Last week and continuing through the spring, Mobile Future will be hosting a series of state-based public education events designed to help educate state lawmakers, regulators and consumers about what's happening with wireless in their state. On Tuesday, February 3rd, Mobile Future will highlight how cities like Tallahassee are utilizing wireless technology to streamline services for residents. For more information on the Tallahassee, Florida panel and to see coverage of the event, check out Florida's state page on our Web site and read our chairman's op-ed in the Tallahassee Democrat.
Last week, Mobile Future began a series of state-based public education events designed to help educate state lawmakers, regulators and consumers about what's happening with wireless in their state. The first event took place in Olympia, Washington on Thursday, January 29th. For more information on the panel and to see coverage of the event, check out Washington's state page on our Web site and read our chairman's op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Thanks to mobile technology, personal safety on one college campus is taking a large step forward:
Next semester, college students in Oswego will be the first in the state university system to try out a new security tool that can connect them to university police with the touch of a button on their cell phones.
In November, the State University College at Oswego unveiled the first phase of Rave Guardian. Cynthia Adam, the chief of university police at Oswego State, said the response from students has been overwhelming. "Ninety-eight percent of our students and about the same number of faculty, carry cell phones, so, for us, it made much more sense to use that technology as a personal safety device."
The new system lets students input their photo, mobile phone number and other personal information on a secure website. That information is then immediately accessible to campus police when a student speeddials into the office.
Beginning next year, SUNY hopes to expand this system to include GPS data, which would help find the emergency location.
So, is your college or university doing something similar? Drop us an email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) or send us a link. We're interested.
If Tom Kalil has his way, mobile technology and services will be at the heart of American global development policy.
So says his visionary and timely new report, "Harnessing the Mobile Revolution," published recently by NDN, the innovative Washington D.C. policy group.
The next Administration, says Kalil, a science and technology policy advisor at Cal Berkeley, has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage advances and investments in the mobile sector to catalyze critical development goals such as providing safe drinking water, new vaccines, therapies, point-of-care diagnostics, clean energy, and improved crops that are more productive, nutritious, and drought-resistant. And not a moment too soon, he warns, as to date, the U.S. government has largely overlooked the power of mobile services to help improve the human condition. It is time, argues Kalil, for the blinders to come off.
Says Kalil: "Even in the absence of enlightened U.S. government leadership, mobile services will become more ubiquitous, affordable and versatile. But the missed opportunity will be to leverage this large and growing private sector investment (in mobile technology and services) for public purposes, such as ensuring fair elections, helping a community health worker save the life of a mother or young child, and giving a farmer or small business owner access to the credit they need to build a path out of poverty."
Kalil argues that policy-makers in Washington have a historic but limited window of opportunity to work in partnership with the private sector to ensure that mobile technologies increasingly can be agents of productive social, economic and political development. The use of mobile technologies has exploded, particularly in the developing world, where there are now more subscribers than in the developed world. Some forecast that there will be over 5 billion mobile subscribers in the next two years - a fact that has encouraged the development economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University to conclude that "the cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development."
Here are some of the statistics the report cites:
A rise of 10 mobile phones per 100 people is associated with a growth in GDP of 0.6 percent;
Every 1 percent increase in mobile penetration boosts foreign direct investment as a share of GDP by 0.5 percent;
Telecommunications investment in African countries such as Kenya and Senegal accounts for more than 10 percent of private sector investment in fixed capital;
The mobile industry has created 3.6 million jobs in India, not only through mobile operators, but through retail sales of airtime, handsets and SIM cards;
Chinese workers who travel for their work (e.g. taxi-cab drivers, plumbers, salespeople) have been able to reduce traveling by 6 percent - a productivity payoff worth $33 billion in 2005.
So what is to be done?
First and foremost, Kalil recommends that the U.S. government should establish new public/private partnerships to ensure that advances in mobile technologies and services - especially in the areas of public health, education, civil engagement, human rights, and financial services - can be more systematically accessed by communities which need them most. Creative examples of these partnerships in mobile technology have been implemented in countries like Zambia and Kenya. It is time for American engagement and leadership as well.
Second, official donors - the U.S. included - must direct more investment to increase the number of developing country entrepreneurs, programmers, researchers, government agencies, and non-profit organizations that are capable of designing and implementing mobile applications that address local needs. Kalil also argues that the private sector itself can do more to support the use of its technologies and applications as vehicles for positive development.
Last, Kalil argues that governments must move quickly to lower or eliminate the punitive taxes that have unwisely and disproportionately targeted the mobile industry so the industry can flourish, entrepreneurs can innovate, productive new jobs can be created, and consumers can gain access to better and less expensive services. Mobile and wireless technology is not a luxury and should not be taxed as such.
