EECS 294-12 An Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Framework for Developing Regions

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EECS 294-12An Information and Communications
Technology (ICT)Framework for Developing Regions

• Berkeley
• Professor Eric Brewer, EECS
• Tom Kalil, Special Assistant to the Chancellor
• Professor Richard Newton, Dean of the College of
  Engineering
• CMU
• Rahul Tongia, Institute For Software Research
  International
• M. Bernardine Dias, Robotics Institute
• Prof. Raj Reddy, Robotics Institute/Computer
  Science

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Logistics and Other Practical Stuff

• EECS 294-12 (will be cross-listed at Haas for
  business students), 3 units
• Project, 60 Homework 20 Class participation
  20 of final grade
• Written project with oral project review in last
  two weeks of semester
• Typical class format 1 hr of lecture, 1 hr of
  discussion (3rd hr reserved for use when needed)
• All other details on the web site at
• http//courseweb.berkeley.edu/courseweb/pub/course
  s/2003/FL/COMPSCI/294/012
• We will be using the Blackboard system at CMU for
  additional communications, etc.
  www.cmu.edu/blackboard

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Value Creation in Product Development
... The Way It Used to Be
Source Stan Shih, Acer, 1992
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Value Creation in Product Development
... The Way It Is Today
Disruptive Business Model
Disruptive Technology
Product Definition
Fundamental Technologies
Product Implementation
Source Stan Shih, Acer, 1992
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The Bottom of the Pyramid
We Can Build Large and Sustainable Businesses
Based on These Markets
emerging mass markets
Source Prahalad Hammond, Harvard Business
Review, Vol. 80, Issue 9 (Sep. 2002), pp48-58
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The Bottom A Brief Description

• 3-4 billion people with per-capita equivalent
  purchasing power (PPP) less that US2,000 per
  year
• Could swell to 6-8 billion over the next 25 years
• Most live in rural villages or urban slums and
  shanty townsmovement towards urbanization
• Education levels are low or no-existent
  (especially for women)
• Markets are hard to reach, disorganized, and very
  local in nature

http//www.wri.org/meb/wrisummit/pdfs/hart.pdf
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Growth in MegacitiesAn Urban Future
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ExampleAn Emerging MarketIndia
http//www.wri.org/meb/wrisummit/pdfs/hart.pdf
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The Bottom Not the Same Everywhere
http//www.wri.org/meb/wrisummit/pdfs/hart.pdf
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Example IndiaMany Price Points
REFRIGERATOR
CARS
WASHERS
RICH
BICYCLES
CONSUMING CLASS
CLIMBER
Extent of benefit desired
ASPIRANTS
COLOR TV
MIXERS
BW TV
DESTITUTE
AUDIO
Price able to pay
Source NCAER, Millions of Households in
1999, and Rama Bijapurkar
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Example IndiaDigital Photography Pyramid
Village Photographer Target 400 -gt 200
Source Dr. Per-Kristian Halvorsen, HP Labs
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Speculative Technologies
Hand-writtten Email sent as bitmap
Telugu and Hindi voice-enabled news retrieval
system
Source Dr. Per-Kristian Halvorsen, HP Labs
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ICT4BHypothesis 1

• Current ICT projects for the Developing World are
  just trickle down first-world technology
• Too expensive
• Assumes reliable infrastructure, power
• Assumes IT knowledge and significant support
• Assumes literacy
• We can directly attack these issues

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ICT4BHypothesis 2

• Thousands of ICT projects, but
• Almost all focus on devices not infrastructure
• No single project can afford to build
  infrastructure, but all of them would benefit.
• Existing elements of infrastructure not leveraged
  enough!
• Key Idea We can enable low-cost infrastructure
• Enhance all of the existing projects
• Enable new projects that were previously
  intractable

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ICT4BThe Big Picture

• Enhance and enable ICT projects
• Novel technology (direct attack)
• Novel deployment/support
• Support for semi- and illiterate users
• Two real-world deployments (validate)
• Question Is this really true? Can new
  technologies really make a big difference here?
  Or is this market better served by a trickle
  down of existing technology and the real
  challenge is simply the business model aspect?

