It’s been over three months since we started our guest columnist series around the VNI Service Adoption research.  This research forecasts the end user adoption rate for 20+ telecommunication services such as SMS, mobile banking, online gaming, location-based services, and various types of video conferencing.

Our goal is to explore how the use of technology, and specifically telecom services, impact people’s lives and communities worldwide. Technology is an enabler, the cool gadgets and networks and shiny objects are not necessarily meaningful on their own. It takes intelligence and creativity of many people to bring it to fruition and provide a context which empowers individuals to dream of achieving bigger outcomes.

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Tags: Mobile Apps, research, service adoption, sms, telecom network, telecommunications, visual networking index, vni, VNI-SA

By Lionel Walters,  Guest Columnist

Some of the most compelling memories I have from my school years involve trips away to see amazing things, or special visits to the school by amazing people. I still have vivid memories of the sights, sounds and even smells of some of the fascinating places we went to, and I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach as I met my favourite author and had him personally autograph some of my most treasured books.

To me, what made these experiences successful was that they lifted my sights and gave me something to aspire to. Unfortunately for many students living in rural areas, these boundary-breaking experiences are few and far between, either because of funding constraints or simply the lack of appropriate people or places to see.

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Tags: Dallas Clayton, education, rural, rural broadband, service adoption, Tasmania, video conferencing, vni, VNI-SA

By Kristen Vargas, Guest Columnist

Before the emergence of second generation providers such as Skype, I was always a firm believer that face-to-face contact and physical interaction were essential to sustaining healthy relationships. Born and raised in California with most of my family and friends living in the same general vicinity, I grew accustomed to the comfort and convenience of having them nearby.

However, unpredictable life events followed, and I found myself building a life with someone serving in the U.S. Air Force. A natural consequence of this newfound military life meant that I inevitably was going to be moving from base to base to follow my husband as he served his term. The idea of leaving California to live at my first base in Idaho, although temporarily, was a move I was not altogether excited about and left me feeling a bit apprehensive about living in another state for the first time.

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Tags: service adoption, social media, telephony, vni, VNI-SA, voip, Webcam

By Kayvon Siadat, Guest Columnist

The addition of online streaming content has helped KSCU 103.3, Santa Clara University’s non-profit, volunteer run radio station, tremendously.  Before the radio station had this technology our listenership was limited to however far our radio signal would go, which is, give or take 30 miles in any direction.

Now with advances in technology we are able to deliver our content to anyone in the world at any time.  Currently, a big portion of our listeners use our online audio stream (computer, smart phone, etc.) and because of that we are able to bring local content to a much bigger scale now.

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Tags: KSCU, online streaming, radio, service adoption, vni, VNI-SA

By Molly Mattessich, Guest Columnist

In some ways, rural countries, including those in Africa, are ahead of the United States on technology. Without the infrastructure — offices, network lines, etc. — to use the Internet in more traditional ways, they have relied on cell phones to exchange information.

According to Cisco’s recent VNI Service Adoption Forecast (VNI-SA) research, mobile commerce ranks as the second-fastest-growing consumer mobile service, increasing at a 42.7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) globally from 2011 to 2016. The Middle East and Africa will have the second-highest number of users in 2016, reaching 424 million.

Rural farmers in Africa, for example, now often use their cell phones to check commodity prices before heading to market, helping them improve their bottom line at times when a few cents can make a huge difference. Read More »

Tags: africa, farmers, GPS, mobile applications, Peace Corp, research, service adoption, vni, VNI-SA