobile telephony and wireless broadband technologies, the availability of spectrum exceeded demand and incentives to coordinate spectrum allocation existed but were often trumped by local or regional priorities. So while there is broad coordination in general areas of spectrum use, there are critical variances in the details. This has led to the need for mobile phones that operate in three, four, or more spectrum bands in order provide a working service internationally. Regulators today find themselves in a catch-22 situation where they recognise the need to harmonise spectrum but are tempted to act individually because the pace of international coordination is so slow.

Institutional Capacity. When it comes to effective regulation of spectrum, there is a clear need for the technical, economic, legal, and administrative capacity within every country to address the above issues effectively. For developing countries, this is often the most significant challenge as communication regulators are typically under-resourced and sometimes insufficiently independent of state and industry alike. Because so much money is on the table, regulators are often outmatched by their wealthy industry counterparts.

Where Do Things Stand?

In poor countries, regulators and governments are caught between the growing market demand for more spectrum and the need for more human and financial resources to manage the increasingly complex web of issues including spectrum auctions, technological advances, regional harmonisation, not to mention vested interests.

This is compounded by the fact that decisions about spectrum can have consequences that can last a generation or more. The interplay of investment, evolving technical standards, and administrative complexity tends to make this a very slow-moving decision-making environment. This means that not only does it take a long time to introduce new spectrum regulation but also that strategic errors in regulation can take many years to undo.

South Africa is a good example of how challenging it can be to carry out a spectrum regulation change. In May of 2010, the South African communication regulator, ICASA, announced an auction of spectrum in the 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz bands. The auction was plagued with problems. Insufficient attention was given prior to the auction to the need to migrate incumbents within the 2.6GHz band in order preserve technological neutrality. Build-out requirements for the spectrum licenses were claimed to be unrealistic by some major players as well as other factors that were critiqued. For nearly two years the regulator went through an on-again, off-again process with the auction. Ultimately the auction was withdrawn and three years later the spectrum remains unavailable. Worse, trust in the regulator’s capacity to successfully carry out a spectrum auction has been undermined.

Unlicensed versus Licensed Spectrum

Standing in stark contrast to the traditional method of assigning spectrum through exclusive-use licenses is the world of unlicensed spectrum. Unlicensed spectrum is regulated but instead of being managed through a licensing process, it is regulated through the technical specifications imposed on devices operating in spectrum designated as unlicensed. Typically this means that the power output of these devices is required to be lower than is found in licensed environments. The lower power output limits the ability of any device to interfere with another and any device operating in these bands must be tolerant of interference.

Originally conceived for non-communication-related use of radio spectrum, the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands have come to be dominated by popular communication technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and Near Field Communication. The success of these technologies, WiFi in particular, is something to consider in the context of spectrum management strategies. The ultimate use of the ISM bands was not predetermined. WiFi emerged as a success story more through a process of natural selection than by design. Its success has eclipsed all expectations.

According to market research firm IHS, in excess of 2.14 billion WiFi chipsets will ship in 2013 – 20% more than in 2012. WiFi technology is emerging as a critical part of mobile broadband infrastructure. According to a survey of Android devices by mobile analytics vendor Mobidia, WiFi predominates as the access technology for smartphone and tablet data. This research is corroborated by reports from Nielsen that WiFi also dominates smartphone data in the UK with only 22% of data traffic travelling via mobile networks.

It is interesting to note that this dominance has evolved without the intervention or design of mobile operators. The success and importance of WiFi to broadband strategies has begun to receive some attention in the industrialised world but receives almost no attention in debates on bridging the “digital divide”.  A recent ITU / Unesco report entitled The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion for All mentioned WiFi only twice.

As a broadband connectivity success story, unlicensed spectrum is under-represented. We rely on WiFi connectivity everywhere we go yet it is seldom mentioned in a strategic context, perhaps because its growth has occurred so organically.

TV White Spaces Spectrum – a new frontier

While the existing unlicensed spectrum technologies have gone from strength to strength, a new opportunity for unlicensed spectrum use has emerged in the form of TV White Spaces spectrum. Originally conceived of as a technology that could take advantage of the guard bands or “white spaces” that were left between television channels to prevent interference, TV White Spaces (TVWS) spectrum is a secondary spectrum technology that can take advantage of unused television spectrum in a dynamic manner. In the US and the UK, communication regulators have endorsed TVWS regulation and the commercial scale-up of TVWS technology has begun.

What Promise Does TV White Spaces Technology Hold for the Developing World?

There are four key reasons why TVWS technology holds tremendous promise for the developing world:

Low Risk Regulation. Because TVWS is a secondary-spectrum-use technology, there is no need to re-allocate spectrum in order to regulate its use. It doesn’t commit the regulator to giving away a spectrum band for years to come and doesn’t expose the government to the challenges of spectrum auctions which range from stalled processes (as we have seen in South Africa) to widespread corruption (as we have seen in India). Whether TVWS succeeds in its potential to spur the same innovation and market development that has happened in WiFi is a risk for the market not for the regulator.

Availability of Television Spectrum. The profusion of terrestrial broadcast channels in use in North America and Europe may limit the impact of TVWS applications in these regions. However, a region like Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is very different. Most countries in SSA have few terrestrial broadcast channels in use, leaving large amounts of television spectrum available for use. This is even more true in rural areas where TVWS show their greatest potential. The flexible nature of TVWS technology means that more spectrum can be taken advantage of in the least serviced areas. Of course this doesn’t preclude using television spectrum for other purposes too such as digital terrestrial TV and mobile broadband.