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ICT4BHypothesis 3

• There are many applications that can benefit the
  developing world built upon an affordable,
  reliable and ubiquitous ICT infrastructure.
• There are sufficient productivity gains,
  opportunities to increase government efficiency,
  and health and well-being benefits to build
  sustainable businesses at all levels
• By providing these opportunities in the
  developing world, we will also provide a
  mechanism to address such critical long-term
  issues as population growth, human rights, and a
  sustainable environment

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The Digital ProvideGlobal Information
Technology Report 2001-2002Readiness for the
Networked World (http//www.weforum.org)
Economic Growth
Income Gains
Effective Markets
Information for Economic Decisions
Information and Communication Technology
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Tangible Economic Benefits of ICT4B

• Productivity
• Drives long-term standard of living
• Large part of U.S. resurgence of productivity
  growth in 1996-2002
• How widespread would it need to be in LDCs to
  yield significant productivity increases?
• Income generation
• ICT equivalent of Super Money Maker irrigation
  pump6-9 month payback
• GrameenPhone170/month vs. 368 GDP/capita in
  Bangladesh
• Outsourcing
• Virtual security guards from Cape Verde
• Business process outsourcing in India
• But if 5 percent of developed country service
  jobs are contestableonly 0.24 of developing
  country population
• Digital diaspora as development resource (brain
  drain to brain trust)

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Economic Benefits and Applications

• Price discoveryrural farmers able to double
  incomes by discovering price of their crops in
  the capital city
• Improved exports to developed country markets
• Transfer of dollars from diasporanetworked
  diaspora as a development resource
• Coordination of transportation and distribution
  (e.g. crops to markets)
• Natural disaster mitigationearly warning of
  floods, monsoons, etc.

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ExampleICT for Improving Market Efficiencies
Price dispersion is a manifestationand, indeed,
it is the measureof ignorance in the market
(Stigler, 1961)

• Badiane and Shively (1998) studied monthly maize
  prices in Ghana from 1980 to 1993 the
  estimated time to fully transmit a price shock to
  each of two outlying markets is about four
  months.

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Economic Benefits and Applications

• Price discoveryrural farmers able to double
  incomes by discovering price of their crops in
  the capital city
• Job creation (jobs like data entry that can be
  shifted to developing countriesinexpensive IT
  workforce)
• Improved exports to developed country markets
• Transfer of dollars from diasporanetworked
  diaspora as a development resource
• Coordination of transportation and distribution
  (e.g. crops to markets)
• Natural disaster mitigationearly warning of
  floods, monsoons, etc.

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ICT Empowers Women

• We get our freedom from the Internet, since in
  our society girls are not allowed to go wherever
  we wantthe Internet takes us out to other
  people, places and realitiesit is our way of
  escaping from our closed society. It is vital to
  us, it gives us liberty.
• A young Muslim girl from Mauritania, Global
  Information Technology Report 2001-2002
  Readiness for the Networked World

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The Digital Provide
Economic Growth

• Smaller Families
• Healthier Families
• Better Education
• Capitalism Thrives

Income Gains
Effective Markets
Information for Economic Decisions
Information and Communication Technology
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Social Benefits and Applications

• A Platform for Education, Training and
  Consultation
• Educated women have fewer children and they are
  healthier
• Transparency
• Cost of obtaining a land title in Madhya Pradesh
  drops from 100 to 10 cents (reduced corruption)
• GIS for location of roads, schools, power plants
  to reduce politicization (Bangladesh)
• Internet-based disclosure
• Increased pressure for compliance with
  environmental regulations

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Social Benefits and Applications

• More voices (ease of publishing, many to many
  communication)
• Hondurasall media owned by one of 10 wealthiest
  families
• Revistazo.com provides outlet for investigative
  journalism
• Entertainment
• Developing country communities of practice
• Preservation and global sharing of local culture

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Health Benefits and Applications

