IGF Workshop Report
#58 – Mobile and Cloud Computing in Emerging Economies
(For Rapporteurs)
Ana Cristina Neves, Director, Department Information Society, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Ministry of Education and Science
1. Provide brief substantive summary and present the main issues raised during the discussion.
Moderator: Ms. Jacquelyn Ruff, Vice President, International Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Verizon Communications
The session was focused on the developmental promise for emerging economies from mobile telephony and cloud computing capabilities due to its enormous potential in the next 5 years, when 90% of the world population will have access to mobile coverage. The speakers presented the OECD perspective on this issue, the challenges emerging economies have to face and case studies, where mobile telephony and the cloud are changing the life of a city.
Ms. Verena Weber, Economist/Policy Analyst, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Overview of policy and infrastructural challenges related to service and deployment models of cloud computing – an OECD perspective
Ms. Verena made a presentation on the benefits of Cloud computing for developing countries as it will allow businesses , individuals and governments to benefit easily from those services. On the other hand, she underlined that there is no need to have up-front capital investments as Cloud computing services can be provided at a low cost and an energy-efficient way.
To spur the use of cloud computing, Ms. Verena considered that governments have to act as lead users due to their role on such public policies, as taxation and standardization. Governments have a role in encouraging the development of interoperable standards and open source clouds (not creating themselves but encouraging others to do that). She underlined that Infrastructure needs to support cloud computing: (i) symmetric bandwidth is fundamental, ii) mobile networks as cloud computing will become more and more mobile. On the other hand, mobile access to the personal cloud was also tackled once it brings fixed and mobile networks together. It was noted that around 1 million of websites are hosted in the USA and Europe.
On challenges and open issues it was noted: 1) the majority of cloud computing providers are located in the Northern Hemisphere which means that an important percentage of overall Internet traffic has to go from the South to the North and back which can be expensive - a way to overcome this would be to build up cloud computing infrastructure in developing countries; 2) privacy and security and how to protect data in the cloud and how to determine which law enforcement bodies have access to the data. Ms. Verena considered that a globally harmonized approach by governments could help.
Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, Director, LIRNEasia
Power, Infrastructural, and Technology Challenges – A Perspective from Asia
Dr. Rohan gave a not very enthusiastic approach from the Asia perspective and as a user of the cloud but underlined the importance of investment to be made on the cloud in the least-connected places and not in places with FTTH. He compared five performances: downloads, uploads, latency, jitter and packet loss with and without the cloud. He concluded that in continents such as Asia where there are not enough cables, there is not enough redundancy. Asia, he said, “though the largest continent, tends to behave very badly due to the lack of infrastructure”. Besides, even if the international link is fixed, electricity will still be a big problem, as they don’t have regular load-shedding exercises.
Finally, he explored concerns data privacy. Nowadays, if governments come and take off with someone’s computer there will be no problem as people keep their data in some place other than their home country. On the contrary, the cloud will be all over the place, and it will not be possible anymore to have data privacy within this framework, even if it is well-perceived that if a natural disaster occurs as it could be the case with an earthquake, cloud is safe, but still there are multiple redundancies.
Prof. João Barros, University of Porto, and Founding Director, Institute for Telecommunications, Porto, Portugal
The “Porto Experiment” – A Hands-On Perspective on Building an Urban Digital Ecosystem – a case study
Prof. João presented “Porto – Our Living Lab for Future Cities”, a project which uses cloud computing and the Internet of things to integrate bus, train and underground in a city like Porto where there is a multi-modal transportation system and fiber-optical Internet backbone. The project is also supported by the European Union with “Future cities project.eu”. His point was to demonstrate how one can change the life of a city when you add to Computation, the right infrastructure, and interdisciplinary work involving social sciences, art & design, social sciences and communication. These interdisciplinary teams are building world-class testbeds for urban-scale downloads, working closely with end users -- the consumers -- which is crucial.
For him the success equation is research question + business case + user benefit (to work with them everyday)+ political will (all stakeholders who speak totally different languages, with different meanings, which makes this exercise really challenging).
He gave hands-on experiences: 1) with firemen using wearable technologies connected to a mesh. With these wearable sensors plus iPAD applications it is possible to understand e.g. what is the medical condition of a fireman; 2) Vehicular network at Leixões Harbor – as they are all wireless connected, the cloud helps to manage lots amount of data; 3) the city of Porto – connected vehicles – taxis and buses connect to wifi form a vehicular mesh. They are connected through wifi hotspots. This allow interdisciplinary research and to use technologies to tell e.g. the level of stress of a driver. If all people became stressed at the same spot, city officials see they have to do something about that spot. With this information, it is easier to reduce stress, which means fewer accidents. The objective is to guarantee the right data, which gets to the right person or organization at the right time.
The variety of questions from the audience to the panelist that presented the case studies exemplified the complexities of smart-phones to upload the information to the cloud and of cloud computing vs. data privacy.
Some members of the audience inquired how the case studies might work in emerging cities once the technology is available and what the experience has been on collaboration. This elicited a detailed response from João Barros, who showed great interest in collaboration, something that he already started with Brazil. He emphasized that a challenge of the Cloud is latency, but as the needed intelligent devices are so cheap today all over the world, one can afford to move on. But, nevertheless, he underlined that the it was needed to underlined that the Porto case study uses GPS coordinates and IPv6, so the vehicles are anonymized.
In addition, Dr. Samarajiva mentioned that one of the big problems might also be the stress measurement, as people may not be very happy to be measured in such a way. That will bring up data privacy problems, even if everything is anonymized. To that very pertinent question, Joao Barros emphasized how helpful is to work with social scientists when developing this policy, to better anticipate which could be data privacy problems. In addition, it is important to continue daily work with the end user on this new challenge, as we must understand what the customers need or want.
2. What were the conclusions drawn from the workshop
Each of the panelists approached the theme from a different point of view: 1) role of governments, 2) the difficulties for developing countries to work with the cloud and 3) study cases on a specific town which is using mobile and cloud computing to foster economic and social development. But they all agreed that Cloud computing services can only be used if an Internet infrastructure wired or wireless broadband is in place providing a low latency and robust Internet connection to cloud users. In addition, they concurred that greater efforts have to be made to connect more individuals, businesses, and government agencies to the Internet, so that developing countries can benefit from cloud computing. Another major infrastructure challenge is the lack of electricity or a reliable electricity supply in many regions to move content to the cloud and to run computers.
During the discussion, the speakers underlined that technology is advancing so fast and the pace of legislation is way too slow ever to catch up with this development. Trust among nations was also underlined as crucial for Cloud computing development.
Ultimately, though, speakers agreed that the customer is key on this issue along with the technology, the bandwidth, electricity and the need for redundancy or remote location as a source of confidence.
3. Describe if the session discussed issues affecting gender equality and women’s empowerment
Implicit in all the discussion was gender equality and men and women’s empowerment.