A Great Rural Technology. While mobile technology has been an access boon for the developing world, mobile operators still struggle to deploy access in rural areas where low incomes and sparse populations do not make a viable economic proposition for the establishment and maintenance of mobile base stations. TVWS has specific advantages that make it well-suited to being a complementary access technology. First, TVWS use of the UHF spectrum band offers better propagation characteristics than other technologies higher up in the spectrum band. This means that individual base stations can reach further, thereby lowering the total number of base stations required for a given areas. Second, UHF spectrum doesn’t require direct line-of-sight between radios. This will also lower the cost of deployment thereby reducing the need for high towers and more complex network design. Finally, the market cost of TVWS devices will be closer to that of WiFi equipment than traditional wireless broadband equipment used by licensed spectrum operators.

Opportunity for Entrepreneurship. Perhaps the least acknowledged benefit of TVWS regulation is the opportunity that it will offer to entrepreneurs. Rising demand for licensed spectrum has raised the bar for market entry so high that none but the wealthiest of investors can get involved. The high cost of entry also raises the risks of market entry. By contrast, TVWS technology will open up rural broadband service delivery to an entire generation of entrepreneurs interested in providing local, competitive broadband services. If TVWS technology lives up to its promise, it will not only provide opportunities to small entrepreneurs but perhaps will also provide the foothold they require to nip at the heels of and ultimately challenge the market hold of incumbent operators.

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Google and Microsoft

After a welcome by Minister Cheikh Abiboulaye Dieye, I moderated the first session giving first a brief introduction to TVWS.  Much more interesting though were the two key presenters for the first session:  Kai Wulff  of Google and Paul Mitchell of Microsoft. To have Google and Microsoft on the same stage making common cause for affordable access through TV White Spaces spectrum is a bit of a dream come true for me.  For Microsoft and Google this is very much a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  They compete in search, mapping, mobiles and just about everything else but in this case Google and Microsoft share an enemy in the high cost of access in Africa.  Both stand to benefit from having more Africans affordably online and in this particular case, their corporate goals are fairly well-aligned with a development goal.  And on that front, standby for news in June of a new industry association on dynamic spectrum supported by both Google and Microsoft.

What stuck in my mind from this session was an interesting analogy shared by Kai Wulff who pointed out that in Africa, taxi drivers generally don’t fill up their tank completely but just enough to get where they need to go.  Similarly, pay-as-you-go airtime has allows for dynamic management of phone charges.  This is common knowledge but it was a nice insight that this conceptual framework might be applied to spectrum management.

Pilots and Trials

So what’s going on in Africa with TVWS?  A lot.  Both Google and Microsoft are sponsors of significant of trials in Africa; Google in South Africa and Microsoft in Kenya.  There are also independent efforts going on in Malawi.  Here’s an update on them.

South Africa

The Google-sponsored trial in the Western Cape of South Africa is a small success story in collaboration.  TVWS technology was initially instigated by an active civil society and by the Wireless Access Providers Association (WAPA).  After gaining the attention and then support of Google, other key players came on board.

• TENET, the South African National Research and Education Network (NREN), offered to be the project manager for a TVWS trial;
• ICASA, the South African communications regulator,  expressed its support for the trial;
• CSIR, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, a parastatal research agency, offered to carry out the necessary spectrum measurements to provide the necessary evidence of non-interference that would pave the way towards regulation; and,
• the e-Schools Network provided a local network of schools in need of affordable access to be connected through the trial.

Arno Hart, TENET’s project manager for the trial, presented the work of the trial so far.  So far 10 schools have been connected representing more than 6400 students.  So far the technology has met its most important goal which is demonstrating non-interference with television broadcasts.  Cape Town has more active terrestrial television broadcast channels than most place in South Africa so it was ideal for a trial of TVWS.  The throughput and latency of the connectivity is not quite the 10mbps over 8km that has been advertised but it was still respectable.  It is evident that TVWS technology is still evolving and performance improvements can be expected.

Arno’s talk had lots of interesting insights into TVWS such as the fact that the frequencies below an in-use television channel are more sensitive to interference in the frequency directly above the channel.  This is because the lower end of the television channel is a marker that helps define the wave form for the channel.  Interfering with this marker has a bigger impact on the television broadcast than interference at the top end of the channel.  Critical information like this will help shape the spectrum authentication database that will determine what television spectrum can be used for TVWS access and where.  You can read more about the trial on TENET’s website.

Kenya

The genesis of the TVWS pilot in Kenya is a little different.  It was inspired by one of the true pioneers of connectivity in Africa, Malcolm Brew.  Years ago Malcolm was the CTO of Bushnet Uganda, a company building HF radio links into rural Uganda and the DRC to deliver email into areas previously considered inaccessible except by satellite.  Having since moved back to the Isle of Bute in his native Scotland, Malcolm convinced British Telecom to run a TV White Spaces trial on the Isle.  Paul Henderson, chair of Indigo Telecom, a Kenya satellite services provider, happened to call Malcolm and was amazed by the quality of their Skype call over the TVWS connection.  He immediately saw the potential of TVWS for rural Kenya and, with the support of Microsoft and USAID, has rolled out a pilot in Nanyuki, Kenya.  You can read more about the pilot on Microsoft’s website.

While this pilot has gone ahead with a lot of international support, its internal support is a little more complex.  The pilot enjoys support from the Ministry of Information and Communications but it doesn’t appear that the communication regulator (CCK) are particularly involved in the trial.   I was disappointed not to see someone from CCK at the Dakar event.  Moving forward it will be essential to engage more closely with the regulator as they are crucial to the success of TVWS.

