Forum: "Mobile Information Services" November, 2011
Question 1: In a partnership between a mobile network operator and agricultural partners...
18/11/2011
Question 1: In a partnership between a mobile network operator and agricultural partners, what unique value proposition does each partner bring, how can they leverage of each other's strengths and what roles should they each play in delivering a service to farmers?
Hello All and thanks to the e-agriculture team for having set-up this forum.
I believe that in a partnership between a mobile network operator (telco) and an agricultural partner the key for a sustainable and viable service to farmers is the underlying business model.
In that sense, each partner needs to focus on what it is good at:
Telco:
- provide access to the telecom network (including underserved regions/areas);
- market and communicate on services that are available to users (all services available through their network);
- charge users and share generated income with external Value Added Service providers (here the agricultural partner).
Agricultural partner:
- clearly identify who the target farmers are and what their real information needs are;
- understand which format is best suited for the collection and delivery of information (voice/IVR, text...);
- collect, analyse, refine and disseminate (or make available) relevant agricultural information to the target audience;
- market available information services in the field, including through networks of extension workers (or "community knowledge workers");
- make sure the telco partner fully understands that there is a real business behind VAS targeting farmers, even if the information service may take a longer time to take off (break even).
These key respective responsibilities enable for a business partnership which is meant to cover costs involved in the information management meant to benefit farmers.
It is easier said than done, but I think that the only information services targeting farmers which work in a self-sustainable way (not through advertisement made by large product/service providers) have followed this route.
I am keen to read other people's views and learn from them!
Thank you for starting this forum off right! We look forward to hearing more from you as the other questions open.
in 21st century mobile information is easy for flash any thing and low costing any where we sit and easily convey the massage as forum start and communicate massage massage flashed and egar farmer knew easily about the solution of the problem experts are easily think and they can give the connecting othebs and solute the problem very fastly because agriculture do not have time and wait for anything so in my view it is very useful
Thanks @radard! This is indeed a very good analyis of how the roles between telecom provider and Agricultural partner might be split. I would like to add just a couple of other points to this picture.
In addition to the basic infrastructure they would provide to any VAS provider, MNO could also bring additional benefits and assets to the table if strategically involved in building the Agri VAS:
- USSD menu. By providing Agri VAS access via basic USSD menu service provider could dramatically decrease the barriers for the rural users to access the service by increasing the usability (easy to find, no need to remember the codes). Usually MNOs provide access by USSD menu only to their core VAS such as mobile money solution. USSD access can also be seen as an idicator of their commitment to provide the service long-term.
- Potentialy MNO has a capacity to blend Agri VAS with mobile money solution and compliment advisory with agricultural financial services, such as loans and crop insurance.
There are several other roles that need ongoing involvement from one of the partners, and sometimes would require a third party to get involved:
- Formatting of the content. Even if the original source of content is identified and the channels for service delivery are chosen, information still has to be reformatted and sometimes translated to be delivered and understood by the end user. Agricultural partner might not have an immidiate capacity to do this in-house, as Agricultural partner is usually an NGO or Ag institution and not a VAS provider it its traditional sense.
- Quality assurance of the content - including sources, processes and final advice delivered. For this independent agronomists/ SMEs might be recruited if for example the agricultural partner has extensive on the ground experience but not so much access to the latest deep research around each individual crop/ animal.
Would be great to see how others have tackled these problems and look forward to further discussions!
I just want to let everyone know that Question 5 of this forum (opening for discussion on 29 Nov.) is focused specifically on content issues. This is a great introduction to this important, and often underestimated challenge of any agricultural information service.
@Natalia - Some of the activities that may fall under the “Knowledge Brokering Role” that I mentioned earlier briefly go to address your point on agriculture partners:
Demand Articulation Function (DAF): Partners that have expertise in organizing, identifying, planning, scanning, gathering, categorizing, storing information/knowledge through deliberation and brainstorming activities with the potential users/generators of information/knowledge.
Process Management Function (PMF): Partners that have expertise in mobilizing resources; secondary knowledge production through translating, modifying, rebuilding, packaging and repackaging of knowledge products from raw materials or from other knowledge products; and monitoring, evaluation, supervision, and feedbacks of content.
Supply Activation Function (SAF): Partners that can ensure the final products get to the end users by signaling, activating, setting in motion or triggering the final utilization of knowledge products to the user communities; and then actually communicate the technical know-how of the products to the user through advising, demonstrating, teaching, explaining, and training users.
