
Common Obstacles Stakeholders Face in Telecom Industry
CIO Review APAC | Tuesday, April 18, 2023

The global use of mobile phones generates a vast amount of data. When used effectively and responsibly, mobile phone data can be immensely helpful for development work and emergency response.
FREMONT, CA: Given that the mobility data ecosystems of the various nations differ, it is challenging to extend access to mobility data across borders. The internal organisational structures of players, various legislative frameworks, partnership structures, incentives, and capacities of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and governments make up each country's ecosystem. This indicates that in emergencies, it is not practical to employ the same approach for concurrently accessing and interpreting mobility data across numerous countries.
Stakeholders are not properly aware of the benefits and expenses associated with mobility data. Mobility data cannot be easily obtained commercially since there is no agreement on what constitutes a unit of mobility data or what its price should be. For the pricing of mobility data used by non-profits, a fair standard is required. During sudden-onset humanitarian catastrophes, MNOs frequently offer free or discounted access to mobility data while bearing the costs.
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Making this data accessible, however, necessitates data collection, extraction, processing, hosting, and protection—costs that MNOs are typically not willing to bear for non-emergency development activity. Data must be made available under certain circumstances, including for free in case of emergencies, at a fair price for non-emergency development or humanitarian projects, and for-profit for commercial purposes.
Building trust between stakeholders and decision-makers is necessary but takes time. It takes trust to create new data-sharing agreements and a system that produces useful analytical findings. It can be difficult to build this confidence between stakeholders amid a sudden emergency. A person's rights may conflict with commercial, humanitarian, and public sector concerns. The regulatory environment may be unclear, which lowers trust in the relationship. It takes time to establish trust, long before an emergency arises.
There is still a need for standardised information practices and agreements between MNOs and nations. Standard data licensing or sharing agreements do not currently exist, and creating such would be expensive for certain providers, especially if they are giving the data away for free. Additionally, there is still no agreement on pre-established markers or definitions for the data. For example, this prohibits dashboards created by MNOs covering several geographic areas within the same country from being combined to provide a more thorough overview of that country.
All stakeholder groups have capacity shortages, ranging from technical prowess and expertise to accessible human resources. In some circumstances, MNOs might lack the internal technical and analytical capacity to generate indicators from their telecom data or might not have enough personnel to complete this task in a time of crisis. Government and development organisations that request access to data and insights may not have the resources or know-how to use them or put them to use in making useful decisions.
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