Malawi

Another very interesting trial is getting underway in Malawi.  Championed by Dr. Chomora Mikeka of the University of Malawi and Jonathan Pinifolo of the Malawi communications regulator (MACRA), they are carrying out background research in anticipation of setting up a pilot in a few months.  They have partnered with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste who have a long history of supporting wireless research in African universities.

What I found interesting about their story so far was their innovative approach.  Among other things, they have developed a very low-cost spectrum analyser based on Open Hardware which has allowed them to carry out a spectrum survey at a fraction of the typical cost.  In listening to Dr. Mikeka, it was evident to me that Africa has the potential not just to be a leader in regulatory innovation around TVWS but a technology leader as well.

Others

And of course there is more going on.  Microsoft is supporting other pilots in Tanzania and soon in the Limpopo province in South Africa.  In Nigeria, a company called WaveTek has secured the West African distribution rights for Carlson Wireless and is on the verge of carrying out a trial.

Manufacturers and Wireless Standards

There are an array of competing standards around TVWS technology.  First there is the 802.22 standard also known as Wi-Far which has evolved out of the WiMax standards group.  Next there is the 802.11af standard also known as White-Fi which has evolved out of the WiFi standards group.  Then there is also the Weightless standard which has been put forward by Neul, one of the earliest developers of TVWS technology.  Neul developed its own Weightless standard because they originally designed their TVWS technology for machine to machine (M2M) communication.  As the demand for TVWS in rural broadband applications became more apparent, they adapted their Weightless standard for broadband use.  Finally there is the wild card in the mix, the TD-LTE standard for White Spaces being developed by Huawei.

Neul have licensed their technology to Carlson Wireless so currently all Carlson equipment also uses the Weightless standard.  Interesting to note that Neul are also releasing their own equipment shortly which will perhaps end up competing with Carlson.  The South African TVWS trial is using Carlson equipment as is the Malawi trial.  In Kenya, the TVWS pilot is being carried out with Adaptrum equipment.  Adaptrum currently use the 802.22 standard or something fairly close to that standard.

So which standard is likely to dominate?  That was what I hoped to find out more about at the event but I was disappointed.  Manufacturers were pretty vague on the topic.  When I asked the question, I didn’t get much more than “the market will decide”.  On the one hand letting the market decide is a good thing but on the other hand, the balkanisation of the standards community makes it hard to build momentum.

From what I can make out so far, 802.22 is designed for rural broadband but is not that well-loved by manufacturers because it is a complex standard to implement.  802.11af is simpler and easier to get to market but suffers some of the limitations of its WiFi parentage.  Weightless appears to have an early advantage but will other manufacturers really but into a standard so closely associated with one company?  Finally, TD-LTE doesn’t currently feature in any trials and is targeted at the mobile industry not the rural broadband industry but it would be a mistake to discount Huawei from any calculations in this arena.  I found it a bit hard to understand the presenter from Huawei but I believe a typical use case for TD-LTE White Spaces would be something like backhaul and coordination among femtocells.  While an interesting and possibly very efficient use of TVWS, the TD-LTE approach holds much less interest for me because it puts TVWS directly into the mobile operator supply chain as opposed to enabling entrepreneurship that could lead to more competition in the broadband marketplace.

White Spaces and the Authentication Database

Although it didn’t start out that way, TVWS technology is now inextricably connected with the concept of an authentication database.  Early proponents of TVWS argued for a spectrum-sensing approach to regulation where TVWS devices would regularly “sniff” the spectrum to see if it was in-use by the primary spectrum holder and dynamically switch out of any occupied spectrum. There was sufficient push-back from broadcasters on viability of spectrum sensing that an alternative had to be devised.  This alternative came in form of an authentication database that all TVWS devices are obliged to connect to in order to receive information about available spectrum in their area.

Andy Lee of Google gave a great presentation explaining the basics of how the authentication database works.  In short, the database combines information about spectrum in use with information about the geography of the region and performs a calculation to determine where current broadcasts reach and on what frequencies.  It then uses the inverse of that to establish what spectrum is free for use and where.

In Africa, even in urban areas, it is clear that there is a lot of unused television spectrum that could be re-purposed for TVWS rural broadband applications.

A lot of work has been done in the US and elsewhere to establish an open standard for TVWS databases. The Internet Engineering Task Force have developed the PAWS standard for accessing TVWS databases.  While different companies have developed TVWS database applications, Google and Telcordia among them, they all operate according to a common standard.  Thus it is possible to have more than one authentication database in a country.

In terms of regulation and TVWS databases, it is worth noting that there is one significant difference between US and UK regulation of TVWS.  In the UK, the power output of the TVWS device is not pre-determined but can be dynamically set via the database.  Thus if the database knows that the device is in a remote areas with few or no terrestrial television broadcasters, it can permit the TVWS to operate at a higher power output offering better range and throughput.

There was some discussion among the participants as to whether an authentication database was the best approach to TVWS for Africa.  Some people argued that this was importing unnecessary limitations from the US.  It is an interesting question.  On the one hand, I would like to see TVWS achieve the same kind of success that WiFi has through an unlicensed environment.  I fear that constraints such as an authentication database might limit the uptake of the technology.  On the other hand, variable power output (described above) which a database enables is a significant advantage.  In addition, an authentication database also offers a big security blanket to regulators who need not worry that they are opening Pandora’s Box because they ultimately are still in complete control of the spectrum.  This may prove to be a critical ingredient to speed adoption.

