"We are at an inflection point, where 5G and the ecosystem are set to unleash a wave of innovation. In this Ericsson Mobility Report, we explore how an ecosystem partner is leveraging 5G, network slicing and dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) that will take live broadcasting to a new level, by ensurin
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g seamless, high-quality video streaming – even in crowded environments. The recent advancements in 5G standalone (SA) networks, coupled with the progress in 5G-enabled devices, have led to an ecosystem poised to unlock transformative opportunities for connected creativity. Service providers have recognized this potential of 5G and are beginning to monetize it through innovative service offerings that extend beyond merely selling data plans. To fully realize the potential of 5G, it is essential to continue deploying 5G SA and to further build out mid-band sites. 5G SA capabilities serve as a catalyst for driving new business growth opportunities [...] On the forecast side, we see continued mobile network traffic growth with a 20 percent increase year-on-year, meaning it’s expected to more than double in five years. Fixed Wireless Access is experiencing robust growth and is projected to make up over 35 percent of all new fixed broadband connections by 2030, as service providers capitalize on its flexible and rapid deployment capabilities, offering extensive coverage and an exceptional user experience, compared to other technologies. Finally, we explore the impact of increased usage of GenAI on the consumer side, as it moves from text to voice, video and multimodal. We analyze how GenAI could impact mobile data traffic volumes and characteristics going forward. Differentiated connectivity will be key in enabling a high-quality user experience for these and other conversational applications. There will be no personal AI without mobile." (Letter from the publisher, page 2)
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"In modern warfare, digitalization has blurred the line where civilian ends and military begins. Embedded in the participative warfare theoretical paradigm, this article looks into how the information and communication technologies (ICT) enable civic resilience under the conditions of the foreign ar
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med aggression. Specifically, the authors explore how smartphones and smartphone applications empowered the Ukrainian civil society in the aftermath of the Russian full-scale invasion of 2022. Based on an online survey and semi-structured interviews, the article highlights how the device and its features not only allowed civilians to adapt to living in conditions of
a constant threat, but also to respond and support the defence from the rear. The authors conclude that, while the smartphone becomes an ‘online resilience hub’, acquiring many new functions like a mobile office, an online volunteer (frontline logistics and procurement) hub, an air-threat warner, a first-hand news source and so on, its security provision functions are not unconditional and may turn to the opposite, depending on the physical circumstances on the ground as well as the virtual information battlefield." (Abstract)
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"In this special edition of ITU's Facts and Figures series, we explore the impressive progress and ongoing obstacles SIDS encounter amid the digital revolution. On the occasion of the fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4), our goal is to provide stakeholders with
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accurate data to inform their decisions. The connectivity challenge has grown more complex over the last decade. It's insufficient to simply connect the unconnected. Universal and meaningful connectivity – the possibility for everyone to enjoy a safe, satisfying, enriching, productive and online experience at an affordable cost – is the new policy imperative to harness the potential of connectivity and enable digital transformation.
