Essay
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| By Tony Ojobo |
THE literary interpretation of the theme of this conference should not be lost on any of us gathered in this hall. It is only in technology that you can have something that is totally negative yield good fruits.
Take out the operating word, Disruptive, from the thematic phrase, and you will begin to understand what I want to talk about and in fact even have the job done for me. Just a few qualifications for Disruptive – troublesome, unsettling, upsetting, distracting and disturbing, just to name a few.
When the aforementioned words come into operation, it means the natural order is being torpedoed and some chaotic situation will form the consequential experience. Quite luckily for us, in communications where the traditional operators have enjoyed gilded opportunities, technological advancement in the sector has intruded in that esoteric state of being; so the word Disruptive has been transformed into a beautiful bride whose qualities are being considered strong and positive enough to transform the GDP of the continent.
And, I agree. Because what is happening is totally out of control and beyond the expectations of most of us gathered here. Especially placed on the canvass of not too recent experience.
Let’s reflect a little bit. Pre 2000. Telephone is not for the poor. Investment in the telecommunications sector is about $500m; and that really puts the phone in the hands of the big boys in the society and make some of us really green with envy at the corner.
Just over a decade and half, with better liberalization of the sector and a firm regulator that is in charge, the Nigerian Communications Commission, the investment profile is over $32bn, the phones out there are over 148m, and with most of them in the hands of ordinary folks who have moved beyond beholding the wonders of this technology to really begin to think of some other derivatives that can profit their lives. Without doubt there is an amount of effusive energy which is at work here to the point of intrusion.
This is the danger. And this is where Disruptive is coming from.
A Disruptive Technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry. (Computing fundamentals glossary).
The expression, Disruptive Technology, was first used in 1995 by Prof Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business lecturer in an article he co-wrote with his colleague, Joseph Bower for the Harvard Business Review.
Christensen further expatiated on this idea in his 1997 best-selling book, The Innovators Dilemma, where he separates new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Identifying Sustaining technology as relying on incremental improvements to an already established technology, Disruptive technology lacks such refinement, often has performance problems because it is new, appeals to a limited audience, and may not yet have a proven practical application
The other interesting aspect of his book is that while large corporations are designed to work with sustaining technologies, excel at knowing their market, staying close to their customers, and having a mechanism in place to develop existing technology; they often have trouble capitalizing on the potential efficiencies, cost-savings, or new marketing opportunities created by low-margin disruptive technologies.
Using real-world examples to illustrate his point, Christensen demonstrates how it is not unusual for a big corporation to dismiss the value of a disruptive technology because it does not reinforce current company goals, only to be blindsided as the technology matures, gains a larger audience and market share and threatens the status quo.
Does the foregoing address any situation you know?
Christensen’s book only began to gain traction with traditional industry operators who after a wait-and-see attitude has suddenly realized the capacity of Disruptive Technology to undermine the security, safety and figures coming out of their industry. You will agree with me that no investor loves a dip in profit margins.
Although a 2013 report by McKinsey & Company titled, Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy, listed twelve in the gallery of Disruptive Technologies, among them, Mobile Internet, Internet of Things, Cloud, Advanced Robotics, Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles, Renewable energy, and Energy storage, some Disruptive Technologies fall under the genre of Over-the-Top Services which are carried over the networks, delivering value to customers, but without any carrier service provider being involved in planning, selling, provisioning, or servicing them, thereby implying that traditional telcos cannot directly earn revenue from such services. These over-the-top services include services such as Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony, live streaming and other social media applications.
So, the point of interest is not in doubt at all. Many traditional telecom service providers are of the opinion that traditional telephony and SMS revenues are under threat from newer IP based alternatives like WhatsApp, Twitter, Skype, Viber, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and others. Similarly, third party web content and social networking companies such as Google and Facebook are increasingly generating huge revenues and driving high levels of data which ride on the broadband networks of traditional telecom traditional network operators even if the latter still have to spend all the money to upgrade their networks to accommodate the OTT intruders.