The Regulators

Most interesting of all was what the African communication regulators had to say.   Speaking at the event were representatives from the communication regulators in Senegal, Niger, Malawi, and South Africa.  In the audience, there was representation from communication regulators of Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Togo.  What was most striking for me was the wide range of perspectives on TVWS. Some regulators clearly saw the potential and were working to integrate TVWS into their strategic planning and others were frankly sceptical.  Of those who were doubtful of TVWS technology, a lot of the concern centred around the fact that television spectrum was already a subject of heated debate related to the Digital Switchover and the potential release of one or more IMT bands for mobile use.  The spectrum bands in question,  700MHz and 800MHz,  form the upper block of the UHF television band.  I have my own opinions about how this could be handled but it is clear that there is a lot of interest in television spectrum and, as a result, a lot of concern that it be handled appropriately.   It was proposed by some that TVWS should wait until the Digital Switchover was complete and firm agreements had been made on new IMT bands such as the 700MHz band.  In my opinion, making these issues dependent on each other robs TVWS technology of its primary innovation, the ability to continuously and dynamically adapt to a changing spectrum regulatory landscape.  One thing is clear to me and that is that more awareness raising and healthy debate of TVWS needed.

No discussion of regulators would be complete without mentioning the stand-out presentation from the UK regulator (OFCOM)’s head of spectrum, Prof H Nwana.  Prof Nwana’s roots are in Cameroon but at OFCOM he leads what is arguably the most progressive approach to dynamic spectrum regulation in the world.  His vision of the evolution of dynamic spectrum management is inspiring.

Summary

This is a watershed moment for Television White Spaces in Africa.  There is a lot going on.  With the backing of companies like Microsoft and Google, TVWS are getting recognition as a key part of the regulatory toolbox.  Manufacturing is starting to come on board but the process is a little slower than anyone had hoped.  TVWS equipment has yet to achieve its full mass market potential.  Equally the standards for TVWS are still evolving.  Expect to see one of these standards leap forwards in the next 24 months.  The tide of TVWS is at the flood and it is up to African governments, regulators, and entrepreneurs to decide whether to seize it or not.

All the presentations from the TV White Spaces Africa Forum 2013 are available online. Kudos to Google and all the other partners for making this extremely worthwhile event happen.  Finally, if I have missed nuances or missed the mark entirely on any of the above, please do correct me.

However things turn out, it is clear to me that we need a better understanding of the choices and their implications.  While most of my time is still taken up with Village Telco, I am very happy to say that I am now also affiliated with the Network Startup Resource Centre (NSRC), an organisation that has dedicated itself to building the capacity of Internet network operators around the globe . My role with them is to build understanding of the opportunity that shared spectrum technologies and policies represent.

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Current television spectrum allocation

Digital Divide, Digital Dividend, Digital Yadi-yadah.  You would be forgiven if the term Digital Dividend didn’t immediately resonate with you given the proliferation of all things “Digital” in recent years.  A quick reminder then.  The Digital Dividend refers to the spectrum that is freed up in the conversion from analogue television broadcasting to digital broadcasting, also referred to as the Digital Switch-over (DSO), a change that has largely already taken place in the industrialised world and is slowly gathering pace in Africa.  This involves deploying digital transmitters to replace the analogue ones and either new digital televisions or digital Set Top Boxes (STBs) for existing televisions.  But the fact that more channels may become available or that you can receive television channels optionally in high-definition is less exciting to me than what can be done with the spectrum that is freed up. How much spectrum is being freed up?  There is over 400MHz of television spectrum.

Digital broadcasting uses a fraction of the spectrum that analogue broadcasting does and in Africa, there are few enough analogue terrestrial television channels per country to begin with.  What is more, it turns out that television spectrum exists within a very attractive range of the frequencies. What makes a frequency attractive?  Propagation or the ability of a radio wave to go through obstacles.  The lower down you go down the spectrum, the longer the radio waves and the less they are inclined to bounce off solid objects.   That means that you can cover a larger area with a single transmitter and that means that the cost of building a communication network drops significantly.  There are trade-offs however.  Longer waves carry less information so you can’t pack as much data into the same channel but that is a very reasonable trade-off when it comes to planning rural networks where the cost of network deployment may be a bigger issue than ensuring >20MB/s download speeds. So the Digital Dividend spectrum is extremely appealing from an infrastructure cost-of-ownership perspective.  It is unfortunate then that most of the debate around the Digital Dividend has largely been held within the broadcast community.  Not that digital broadcasting isn’t important but the Digital Dividend is an extremely valuable resource that needs to be considered holistically in terms of its national strategic value.

At the World Radio Congress (WRC-12) last year, there was confirmation of 790-862MHz (popularly known as the 800MHz band) as a global IMT (mobile) band. There was also a move by some African countries to have the 694-790MHz band (popularly known as the 700MHz band) made available in Region 1 (Africa and Europe) on an accelerated basis, probably because there are lots of CDMA players already in the 800MHz band. 700MHz is likely to be confirmed as an IMT band for Region 1 at the WRC in 2015.  So that’s good news for mobile operators except that the release of the 700MHz and 800MHz bands is being treated as contingent on the completion of the DSO.  Given the delays that have plagued the DSO on the continent, this seems like a dangerous strategy.  Why can’t one or both of these two new IMT bands be cleared for use while the DSO is going on in the lower end of the television spectrum?  At the very least, preparatory work for release of this spectrum ought to be going on now.

What a future allocation of spectrum might look like.

