Phone Network Research Articles

Competition in Network Industries: Evidence from the Rwandan Mobile Phone Network

Competition in Network Industries: Evidence from the Rwandan Mobile Phone Network

Integrated disease surveillance and response implementation in Liberia, findings from a data quality audit, 2017.

Introductionin spite of the efforts and resources committed by the division of infectious disease and epidemiology (DIDE) of the national public health institute of Liberia (NPHIL)/Ministry of health to strengthening integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR) across the country, quality data management system remains a challenge to the Liberia NPHIL/MoH (Ministry of health), with incomplete and inconsistent data constantly being reported at different levels of the surveillance system. As part of the monitoring and evaluation strategy for IDSR continuous improvement, data quality assessment (DQA) of the IDSR system to identify successes and gaps in the disease surveillance information system (DSIS) with the aim of ensuring data accuracy, reliability and credibility of generated data at all levels of the health system; and to inform an operational plan to address data quality needs for IDSR activities is required.Methodsmulti-stage cluster sampling that included stage 1: simple random sample (SRS) of five counties, stage 2: simple random sample of two districts and stage 3: simple random sample of three health facilities was employed during the study pilot assessment done in Montserrado County with Liberia institute of bio medical research (LIBR) inclusive. A total of thirty (30) facilities was targeted, twenty nine (29) of the facilities were successfully audited: one hospital, two health centers, twenty clinics and respondents included: health facility surveillance focal persons (HFSFP), zonal surveillance officers (ZSOs), district surveillance officers (DSOs) and County surveillance officers (CSOs).Resultsthe assessment revealed that data use is limited to risk communication and sensitization, no examples of use of data for prioritization or decision making at the subnational level. The findings indicated the following: 23% (7/29) of health facilities having dedicated phone for reporting, 20% (6/29) reported no cell phone network, 17% (5/29) reported daily access to internet, 56.6% (17/29) reported a consistent supply of electricity, and no facility reported access to functional laptop. It was also established that 40% of health facilities have experienced a stock out of laboratory specimens packaging supplies in the past year. About half of the surveyed health facilities delivered specimens through riders and were assisted by the DSOs. There was a large variety in the reported packaging process, with many staff unable to give clear processes. The findings during the exercise also indicated that 91% of health facility staff were mentored on data quality check and data management including the importance of the timeliness and completeness of reporting through supportive supervision and mentorship; 65% of the health facility assessed received supervision on IDSR core performance indicator; and 58% of the health facility officer in charge gave feedback to the community level.Conclusionpublic health is a data-intensive field which needs high-quality data and authoritative information to support public health assessment, decision-making and to assure the health of communities. Data quality assessment is important for public health. In this review completeness, accuracy, and timeliness were the three most-assessed attributes. Quantitative data quality assessment primarily used descriptive surveys and data audits, while qualitative data quality assessment methods include primarily interviews, questionnaires administration, documentation reviews and field observations. We found that data-use and data-process have not been given adequate attention, although they were equally important factors which determine the quality of data. Other limitations of the previous studies were inconsistency in the definition of the attributes of data quality, failure to address data users’ concerns and a lack of triangulation of mixed methods for data quality assessment. The reliability and validity of the data quality assessment were rarely reported. These gaps suggest that in the future, data quality assessment for public health needs to consider equally the three dimensions of data quality, data use and data process. Measuring the perceptions of end users or consumers towards data quality will enrich our understanding of data quality issues. Data use is limited to risk communication and sensitization, no examples of use of data for prioritization or decision making at the sub national level.

Constructing Time-Dependent Origin-Destination Matrices With Adaptive Zoning Scheme and Measuring Their Similarities With Taxi Trajectory Data

There has been a recent push towards using opportunistic sensing data collected from sources like automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems, mobile phone networks, and global positioning system (GPS) tracking to construct origin-destination (O-D) matrices, which are an effective alternative to expensive and time-consuming traditional travel surveys. These data have numerous drawbacks: they may have inadequate detail about the journey, may lack spatial and temporal granularity, or may be limited due to privacy regulations. Taxi trajectory data is an opportunistic sensing data type that can be effectively used for O-D matrix construction because it addresses the issues that plague other data sources. This paper presents a new approach for using taxi trajectory data to construct a taxi O-D matrix that is dynamic in both space and time. The model’s origin and destination zone sizes and locations are not fixed, allowing the dimensions to vary from one matrix to another. Comparisons between these spatiotemporal-varying O-D matrices cannot be made using a traditional method like matrix subtraction. Therefore, this paper introduces a new measure of similarity. Our proposed approaches are applied to the taxi trajectory data collected from Lisbon, Portugal as a case study. The results reveal the periods in which taxi travel demand is the highest and lowest, as well as the periods in which the highest and lowest regular taxi travel demand patterns take shape. This information about taxi travel demand patterns is essential for informed taxi service operations management.

