Village phone project should be supported

ONE approach to Universal Access (UA), which springs from the user side of the network- even though the first international case and several current initiatives involve leading mobile operators- is the village phone concept. This has emerged in several forms around the world including Zambia, sometimes organised by Micro- Finance Institutions (MFIs), sometimes by a private enterprise, or sometimes by telecommunication operators with financial partners.

The village phone concept began with the launch of the village phone programme in Chipata district in 2003 as an initiative of One World Africa. One World Africa provided mobile phones to be used by villagers to send Short Message Service (SMS) and this facility went to impoverished village women. This initiative has since come to an end, but such initiatives that render support to develop sustainable income generating activities should be commended. Women clients of village phones who showed interest to become local phone operators, received training and were loaned funds to purchase a mobile phone set- up (phone with special in- built pricing software) suitable for rural areas, as well as airtime credits. Through a network, vending affordable airtime denominations and facilitating individual calls, residents enjoyed better access to communication services.

The success of the programme at generating sustainable business and social empowerment opportunities for women, and high performance from women, and high performance in the recovery of loan disbursements, led to the replication of the idea to other areas such as North western province particularly in Kasempa district.

At the core of a generic village phone programme is a viable business model for local entrepreneurs (women and increasingly men) to provide telecommunications services to their community. The entrepreneurs are offered a telephone operator business kit consisting of a mobile phone, external antenna ( in the case of Africa), business management materials, a marketing poster, and usually some introductory training via the telecommunications service provider alone or in partnership with supporting organisations, which include MFIs entities, banks and Non- Government Organisations (NGOs). The local calls within some service providers were fair in all networks
but with the coming in of a fourth mobile service providers’ prices could go down due to competition.

We hope the Information Communication Technology (ICT) bill shall regulate the charges to ensure fair charges and also cross network issues shall be moderated by the Communication Authority of Zambia (CAZ). At one of its monthly meetings, e-Brain Forum of Zambia had its theme that borders on mobile phones. The theme was “Has mobile service added value to Zambian subscribers?” The issue of unclear termination agreements among operators is one of
the barriers in lowering cross- network calls hence the need for transparency in this area.

The observation is that international calls in the country are still the highest in the region. There has been a lot of public outcry from different sections of society that the international gateway should be liberalised. The international gate way, Mwembeshi Earth Station is only being utilised by 50 percent. This clearly shows that there is need for a new operator.

The option for state company Zamtel is to interconnect to all our borders through optic fiber or any other interconnection so that we can have lower international calls in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region. We can also route and charge for data and voice traffic on behalf of other countries. This is an opportunity for us to take advantage of being a landlocked country.

Like our friends in the United Kingdom (UK) whose private individuals such as Kris Swanson, of Merrill Lynch, has revealed that the company has some 60,000 employees and, of these, some 21,000 have BlackBerry mobile devices. Of these, some 6,000 have been given access to mobile learning materials and, to date, there are some 2,000 regular users of this mobile learning material. That means that some 9.5 per cent of those with access to the delivery technology for mobile learning are using it. This is the investment that should be sourced in order to help our rural population in Zambia.

Swanson, speaking at the November 2009 meeting of the e-Learning Network, in Lusaka, also revealed that a pilot study to measure the return on investment in mobile learning showed that making learning materials available via BlackBerries resulted in a 75 per cent reduction in learning development costs; a 30 per cent fall in users’ ‘time to competence’, a 45 per cent reduction in the time taken on ‘training’ and a one per cent improvement in users’ assessment scores compared with those who studied the learning materials at their desks. “However,” Swanson said, “I stacked the cards in my favour because I only included investment bankers in the pilot study and the mobile learning materials only covered compliance training.” Despite the possibility that these return on investment figures may have been slightly ‘massaged’, they still make a strong case for using mobile learning.

However, it is interesting that slightly less than 10 per cent of those given the option of engaging in mobile learning take it up. This is not out of keeping with preliminary results that are emerging from the study of the UK’s ‘e-Learning scene’ by Towards Maturity. Laura Overton’s company has been running a Benchmark Review of the industry, looking at how learning technologies are changing the way that we deliver learning and development in the workplace. The review was concluded at the end of November and the results are scheduled to be revealed at the UK’s key e-Learning show: Learning Technologies show, which will be held at Olympia, in London, on 28th and 29th March 2009. Zambia successfully hosted the national e-learning conference at which government announced that it had adopted ICTs in governance and education sectors to drive the developmental programme. Education Minister, Professor Geoffrey Lungwangwa, said the government had adopted ICTs in four broad categories, namely e-governance, e-learning, computer science and Education Management Information Systems (EMIS). According to Professor Lungwangwa, in the e-governance area, his ministry was institutionalising ICTs at all operational levels to give members of staff direction with regard to service delivery. With e- learning, he said this was targeting the whole education system from basic to tertiary level.

This is also connected to mobile phones at what level do pupils and students send SMSs to their teachers about taking notes that a crucial for most learners today. Considering that most village phones are situated near children who are supposed to be in school or are in schools, should be seen to be partnering with government if the dream of Public Private Partnership (PPP) is to be achieved.

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