But the situation is worse than just a disconnect between the broadcaster and mobile operators.  There is also the prospect of missing out on an alternative access technology that could make a real difference for rural access.  Television White Spaces technology has the potential to create a vibrant rural access industry in Africa.

Television white spaces refers to the guard bands left between analogue television broadcast channels in order to prevent interference. TV White Spaces technology is capable of serendipitously re-using that empty spectrum without interfering with existing television broadcast. The initial vision was that through spectrum sensing, the devices would automatically use whatever empty spectrum was available, as a secondary user. That means if a television signal suddenly turn on in a frequency being used by a TV White Spaces device, it would automatically cease using that frequency and find another empty frequency to use. The broadcast and wireless microphone industry in the U.S. were not satisfied with this solution and the concept of an geo-located authentication database was introduced whereby TV White Spaces devices would need to authenticate against a spectrum database to see what spectrum was available for use in the area it was being used. Very low power TV White Spaces devices are still allowed to use just spectrum sensing. In general TV White Spaces regulation in the US has been the victim of massive lobbying and the result is some extremely hamstrung regulation.

The UK has largely followed the US regulation with one significant improvement. The power output level of the devices is not fixed but can be dictated by the settings in the authentication database. This means that higher power output levels could be assigned in sparsely populated rural areas versus areas where there are many other spectrum users.

What is exciting about this technology?

1. No spectrum license required or at least a very nominal one. This means new opportunities for small entrepreneurs to provide alternative access.
2. Great propagation. A typical TV White Spaces link can go 8-10km without any effort and is not obstructed by trees, buildings, etc.
3. Innovation. WiFi has gone from a niche spectrum for experiments to an industry that is expected to be worth over 6 billion dollars in 2015. ~70% of smartphone data traffic in the rich world goes over WiFi. This is what open spectrum offers. TV White Spaces has the potential to be another such industry because of the low barrier to entry.
4. No spectrum re-farming required. Because TV White Spaces technology is designed for secondary use of spectrum, there is no need to move the primary spectrum holder. This is a quick and easy win. Conflicts can be easily resolved by the regulator thanks to the authentication database.

TV White Spaces are finally gaining traction however.  Google is sponsoring a pilot in South Africa and in Kenya, Microsoft are supporting a pilot in partnership with the Kenyan government and a satellite operator there.  Those are good signs but in general the discussion of the Digital Dividend has been trapped in bureaucratic silos.  There needs to be a broader acknowledgement of the strategic value of the Digital Dividend and a strategy that addresses it holistically.

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For those working in the complex world of International Development trying to bring about more equality in the world, through means misguided or otherwise,  information and communication technologies (ICTs) seemed to offer tremendous potential to accelerate positive change in the world.  And so new aid programs were born that attempted to catalyse development activities through the use of ICTs.

As the Internet optimists had foreseen, ICTs turned out to be very useful for everyone, even and most especially the poor.  But where there is utility, there is money and the communication infrastructure business soon became a multi-billion dollar industry.  Technology companies rapidly outpaced development efforts and soon mobile phone infrastructure had spread across the developing world.

Slightly embarrassed by their own efforts, development agencies leapt on board with mobile and Internet companies to partner in bringing access to the developing world.  A beautiful public private partnership was born. Sounds great doesn’t it?  Everyone go to Davos.

What is missing from this picture is the fact that large technology companies are not in the business of saving the world.  They are in the business of serving their shareholders.  And that means that the story they tell the world about their involvement in the developing world, is one that serves their shareholders.  What do I mean by “story they tell”?  Narrative is the basic unit of human thought and everything we do is constructed in the context of a story that we tell ourselves and that we tell others about what is happening in the world and what our role is in it.  Some years ago I was introduced to a beautiful quotation from Alasdair Macintyre (thank you Steve Denning) that has stuck with me:

“unless we have the critical tools to understand in which story we stand, our praxis runs the risk of prolonging not only the problem but the problem story. Often a problem will be solved only by dissolving the story”

In other words, if you don’t know whether your Hamlet or Rosencrantz or in King Lear or The Comedy of Errors, there is little chance of you successfully changing your role or the outcome of the story.

Corporations have been known to occasionally deviate from the very strictest truth in the stories they tell in order to serve their corporate interests.   An energy company might de-emphasise the danger of certain kinds of energy sources because of the vast profits to be made from them.  A mining company might obscure the provenance of minerals sourced from a conflict zone.  Otherwise upright corporations pay bribes where there is a lot of money to be made and an opportunity to do so without getting caught.  Where there is a lot of money on the table, corporations tend to act first in the interest of their bottom line.

And there is a lot of money in the world of telecommunications and the Internet.  Carlos Slim didn’t get to be the richest man in the world by baking cakes.  This turns out to be a problem because communication networks, thanks to the magic of network effects, naturally tend toward monopolies or at least oligopolies.  This makes it much easier for communications corporations to extract more than their fair share of revenue from the average customer.  Why do they do this?  Because they can, because it is what they exist to do, to maximise profits for their shareholders.

This is not about the developing world in particular.  It is true in the U.S. and Canada.  For an insight into the U.S. watch this chilling talk by Susan Crawford about the state of broadband infrastructure.  Communication companies have the chips stacked in their favour and absolutely require regulation in order to counter-balance the natural tendency toward monopoly.

When it comes to the developing world however there is an amazing dearth of critical discussion about the narrative put forward by communication companies.  Development agencies treat these corporations as if they were their friends.  They are not your friends.  They may have temporarily aligned interests but they are not your friends.  They may be staffed by excellent and well-meaning people but their collective interest, nay their responsibility, is to their bottom line and it is frankly amazing that development agencies have managed to maintain an apparent state of willful naivete for such a long time.