As they say in my village, one man’s meet is another man’s poison. The industry statistics don’t actually favour the disgruntlement of the traditional telco operators. Globally there is a continuing surge in growth which means that the industry must be heading somewhere for a positive reason.
The organisers of this conference seem to agree with the latter group that the industry is headed somewhere and there must be something attractive in the direction it is headed. Hence the topic, Role of Disruptive Technologies in Catapulting the African Continent’s GDP.
I believe the optimism derives from some of these figures which bear testimony to the transformational strength of a well implemented ICT agenda which incubates new ideas. Total population of Africa by mid-2015 is 1, 158, 355, 663. There are over 722million mobile phones in Africa out of which over 127million are smart phones. Internet users by November 2015 were 330, 965, 359, while 124, 568, 500 were on Facebook within the same period.
Still looking at the 2015 statistics, globally, Facebook has over 1.5bn users monthly with about 798million accessing the site on their mobile phones; WhatsApp has over 700million users who are sending over 30bn messages every day; Twitter has over 302 million monthly users; Instagram has over 300million active users per month; LinkedIn over 332million registered members; while Pinterest has about 70 million of which 56 per cent are females.
Please, tell me why would Microsoft want to put in a mind-blowing sum $26.2bn in LinkedIn except there is something they have seen in an organization that may not have as much physical facilities to warrant that amount.
But that is the point of vexation by the traditional operators who feel that organizations without tangible investments are creating the new big boys while the old fellas are struggling to balance their books. Someone call it the story of the dodo and the dinosaur. Whatever name they are called their point of commonality is that at a point they went extinct. These operators don’t want go into extinction. The challenge is that they must listen to the new drumbeat.
Some people used to brag with their pagers, magic jack or even worldspace radio. But what do you have today? You can simply have your smart phone do more than any of those items listed and really be very modest about it as the phone is hidden somewhere in your pocket.
Let’s return to those figures earlier quoted, and the story of the dodo and the dinosaur. There is a new generation that is not quite excited about the age of the dinosaur but much more enamoured on what figures can do. To this generation the figures mean new business opportunities as they try to create products and services to meet the demand and taste of those who hide in these figures.
Let’s look at the first one on McKinsey’s list: Mobile Internet. Of the over 148million mobile phone users in the country, over 92million of them are connected to the internet, thus giving them the flexibility to do things on the go. This is one technology that has completely altered the nature of living and the style of business transactions and social relationships, among others. You do not need to visit the airport any more to buy your flight ticket or even check in, you do not need to visit any shop to carry out transaction or visit a bank to send money to the grandpa or grandma in the village. In fact the money can be sent on a Sunday afternoon and equally be spent that same day without any visit to the bank.
This then is the definition of Disruptive as per the subject under discussion. While you were buying your ticket online and equally checking in, you have removed the services of the ticket agent; while you do your banking on Sunday afternoon, you are supporting the gospel of the Central Bank which says, let’s do very little with the traditional bank and place more emphasis on internet banking. But these services are perfected in such a way that they create more satisfaction for the user than the services of the agent or even the traditional banks.
WhatsApp used to be just for messaging alone with billions of messages sent in one day. In Dallas the other day some friends did not need to buy any phone or phone cards but simply just relied on the hotel WiFi to make calls to their loved ones on WhatsApp. Meaning. WhatsApp is adding to its functions to create more value and make more money. The coming of new technologies and social media have created new bouquet of opportunities and services which the organisers of this programme want the continent to appropriate for a better future.
Those buying space for advertising will tell you that these figures from new technologies couldn’t have been better; personal blogs are becoming big businesses, online businesses and retail outlets are springing up, musicians are creating new markets, online TV and video on demand are being introduced; in fact entertainment has hit a pleasant pile. Going forward the story is going to be much more interesting as the people try to take advantage of some of these technologies.
