TelecomPlus: What is your World Ahead Program?
Chris S. Thomas: When we started our World Ahead program, the goal was to get
one billion customers using computers and Internet. Interestingly, ITU said that now
there are about 2 billion Internet users around the world. We are now talking about
3rd billion cellular users. In each successive billion, there were different sets of
challenges. In the first billion we had mature markets not necessarily concerned as
much about affordability as other factors. The technology needed to work, the
infrastructure needed to be built, the networks needed to be invented. So we were
in the process of inventing the industry. The second billion was all about reaching
new markets because in mature markets the growth rates were as low as one to
four percent. In the third billion it is about customers who can’t afford PCs. In the
World Ahead Program that I represent, we are working with governments, telecom
service providers, NGOs, etc to help create affordable access to technology for the
next layer of new customers. How we do it? We work on tax breaks, what I call less-
for-less strategy. Prepaid broadband is great example if we take telephone
industry. Most of Africa uses prepaid phone cards.
The World Ahead program is a team of people I am on. The program was originally
focused to giving people access to computers, bridging the digital divide, finding
ways to reducing taxes and tariffs and making governments understand that
helping people to use technology and making its usage cheaper can help their
economic growth. Our program, which some people call PPPP, Public Private
Partnership Program, is about finding ways of creatively funding packages with
telecom and computer vendors to encourage people to use technology. More often
it is governments who are sponsoring programs with teachers, doctors and
students and creating packages to make the entry points affordable. The key is to
find reasons for the people to use technology. It could be entertainment, education,
business, etc. We try to focus on business and create economic value and viability.
Finding business benefits of technology for people triggers the need to get
training. It’s all about making technology relevant to people. Recently we went to
Higher Education Commission. The idea is to give teachers two-month training in
the use of ICT. Nowadays students are much ahead of teachers in the use of ICT.
We encourage teachers to become the part of the ICT culture using social
networking, multimedia, email, etc. We create a cultural experience out of that two-
month training.
The front running countries do things like multimedia in class rooms, cloud based
services, collaborative work spaces, etc. They are changing the way their school
systems are being developed. The people are experiencing and using technology
in new ways. It is not just exposure to technology. There should be a purpose to it.
In Russia for instance, students coming out of high schools are required to use
technology to prepare their presentations, build and deliver their content on
computers, etc. It gives students a reason to learn technology, whether it is getting
educational certificates or jobs or communicating with the rest of the world.
In Pakistan, we do five workshops a year with Universal Service Fund (USF) to train
people how to use USF funds. More often it was believed that this fund was for
basic connectivity and voice only. But now we are getting governments into using
the fund for broadband, getting PCs and Internet in schools. One of our unique
programs was in Portugal where they are using the fund to manufacture laptops for
every kid of the country and now they are in export mode. That’s how using the
fund creatively, you can bring a country into leadership role in a chosen field. Intel
is trying to emulate Portuguese Model in other countries.
Where do you place cell phones and PCs in the context of wireless
broadband?
I can give you some interesting figures. Five hundred and fifty dumb phones equal
1 PC on broadband. And it takes 22 smart phones to equal one PC. The phone is
indispensible for communication whether it is voice communication, transactional
communication or texting. Texting is an incredible tool until you need more
information. It works all right till you try to get lots of information and even smart
phones cannot outdo PCs with WiFi connections. The more data intensive and
research oriented the need, the more you want your smart phone to be more like a
PC. I can type 80 words a minute on my laptop or tablet but only one or two words
a minute on a cell phone. It’s all about what you want to do with your device. If you
want to do Internet research, have your applications and storage in cloud, get
streaming video, send and receive emails, want to have mobile TV; you actually
want a computer that looks like a cell phone. If your data is in cloud and you want
to have it just now, it may not be as fast even on a hi-speed network. Cloud
computing is fine until you have an urgency. You want more processing, more
memory and to keep latency away, you need more bandwidth and on both sides of
the network. The good news is that Intel is shrinking the size of the processor,
shrinking the size of the memory and we are adding more bandwidth. You are
going to have computers everywhere, though they may look different.
How far can Moore’s Law take you?
A long way. The Moore’s Law is not just about shrinking the size of the chip. It is
about creating more gates and processors. When we got to multi-core architecture,
we changed the rules. Instead of one chip, it became many different types of chips.
We got to the point with one atom between the gates. We are changing the roles of
different cores; one for graphics, other for communications and so on. We will
continue adding more and more circuits to Moore’s law equation. Up till now, the
numbers of gates in the chips are doubling as predicted by Moore and we don’t
see it not happening in the near future.
What’s the behavior of first time buyers in the emerging markets?