SIDS share common issues: remoteness, limited markets, narrow economic bases, and high costs for energy and infrastructure. Moreover, they are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, threatening their existence. Digital connectivity is crucial in mitigating these challenges by enabling access to information, facilitating communication, and creating economic opportunities. It can improve disaster response, management, and access to critical services, often constrained by geographic and resource limitations in SIDS. This publication offers a current view of SIDS connectivity and highlights gaps in our understanding, underscoring the urgent need for investment in data infrastructure and statistical capabilities as part of their development strategies." (Foreword)
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"This article explores the patterns and consequences of transnational audiences’ engagement with global media in the digital age, focusing on experiences in Africa. It examines Nigerians’ interactions with the BBC World Service, and draws on active audience theory and Joseph Nye’s soft power c
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oncept to unpick their complex relationship. Using documentary analysis, focus groups and individual interviews, the study unpacks how Nigerians deploy digital devices to engage with the BBC – and how the broadcaster leverages this to extend its influence. The impacts of digital technologies on participatory programming and audience interactivity – and the theoretical implications – are also analysed." (Abstract)
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"Mobile connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to drive digital transformation and socioeconomic advancements. This underlines the need for continued efforts to address the persisting barriers that impact mobile internet adoption in the region, particularly the affordability of devices, online
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safety concerns and the lack of digital skills. Meanwhile, authorities and enterprises see an opportunity to leverage growing 4G and 5G networks, alongside emerging technologies such as AI and IoT, to enhance productivity and efficiency in service delivery. The adoption of 4G has accelerated in recent years, partly driven by the growing demand for faster speeds among younger consumers. Over the next five years, 4G adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa will more than double to 45%. 5G momentum is also growing, although the initial focus for 5G deployment is on urban areas and industrial locations, where there is greater need for the technology. 5G is expected to benefit the Sub-Saharan Africa economy by $11 billion in 2030, accounting for more than 6% of the overall economic impact of mobile." (Executive summary)
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"[...] This publication provides an overview of the state of digital connectivity in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), drawing on the data from ITU’s flagship publication Facts and Figures 2022. Since the Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries in 2011, progress has been made
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in terms of connectivity in the LDCs. The share of the population in LDCs using the Internet increased almost ten-fold to reach 36 per cent. Accessing the Internet has become cheaper and easier and mobile broadband has gone from being non-existent to being ubiquitous. But progress has been from a very low base and so much remains to be done. SDG Target 9.c called for closing the access gap in the LDCs by 2020. Yet, three years past this deadline, almost one fifth of the population cannot even access the Internet. Among those who can access, many do not, because of multiple barriers, ranging from awareness to skills and costs. Over the past decade, the connectivity challenge has become more complex and demanding. Bringing everyone online is no longer enough. Meaningful connectivity – the possibility to enjoy a safe, satisfying, enriching, productive and affordable online experience – is the new imperative. For LDCs, this remains a major challenge. The digital divide between LDCs and the rest of the world shows little sign of narrowing. The risk is all too evident. As the world becomes increasingly adept at leveraging the Internet for value creation, LDCs risk falling further behind." (Foreword)
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"This textbook takes a case study approach to media and audience analytics. Realizing the best way to understand analytics in the digital age is to practice it, the authors have created a collection of cases using data sets that present real and hypothetical scenarios for students to work through. M
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edia Analytics introduces the key principles of media economics and management. It outlines how to interpret and present results, the principles of data visualization and storytelling and the basics of research design and sampling. Although shifting technology makes measurement and analytics a dynamic space, this book takes an evergreen, conceptual approach, reminding students to focus on the principles and foundations that will remain constant. Aimed at upper-level students in the fast-growing area of media analytics in a cross-platform world, students using this text will learn how to find the stories in the data and to present those stories in an engaging way to others. Instructor and Student Resources include an Instructor's Manual, discussion questions, short exercises and links to additional resources." (Publisher description)
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"In this toolkit, our focus is on the use of mobile phones to the maximum benefit of women, men, youth, smallholder farmers and refugees, to enable them access digital financial services." (Background, page 11)
