Telecommunication reform in Ghana

In 1996 Ghana privatized its incumbent telecommunications firm by selling 30 percent of Ghana Telecom to Telekom Malaysia, licensing a second network operator, and allowing multiple mobile firms to enter the market. The reforms yielded mixed results. Landline telephone penetration increased dramatically while the number of mobile subscribers surpassed even this higher level of fixed line subscribers. On the other hand, the network did not reach the levels the government hoped, the second network operator never really got off the ground, and the regulator remained weak and relatively ineffective. The sustainability of competition is unclear. The government ended Telekom Malaysia's management of Ghana Telecom and has invited Norway's Telenor as a strategic partner. What this means in practice remains unclear, and the process for selecting Telenor lacked any transparency. Meanwhile, some of the mobile firms are in precarious financial positions. Competition is still relatively strong, but its sustainability will depend on the government's future commitment to ensuring it.Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Rural Communications,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies

The Quest for Mobility: Designing Enterprise Application Framework for M-Business Practices

With the advent of the “road warrior,” a growing part of the workforce is mobile and using all sorts of mobile devices to stay in touch and transact business. As the global economy shifts toward the mobile economy, enterprises need to be progressively more flexible and globalize. Mobile businesses open up new opportunities for innovative enterprises and give them new means of communications with customers and employees. In a changing business landscape, mobile business addresses new customer channels and integration challenges. The current transformation is simply the movement of e-business to a mobile environment. It is still a developing concept as are the business models that support it. The usefulness of the mobile channels will be largely driven by new enterprise applications that enhance the overall customer values. This paper provides a broad discussion on the movement of mobile integration strategies. Several issues will be addressed, such as value chain, the data access of mobile computing, m-business application framework, and the future development of mobile computing. All of these efforts attempt to provide an overview and schematics for the integration of modern e-business application strategies into future m-business practices. This paper will show that any proposed system or strategy must recognize the primary value and mechanism of how people “work,” and technological solutions must be devised in order to facilitate people who conduct business. With mobile technologies, enterprise applications will go beyond the four walls of organizations to a workforce on the mov

Going Wireless: Migrating From E-Business to M-Business

The challenge of globalization the ability to respond quickly according to changes in market demands and competitions, is the driving force for organizations to optimize their business strategies and operations regularly. Customer preferences and needs change constantly, resulting in pressingly intense competitions. Time sensitive real-time transaction is becoming the common denominator for successful businesses. Information also needs to be available to anyone from anywhere at anytime. As the global economy shifts toward the mobile economy, enterprises need to be progressively more flexible and globalize. Mobile businesses open up new opportunities for innovative enterprises and give them new means of communications with customers and employees. In a changing business landscape, mobile business addresses new customer channels and integration challenges. This paper provides a broad discussion on the changing landscape of business: from e-business to m-business. Several issues will be addressed, such as value chain, the data access of mobile computing, m-business application framework, and the future development of mobile computing (e.g. 4G wireless). All of these efforts attempt to provide an overview and schematics for the integration of modern ebusiness application strategies into future m-business practices. This paper will show that any innovated business strategy should be built upon target stakeholders. With mobile technologies, enterprise applications will go beyond the four walls of organizations to a workforce on the move

Programming for Peace: Sisi Ni Amani Kenya and the 2013 Election

In 2007-8, Kenya experienced protracted and widespread post-election violence. Mobile phones—and text messages in particular– were used to spread rumors and to organize violence. Sisi ni Amani Kenya (SNA-K), a Kenyan non-governmental organization, utilized a combination of traditional and innovative communication and dialogue approaches to increase civic education and engagement and prevent violence in Kenyan communities before, during, and after Kenya’s 2013 General Elections. SNA-K developed SMS-based programming that reached over 65,000 Kenyans with civic education, civic engagement, and violence prevention text messages throughout the 2013 election cycle. This paper analyzes data from qualitative and quantitative surveys distributed to samples from SNA-K’s subscriber base. The paper draws insights and lessons learned that can inform future programming seeking to utilize mobile technology and ICT-based communications strategies for civic engagement and violence prevention

Intelligent Aerial-Ground Surveillance and Epidemic Prevention with Discriminative Public and Private Services

Since complete surveillance is essential to provide safe daily life to citizen in smart cities, the issue of how to achieve secure surveillance has been driven by various research communities. Also, due to recent epidemic spread such as COVID-19, it is obvious that we should focus on how to manage a cooperative framework for possible future pandemic fights and allied medical services continuously. To support those purposes, it is anticipated that we can utilize AI-assisted communications and technologies using a variety of devices and equipment, including UAVs, mobile robots, and smart devices on the aerial and ground sides. In this article, an aerial-ground cooperative infrastructure is designed to study surveillance and epidemic prevention with managing energy recharge and AI-supported communications through collected or pre-knowledge information for public and private areas. Also, in the proposed architecture, we specify system settings, promising scenarios, and strategies in order to satisfy several objectives and tasks. Then possible research challenges and issues are addressed for successful realization and management of intelligent surveillance and efficient epidemic prevention

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Optimal Positioning and Coverage Improvement

With the emergence of future mobile generations beyond 5G, novel technologies are studied to satisfy the envisioned requirements of future services such as Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) or Virtual Reality. Among these technologies, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) arise as one of the most promising due to their capabilities to improve the channel while only modestly increasing the network energy consumption. However, multiple challenges have to be addressed before they can be deployed. In this thesis, we study strategies for positioning the RIS to achieve maximum SNR coverage in an outdoor propagation environment. Our model takes into account the effects of shadow fading and line-of-sight (LoS). A comparison between centralized and distributed deployments is also considered. Additionally, the required size of RIS to match the coverage of a small cell is assessed. The results show that the best positions to deploy a RIS lie close to the mobile terminals, in the vicinity of the boundary between covered and out-of-coverage areas. It is concluded that a centralized deployment is better than a distributed one, and a feasible size of the RIS which matches the small cell coverage is obtained