This obliviousness leads to pretty dubious activities like the funding of “mobile apps for development”.  Oh sweet saffron, how the mobile operators must have chuckled when they heard that one.  Honestly, they don’t need your help.  Curiously there is little funding going into supporting good policy and regulation of telecom and Internet markets in the developing world, to ensuring real competition and fair pricing.  There are some stand-out exceptions but they are just that, exceptions.

So when the ITU develops a global next generation broadband strategy and it fails to mention WiFi, do you think it might be because mobile corporations have an interest in promoting their own infrastructure rather?  Do you think that when Google launches a campaign to Save the Internet that it is altruism or self-interest?  When Facebook offers free access on mobile phones, is that because they care about the poor?   Please don’t get me wrong, I am not some whining lefty moaning about how corporations are evil.  Corporations are lovely.  Google, in particular, in serving its corporate interest of having more bits consumed globally is in a position to do some very useful  disruptive things in both the rich and poor worlds.  Disruptive corporations in particular are lovely as they pry out the roots that monopolistic corporations dig in the ground.  However, they are still not your friend.  They need to be watched and called to account when they behave badly, especially when a big fat pile of money is on the table.  And this is what the international development community is signally failing to do.

So what’s the tl;dr?  Fewer apps and more support for ICT policy and regulation, please.  It’s not sexy, it takes a long time, and often it fails to succeed against the massive advantage that huge communication corporations have.  But it is where a more ICTD support should be going.  Naturally I speak with a degree of self-interest.  Simply making WiFi and VoIP legal everywhere would be a big leg-up for Village Telco.  Where would I be without my own little corporate narrative?  :-)

Original image courtesy Philip Martin.

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“mobile broadband could prove the platform for achieving the boost needed to get progress back on track – at end 2011, there were already almost twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions as fixed broadband connections.”

But what does it actually mean and is it really true?  When talking about our mobile broadband future, it is essential to distinguish between devices and networks.  The two things are not necessarily the same thing.

The Future is Mobile Devices

This future I believe in.  Small, low-power wireless devices whether phones or tablets are taking over the way we interact with each other and with content.  New markets and services are being created every day for mobile devices.  The world of app and apps stores are creating new opportunities for innovation and adding value.

The Future is Mobile Networks

This is the future mobile operators would like you to believe in but the evidence is increasingly not in their favour.  Here are some statistics that may change your perspective of our mobile broadband future.

Global Smartphone-originated Data Traffic
January 2012 – Source: Mobidia

A recent study by Mobidia revealed that about 70% of smartphone data traffic travelled via WiFi and not mobile networks.  Keep in mind that this research was not done in Africa, it was done in the industrialised world.  What we are seeing overwhelmingly is WiFi become the default form of data access and cellular access being relegated to those times when WiFi is not available, an increasingly rare phenomenon in the rich world.

The figures are even higher for tablet traffic.  And while we’re at it, since when are tablets “mobile” devices?  Of the fifty million tablets sold in the United States, only 8% have mobile capacity.  The tablet is not a mobile device, it is a WiFi device.  Google’s Nexus7 tablet is WiFi-only.  Both Microsoft’s new Surface tablet and Apple’s new iPad Mini are likely to launch as WiFi-only devices.  Why would Apple and Microsoft do that?  Well, one reason might be to avoid the painful process of negotiating mobile carrier agreements.  Imagine if computer manufacturers had to negotiate ISP agreements to connect a computer to the net.  The latest tablet is also a whole lot cheaper than a smartphone.  Compare a $200 Nexus7 tablet with an $800 Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.

So what’s my point here?  My point is that the UN Broadband Commission’s recently published report on Achieving Digital Inclusion mentions WiFi exactly twice, both times parenthetically.  Mobile operators would like you to believe that the future of mobile broadband lies in the LTE networks that they are building.  And certainly that is partly true but only partly.  If the Mobidia stats are to be believed, about 30% true.

Mobile operators have no interest in WiFi because they currently have no control over WiFi networks although that is beginning to change in the U.S.  And we get reports like the one from the UN Broadband Commission because the dialogue at the ITU is dominated by operators.  The Broadband Commission itself is chaired by Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world.  The irony of putting the richest man in the world in charge of a commission to connect the poor appears to be lost on the UN.

In any discussion about the mobile broadband future of Africa, WiFi is simply not part of the discussion.  Yet the evidence is before our eyes of the strategic importance of WiFi to our “mobile” devices.  It’s cheap and fast and grew to solve the problem of affordable access by chance not by design.  It happened because WiFi is an open space for technology developers to innovate.  No carrier agreements required.

Also not mentioned in the UN Broadband Commission’s report is the potential of Television White Spaces spectrum, a space for with the potential for massive innovation in rural access.  Another area not controlled by mobile operators.

The benefits of WiFi go beyond just cheaper access.  They also create the opportunity to eliminate the weakness of a single point of failure that mobile networks create.  WiFi infrastructure can make it harder to wilfully shutdown communication in a given geographic region.  The key to resilient networks is plurality of access and WiFi is already embedded in every smart device you can think of.

It would be nice to see WiFi recognised for the powerful role that it is already playing in mobile broadband and to see it figure in national strategic broadband plans for the future.

