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Digital divide narrows but digital needs broaden

23 Jan

In the UK the number of citizens on the wrong side of the digital divide may have been more than halved over the last 5 years but that still leaves a vast number who are about to find that, in the cause of cheaper, more-efficient and sometimes better public services, the government’s ‘digital by default’ policy will soon start to hit home.

Moreover, of those citizens who are not currently online-enabled (with neither the connectivity nor the skills) the majority are those for whom easier access to  public services, cheaper living, access to jobs, less hassle, better healthcare and education  are high priorities.

Tackling the challenges of the ‘doubly disconnected’ (economically and socially disconnected citizens) are 15,000 volunteers led by Helen Milner’s UK Online Centres Foundation.  Together they are delivering vast benefits – for the life chances of individuals and, economically, for all of us.

We thought it timely to update our story from 2007.   Read Helen’s account of the continuing need for greater digital inclusion in her report for Groupe Intellex ‘The scale of digital exclusion in the UK‘

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The Silver Lining Behind the High Street’s Cloud

17 Jan

Yesterday’s demise of the UK’s Blockbuster video store, coming so soon after the reins of HMV were handed to ‘the administrator’ and Jessop’s cameras followed Comet’s white goods and countless card shops into the wilderness, has kept headline and leader writers busy and caused ‘a nation of shopkeepers’  to pause for thought.

It was, said one columnist (overstating for effect), as if the High Street had finally run out of people who were not on the Internet.  We might even see the end of that most unlikely quack health treatment – retail therapy.  The outpouring of late love for lost brands stands in contrast to the reluctance of shoppers to visit the places before they died – and a good part of that must reflect the lack of money to splurge on optional extras when they can be found more conveniently and cheaper elsewhere.  Economists may describe this as ‘market pruning’ but hopes for a resurgence of growth in the Spring seem unlikely.

No amount of yearning for the real or imagined lost paradise of the High Street will slow the world sufficiently for those who want to get off but there is value to be found in this massive penny-dropping moment – the realisation that the digital economy is real.  Personal and collective moments of revelation such as this tell us how much we have been kidding ourselves as we cling to the ‘established order’.

In the UK the retail sector employs 4 million people and whilst feeling for those whose lives careers and incomes have been disrupted, our editorial ‘Pennies, Drops and Impacts‘ looks at the urgent need to get all our heads around the new realities and deliver a digitally inclusive and more-equitable society.

 

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Groupe Intellex Index: July-Dec 2012

7 Jan

This edition of the index shows that our published output may have been lower in the 2nd half of the year but we developed some digital economy themes in greater depth.

The Index provides quick links to all of our editorial material (including contributions from Marit Hendriks and Andrew Macdonald and Leader columns for the CMA) plus briefing notes for projects for NG Events and Community Study Tours.

Surprisingly popular in the last week of the year was a review of Irene Ng’s new book ‘Value & Worth’ with a hit–rate exceeding anything we’d published since last September.

More

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‘Value & Worth’: Irene Ng’s new book

23 Dec

For Irene Ng’s new book the title of our review, ‘Make of it what you will’, captures the sense of empowerment that is so evident in the digital economy.

This is an economy where the consumer plays a huge role in how products and services are used to create value.  It is an economy where suppliers must rethink their propositions.

In our increasingly digitally-enabled economy it is no longer sufficient for businesses to see sales of a product or service as their sole objective.  The value seen by the consumer will be co-created in combination with an array of services and digital devices and further conditioned by the context in which they are being used.

The author does not hide her academic credentials (including a Professorial Chair at Warwick University) but it is her pre-academic business experience that is evident throughout.  The challenges of creating and sustaining new markets will be fought in an intensely competitive arena – and one where the platforms for value co-creation are often beyond the influence of second-order supplicants.

Many business leaders will respond to these challenges with innovative creativity and startling success.  This week’s report from the GDS shows very clearly that the government is taking a lead.  Others may not be so responsive.  The world will move on and the disruption to the established order of things will be devastating for those who do not see or fully understand the changes that are already upon us.

This an explorer’s handbook as we venture into the digital unknown.

More at the Sunday Breakfast Book Review

See also our Business Advisory note at Bdaily – the UK business news network

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Sustainable Economic Development

14 Dec

Those who doubted the findings in 2009 of Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The Spirit Level’ may care to revisit the subject of equality in the light of the recent report from Boston Consulting Group.

In BCG’s ‘Sustainable Economic Development Assessment’ we have new methodologies and data for assessing the quality of GDP growth – the extent to which wealth is converted into well-being.

It turns out that countries with high rates of growth are not necessarily able to convert that into societal development whereas other less-GDP-impressive countries seem to have far better mechanisms for raising living standards.