Ben
I agree with radard's delineation of the roles of mno and agricultural partner. In my view, the mno is the platform provider and the ap the content provider. In my experience the partnership is formed by an Agreement, in which the roles of each party are specified. However, it is my experience that mnos dont want to engage the aps directly. Instead, an ap has to go through a third party IT company. And the ap has to negotiate and sign the Agreement with the itc to provide a service/content on the mno platform. Our experience is also that the mnos are willing to share only a small % of the revenue generated with an ap. And even then, the little share is never paid in time to the ap. This negates the ap's financial viability. Usually, the mno is so large relative to the ap that the ap has little or no bargaining power for a fair share of the revenue, and in obligating the mno/itc to pay on time, e.g. on a monthly basis. How can this challenge due to imbalance of bargaining power between an ap on one hand and the mno/itc on the other be fairly addressed!?
1. [Day 1] In a partnership between a mobile network operator and agricultural partners, what attributes does each partner bring, how are they complimentary and what roles should they play in delivering a service to farmers?
In the context of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL), Bharti Airtel is the network operator and Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) is the agricultural partner. In this model successfully implemented in India, each of the partners has contributed with their respective domain strengths.
- The network partner has a cricial role in ensuring adequate network coverage, developing suitable products which are within the reach and affordability of the target audience, addressing coverage issues, etc.
- The agriculture partner brings in rich experience of rural needs and quality content.
- Both Bharti Airtel and IFFCO have joined together in a joint venture which establishes their commitment. In addition to finacial resources, each has contributed experienced human resources with expertise in all the related areas of service. Leveraging the streangths of the promoters,
IKSL has developed as a Content Provider as well as Integrator of various stake holders.
- The network provider is important in sharing the MIS on delivery of the advisory services to the farmers and receipt.
- A VAS Technology Partner is important in managing the content and delivery through the network operator. In the case of IKSL, Bharti Airtel has contributed this support thru a third party vendor with specialisation in managing the delivery.
- In addition to own content compiled and collated, IKSL also has developed partnerships with other Agencies and Institutions which generate actual content - like Agricultural Universities and Research Institutes, International agencies like CABI, Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Agmarknet for market information, etc. IKSL has developed platforms to collate and make reference material accessible to its Content Team.
- IKSL has also developed Partnerships with other stake holders in rural India for promoting more focused and location specific advisory services. With these organisations / agencies, IKSL has promoted Focused Communities of farmers with common subjects of interest under the aegis of a collaborating partner. Such partnerships include - State / Central Govt Ministries, State Level Federations, NGOs, etc. These partners facilitate in providing more intensive and focused advisory of relevance to the subscribers
- IKSL has also developed ICT Platform with support from GSMA Foundation to manage all the activities and set up quality assurance processes.
Mr Srinivasan, thank you for this detailed comment. Would you please give us a little background, and maybe some links to detailed information about IFFCO? This could be interesting to our global audience. Thank you.
Mr. Riggs,
Here is a brief on IFFCO:
Indian Farmers Fertliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) is a multi-State Cooperative society incorporated in 1967 in India having more than 40,000 member societies with a base of around 55 millions farmers.
IFFCO is an Important stake holder in Rural India which has established a strong bond with millions of farmers. It is the largest Producer & Marketeer of fertilisers in India having installed capacity of more than 8 million Tonnes of fertilisers
Reaching out to Farmers :
IFFCO has always recognised the importance of adopting ICT for bringing about a significant change in reaching out to the farmers. Towards this, IFFCO promoted a joint venture company by the name IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd. (IKSL) with Bharti Airtel Ltd. & M/s Star Global Resources Pvt. Ltd.
Mission of IKSL is to empower people living in rural India, to provide the much needed inputs, information & services on real time basis through affordable mobile communication, to enable farmers to improve their decision making ability and to associate like minded organizations for meeting the objective of IKSL.
Fore more information -
http://www.iffco.coop/
Thanks to GSMA for starting off this very important discussion thread on e-Agriculture Forum. We expect many insights from the participants in coming days. Here are a few thoughts of mine as I think about today’s discussion question.
I think the key success factor for any service, that mobile network operator may be interested to launch, would be the scale, because that’s the only thing directly linked to their profit and will determine whether they would invest that service or not.
