I am here at the India Global ICT Forum 2013 in New Delhi, listening to what Innovation means in India and how practical creativity leading to biz and well being is stimulated by the Government. Here a few snapshots I like to share with you.

One thing that impressed me is a nation wide program, in India, to create a data base of biometric identification of all Indians, that is over a billion people, based on finger prints and iris recognition. Interestingly the business motivation is to provide a way to cut frauds (from a Government point of view) making sure that subsidy goes to the person that was intended to be the recipient. At the same time this nation wide person authentication becomes the platform for any business where identity is required.

The project is not just about creating a data base and populating it, nor limited to provide a standard set of APIs to access the identity information.

It is about developing more effective (and affordable) technologies for capturing biometric parameters, analyzing them and make sure of minimizing false positive and false negative.

The expectation is that being able to manage such a huge identity set will create a business opportunity for India to export these technologies.

Whilst one speaker insisted in better education an investor angel said that in his experience the less educated a person is, the more likely he is to become a successful entrepreneur. Those getting Masters and Doctoral degrees are usually looking for security, they do not have the right entrepreneurial spirit!

ICT is a winner-take-all business. One need to fund companies that are able to create the market, not those that aim at competing in an existing market.

A representative of the South Korean Government outlined their plan:

• 90% of population reached by 1 Gbps by 2017
• beginning of 10 Gbps in the mass market
• massive coverage of urban areas with free wifi hotspots
• eGovernment for free to all mobile phones (no charge in using a phone to access Government services)
• Nation wide commitment to prevent hacking and cyber crime on mobile

A representative of Bangladesh explained how ICT can change the life of people and the economic fabric by creating a brand new banking system. In Bangladesh only 22 million people have a banking account, but 99 million people have a cell phone. These latter represent 68% of the population and this figure is rapidly growing.

They can now open a cell phone mobile account by taking a picture of themselves through the cell phone, this is associated to four digits fingerprint that is managed by the Telecom Company along with a voice digital signature. The combination of these biometrics (in different situations) is the passport to access banking services. Notice that a good percentage of people in Bangladesh still do not know how to read and write, but they know how to operate a cell phone.

The transaction price is about 8 paisa, that is one third of the cost of a voice call, hence really affordable.

In India 346 million kids are in the primary and secondary school age but only 220 million are actually going to school. Also, it has been observed that the quality of education (and teachers) decreases as distance from a major city increases. Good teachers do not want to teach in rural areas.

Hence Education is a crucial strategic priority for India and the approach is to use ICT through “frugal innovation”, that is by dramatically reducing ICT cost so that it can become pervasive. Now they have a computer for school, Aakash selling for 2,500Rp (less than 50$) based on the microprocessor used by Apple for the first iPad. At that time (2010) it cost 38$, now it cost 4$.

For connectivity they use GSM making sure to format content in such a way that a few kbps are enough, so that the data service can be provided for free.

I am not an expert in cocktail parties, nor in discos, but I have to say I noticed that whenever I am in a crowd I have problem in hearing the person I am talking with because of the overwhelming noise. However, after a while, the noise seems to disappear and I can focus on my conversation.

Location of sites with signifcant LF phase-ITC (left) and HG power-ITC (right) in both conditions. The colors of the dots represent the ITC value at each site

This empirical “sensation” has now found an explanation by studies from researchers of the Columbia University and other universities, who managed to look “inside” the brain of people to see what happens when one wishes to concentrate on a sound in a noisy environment.

All sounds in the environment clearly get to our ears (we do not have the options of some dogs that can move their ears in the direction on a sound to better capture it and single it out from other sources).
This is shown in the activity of the brain that gets all sounds. Scientists have discovered, by experimenting with people suffering from epilepsy, that there are two regions in the brain involved with sound. One is basically capturing any sound detected by the ears, the other is focussing on a specific sound the person  is paying attention to.

