I would firstly like to express my thanks to Prof. Dieter Ernst for his great work, his objective analysis and fruitful findings. Such kind of analysis is surely great for fostering dialogues and facilitating the cooperation between China and Western world.
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International remittance, the transfer of money home by a foreign worker, is a key area in which mobile money can potentially play a very valuable role in economic and social development (micro financing has proven in recent years to be of great importance in many countries).

The International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates that global remittance is in excess of $300 billion (USD) annually which is greater than the sum of all international aid. For instance the World Bank estimates that in 2008 (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD) India, China and Mexico received approximately $45 billion, $41 billion and $25 billion respectively. Furthermore, in nearly 40 countries, remittance represents a share of GDP greater than 10%, such as in Tajikistan (45%) and Moldova (38%).

However, despite the significant role of international remittance for developing nations, more than 90% of the world’s poorest have no access to basic banking services. Yet there is near universal saturation of mobile technology.

However there are still significant barriers, both technical and regulatory, to mobile money development. And although the key innovative players in the mobile money space are from the the developing world, they are in no position to influence the developed world to take the necessary steps needed.

Part 10: Risk of “Government Failure” is Particularly Acute in a Dynamic Market
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Part 9 – Risk of “Government Failure” Should Give Government Cause to Pause

I have been describing the facts, law and public policy that support a government preference for market developed IT standards. I now turn to the negative motivation for governments, the risk of failure should government jump into the standard-setting fray. It is often observed that the market is more well informed, efficient, flexible, and nimble than government in developing IT standards. In general, this observation leads to a concern that government intervention to address an IT market failure is the high risk of “non-market failure,” or “government failure.” A non-market failure can be defined as the unintended and undesirable consequences of government failure where it intervenes to address a market failure.

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In February, 24 of the world’s largest telecoms announced the formation of an alliance – the Wholesale Applications Community – to provided a unified and open platform for the rapidly growing – both in magnitude and fragmentation – mobile application market. The stated aim to enable developers to “deploy a single application across multiple devices (through the use of standard technologies) and across multiple operators”, which will lower costs and improve both the quality and quantity of mobile applications available to consumers.

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Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) dominates the web browser market in terms of users, commanding a market share of over 60%. But there is an increasing trend towards alternatives such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. These alternatives, which in according to some measures offer superior technical performance and standards compliance, have gradually been eroding IE’s lead.

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This is Part 5 in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird presents and in-depth analysis of the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which is released on a bi-weekly basis. For previous instalments see here: Part 3, Part 4 – Editor

PART 5 – Not Hot, nor Cold, but Just Right… (or “Not Formal, Not Informal, but Drawing on the Best of What Came Before”): Consortia

I have been discussing the sophistication of the IT industry in setting standards as evidenced by the industry’s long history and considerable use of formal (SDO) and informal means such as patent pools. In between SDOs and patent pools resides a more recent concept commonly used by the IT industry, a truly flexible approach to standards development – where the relevant industries or businesses develop and support a standard by mutual agreement through a consortium.

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This is Part 4 in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird presents and in-depth analysis of the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which is released on a bi-weekly basis. For previous instalments see here: Part 2, Part 3 – Editor

PART 4: The Least Formal IT Standard Setting: Patent Pools and De Facto Standards
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As the third generation of wireless mobile networks reaches the end of its development and the next generation looms on the horizon, the term 4G is being increasing thrown around as the latest buzz work for the mobile industry.

Technically speaking, no network or device commercially available as of writing can truly be described as 4G. The radio-communication division of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) defines 4G, or IMT-Advanced, compliant technology as being capable, among other key features, of data rates in excess of “100 Mbit/s for high and 1 Gbit/s for low mobility” systems. However, with the progress of the industry as it is, the strict definition of the term seems to be in danger of irrelevance.
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This is the third in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird presents and in-depth analysis of the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which is released on a bi-weekly basis. For previous instalments see here: Part 1, Part 2 – Editor

PART 3: There are Many Ways in Which the IT Develops Standards: The Most Formal Forums for Standard Setting

The IT industry’s capacity to create interoperability standards is well supported by the fact that there is a veritable alphabet soup of formal forums in which IT and related standards are developed and an equally exhaustive use of the alphabet in IT standards nomenclature. The traditional course for standards development is gaining adoption in voluntary consensus forums most commonly described as national standards bodies (NSBs) and standards development organizations (SDOs). I am not going to go into detail as to the formal processes, suffice it to say they have well established consensus processes and most have an extremely long history of success in setting a wide range of industrial standards.

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