However, unlike entertainment VAS, Mobile Network Operators cannot sell agriculture service through promotion alone, since the customer would expect continuous value derivation in terms of better crop yield and higher economic profit from the advices, and currently the customers (farmer) are not very sure about how these things will be delivered through mobile operators. Hence they are sceptic and uptakes of agro-services are low.
Hence, any agriculture partner, should bring in clear distinct experience and expertise in these areas in terms of understanding of farmers need, ability to solve their problems and ultimately to help them with inputs and services to implement the solutions.
This as a whole determines the serviceability of the agriculture partners and if that match the scale, the mobile network operators are looking at, would be a winning partnership to evolve into a successful business model and long term profitability.
I will begin by arguing that we need to define what we mean by “Agricultural Partners”? Are we talking of any group or organization involve in agricultural development services such as NGOs with agricultural service provision; community-based organizations involved in agriculture; farmer-based organizations; national agricultural units such as extension services? This is because the goal of this type of investment should go beyond "Service Delivery".
With that, I will take a different perspective on the question! The main goal for this type of partnership, I think, is to develop new and relevant communication models/approaches to ensure timely exchange of knowledge between knowledge generators and users. So we need to know whether the "telcos" and "agricultural partners" that we are talking about have the necessary expertise and capabilities to achieve that.
The role of the telcos can easily be predicted (as some other discussants have started outlining) but when it comes to the 'agricultural partners', we need to understand the complexity within agricultural innovation systems, especially within the context of smallholder farmers.
Any good partnership aimed at improving knowledge sharing between local farmers and the other stakeholders through ICTs/mobile technologies should encompass all four functions of "Knowledge Brokering Role (KBR)" that I have been working on for sometime now – demand articulation function; network formation function, process management function, and supply activation function. This model is purely socio-technical.
I can explain these further for those interested in the KBR construct.
Great contributions to this discussion. Thanks for your valuable input on Day 1 of this event.
I would like to add onto bkaddom's comments and ask: how do we define success when evaluating mAgri business models that involve partnerships between telcos and "agriculture partners"? TechnoServe has done some analysis in this space and found that there are very few models to date that are profitable. In part, this is due to the fact that many initiatives are still in early phases of development. However, other initiatives are based on business models that seem not to be designed for profitability.
If models are fully or mainly subsidized, can we call that a success? We would argue that if there is not a clear strategy for full cost recovery beyond donor funds, this is not a sustainable model.
I would very much like to hear the thoughts of the group on this question.
Thanks, Hilary. I agree with your points. I have a few comments on this thread so far.
First, given governments have a tradition in many countries of providing AG information to farmers as a public good, I'd extend Hilary's definition of success by leaving open the option of an on-going subsidy from a government source. In fact, a government could consider outsourcing its provision of valuable AG information to a third-party service. Of course the government's subsidy would have to be reliable and not dependent on donor funds itself.
Two other thoughts: how would a model work that included two or more MNO's as the service delivery partners? In most cases where success seems most likely, one MNO is involved and that of course increases the odds that the MNO's focus and market reach will be sufficient to reach scale and sustainability. But many countries have a mix of MNO's with no dominant player. In these cases, how can we hope to reach sustainability and scale by, of possible, tapping more than one MNO?
Third thought regarding the value of the AG partners. They are most likely in the best position to make sure that the mobile "channel" is used well to augment other info delivery channels including traditional ones like face-to-face training, demonstration plots and radio, or newer ones such as stand-alone video. The mobile channel is great for delivering certain types of information, but not all. It can be used well to complement these other channels. For example, farmers might learn via face-to-face training how to graft a tree (something that is hard to teach via text messages), but wel timed reminders sent by text message could increase the probability that a farmer new to grafting does it correctly.
Judy
Dear all,
i would like to comment on the multiple MNOs thought. I'm convinced that it is a key aspect in a scalable approach as mentioned in one post, but it is also the best way to design solutions that could be then ported to different countries, or used by other organizations.
So all the question is to know how to make such a case possible. It is clear that if the origin of the project is a partnership between one mno and one or more agri partners, then it is almost impossible to open the market later. Surely from a contract perspective, but also because the service would have been designed to fit with the specificities of the VAS platform of the mno.
Therefore, there are, imho, different requirements to enable the integration of multiple MNOs.