"As the world welcomes its 8 billionth inhabitant, an estimated 5.3 billion people – roughly 66 per cent of the global population – are using the Internet. Yet some 2.7 billion people worldwide remain totally offline, with universal connectivity still a distant prospect in least developed countr
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ies and landlocked developing countries, where, on average, only 36 per cent of the population is online. Young people remain the driving force of connectivity globally, with 75 per cent of the 15- to 24-year-old age group now online, compared with 65 per cent for the rest of the world’s population. And while data show slow but steady growth in fixed-broadband subscriptions, mobile continues to dominate as the platform of choice for online access, particularly in low-income countries where wireline connections can be scarce and costly, notably for those living outside of major urban centres. In poorly connected countries, two of the biggest barriers to digital uptake remain cost and digital skills. While affordability of entry-level fixed- and mobile-broadband services improved in 2022, the global gap remains far too wide. For an average consumer in a typical low-income economy, the cheapest mobile broadband basket still costs more than 9 per cent of his or her income – over six times the global average. Fixed-broadband service costs over 30 per cent, compared with less than 2 per cent in the world’s high-income countries." (Foreword)
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"Die Methode der Kamera-Ethnographie ist ein zeigendes statt beschreibendes Verfahren und nutzt Kameraführung, Schnitt und Montage im Rahmen einer visuellen Analytik und performativen Wissensform. Bina Elisabeth Mohns Programmschrift zeigt, wie Kamera-Ethnographie auch nonverbale Praktiken in ihren
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Choreographien und bildhaften Figuren in den Blick rückt: Anstelle einer videographischen Aufzeichnungslogik wird davon ausgegangen, dass Forschungsgegenstände zunächst noch gar nicht sichtbar sind. Durch eine reflexive Pragmatik des Sehens und Zeigens leitet die Kamera-Ethnographie dazu an, die Prozesse ethnographischer Beobachtung, Erfahrung und Entdeckung mit filmischen Mitteln zu gestalten und selbst das Publikum in eine forschende Rezeption einzubinden." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Afrobarometer finds that most Africans own a mobile phone and have access to a mobile phone network. However, fewer than half own a mobile phone with Internet access, and even fewer have access to a computer. This translates to low levels of Internet use in many countries. Lack of Internet access a
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nd use is far more common among women and people who are rural, older, less wealthy, and/or less educated. There is also a sizeable gap between LDCs and more developed countries." (Summary, page 1-2)
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"Mobile internet use has reached 55% of the world's population. By the end of 2021, 4.3 billion people were using mobile internet, an increase of almost 300 million since the end of 2020. Growth in mobile internet adoption has almost entirely been driven by people living in low- and middle-income co
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untries (LMICs). As a result, for the first time, half of the population in LMICs is using mobile internet. Mobile broadband coverage continues to slowly expand, with 95% of the world’s population covered by a mobile broadband network. At the end of 2021, the coverage gap – those living in areas without mobile broadband coverage – represented 5% of the world’s population (400 million people). The coverage gap has only reduced by 1 percentage point (pp) per year between 2018 and 2021, showing how challenging it is to cover the remaining population, who are predominantly poor and rural. In the least developed countries (LDCs), more than one in six people live in areas without mobile broadband coverage." (Key findings, page 5)
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"Six years ago, about a third of the world’s population were using mobile internet. Today, it is more than half. Despite this progress, the pandemic has highlighted how big gaps in connectivity persist, even in high-income markets. 3.8 billion people still do not have access to the internet – du
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e to a lack of mobile broadband coverage or because of other barriers, including a lack of awareness of the internet and its benefits, lack of literacy and the required skills, affordability, lack of perceived relevance, and safety and security concerns. The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2021 highlights trends in the coverage and usage of mobile internet over the last six years and the key barriers to mobile internet adoption. It also looks at the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest regional changes and the key challenges to address to ensure everyone can connect to the internet." (Executive summary)
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"An estimated 4.9 billion people are using the Internet in 2021, according to latest estimates in this 2021 edition of Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures. That means that roughly 63 per cent of the world’s population is now online – an increase of 17 per cent – with almost 800 mi
