Myriad Connect on Bridging the Digital Divide in Africa

Myriad Connect’s GM, Fabien Delanaud, recently spoke to BizCommunity.com on ‘Bridging the Digital Divide in Africa’ and what how technology already widely used in Africa can help address this challenge.

“Aside from having less ability to engage with the latest mobile trends, the lack of reliable data services in emerging markets has quite a severe snowball effect on more mainstream applications. Rolling out services on mobile can be expensive for organisations and if there is a smaller audience, companies will often pass these costs back to the consumer, which is clearly not an ideal solution in a alow GDP region.

The result is basic services likes mobile banking are often operated through SMS services – less secure than data connections, but much more ubiquitous.

One way organisations are bridging the divide between the need for data and tha absence of it, is with a technology called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). In essence, USSD is a protocol, built into all GSM devices, which allows network operators to communicate directly with handsets. An internet without the internet, the technology doesn’t have the bandwith to stream video, download images or work documents, but it can allow short packages of data to be securely sent and received to a device wihtout the need for a 3G or 4G connection.”

Read the whole article here.