1- first of all, a partnership is necessary between Agri partner and a technology partner. An organization that has expertise in mobile technologies and can develop the technical service
2- then the service itself should be easily implementable accross mnos: -use open standards -use non-proprietary technology (e.g. this is ruling out USSD) SMS works perfectly, Voice technologies, mobile web technologies, on-device apps are all possible.
The second part of the question is when the partnership with one or more MNOs is required. I believe that all the investigation and proof of concept does not need any mno. For any kind of services and technologies, a small pilot does not require mno infrastructure. The only real and essential need for a MNO is really on the scale-up and as mentioned in a couple of posts on the financial aspects (collecting money, etc.). But then, the negotiation can be, and perhaps should be only on the infrastructure provision and amout of traffic generated. MNOs value traffic, and are happy to share revenues with provider of traffic.
There are imho many advantages with such an approach where an MNO arrives late in the pipe and is not the owner of the service. First of all, the ownership of the service is on the agri partners who has more flexibility to improve the service and increase its usefulness (even create a full portfolio of services as the need appears)
Second, for the community at large, it increase replicability and more global uptake around the World. I personnally feel that one of the problems of the domain is the competition, due largely to the commercial aspect.
I think it is essential to integrate ideas and not oppose them, and in the best World having one platform that improves over time. This is not an utopia, but a very common model in ICT. few examples: linux for operating system, apache for web server, mysql for db management, etc etc.
Particularly in this domain, services for social and economic development, it would be imho essential to go in that direction.
The last point i want to react on is related to two points that have been enlighted as strenghts of MNOs:
*marketing
*trust of quality of content
I respectfully disagree on these. In my own experience in at least 4 countris in west africa, east africa and india, I haven't seen any farmers willing to integrate an agri advice from an untrusted unknown unseen source. It is just impossible imho to believe that one can spread such a service to farmers directly without relying on an ngo which has already links in the field. The trust is coming from this human links which is required. It might be different on other services, e.g. finance services, but my experience with farmers let me think a bit differently on this.
stephane
Stephanie makes some interesting points about a multi-MNO approach. I'd like to hear others' perspective on this. I hear usually that, in order to really scale, one needs a single MNO approach so you can get the full force of that MNO's marketing engine. I don't know of any multi-MNO approach that has worked. Does anyone know?
We may see something like this with the USAID/GSMA/Gates mFarmer Initiative where the shared content database is used by several MNO's and each MNO then adds its market differentiation by localizing information or improving its delivery. Is that possible? Could a MNO-neutral platform provide access to the shared database and perhaps payment services?
Judy
I anticipate problems with multiple MNOs in this type of partnership. With good telecommunication policy issues such as interoperability in place, good partnership can take place between one MNO, agriculture partner (s) and/or sometime a third party software developer.
For example - a mobile application designed by a single MNO for mango farmers who subscribe to multiple MNOs in a given country should be possible. M-Kilimo in Kenya uses that and the farmers who are subscribers to different MNOs are charged accordingly.
Ben
There are lots of initiatives in different sectors that is following the multi-mno approach. It is not presented as a multi-mno approach but just the branding is the service itself, and it is independent of the MNO.
Almost all multi-country projects are multi-mno.
Some examples: txteagle or mpedigree.
Other successfull examples that are not backed-up by a mno: agriculture lifeline india. Somehow, the case of grameen knowledge worker in uganda is on the edge. It is a partnership with an mno, but it is not branded as such, and it is perfectly portable to other mno imho.
There is imho no question on the need for an mno, particularly for the infrastructure and the payment aspect. I'm not convinced at all that the branding and marketing is required. People are interested in useful services and the provider of service (the brand) might be more the service itself than the mno behind.
In that regards there is no particular need for differentiation, as the deal would be more based on business contract than really co-branding.
All MNOs, in the generic domain of VAS, have a two options offer, which is integrating the service in their portfolio as the mno service, or just providing infrastructure and revenue sharing as a business contract. this is the case in all countries of the world.
My point in this thread is pushing for the later case. I do think that the ownership of the service, and its evolution is a key approach, and it is likely handled more efifciently, and with a greater flexibility by an organization outside the MNO. In the traditionnal internet business chain, i think that the role of mnos is something close to ISP+Paypal but nothing else
Stephane (a french male ! so no i)
Stephane, consider uploading a photo to your e-Agriculture profile. That would avoid any confusion! :-)
Thank you for all your comments.