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llion people estimated to have come online since 2019. Internet penetration increased more than 20 per cent on average in Africa, in Asia and the Pacific, and in the UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs). With most of the 17 Global Goals thrust sharply off-track by the force of the emergency, the pandemic has highlighted – and exacerbated – the crippling cost of digital exclusion. Achieving universal meaningful connectivity has become a matter of the utmost urgency if we are to meet the SDGs by the end of the decade. We cannot close the digital divide if we cannot measure it. And we cannot connect the unconnected if we do not know who they are, where they live, and why they remain offline – nor can we measure the success of our policies to bridge the gap . While the access divide is close to being bridged, with 95 per cent of the world’s population now living within range of a mobile broadband network, important blind spots remain. Close to 30 per cent of Africa’s rural population still lacks mobile broadband coverage. And even though the vast majority of the world’s people could access the Internet through mobile broadband, less than two thirds actually do. The statistics reveal a connectivity ‘grand canyon’ separating the digitally empowered from the digitally excluded, with 96 per cent of the 2.9 billion still offline living in the developing world. Drilling down to country level also affords a more nuanced picture. Location plays a big part: our figures reveal that the share of Internet users in urban areas is twice as high as in rural areas. There is also a generational gap – 71 per cent of the world’s population aged 15-24 is using the Internet, compared with 57 per cent of all other age groups. And gender remains a factor: globally, 62 per cent of men are using the Internet compared with 57 per cent of women. While that digital gender divide has been narrowing across all regions, women remain digitally marginalized in many of the world’s poorest countries, where online access could potentially have its most powerful effect." (Foreword)
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"This book investigates the ways in which the mobile telephone has transformed societies around the world, bringing both opportunities and challenges. At a time when knowledge and truth are increasingly contested, the book asks how mobile technology has changed the ways in which people create, disse
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minate, and access knowledge. Worldwide, mobile internet access has surpassed desktop access, and it is estimated that by 2022 there will be an excess of 6 billion mobile phone users in the world. This widespread proliferation raises all sorts of questions around who creates knowledge, how is that knowledge shared and proliferated, and what are the structural political, economic, and legal conditions in which knowledge is accessed. The practices and power dynamics around mobile technologies are location specific. They look different depending on whether one chooses to highlight the legal, social, political, or economic context. Bringing together scholars, journalists, activists and practitioners from around the world, this book embraces this complexity, providing a multifaceted picture that acknowledges the tensions and contradictions surrounding accessing knowledge through mobile technologies. With case studies from Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Syria, Egypt, Botswana, Brazil, and the US, this book provides an important account of the changing nature of our access to knowledge, and is key reading for students, researchers, activists and policy makers with an interest in technology and access to knowledge, communication, social transformation, and global development." (Publisher description)
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"In this book, Leah Komen explores the impact of mobile telephony on the lives of people in rural Kenya. The book analyses the outcomes of complex intersections and interactions between mobile phones, individuals, and the broader society as distinct from the traditional cause-effect relationships in
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the discourse of development in the changing world. It subverts the traditional notion of synchronic development that ignores target populations' involvement in decision-making and sees development from the lens of developed economies where information and communication technologies like mobile telephones have originated. Komen's analysis advances a diachronic type of development that focuses on human technology's interrelationships instead of the synchronic model that privileges technology as engendering social transformations and development. The diachronic model is fundamentally Maendeleo, a Swahili term denoting process, participation, progress, and growth, and views social transformations and development as an interaction between mobile telephony users and their specific contexts. The book argues that the mobile phone has become an increasingly personalised device. It encourages a sense of community through the sharing of the device by multiple users, promotes co-presence and interpersonal communication, enhances kinship ties and social connectedness, and creates new ways of organising and conducting everyday socioeconomic activities. However, it also can disintegrate relationships and remodel some." (Publisher description)
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"Conclusions and actionable recommendations to media stakeholders and Internews including: improving access to radio and television in Unity State would likely produce a substantial increase in overall media consumption in Unity State; improving access to smartphones in Warrap State would potentiall
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y produce a major increase in internet access/use in Warrap State; women have far more limited phone access and ownership than men, so for Internews access to information interventions, equipping more women with phones could shift women’s access to information and the internet, as well as potentially shifting gender power dynamics in important ways; radio stations across South Sudan can charge the most for advertisements from 4-8 pm in the evening. This is also prime time for television usage; depending on the region, the next most popular radio use time is in the early morning from 5-8 am, and most stations broadcasting in most states can also charge more to advertisers and sponsors for this timeslot than the others." (Publisher description)
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