What they have further discovered is that it is this area that connects to the cortical neurones where perception of the sound arises. Hence, we perceive what we pay attention to. They also shown that the process of selectivity is a dynamical one. As our brain works out the meaning of a discourse it is able to create a representation that in turns further focus attention. Part of this representation fills in those sounds that get lost in the noise. In a way the brain reconstruct the meaning of a conversation by filling in what it is expecting to hear. This of course may generate false understanding from time to time, but in general it works pretty well.

It is just another example of the creation of a semantic network.

The research aims at helping people suffering from epilepsy by decreasing the burden of sounds that can originate an epilepsy episode as signals spread through the brain. A surgical intervention may interrupt the fibres spreading the signals thus decreasing the number of epilepsy episodes.

When reading this news I was attracted by the relation it has on semantic networks and the fact that we can really learn a lot by looking at how Nature can solve problems by working around them.

I was also interested by the connection I can see with the issues we have in wireless networks where the level of noise, that more and more is created by our own networks, is decreasing the amount of signals that can be transmitted.

In transmission we are constrained by the Shannon theorem that defines the ration between the signal and the noise that allows to transmit a certain amount of bits. With a semantic network we are not invalidating the Shannon theorem but we can find a reasonable work-around. By introducing an understanding of the message we can use less bit for the message and still work out its meaning, and then reconstruct it.

It is like saying in a discourse: “I will be going tomorrow from Rome to Milan” and because of the noise being unable to transmit the whole message. What if I am just sending ” I tomorrow from Rome Milan”?  Well, if you place this into a context you will probably be able to work out the meaning and reconstruct the full sentence (this is just an example to give the basic idea, in reality it is much more complex, as more complex is the approach followed by the brain).

Connections in our brain, from the Connectome Project

In the example given, the first sentence would have required 42 basic information (characters) to be sent, the second one achieves the same result with 25. And what if from the context you can tell that I am in Rome, and that I am talking about myself so that you just say “tomorrow Milan”. You would cut down the information transfer to 14 characters, 1/3 of the original sentence. In other words you might claim that using a semantic network you would be able to multiply by 3 the amount of information sent!

Once you move into the “semantic” space, you find yourself in a domain where correlations are as important, even more important, than the single pieces of information. In a future where we will have pervasive networks and thousands of objects creating connectivity, not just using it, you will have a structure that more and more resemble the wiring in the brain, with continuous alteration in the strength of each link that in turns represents a meta-information that can be used to assess meaning. We will change from a communications based on signals to a communications where signals change states of the network and this leads to new emerging properties (meaning) that can be perceived and that create the “message”, as it happens in the brain where our consciousness and perception is more a consequence of a brain state change than a response to external stimuli.

Samsung prototypes with flex screens

Samsung has perfected the OLED/AMOLED technology to create flexible screens on a plastic support. They expect a revolution in the cellular phone design starting next year, when the new screens will show up in latest cell phone models at the end of first half 2013.

This technology is not new, at least 10 years old, but so far only prototypes have been made. The big challenge is to mass produce this kind of screens. Now it seems that Samsung has managed to find a way to do this.

Based on Samsung reports the screens will fit a smart phone form factor, bigger screens that might be used for tablets are not planned for the time being.

Flexibility in the screen decreases the possibility of damaging it when your cell phone hits the floor, are lighter than screens made of glass and may help in lowering production cost,  but it also enables a whole new set of design. So I am really curious to see what designer will come up with ….

As I was looking on the web for an image of an RFID tag I could include in my post yesterday I stumble onto this cartoon, that made me smile and … think!

Have you ever start thinking of the implication of having a cell phone?
A cell phone is a very sophisticated RFID, a device that can identify you and let the “system” follow you every single day through every moment of your life.

And this information can be easily correlated to understand what are your whereabouts, what are your friends, what you do on free time, even the type of person you are: do you get nervous often? are you a chatty character?…

And still, even though you would be the first to react adversely at the idea of someone wanting to “tag” you and potentially knowing something about you, you are accepting your cell phone and actually you’ll feel lost without it!

It is not just a matter of “presenting” (or marketing) things as the cartoon suggest. I think it is more complex than that.