Good point Fiona, with what you stated on agriculture partners. My experience with these so called 'agricultural partners' is that, they have different expertise based on the goals of the organization, but are not collaborating to leverage these skills. So the problem we are having on the ground is where myriads of these agricultural service providers are duplicating projects and services.
That is why mFarmer initiative needs to be clear with what they are looking for in these partners. From the last sentence of Fiona's post, we can see at least 3 key functions by agricultural partners - "understanding farmers need"; "providing content"; "connecting with farming communities". All these are key in leveraging the role of mobile companies and are at the same time totally different.
The reason the national agricultural extension services continue to fail is that, they combine all these functions and a lot others for one extension offcer to deliver.
Agricutural partners should be evaluated not based on what their objectives are but what they are actually doing. In that sense, the mfarmer initiative should look for more than one agriculture partner within a given partnership.
IFFCO's case may be a good example but I believe we can get better models/approaches when we look critically into these agricultural partners.
Ben
bkaddom, while I agree that the 3 key functions by agricultural partners - "understanding farmers need"; "providing content"; "connecting with farming communities" may be different, they are not mutually exclusive, but complimentary in practice, and can be effectively provided by one ap.
Thanks.
Adrian
Adrian, thank you for this comment. Can you share an example of an agricultural partner that is providing all three functions in a relationship with a mobile network operator?
Michael, I believe that we Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange Limited (KACE) (an ap) in collaboration with the Safaricom Limited (an mno) are a good example of this in Kenya. Not only do we provide content (reliable & timely market price information as well as commodity offers to sell and bids to buy) but to do so we had fisrt to understand the farmers' needs for market access, then develop the content, as well as develop appropriate ICT based platforms (in collaboration with mno) to provide the content, and build farmrs' capacity to access and use the platforms effectively through farmer training workshops and promotions.
Thanks.
Adrian
Sure Adrian, I agree with you but the challenge on the ground is more than being complimentary in practice. It is about duplication of functions/projects under the limited resource conditions.
Let's take Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange Limited (KACE) for example as the Agricultural Partner (AP). KACE has all the resources and expertise to i) articulate knowledge demand from users (farmers and researchers) - DAF, ii) network partners according to their needs and resources -NFF, iii) manage the process in terms of funding, repackaging of raw data/information, etc. - PMF, and also be able to iv) signal the advent of new innovation and train users how to use it - SAF. This is the entire chain that I refer to as "Knowledge Brokkering Role (KBR).
You will agree with me that, in Kenya you will identify myriads of NGOs, international development organizations, community based organizations etc. that will also profess to have the same skills and expertise and therefore be abe to deliver through the entire chain. That is the situation on the ground, leading to duplication of roles because there is little or no doordination/collaboration among these organizations.
So my argument which is based on field research is that, for effective and efficient use of resources, the APs should identify their strengths within one or two of these four functions and focus their limited resources on that. With collaboration from others, we may see concentrations of APs that are good in Demand Articulation (DA), others in Network Formation (NF), stil others in Process Management (PM), and some in Supply Activation (SA). It is more about distribution of functions and developing expertise in it.
In reality/practice is tough, but it should be possible once the network is formed.
Ben
Ben, I hear you. But aps are in a market place of ideas! And the market will sort out the concentration. It is hard for anyone to "legislate" it, in a free market environment!
Thanks Adrian,
I differ from that, even though you are not the first to argue that way. If we actually want the 'market' to improve lives of our clients, then the agricultural partners (AP) must put their house in order.
I think that is what the mFarmer Initiative is about - partnership between the MNOs and APs and possibly among the APs and/or MNOs. My approach is just looking at ways to improve the existing 'chaos' agricultural value chain where everyone is doing everything.
Of course if the market cannot legislate itself, funders with their requirements can decide who they fund. Unless the AP is funding its own projects.
Ben
I agree with Ms. Smith that leveraging existing brand of the MNO or Agri VAS partner in rural areas allow the service to build awareness and establish credibility. However, in the long run, the customers , especially those in the bottom of the economic pyramid, simply look for “Value for Money” rather than the “Brand”.
For example, a poor, rural customer will discard a branded handset and go for a not-so-popular brand for the reason that the latter is claimed to have a battery life many times that of a branded one.
