The Convergence Partners stand was a hive of activity for the duration of the event (especially when our gorgeous ladies served up some great cocktails at the end of day 1). Companies in the Convergence Partners stand that were formally exhibiting at AfricaCom included Seacom, Convergence Wireless Networks (comprising WiA and Intra), Intelsat New Dawn Satellite Project, Plessey, Comsol, Integrat, Skillpod Media, Bloodhound, Inala, Convergence Border Management Solutions, as well as the Convergence Partners Foundation.

AfircaCom also coincided with the media launch of Convergence Partners’ latest project, FibreCo (see below blog).

The main themes discussed at the conference this year centred around:

• infrastructure sharing and managed services – in light of declining ARPUs, operators are seeking significant cost reduction models;
• rural connectivity – the next major untapped market, although sustainable, scalable models remain challenging; and
• the continuing shift from voice services (still the majority of the industry revenue base) to data and VAS, driven by the proliferation of broadband hungry smartphones.

Skillpod Media CEO Mark van Diggelen said: “AfricaCom was SkillPod Media’s first exposure to a mobile / telco trade event, we used it to showcase our new online and mobile platforms and experienced resoundingly positive feedback from the industry, resulting in a number of key contacts been met, with whom discussions have started. Further to this the professionalism of the Convergence stand drew in a plethora of delegates, all interested in better understanding the services on offer by SkillPod, again resulting in a lot of contacts being made with industry players, wishing to provide services to our overall offering and make use of a number of our services for their solutions. Overall the event was a resounding success, in that our new solutions were warmly received, we managed to network with key contacts, either at the stand or at the various networking events and more so we interacted with a number of key industry players that highlighted a number of opportunities, that we’d previously never considered.

According to Darren Morgan, Head of Sales at Comsol, “AfricaCom was a wonderful experience this year, it’s always great to be under one roof with all the peers of your industry. It’s rare to have all vendors, suppliers, integrators and customers from a certain industry in the same place at the same time and this certainly makes the event a memorable one. This year we were lucky enough to share a stand with fellow companies involved with the Convergence Partners family and that certainly added to the event for us.  A fantastic experience all round”.

Integrat Director, Leonard Cremer said: “The Convergence stand was a great initiative and Integrat will definitely be joining again next year. Integrat not only benefited by exhibiting at the show but also believes it extracted real value from the networking between the Convergence companies”.

We look forward to seeing everyone again in 2011!

See attached pics

Having attended the Mobile World Congress, the largest global telecoms conference (attended by 49,000 visitors from 200 countries) in Barcelona this year, the following 10 key trends and developments came to the fore.

The 10 major developments at MWC were:

1. Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (“GSMA”) and about 15 major operators have signed up to create an application planet where there will be a common platform that will allow application developers in the Symbian world to operate across networks and geographies (i.e. a challenge to Apple’s dominance in the apps space);
2. The affordability of smartphones are becoming a reality, with estimates that by 2015 approximately 50% of mobile phones will be smartphones. This will require larger amounts of backhaul bandwidth for the mobile networks. Once smart phones reach 70% of the market, they will be the single largest access device to the internet;
3. Mobile operators see device-to-device connectivity as the next revenue opportunity in the mobile space. These data flows are viewed as a mechanism to bolster declining voice ARPUs;
4. Green technology, especially in the data centre environment and the growth of cloud computing, is a major trend that will accelerate in the coming years;
5. The growth of smart devices on one side and sophisticated cloud computing on the other will drive growth in “intelligent pipes” in between them. This reinforces the case for increased access to fibre optic networks;
6. Here is a thought, as you go to a restaurant to have coffee or food when you pay with your credit card and you are given a receipt. Use your smartphone with high-resolution camera to take a photo of the receipt and store it or send it to your private data vault. Intelligent systems in the cloud will then collate and reconcile receipts and expense claims automatically.
7. In my view LTE is 3+ years away. No handsets are widely available. While people are talking about LTE trials, large scale deployments are still some way off, however, the hype is here. This is another reason why we need backhaul bandwidth now so that when LTE is implemented there are enough pipes to support this infrastructure;
8. Africa will continue to use mobile devices as the primary means to access the cloud;
9. Africa must develop its own applications that are specific to Africa’s needs. Including its own social network platforms that will address Africa’s unique lifestyles;
10. In conclusion, the communications ecosystem is evolving, but it is not clear which organisations will be absorbed by black holes or collide with each other to create new planets in our ecosystem. The ICT ecosystem at one level and the DNA of organisations and companies at another, will fundamentally change in the next ten years.