Our metrics are based on the perceived usefulness, and also on the level of trust we have, and feel.

Network Operators are usually trusted parties and we feel they will not use the knowledge they have (or might have by processing te data our cell phone provides) to our detriment. This is something that, I think, Network Operator should capitalise by providing each of us with even more services that can be derived by those date we are so willing (or not upset) to provide.
And the more service, the more attention paid to privacy, the more the trust will grow and even more services will be possible to deliver. And this is just what an Information Society should be all about!

Looks more like a mini tablet, or a smart phone, yet it is a camera!

According to a recent interview by Sunhong Lim, VP Sales and Marketing of Samsung, digital cameras are morphing into communications devices. Already in 2012 most of Samsung cameras will have WiFi connectivity and this will become a standard feature in the coming yeas. The reason, according to Lim, is that customer are looking for a total solution to their picture taking fancy, and that includes manipulating the picture and sharing it immediately.

Clearly, young users are in the habit of sharing their pictures on line and for them it is just natural to be able to do the same thing from the camera itself and as soon as they have shot the picture.

The cloud may be the real enabler for making connected cameras a reality and in the future Telecom Operators might even subsidize cameras similarly to the way they subsidize smartphones, according to Lim.

Really, in just a few years we have seen a potential overlap of cameras and cell phones (notice that some cameras are already embedding a mike so that you can voice annotate your pictures and the move from WiFi connectivity to LTE is not a big one, in perspectives). The real question is if cell phones will kill the digital camera market (by embedding good cameras) or if the two world will coexist.

My personal bet is that most of point and shoot cameras will disappear, replaced by the cell phone, whilst the reflex digital cameras for their superior optical quality (and this requires a bulky set, something you are not going to carry around all times) will flank cell phones and probably might embed a cell phone. Or, alternatively, they will wirelessly connect to a cell phone that creates the bridge to the Web.

The huge success in the nineties of wireless communications in the developed world has led to volumes and in turn to the dramatic decrease of cell phones price. Add this to the limited cost of a wireless infrastructure (with respect to a fixed line infrastructure) and to the speed of deployment and you have the right recipe for its diffusion in the developing countries. Within a decade we have seen  a largely unpredicted growth of wireless worldwide: from 1 billion to 5 billion cell phones, most of them in developing countries. China and India are at the forefront of this evolution and are now getting close to a billion of cell phone users, adding more every week than all the rest of the world.

In many of these Countries the cell phone has become a universal tool for the economic growth. Mobile payment is more diffused in Africa than in any other Continent since it has filled a gap in the banking system. Health care in many of these countries has been boosted by the use of cell phones.

This is creating a development of these areas also in terms of education with more new engineers in the developing world than in the developed world, and this is something that COMSOC has been taking into account with specific programs targeting these audiences.

I have been using Dropbox for a while and I noticed that many of my acquaintances are using it too. In some of the European working groups I am in it has become a standard way to store, share and exchange documents. It provides 2 GB for free and you can upgrade to a 50 GB or 100 GB capacity for a monthly fee (9.99 and 19.99 respectively).

They have managed to attract 45 million users and fell under the eye of Steve Jobs who proposed to buy the company but they refused (and now Apple has its own Cloud).

Now they are expanding their services to biz customers (they already have over a million of them, I consider myself more like a residential customer…).

For them they plan to offer 1 TB at a yearly fee of 795$ and additional licenses, each with an extra 200 GB of space, at 125$ a year.

Interestingly, they are targeting the cell phone users, by embedding their client in HTC phones starting 2012. In Japan they have a deal with SoftBank to embed their client in their Sharp cell phones. In Europe some of the Sony Ericsson Android phones have the client embedded.

Their strong point is the transparency to the terminal, and that is why I use them. You can share files from your Android phone and read them on your iPad without a glitch.

Simplicity is at the core of success and the seamless experience they provide explains why so many are using it. Whether they will be able to capture a serious biz customer base remains to be seen. Will business trust placing their data on the Cloud?