Hillary has brought up critical issues that face many development programmes where partnerships are involved: sustainability and successs. Without doubt these points will come up repeatedly during our discussion, and they will be dealt with in detail under Question 3 and Question 4. Keep those good ideas rolling.
Hi,
I think one of the key elements a mobile network operator should bring to the table is 'credibility'. It is very cruicial to establish early on that the services to be offered by a mobile operator in collaboration with agricultural partners do not, in any way, replace the credibility or the 'ways of getting reliable information' from already established sources - something which the farmers may be already accustomed to, or aware of.
It is important to establish early on how a mobile operator positions itself sufficiently as a carrier only of timely and reliable information on agriculture information on demand and it does not in any way, threaten, diminute or displace the knowledge possessed by say agricultural extension workers on ground.
Also your question suggests that 'a mobile network operator' can have multiple agricultural partners. What if there are more than one network operators willing to partner with government agencies? It is interesting to know whether or not 'agricultural information' should ever become a 'commodity' - something the competing telecom operators will be fighting for in the same market space (farmers) with a profit motive.
Thoughts welcome.
Thanks.
The comments have been very good and have mostly focused on the 'partnership' providing some sort of content.
Another way to think about it, however, is that the mobile operator can leverage the 'strengths' or financial receipts from many new users to provide a robust and reliable network. The new users, who might be farmers or farm advisers, can leverage the local experience of their counterparts in day-to-day farm management, with early identification of pests or diseases, being an example.
By sharing observations and experiences through a 'virtual community' that's hosted on the local network, there is increased usage of the network and increased revenue. The 'experential knowledge' of what problems other farmers are facing and how those problems are ameliorated, can be extremely valuable.
I hope this helps, even if it doesn't get to issues like the longer-term need for subsidy.
Mark
I want to put into discussion the profitability of the alliance. In particular, the profitability of the operator, because the profitability of the agricultural partner seems obvious.
To provide the services, the operator must make a significant investment in infrastructure in areas with a very low return. Generally, where more has to invest, less profitable it will be. And in economic terms of mobile network operators, such terms are usually unviable.
In these cases a new player enters the scene. In developed countries is the government and in other countries may also include development cooperation agencies. The function of this new actor is to support infrastructure investments that make viable investments by operators.
The investments of these third parties should focus on the telecommunications trunks and other infrastructure that can be shared by all mobile network operators concerned. This will generate a profit for the common good of society as a whole (the common infrastructure must be publicly owned and privately managed), allowing a viable business model for mobile network operators and encouraging competition to increase the added value for agricultural partners.
In this scenario, the relationship between operators and farmers occur at the same level. Disappears the domain of the network owner over users. And establishing a real win-to-win partnership.
I slightly disagree with Mr Fortuny. There is no way, through a partnership or not, that you will convince an operator to extend its covers just to deliver one agri service.
Then i don't know any operator with real CSR activities. They are supporting services that bring them directly or at maximum on short term benefit.
I believe the coverage extension discussion is a different discussion, that includes different partners. It is not a role of a service provider imho. There are lots of instrument, such as the universal service fund (or whatever name it takes in different countries) to work in this domain. So again i really doubt that a farmer service would be the incentive for operator to extend coverage.
In all case, if the infrastructure cost is covered by donor funds, then be sure that if the maintenance is not then covered, this will stop as soon as the funding stops. If you integrate infrastructure maintenance in the business model of the agri service, then the chance you will ever reach sustainability is below 0%.
So all in one, i think that it relatively outside the discussion to consider areas not covered by a mobile signal.
One a more general basis, i've the feeling in many posts that mnos are quite often seen as a magic wand that will suddenly provide sustainability to unsustainable service. In my experience, it is very very very rarely the case.
As underlined few times, mnos will always focus on their benefit and business, which is perfectly normal. So starting from this fact, we have to look at the service and the related costs. In practice, as i mentioned, what the mnos bring to the partnership is scale in terms of infrastructure (the ability to manage thousands of users), payment management, and discount in public telecommunication costs.