• E-health (Health information, remote consultation
  using digital cameras, public health networks)
• SMS text messages used to increase compliance
  for TB treatment in S. Africa
• 4 tablets 5 times/week for 6 months
• Non-compliance increases drug resistance
• Only 1 treatment failure in pilot of 138 patients
• Very significant life and cost savings possible

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ExampleHealth benefits of ICTRiver Blindness

• IT used to help eradicate black fly that carries
  river blindness in West Africa
• Network of real-time hydrological sensors,
  satellites, and forecasting software determined
  best time to spray larvicide
• Protects 30 million people from infection
• Freed up 100,000 square miles of land capable
  of feeding 17 million people

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But ICT not just VOIP, Computers and Internet

• MEMS for low-cost lab on a chip and drug
  delivery
• Sensors for environmental or food quality
• Remote sensing for predicting crop yields and
  enhancing regional security
• Leveraging cyber-infrastructure for science
  aimed at developing country problems

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ICT4BWe are Studying Five Main Application Areas

• Commerce
• Health
• Education
• Government
• Location-based services
• Team includes social scientists
• Professors Stephen Weber, Isha Ray, at Berkeley

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ICT4BHypothesis 4

• It will take new and very innovative approaches
  in business models to make this workthis is
  not just about technology!
• Financing deployment Grameen Bank, Grameen
  Phone, Yahoo BB and DSL
• Distribution channels Intel White-Box
  experience?
• Working with (or around) local and national
  governments and regulations
• User and technical support models
• Deployment of services, enabling and encouraging
  the development of applications built upon them

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Disruptive Business Models Implementation
... A Major Societal Opportunity
Product Definition
Fundamental Technologies
Product Implementation
Source Stan Shih, Acer, 1992
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ExampleGrameen BankBangladesh

• Owned entirely by the poor
• Began in one village in 1976
• 97 of equity owned by the (women) borrowers,
  remainder by the government
• 2.6 million borrowers (95 women), over 1,000
  branches in over 42,000 villages. 12,000 staff.
• Has loaned more than US3.9B since inception
• Over US3.5B repaid with interest (98.75
  recovery rate) 290M loaned in the last 12
  months.
• Has never accepted any charityhas always been
  run as a profitable social enterprise
• 46.5 of Grameen borrowers have crossed the
  poverty line

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Grameen TelecomA Disruptive Societal-Scale
Business Model

• Village Phone is a unique idea that provides
  modern telecommunication services to the poor
  people of Bangladesh.
• So far over 26,000 loans of average US200 have
  been given to buy mobile phones.
• Average Phone Lady income goes up by 3-10x!
• The goal is to provide telecommunication services
  to the 100 million rural inhabitants in the
  68,000 villages in Bangladeshthe largest
  wireless pay phone project in the World.

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Disruptive Business Models Implementation
... A Major Societal Opportunity
Product Definition
Product Implementation
Fundamental Technologies
Key Idea Can such a model be used to
successfully develop and distribute other
technologies and services?
Source Stan Shih, Acer, 1992
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So Why Now?

• Rapidly Expanding Access to Communication
  Networks (especially wireless)
• Low-Cost Electronics and Devices
• Intuitive and User/Task-Oriented Interfaces

• Peer-to-Peer (and Device-to-Device) System
  Architectures
• Precise Spatial Location (via GPS) Embedded into
  Every Device
• Sensor fusion
• Unique Identity Systems

Source John Gage, Sun Microsystems and K. C.
Claffy, CAIDA, UCSD
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ICT4BHypothesis 5

• Key Idea By developing technologies and services
  specifically for this market, rather than simply
  retargeting existing technologies, there is a
  disruptive opportunity
• Fully-integrated, single-chip handset
• Chips optimized for server farm
  managementintrospection, power management, test,
  diagnosis and self-repair
• Hardware and software interaction in new and
  unique ways (e.g. to support privacy, security,
  reliability, reprovisioning and repair)
• Key Idea By co-developing devices and
  infrastructure, significant efficiencies can be
  obtained, and such development is possible in
  these relatively green field markets
• New and very powerful architectural control
  points can and will be established by the
  early-movers in these markets
• Given the significant pent up entrepreneurial
  desire in these markets, the right technologies
  and services are likely to move and grow
  relatively quickly.