Clearly, the push being made by several Telecom Operators, if successful in creating trust will in the end favor players like Dropbox, unless the message got by potential customer is not “trust the cloud” but “trust the brand”.

This cloud evolution is going to be another challenge for Telecom Operators that may risk pouring money in creating infrastructures and trust and end up seeing other taking advantage of that. This is likely to be the outcome, unless the Operators’ Could proposition moves away from the pure storage at low cost…

At the ICT 2010, organised by the European Commission in Brussels to discuss state of the art and perspectives of Information Communications Technologies there was an extensive display of prototypes. A few of them stimulated my thinking.

As an example, we are talking a lot about 3D, and it has reached the consumer market this year. But it is still “glass” based, that is you need to wear glasses to perceive the 3D effect.

At the ICT I saw some prototypes that get rid of the glasses. True, the result was not comparable, in terms of definition and colours, but at least it is an indication that the future might bring something that would really feels 3D.

Real 3D on a screen designed for a cell phone

One prototype was for a handheld device, and I was told that it is not far from the shelves. Interestingly, the expected cost of this screen is just one dollar more than a normal screen. The trick used is a plastic layer to let our eyes look at two different images, hence the 3D impression.

Of course there is a lot of software to make it work and a dedicated processor is being attached to the screen, as shown in the picture.

The other was a truly 3D image, since I could look around the object being displayed s if it was there. The object presented was an artefact,

I post here two photos taken from a different angle that really present two different views of the artefact, as if it were a real object in front of my eyes.

The image was not good, and this is reflected in the photo. I mention this to avoid you may think the poor quality is due to the photo. The technology still has a long way to go.

The way the image is being displayed is by creating a controlled vibration of the screen and projecting sequentially images created by cameras placed at different angle from the object. Each image becomes visible only when observed from a certain angle and the frequency is such that all of the images are visible at the same time, each from its own angle of view.

I presume that displaying a real object would entail a huge complexity in the lighting, since our eyes are extremely sensitive to tiny difference in lighting and our brain works on these differences to derive a model of what is been seen.

This type of screen is probably at least ten years away from consumer shelves. Surely, if it will ever come to fruition that would demand a tremendous amount of bandwidth since ten or more flows of data are concurrently displayed at once.

I am at a meeting with Nokia Siemens (NS) and the focus is on understanding how the future might look like.

NS pointed out that the dream of a single interface / device so powerful and flexible to be able to take care of any needs of any user is not going to happen. Rather, we are seeing a growth in variety of terminals and this is going to be a trend for the years to come.

Multiple screen environment is what industry and market demand are building. Devices will continue to be proposed meeting in principle all needs but in practice serving a specific need or environment.

This variety is going to fuel innovation and continuous increasing performance as each new one is going to set the bar for the existing ones.

On the customer side there will be a growing need to ensure portability over time from one device to the newer one, and also to move information across devices, benefitting from the specific capabilities of each.

The network will need to be flexible enough to accommodate any kind of request thus supporting any devices and this, paradoxically, makes the network more and more neutral and transparent.

However, a new opportunity space opens up in the creation of a virtual layer where information and services can become device/terminal independent.

Ask Nokia Siemens or Huawei or any other manufacturer a quotation for the equipement to deploy a wireless network. The quotation you’ll get will be much lower than just ten years ago but it will still be way much too high for anyone of us. We are still talking about million of euros, even for covering a limited area.

Don’t despair. Take a look at http://openbts.sourceforge.net/.
The evolution of technology and the dramatic increase in processing power makes it possible to “virtualize” a telecommunication equipment, using a low cost PC and connecting it to an antenna. You may then connect the PC to the Internet and you are in biz!

The trick is to use software defined radio (a standard that is now available) to exploit white spectrum (the one available at a specific time) to go around the radio spectrum licenses. Of course, today regulations are not allowing the use of white spectrum but this is just around the corner. In the US the discussion is heating up and we may expect a resolution within the next two years.

A new world is knocking at the door and Telcos need to think about it seriously.