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The implementation of mandatory SIM card registration has been justified as necessary in order to assist law enforcement agencies in tracking down criminals.  Images are conjured up of thieves executing elaborate plots with the aid of disposable mobile phones.  In the post 9/11 zeitgeist, this is an argument that most find easy to digest.  Indeed, so much so that I am unaware of these policies being buttressed by any research evidence linking SIM card registration to a drop in crime or an increase in solved criminal cases.  Most news articles seem to provide as rationale the fact that other countries in the region are implementing such policies. A search through Google Scholar reveals very little research on this.  And indeed the only research I could find on mandatory SIM registration in Africa focused primarily on its economic impact on subscriber growth.

So what’s to worry about?  The classic rebuttal to objections to this kind of data collection is that if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.  And indeed, the “intent” of most legislation around SIM card registration is to clearly define and control when and how this information might be accessed by law enforcement agencies. But what is worrying is not so much lawful interception but rather when those rules get bent or broken.  We have seen countless examples now around the world of sensitive data being unlawfully accessed from email accounts to credit cards.

The very act of collecting data carries the responsibility to provide adequate methods and oversight for securing that data.  When organisations propose to collect potentially sensitive data, the burden of proof should be on them to justify the need for such data collection as well as their ability to keep that information secure.  I don’t believe the case has been clearly made for SIM card registration.  Certainly I don’t think the benefits outweigh the dangers.  Here is an example of why.

IMSI Catchers

There is a paradigm shift going on in the world of electronic surveillance.  It has gone from complex, expensive, and sometimes unreliable to simple, inexpensive, and highly accurate.  Increasingly surveillance technology has become commoditised.  The device advertised at the left is a great example of this.  It is an IMSI catcher, a device that listens passively to mobile phone traffic and picks up the identity of all of the phones in a given area.  It can be purchased for a few thousand dollars.  About the size of a suitcase, it can be installed on the bottom of a helicopter or on top of an apartment building.  In many countries, the passive nature of the IMSI catcher often means that using one does not legally constitute interception and thus they can be used with oversight by law enforcement agencies.

Now imagine that the government of the beautiful democracy that you live in does the unthinkable and implements some legislation that you object to.  You decide to exercise your free speech by participating in a public rally objecting to this legislation.  A helicopter hovers in the distance with an IMSI catcher attached to it.  Now your phone is in a database that has been collected of everyone who participated in the rally.  Without mandatory SIM registration, that database is just a list of phone numbers.  With it, it is potentially a list of names and addresses of people who the government has now identified as troublemakers.  Perhaps that sounds a little paranoid?  For a healthy democracy it probably is but there is plenty of evidence of authoritarian regimes using these tools and others.  And maybe your country is a democracy now but will it always be?

Naturally such violations of privacy couldn’t happen if the rules for accessing the SIM registration database were observed but that is precisely my point.  I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that the rules won’t ever be broken in the name of “security”.

Time To Ask Questions

The point of this post is to suggest that the time is now for civil society organisations in countries where mandatory SIM card registration has been implemented to starting asking questions, such as:

• Does adequate technological and policy oversight exist to prevent SIM card registries from being misused?
• What evidence is that that SIM card registries are actually contributing to crime reduction?
• Are law enforcement agencies already using passive surveillance technologies like IMSI catchers?
• Are passive surveillance technologies covered under existing legislation concerning the interception of communication?

And of course this is just the tip of the iceberg as we begin to understand the many ways in which in which the ever smarter mobile technologies create new possibilities for the invasion of personal privacy.  In the rich world, organisations like Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are working hard to ensure that rapidly evolving communication technologies do not end up compromising our right to privacy.  Every country in Africa needs a civil society voice to ensure that individual right to privacy is not eroded with a phone call.

A List of African Countries with Mandatory SIM Card Registration

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So whose fault is it? Where does the blame lie? Lloyd Gedye from the Mail & Guardian interprets the report to mean that ICASA has failed and indeed the reports clearly states that

“The regulation in March 2011 by ICASA of the termination price that operators charge each other to terminate calls on each other’s networks has not had the intended outcome of creating a fairer competitive environment and a reduction in prices for consumers”

But for me this is like blaming a man with a wooden sword for failing to conquer a lion. ICASA is terribly mismatched in terms of its ability to go head to head with the telecoms industry both in terms of independence and resources. So perhaps ICASA has failed but whose fault is that?

Predictably the RIA report provoked a storm of obfuscationese from industry. Vodacom spokesperson, Richard Boorman, says

“Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs) are not an industry-wide cost that the consumer bears — the net cost of MTRs to consumers is and always has been zero,” he said. “MTRs are paid by operators to each other to terminate calls on the other’s network.”

Err what? So it doesn’t matter what mobile operators pay each other, it is always the right price? Holy magical thinking Batman! They also argue that call quality is higher in South Africa and that South Africa’s geography is more expensive to service than countries like Kenya and Tanzania. Having travelled in Kenya and Tanzanian recently, I can say this does not bear out in my experience. And did I ask for higher call quality? Could I please have a cheaper, crappier call option? There is some truth to the argument about geography but not nearly enough truth to explain the call cost disparity revealed in the report. Really this is just the standard litany of excuses that the likes of Vodacom and MTN trot out every time more evidence is presented of market failure in South Africa.

So is industry to blame? Well, yes but it is like blaming the lion for eating the wildebeest.  They are accountable to their shareholders. They employ all the tricks available to them to maximise their advantage, except they don’t have teeth, they have lawyers .  Now when government was a major shareholder in Vodacom, this got to be pretty muddy ground indeed. Happily that is done with. You could wish for industry leaders with a little more vision who see both the social and economic benefits of driving down costs and increasing access but there we would need to blame the shareholders who opt for self-interest.

