MobileActive.org

Mobile technological tools are being used today to collect basic information in the health, world climate, geophysics, ecology, and other sectors to exchange information, and to access scientific computing among many services. The potentialities of this mobile technology need to be spread out on a larger scale in the academia in particular, and in the society as a whole so that its benefits can become widely accessible for further development. This is an issue that needs more attention and promotion, especially in less developed areas of the world.

We define in this book Mobile Science (or “m-Science” in short) as the term that comprises sensing, computing and dissemination of scientific knowledge by the use of mobile devices. This includes (i) data gathering, (ii) the analysis and process of data, and (iii) the access to on-line services and applications directed to nurture scientists and scholars (such as mobile access to ejournals, podcasts, web lectures, webinars, virtual conferences, mobile collaboration tools, m-Learning, etc).

Based on information extracted from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) database of scientific publications spanning from 1980 to 2009, the worldʼs scientific product ion has grown from about 400,000 to 1,200,000 publications in the last three decades. This increment of interest in science, together with the recent technological developments in mobile technologies, is making m-Science a completely new field of interest and research development. This book aims to engage the scientific community, engineers and scholars worldwide in the design, development and deployment of the newest mobile applications.

Over 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity. In many emerging markets mobile network operators have become adept at generating their own off-grid power as mobile penetration has outpaced the growth of the electricity grid. Community Power from Mobile (CPM) works to leverage the scale of mobile technology and infrastructure to improve the case for off-grid telecoms and provide millions of underserved communities access to vital energy services.

Through sharing knowledge gained from our work we hope to provide insights to our members and increase the conversations and collaborations we are having with organisations interested in how the advancement of the mobile sector can be best leveraged to develop the off-grid energy market. As we look to the future, we hope to build on the foundations of the programme to develop increasingly impactful workstreams and interventions.

It follows that our analysis is organised into three sections:

■ Lessons from our first year of operations

■ Recommendations to increase the likelihood of CPM

■ Engagement model to move the CPM concept forward.

The paper ends with three in-depth case studies of community power from mobile in Bangladesh, India, and Kenya.

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, committing nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and address pressing challenges of hunger, gender inequality, illiteracy, and disease. The year 2015 has been affirmed as the deadline for reaching these Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.

The goal is to show how an integrated approach to community-level development can translate the international MDG agreements into ground-level breakthroughs throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa. Villages are located in deeply impoverished rural areas that were considered hunger hotspots—with at least 20% of children malnourished. Sites were selected to reflect a diversity of agro-ecological zones, representing a range of challenges to income, food production, disease ecology, infrastructure, and health system development.

The Millennium Villages Project is a ten-year initiative spanning two five-year phases. The first phase focuses on achieving quick wins, especially in staple crop production and disease control, and on establishing basic systems for integrated rural development that help communities escape the poverty trap and achieve the MDGs. The Project involves the coordinated community-led delivery of a locally tailored package of scientifically proven interventions for agriculture, education, health, and infrastructure. Over the first five-year phase, interventions are delivered at a modest cost, totaling approximately $120 per capita per year, of which MVP brings about half to complement funds from the host government, the local community, and other partners. The second five-year phase will focus more intensively on commercializing the gains in agriculture and continuing to improve local service delivery systems in a manner that best supports local scale-up.

Rural areas lack sustainable electrification solutions. Although solar solutions hold promise, they are fundamentally constrained by high maintenance costs (due to low user densities,equipment failure, poor handling) and a complete lack of accountability. In this paper, we describe our experiences deploying more than 5,000 Solar Home Systems in Ethiopia and the sustainability problems we faced.

Towards developing a decentralized and sustainable solar solution, we have designed SIMbaLink,an extremely low-cost real-time solar monitoring system that significantly reduces both the maintenance costs and the time to repair. By explicitly exposing the real-time status of a solar system to all parties concerned, SIMbaLink addresses the lack of accountability and trust concerns. SIMbaLink can be easily integrated with existing solar systems and can reduce equipment failure rates through early detection of system malfunctions. The SIMbaLink module uses the existing mobile network to send Solar Home System health updates to a technician located in an urban or rural center. Remote monitoring reduces the amount of visits that the technician needs to make to a certain household. Also, when the technician does make a visit, he or she will already know what the problem is.

There are more than 4 billion mobile connections worldwide. Over the coming years, many more millions of people at the “base of the economic pyramid” are expected to acquire mobile phones, greatly benefiting their lives, business activities and access to information. However, most of these new subscribers will not have direct access to electricity. This makes it more challenging and expensive for them to charge their mobile phone, not to mention to power the myriad of other daily functions for which electricity is important such as lighting, cooking and refrigeration.

The GSMA Development Fund believes that the issue of electrification is extremely relevant to mobile operators. The innovative nature of base of the pyramid markets has spawned creative solutions to the charging problem - primarily via entrepreneurs who provide electricity on a per-charge basis, powered either by their own access to the grid or through the use of portable car batteries.  It seems likely that renewable energy devices, such as photovoltaic chargers, will provide a practical and environmentally friendly fix. 

As part of its Green Power for Mobile programme, the Development Fund has conducted research into off- grid charging solutions for mobile phones. This study was conducted over a three month period (June-August, 2009) and included extensive research to identify emerging vendors, their products, and other players in the field. The process also included dozens of interviews and surveys of mobile operators and vendors covering 50 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The research has found that there is significant interest in off-grid charging solutions from mobile operators - over half those interviewed have already introduced, or are considering introducing off-grid charging solutions in the near term. At the same time, there is only limited understanding about the full scope of options and the associated social and business benefits.

This publication is intended to provide initial market information and a framework for decision-making about off-grid charging solutions. More practically, it lays out a series of key questions that the GSMA refers to as “Charging Choices” - to help companies think through the possibilities for off-grid charging. The paper is not a fully exhaustive review of all the existing players or initiatives in the market, and the Development Fund is not endorsing the products or companies reviewed herein. This publication is, however, a start of what the GSMA believes will be an important and exciting area of industry growth in the coming years.