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Novel Technology

• Device cost 10-100 times reduction
• Infrastructure cost 10-100 times reduction
• Device power 10-100 times lower
• Speech recognition for obscure languages and
  dialects

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Whats the Right Physical Network Architecture?

• I took a map of India and said what if we drew
  5000 circles, 40 km in radius. Each circle
  covers a 100 villages, about 5000 sq kms each, on
  average 25000 families100,000 people in each
  circle. Now thats a viable scale at which to
  build network and communication connectivity.
  Out of a circle of 100,000 people I can see at
  least a few thousand people effectively using all
  these technologies We try and build 5,000
  important centers and not outfit 500,000
  villages. We build it in a way that any of the
  100,000 people in the centers have access, but
  only if they are motivated, only if they are
  driven, only if they are willing to work hard and
  if they have a good use for this that has a good
  ROI.
• Vinod Khosla, KPCB, Stanford, 2000

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Three Layer Architecture Vision

• Devices
• 1-70 users each, 1-10
• Short range wireless (WiFi or kiosk at
  base-station)
• Proxies (base-stations)
• 100-1000 users, 200 , lt 1/user
• Mixed wired (where exists), wireless (WiMAX with
  relay), satellite
• Transient storage
• Data Centers
• gt100,000 users (more likely 1M users), lt 0.10 /
  user
• Full power, networking, persistent storage
• Question Is this really just about the
  communication architecture and arent people
  already deploying such systems in the developing
  world? Wont this just happen anyway?

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Exploiting 802.11 and 802.16, and Perhaps other
Wireless Technologies

• Driver coming of 5 chipsets
• Mix of local coverage and long-distance links
  (50km), likely with relay
• All IP based Voice and Data
• Multiple baseband channels?
• Illegal in US, but fine for India
• Novel MAC layer? Antennas?

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Devices

• Key Idea Co-Design Devices/Infrastructure
• gt 20-40x lower cost
• Enables more functionality
• Storage, processing, human analysis
• Longer battery life
• Novel low-cost OLED-based flexible displays
• 10-50x cheaper, more robust
• Printed using an inkjet process
• Key Idea Develop standard SoC gt 1-7 per device
• Looking at 1mW per device (including radio!)
• Can still be very profitable!

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Low-cost Infrastructure

• Goal 10-100 times lower cost
• Key idea intermittent networking
• Most apps do not need real-time continuous
  communication
• Asynchronous is 10-100 times cheaper?
• Feel some spots are highly interactive
  (continuous speech, video), many may be more like
  e-mailneed to validate market here.
• Novel protocols, application support

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Novel Deployment Support

• Key Idea Use micro-franchise model for long term
  financing and rapid (viral) deployment
• Grameen Phone
• Remote and self-management for most things
• Self-contained wireless proxies with ad hoc
  networking (WiMAX 802.16?)
• No keyboard, monitor, etc. on proxies.
• Data Centers are widely shared

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Summary

• New approach for IT in developing regions
• Novel technology, infrastructure
• Direct attack on the key challenges and at the
  extremeswere the University!
• Real deployments in the field
• Enable and enhance 1,000s of projects worldwide
• Speech/communication
• Access to local/regional/national/international
  information
• Integration of sensor networks
• Long term IT for self-sufficiency, stability
  (it must be a viable business, not financial aid!)

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Reading for Week 2

• Prahalad, C K and Hammond, A, Serving the World's
  Poor, Profitably, Harvard Business Review, Vol.
  80, Issue 9 Sep. 2002, pp48-58
• Keniston, K, Grassroots ICT Projects in India
  Some Preliminary Hypotheses, ASCI Journal Of
  Management
• Prahalad, C K and Hammond, A, What Works Serving
  the Poor, Profitably - A Private Sector Strategy
  for Global Digital Opportunity, World Resources
  Institute (WRI), Markle Foundation
• Please come prepared!
• Available via the course web site(s)