So, if it isn’t really ICASA’s or industry’s fault, where does the blame lie? The fault lies with government and in South Africa the government of the last eighteen years is the ANC. I hate saying negative things about the ANC. For such a long period in my life, the ANC has represented the spirit of justice, of resilience, of endurance in the face of overwhelming odds that it is hard to bring myself to criticse the ANC openly. But like William Shatner in a corset, sometimes you have to recognise that things have changed.

What have the ANC done wrong? It is quite simple. They have failed to take telecommunications seriously. They have consistently relegated communications as a junior ministry and appointed ministers for reasons other than their competence and vision. The result has been the unhappy, bitter, finger-pointing environment that we have today. And sure, I too am pointing the finger here squarely at the ANC. But the buck has to stop somewhere and I believe that we would be in a very different South Africa had someone with vision and leadership been given the helm of the Department of Communications some years ago.

And things are getting worse. Minister Dina Pule recently announced a full review of South Africa’s ICT policies kicking off with a two-day Colloquium which starts tomorrow in Midrand. On the surface that sounds pretty good and about time. Well, it would be if it had not been outsourced to Deloitte. Outsourcing to large consulting firms is basically an announcement saying I have no idea what to do and will need someone else to blame if things go wrong. Government and industry alike find it hard to resist the siren call of the big-name consulting firm. Pay me. I have the answer you need.

So all of the planning has been handled by Deloitte and some industry insiders. But perhaps that’s not so bad. The incumbents are forever making the point that they are the only one’s deserving of more spectrum because only they really have the capacity to roll out infrastructure nationally. There is a certain simple plausibility to this but really it is like saying money should only be given to the rich because only they know how to manage it properly.

More insight can be found in a new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson called Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. The book is an ambitious, sweeping look at history providing a theory of why some countries have prospered and other haven’t. They divide countries into those with inclusive versus those extractive governments. There is a good review of the book in The Economist and a good interview with Daron Acemoglu on Econtalk. I’ve only just started reading it but one story that has stood out for me is how Venice went from hugely influential city-state to tourist backwater. It is summarised well here:

“Upward mobility drove the city-state’s wealth and power. Its innovative commenda, a partnership in which capital-poor sailors and rich Venetians shared the profits from voyages, allowed those of modest background to rise through the ranks. This fluidity threatened established wealth, however. From the late 13th century the ducal council began restricting political and economic rights, banning the commenda and nationalising trade. By 1500, with a stagnant economy and falling population, Venice’s descent from great power was well under way.”

When a wealthy elite stifle the rise of new players, bad things happen. That is a good description of where the telecommunications industry is in South Africa at the moment. We need to create opportunities for new blood to enter and rise in the telecoms sector. It will be good for everyone in the end. And that’s why the incumbents are NOT best placed to implement South Africa’s broadband future, at least not on their own.

So how can we make this happen? I believe it is simple. The ANC need to appoint new leadership in the Department of Communications and to elevate the ministry to frontline status. It probably needs to be a young minister who understands the potential of the sector and that the digital age is not just a twitter acount managed by a digital consultant.  Stick that in your Colloquium Agenda.

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Postscript for ICT4D funders:  If you want to make a difference in Africa, you should be funding RIAs’ work.  Seriously.

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give effect to the constitutional right of access to any information held by the State and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

You can view the whole act on the website of the Department of International Affairs and Cooperation.  With Telkom being partly owned by the South African government, this seemed like a likely course of action.  Duly submitted, the response came back several weeks later in which our request was denied on every count.  Telkom’s Deputy Information Officer replied that:

In terms of Section 68, I decline to grant access to the records since they contain financial, commercial, scientific, and/or technical information, other than trade secrets, the disclosure of which is likely to cause harm to the commercial or financial interests of Telkom, and moreover contain information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to put Telkom at a disadvantage in contractual or other negotiations and/or prejudice Telkom in a commercial competition.

Even though we are invited to apply to court if we are “aggrieved by this decision” the terms of the refusal are so vague that we are unlikely to succeed via this route.  In the job application world, this would be called a PFO letter.

Just to be clear, we asked for a map of Telkom’s existing terrestrial fibre network, not even their plans for the future although that would be even better.  This is the kind of information that companies like Dark Fibre Africa and Liquid Telecom post freely on their websites.  In fact there are lots of African telecom companies that publicly post this information.  Evidently they think it is a good idea to communicate the reach of their networks.

But you know, publishing this information is not just a good idea for Telkom.  This is a good idea for South Africa.  If I have learned one thing from publishing a map of African Undersea Cables over the last 4 years, it is that it is possible to tell a different story about Africa, a connected 21st century Africa.  But right now that map still makes it look like all those cables stop at the beach.  There is an opportunity with this terrestrial fibre map for African countries to show off a little, to demonstrate that they are the best connected country on the continent, that they are THE destination when it comes to companies thinking about setting up African points of presence.

Surely, that is what the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of ICTs in Kenya must have been thinking when he replied to our request for information with a directive to his staff to gather and provide information on ALL terrestrial fibre optic cable projects in Kenya for use in the AfTerFibre map.

So this is where you come in Ms. Moholi.  As the comparatively new CEO of Telkom, this would be an easy way to demonstrate the new, more open face of Telkom by sharing that information and, in doing so, telling the world about Telkom, setting an example for other incumbents, and in general trumpeting South Africa’s extensive information infrastructure to the world.  What do you say?  There is a great South African story to tell here.

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