Why should this matter when we seem to have little or no growth?  This study arrives at a time when people are drawing lessons from recessionary times and, in facing up to the creative disruptions of the digital economy, are more than ever beginning to appreciate the real role of infrastructure in enabling both wealth and wellbeing.

Full story here

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Less roaming risk – more roaming reward?

14 Dec

Progress towards elimination of excessive Mobile Roaming charges in Europe may be moving at a glacial pace but at least they are moving faster than the efforts to introduce national roaming within the UK.

As they square up to bidding at the UK’s auction for 4G spectrum all mobile operators are acutely aware of the costs of infrastructure investment.   At the same time ordinary users are equally aware that when their signal fades they guy in the next seat may well have a good signal from another operator.   The regulator has always claimed that national roaming (like its EU-wide counterpart) is technically too complex.  Maybe the cost of duplicate base stations will, at last, force the operators to collaborate – ‘tho it seems unlikely that they can get their heads around sensible nationwide wholesale mobile connectivity.

Meanwhile across the EU, INTUG, the representative body for business users, is working hard to define the market requirements for the July 2014 change that requires all operators to offer roaming as a separate service – thus calling time on the era of unexpectedly high bills.

Full story here

 

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Average Understandings

10 Dec

Following a recent flurry of expensive reports claiming insights into aspects of digital infrastructure provision and use, it is time to remind readers of the ‘last law of averages’.

The oft-quoted ‘Law of Averages’ is, of course, a statistical nonsense usually deployed in the cause of ‘advanced wishful thinking’.  Our version highlights a darker side.  Over-reliance on averaged data means that your understanding of the data will be less than adequate – you might say, ‘below average’!

‘The devil is in the detail’  is a common complaint.   With great successes (and failures) hidden under the average blanket, the risks for policy developers are huge – and often  followed by ‘unintended consequences’.

Fortunately the digital economy is gradually eliminating the need for the bland summary reports lacking essential insights.  It is becoming altogether easier to provide the data packaged with the tools for its exploration and in-depth analysis.

Full story here

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Economic Revitalisation

10 Dec

It’s becoming better understood that Cities and Communities who have identified better connectivity as an enabler of economic growth must also pursue a series of programmes designed to exploit the enhanced infrastructure and secure commitments to its future improvement.

In this briefing on Economic Revitalisation, written ahead of NextGen’s 2013 UK events programme, we identify five essential programme strands that together will ensure that the investment in connectivity is worthwhile. At the same time these strands will also inform the local criteria for network design and operation.

The five key strands have emerged from global studies of ‘intelligent communities’ and the UK government’s Open Data and Digital by Default initiatives. They are collectively described as ‘applied’ digital infrastructure.

More

 

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Connecting Continents

30 Nov

While I’ve been deeply immersed in an altogether different journey my colleague Marit Hendriks has trekked to Cape Town and back.

Communications networks are seen by many as the threads that tie us all together but as Marit’s exploration of the African market shows it is the diversity of developments and their contexts that provide the most interesting insights.

Although her visit was focused on the Africa Com conference & exhibition, Marit arrived in South Africa in time to see beyond the glitz of the international conference centre.  In the first of her reports (Under African Skies) Marit takes a trip into a township and takes measure of the vast inequalities and digital divisions.

At the conference itself the contrasts between Europe and Africa were also very much evident – the local approach to Social Media, the huge importance of Mobile Payment systems and the very different priorities for infrastructure in the wider wilderness.  The venturing zeal, the local software industry, the scale of the opportunities are all vast – but the scale of inequalities and the size of the un-served market demands a very different approach to market development.

If there was one common theme between our two continents it might be found in the gradual reduction of relevance of the old ‘last generation’ Telco models – while millions clamour for connectivity the investment spotlight has shifted to the cleverness of Apps and the demand for higher ICT skills – and deepened the digital divides in places that are already desperately disconnected.

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4G race starts as 5G warms up

28 Oct

The imminent launch by mobile operator Everything Everywhere of the UK’s 4G services (with others to follow in 2013 when spectrum is auctioned) comes just 2 weeks after announcement of government research funding for  5G.

The £11.6m from the UK’s Research Partnership investment fund will be more than matched by a further £24m from a consortium of mobile infrastructure providers and operators.  The funds enable a 5G innovation centre to get underway at Surrey University.

Since the heady days of 2G (GSM) Europe has lost pole position in mobile technologies although we should not forget that Cambridge-based ARM has a dominant presence in billions of mobile devices.

The shape of mobile things to come is highly speculative and, with pressure for ever-greater spectrum efficiency and higher-capacity links to support bigger and faster applications, there is a huge interdependency on the adequacy of the fixed digital network to handle the traffic from thousands of smaller localised mobile base stations.

The expected explosion of demand for M2M devices and ‘The Internet of Things’ may already be stretching the limits of 4G and no-one imagines that the global standards-making process for 5G is going to be an easy collaborative ride.

Full story here

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