Indeed, as Kalil's important paper presciently establishes, mobile innovation is now more than a necessity; it increasingly is a vital vehicle for improving the lives, health, and well-being of the least powerful around the world.
The Austin Wireless Alliance recently hosted its annual Texas Wireless Summit and there is no doubt that AWA is fulfilling its mission to bring together the key leaders in wireless from Austin and Central Texas. Participants included representatives from the business, academic, community, and government sectors and the presence of aspiring entrepreneurs was readily evident.
From the perspective of someone who is dedicated to providing youth as many opportunities as possible for them to reach their full potential, AWA truly sets the benchmark for other cities. Their effort in providing an opportunity for University of Texas engineering students to exhibit their wireless application concepts and have them receive feedback from field practitioners is to be commended. It was indeed a pleasure to meet such bright young people. Since my youngest son received an engineering degree from UT, I had to contact him and let him know that his alma mater is doing very well, not only in football, but also in engineering.
Even though this was the first time I have attended AWA's wireless summit, it was evident to me that this concept can be a viable vehicle to generate business opportunities for all sectors of the wireless industry. In discussing AWA's mission with CEO Erin Defosse', I stressed how important it is that AWA is filling the technology niche of the local chamber of commerce. It takes the foresight of business leaders like these to recognize this business necessity. Through AWA, they have filled a critical niche in the technology sector and are helping to better position Austin and Central Texas to compete in today's global economy.
Kevin Roberts, ACU's chief information officer says, "We also are committed to continuing research about how technology can benefit learning and better prepare our students for the future. For their sake, it's not good enough just to keep up; we want to lead." See press release.
How will they use them in the classroom? At ACU's new mobile launch page, students have access to practical information and a host of learning tools, which students and professors will tap into.
English professor Dr. Kyle Dickson, says, "I've got the ability to drag and drop files I need my students to have access to, that can be an image file I want them to analyze in class, or an electronic handout, a PDF (file)," adding that it takes only 30 minutes to prepare.
Read more about this great educational initiative here.
Havana has given us much more than cigars. It was there, in 1848, that Antonio Meucci filed and was awarded patent (caveat #3335) for his invention of the telephone. Meucci never commercialized his vision. He lost his patent because he was not able to pay renewal fees. Though Meucci died in poverty, his vision, some 160 years, has so transformed how human beings work, play, learn, and earn, that it truly must be described as a metamorphosis.
How else but by some magic or sorcery could the original idea of point to point wired voice communications have evolved to our current world of wireless, ubiquitous, and mobile connectivity? Today, there are several nations which have more cell phones than citizens. Some two billion people today have subscriptions for mobile services. These devices, and the applications, services, content, and community they embody, are themselves platforms for the idea of convergence in all its forms – technological, commercial, cultural, and educational.
Their potential for human advancement and engagement are only just being conceived. Most obviously, our mobile devices have become more than mere telephones, they are also game consoles, computers, cameras. But the limits of their uses are only just being explored. Imaginative communities, entrepreneurs, and individuals have put mobile and wireless technologies to use as vital agents of public health, as tools for encouraging civic engagement, as hubs for social and cultural connectivity and networking, as critical infrastructure of emergency planning and preparedness, as broadcasting devices, as catalysts of commerce and banking, as educational and instructional aids, and even as fashion accessories.
Their implications for the global economy can not yet be fully imagined. Beyond the core industries, engineers, product developers and scientists who have been designing the algorithms, software, hardware and infrastructure for mobile telephony, there are now also countless individuals, communities, and companies collaborating, innovating, and instigating new applications, services, and content.
Like so much else in the increasingly networked learning and innovation environments we now inhabit, the mobile phone has become a platform for enormously imaginative collaboration by citizens at their laptops in their living rooms, as well as by coders in their labs.
We at the newly formed Mobile Future Coalition are excited by these developments, and inspired by the implications of mobile technology for our nation, our communities, and our families. We believe that innovation in mobile and wireless technology will only accelerate, and in so doing serve the greater good. We believe that we are still in the very early days of our era of mobile technology. And to ensure its continued evolution and innovation as a force for economic, cultural, scientific and community advancement, all stakeholders who care about mobile technologies – industry, communities, governments, the academy, the media, and individual innovators – will benefit by learning from each other, by listening to each other, and by collaborating with each other.
That is what Mobile Future is about. Our aim is to be an open, accessible and value-added educational platform for bringing all those who care about the mobile technologies together in common cause to discuss and learn about key issues that will impact the continued metamorphosis of the mobile and wireless technologies as a key engine for economic and social growth and innovation in the United States and around the world. We especially hope to serve as a useful and sturdy bridge between those who innovate and those who regulate to ensure the greatest possible transparency, openness and mutual education.
Join us. Collaborate with us. Though we are 160 years on from Antonio Meucci’s remarkable innovation, in the grander scheme of things, we have only just begun. Let us know what you are thinking.
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