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

I never thought of paint as being an important part of the engine of commerce.

That is, until I met Ueli Frei, who heads FUNDES International, an NGO that fosters economic growth among micro-businesses in Latin America. His team helped a group of independent “mom and pop” drug stores band together and operate, in many ways, as a single retailer.

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Tags: africa, DirectTV, documentary, economic development, economics, Network Effect, ShortsTV, telecom network, telecommunications, U-verse, vni