First time buyers are no different than mature buyers. They want the best they can
get. We first thought they can’t afford expensive PCs in China, so let us give them
something cheaper to help them buy technology and we made this Farmer PC. But
they did not buy the farmer PC. They bought the best PC they could get. We made
Farmer PC on an assumption that did not reflect the market behavior. The rebellion
happens if you tell them they have to have that. So in most of our programs we
offer good, better, best. An entry level, the middle level and the best. Upward of the
70% users are in the better and the best range, even though it looked they couldn’t
afford it. That’s because humans want the best. Sometimes they don’t even need
to have the best but emotionally they feel they are as good as the ones who have
the best.
In most of our programs we have to offer a cheap solution because some
government leader says it has to be cheap so that the majority can afford it. But
the person receiving it says I don’t want the cheaper. So to avoid this tension, we
give the program where they can choose and they bring their own money to buy
the better or the best, if they want to. It is proving to be true worldwide. Humans like
the better. When you say this layer is too poor to afford it, they find ways to get
better. They work harder to buy it. It is amazing. If people want it, they find ways to
get it.
What is your eLearning and eHealth program?
We do it in different ways. First we have to train people. This year we trained 10
million teachers worldwide, more than three hundred thousand here in Pakistan, on
how to use technology. We designed ruggedized computers for entry level children.
We have college programs to teach people how to go to multi-core architecture.
We see PCs and education synonymous. That has been a major focus of our
business strategy.
Intel has been in healthcare for a very long time but we are now doing it differently.
The healthcare technology is now leaving the hospital and going to patients in their
homes, in rural areas, to people on the move. In our programs about health, we are
enabling the healthcare technology to leave the hospital and go to the people. The
mobile technology is crucial in taking healthcare out to the people. We have
monitoring programs to watch patients in their homes. There are other programs of
scheduling appointment at clinics so that patients don’t have to wait in lines. We
have mobile vans to take mobile clinics out. All of this works because we have more
patients then the doctors to attend them at diverse locations. We are doing
telemedicine and taking out the travelling costs and the time and trouble of people
going to hospitals. We are using PC technology for either doctors to talk to and see
patients remotely or see the electronic ECGs, EKGs, X-rays, CT scans, etc from
remote locations. We have done some interesting studies. If you go to the hospital
for EKG readings, it may take a few hours to whole day waiting in line. But doing it
in a rural clinic, you are back in about 6 to 8 minutes. Later, they send it to a
hospital. Healthcare is a wonderful area to apply PC technology. We are keeping
people who need not come to the hospital out. It saves their time and also lessens
the load on the doctors. The lesser number of people visiting the hospitals means
that they don’t have to wait long hours. Patients can now also bring their electronic
personal health records from all the different doctors and hospitals over the years.
How you see Internet integrating with the cellular technology?
The Internet and the cellular technology are blending. We now have computers
with SIM cards. You can now track Internet users based on which cellular base
station they are connecting from. This gives physical security architecture. Using
cellular services for computing is bringing amazing changes. Now Telcos are the
cloud. They are the integrators. Today if I am a small business, I am going to them
to find someone from whom I can buy something. Tomorrow I would be going to
Telcos buying from them. By building services within their networks and integrating
third party services, they are going to make processes for me quicker, and
relatively cheaper as well. The concept of broadband that cellular brings and the
telephone companies becoming data services companies and brokering services in
the cloud, is an explosive opportunity. Things are already happening in simpler
ways like sending money through cellular networks. But it is going to be much more
then these simple beginnings.
The Telcos are in the driver seat because they are the bank. Skype was the first to
give a new type of service. Microsoft has put Office in the cloud. Amazon is selling
PCs and a host of other products. All these services need someone to collect
money for them. Telcos are the bank and this puts them in the driver seat. Google,
Skype, Amazon, Alibaba, etc are putting their business through Telcos. So it is not
just voice or data. The Telcos are now in a position to sell and broker a vast range
of services. A symbiotic relationship is emerging between Telcos and other
businesses on the Internet. The best new business model is in the making for
Telcos. They are going to be far more valuable for other businesses than banks
because banks are far more fewer and are not everywhere. Telcos are virtually
everywhere. The only Telcos that are scared of these new developments are the
ones thinking only in terms of voice and data pipes. Once they understand they are
the part of equation in the new economy, they should relish the new developments.
They are service channel, marketing channel, they are the pathway to customers
for other businesses. With their networks reaching far and wide, they are sitting on
a gold mine.
Any parting message?
Pakistan is in an incredible situation. It has very well educated and smart people
who can apply technology creatively in many areas. You have a well-built
infrastructure that is ready to go. You now have to build services on that
infrastructure. These are wonderful developments that would bring business
opportunities for the economy and people to flourish. You are poised for an
amazing growth period mainly because you got the education, infrastructure and
motivation. You are about to benefit from the investment in human resource and
infrastructure that you made and people would be amazed at the outcome.
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