From a pure practical point of view, in a given project, one can expect to get up to 50% rebate on the communication cost plus free hosting of the service. This is in the best case solution. For the case i know well, this is not the part that makes a service sustainable or not. In most cases, the problem is the architecture of the service that makes the service unsustainable, not the presence or the absence of an mno. I'm sure this will come again later in the discussion.
steph
@Steph I think you are right that a mobile operator wouldn't extend their network coverage purely for one agri value added service (VAS), just as they are unlikely to see Agri VAS as a standalone product. Instead, as Collins Nweke mentioned in Question 2, some operators view agriculture services as part of a wider "mServices strategy" that includes health, financial services and education. As competition between operators continues to escalate, the large rural customer base (a great deal of whom are farmers in the markets we are talking about) represents a sizeable business opportunity for MNOs.
Have you seen the recent report by Vodafone: ‘Connected Agriculture’? [PDF file] The report concludes that 80% of a potential $138 billion uplift in emerging market farmers' incomes will be derived from the growth of:
- mobile information services providing detailed and localised weather forecasts, crop prices and resource management information
- helpline services giving real-time guidance on issues such as pest control and the challenges linked to climate change, including water scarcity
- mobile money transfer systems, such as Vodafone M-PESA, which provide farmers with the ability to exchange, save and borrow small amounts of capital as well as take out short-term insurance policie
The report on 'connected agriculture' is quite good, even if i feel that the underlying hypothesis is quite wrong. I've developed my view on this report in a recent post.
I tend to think that the global question is to know if MNOs should be or not value-added service provider. I personnaly think that not only they should not be service provider, but more over i even think that this is even particularly bad for the mservice in general.
First of all, i think that mobile operator are not well structured to support innovation. Most innovative services on the web as started from nothing, and because it was easy to deploy, lots of innovation happened. Same for lots of successful apps, or for services like twitter. It is pretty clear that the fact that it was easy and costless to try an app and make it easily available was a reason of emergence of innovation. If one had to deal individually with operators, nothing would have happened. This was the case at the early days of wap portals.
Then i think also that it is quite unfair that mobile operators owning their network compete with service providers who are also their customers for the infrastructure. This is really unfair competition. I think it is essential to have a separation between infrastructure provider and service providers, and that both are separated. Btw, one can start to see that regulation is going in that directions in few countries like Rwanda, and Tanzania (iirc).
All in one, if you look at developed countries, you see that mnos are not even fighting for being a service providers any more, they just surrender and are back to infrastructure provider only (see appstores, mobile web access etc). They have tried hard in the past, back in the years 2000-2004, with WML and their own private closed wap portal. This is now dead, and i had wished they learnt from this history. On the contrary, they are now trying to push for the walled garden in developing countries again, and this is terrible. I believe that it is safe to bet that this will die because at the end everybody will want to be fully connected to the whole information space but i wish we would not go through the same path again.
so all in one, we are all witnessing competition between operators. This is great when this drives the price down, but somehow this is insane when it comes to social oriented services such as agri services or financial services.
i tend to think that yes there is a huge potential for mservices, but the partnership with mnos should stay at the infrastructure level, so that services can go accross operators, and serve all people independently of their operator.
steph
Reality has to convince MNOs to expand coverage because the business of mobility can not have the same discrimination to rural field as in the past happened with cable telecommunications. New uses of urban users, mServices strategies and ease of deployment of the network, should allow the presence of MNOs in rural areas. My previous contribution wanted to expose that the necessary infrastructure should be shared and should be made available to all service providers.
The MNO partnership should be with service providers. Service providers should remain independent of the MNO, but this is not possible if there is no regulation of the telecommunications sector. What has happened in developed countries (as Steph indicated) is that the MNO has offered services because it was a profitable business. When third parties have entered into market services with innovative proposals, MNOs have returned to their business core. To avoid that operators provide services in developing countries, regulation of telecoms are needed.
Everyone must be devoted to their specialty. And added value partnerships are to be made in direct client-supplier relationships.
(partnership) (partnership)
MNOs <----------> Service Providers <-----------> Users
<---------------- (telecom regulations) ------------------->
Government
Hello All
Telcos are the major technology platforms with better penetration into rural areas, and may be the best alternative of agriculture modernization with the right partners. Mobile technology can provide better opportunities for both small and large farmers, offering better products access and opportunities for communication and development. In the case of the company I represent, as a small new startup we dont have yet any partnership with a Telco, but having good mobile platform is the basis for our business plan and the support of our main technology products.
Best regards
Eddie, we look forward to hearing more from you on the other topics in this forum. It's great to have the perspective of an entrepreneur in our discussion!
Another point about the importance of content type and periodicity.
Merci!