Why this optimism?
Several reasons are responsible for this as can be seen from the following. The curators of some of these technologies aptly described as Disruptive are the youths. The continent, and Nigeria in particular, have a rambunctious gathering of youths. They are bold. They are audacious. And they are creative.
Depending on the documents you are looking at the figures will blow your mind. United Nations 2015 Population Facts say there were 226million youths between ages 15 and 24 years in Africa. The figure does not include ages 25 to 45. Wikipedia records 33, 625, 424 for ages between 18 to 35 for Nigeria alone while country Meter has the following Age Structure: 75, 584, 144 – young people under 15 years, 103, 288, 688 – between the ages of 15 and 64, and 5, 762, 467 – above the ages of 64 also for Nigeria. What this means is that quite a number of figures in the demographic fall into the age of creativity and audacity.
In spite of hermetic strictures created by legacy failure in governance, in spite of challenging human capital development environment and the inability of African leaders to address the adverse factors that affect their ecosystem, African youths will always stand their own because of their resilience and the elastic ambition to dream and dare the unknown.
You only need to look at happenings in Nollywood and the entire entertainment sector to begin to contemplate the resilient spirit of the African youth.
The other factor is the liberalization of the telecommunications sector in the continent which makes it possible for the industry to be accountable for some very positive growth in some countries in Africa. Apart from a few countries where there is internal strife and desperate despotic control, the sector is attracting a lot of FDIs, therefore, boosting employment and helping to improve the quality of life and standard of living. Only recent the National Bureau of Statistics informed that the telecommunications industry is contributing 8.6 per cent to the country’s GDP. The story of growth spreads across the continent, from east to west and north to south, including central.
There is no doubt that a liberalized telecommunications sector will help African youth to take charge of their future.
What is the role of the Nigerian Communications Commission in boosting Africa’s GDP with Disruptive Technologies?
The NCC will rely on the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 and other Regulations to provide a transparently regulated industry which is friendly to local and international investment and further open up the fortunes of the sector.
To this end, the Commission is committed to the Broadband plan of the Government which has set out milestones to extend Broadband to the various ends of the country. This is why recently the Commission under the leadership of Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, released an 8-Point Agenda to stir the industry towards the kind of growth that will allow Nigerians fulfill their dreams. The Agenda includes:
Facilitate Broadband Penetration, Improve Quality of Service, Optimize Usage and Benefits of Spectrum, Promote ICT Innovation and Investment Opportunities, Facilitate Strategic Collaboration and Partnership, Protect and Empower Consumers, Promote Fair Competition and Inclusive growth, and Ensure Regulatory Excellence and Operational Efficiency.
Every point in the Agenda has been carefully thought out and followed with vision and strategy to help push the industry to new heights in an era of very fair, firm, and forthright regulations.
Broadband occupies a central peg in the Agenda. The current Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC is very excited by the opportunity given to drive the growth of Broadband in Nigeria and has already thrown his hat in the ring in full readiness for action.
The Commission is embarking on activities to aggressively drive the deployment of Broadband which it describes as the real game changer. The Commission recently put out 14 slots of 2.6GHz spectrum on offer; six of it were taken by one bidder. The EVC has promised to review the sales process before doing another auction.
For NCC, the telecommunications industry retains a primary placement in the change agenda of the Buhari regime. It is our pledge therefore, that the Commission will always act responsibly, impartially, transparently and independently in the discharge of its statutory functions in order to validate these expectations for the common good of all Nigerians.
In doing this, we hope we can be remembered for creating a commodious environment for ideas, technologies and businesses to grow.
“Role of Disruptive Technologies in Catapulting the African Continent’s GDP”, a paper delivered by Tony Ojobo, Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission at Nigeria Technology Exhibition Conference (NITEC) which is currently taking place from the 23rd to 24th of June 2016 in Lagos. NITEC 2016 .
— Jun 23, 2016 @ 15:40 GMT
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