The mobile phone in Africa: Providing services to the masses

Abstract

The story of mobile telecommunications in Africa and the developing world is a remarkable one. Africa's mobile cellular growth rate has been the highest of any region over the past 5 years, averaging close to 60% year on year. Large cellular infrastructure investments, which have enabled millions of people to communicate better, have been made. In accordance with the Meraka theme and objective of increasing ICT intensity and pervasiveness in society, this paper looks at the various technical and operational considerations associated with creating a middleware platform for mobile services. The platform should be able to support different mobile paradigms (voice, text, multimedia, mobile web, applications) using a variety of communications protocols (SMS, USSD, MMS, Bluetooth, WAP data via GPRS/3G/HSDPA). This will enable components to be reused, ensure scalability, support multiple access devices (from basic phones to more powerful smart phones, including traditional PCs), provide interoperability via different modes of access and also ensure faster development time.