Mobile Phones and Mozambique Traders: What is the Size of Reduced Search Costs and Who Benefits?

We investigate to what extent the roll-out of the mobile phone network in Mozambique reduced transport costs and search costs, and thereby decreased spatial price dispersion and improved market efficiency. Estimations are based on data of transport costs of maize grain and maize market prices. The mobile phone rollout explains a 10%-13% reduction in maize price dispersion. Around half of this reduction is associated with search costs related to transport, the other half with other search costs, for example for the collection of maize in source markets. Search costs are substantial and also a substantial component of total transport costs. Benefits of increased market efficiency are biased towards consumer markets. Results are robust for non-random rollout of the mobile phone network and several other threats.

Mobile Money

Access to financial institutions is difficult in developing economies and especially for the poor. However, the widespread adoption of mobile phones has enabled the development of mobile money systems that deliver financial services through the mobile phone network. Despite the success of mobile money, there is a lack of quantitative studies that unveil which factors contribute to the adoption and sustained usage of such services. In this paper, we describe the results of a quantitative study that analyzes data from the world's leading mobile money service, M-Pesa. We analyzed millions of anonymized mobile phone communications and M-Pesa transactions in an African country. Our contributions are threefold: (1) we analyze the customers' usage of M-Pesa and report large-scale patterns of behavior; (2) we present the results of applying machine learning models to predict mobile money adoption (AUC=0.691), and mobile money spending (AUC=0.619) using multiple data sources: mobile phone data, M-Pesa agent information, the number of M-Pesa friends in the user's social network, and the characterization of the user's geographic location; (3) we discuss the most predictive features in both models and draw key implications for the design of mobile money services in a developing country. We find that the most predictive features are related to mobile phone activity, to the presence of M-Pesa users in a customer's ego-network and to mobility. We believe that our work will contribute to the understanding of the factors playing a role in the adoption and sustained usage of mobile money services in developing economies.

How Important of The Accuracy Sales Forecasting Method against Sales Strategy Decision Making of The Mobile Phone Network Operator Company: A Case Study

This paper examinesthe accuracy of sales forecasting method that are important for decision making of sales strategy the mobile phone network operator company. Sales forecasting used to estimate company products sales for next year, so the company could make sales strategy plans and estimation an amount to be produced next year. Mobile phone network operator is one of un-seasonable products. The purpose of the paper is to compare, analyze, and giving a recommend of the best sales forecasting method to improve the mobile phone network operator company. Quantitative data were collected through published companies finnacial reports, articles, and journals which related with Supply Chain Management theory. The contribution this paper is providing the mobile phone network operator company to make successful sales strategy based from good sales forecasting method. Keywords – Sales Forecasting, Mobile Phone Network Operator Company, Sales Strategy, Forecasting Method

Field testing a remote monitoring system for hand water pumps

Abstract Throughout Africa, many hand water pumps malfunction and remain inoperable for long periods of time. Previous studies from a number of sub-Saharan countries have indicated that in some regions up to 65% of hand pumps may be broken. It is reported that robust monitoring of remote water pumps can help address some of these problems. However, traditional project monitoring strategies generally rely on physical site visits to remote locations. These visits can be time consuming and resource intensive, which in turn may delay the implementation of pump repairs. In contrast, recent years have seen the emergence of a range of new monitoring technologies that use mobile phone networks to rapidly report the operational status of water projects from remote sites. The authors describe the development of a new monitoring system, called MANTIS, which is intended for hand pumps in developing regions. The paper presents data from early field trials of MANTIS in Sierra Leone and The Gambia. The unit relays ‘near real time’ operational data from the water pump to an accessible online platform.

Inferring modes of transportation using mobile phone data

Cities are growing at a fast rate, and transportation networks need to adapt accordingly. To design, plan, and manage transportation networks, domain experts need data that reflect how people move from one place to another, at what times, for what purpose, and in what mode(s) of transportation. However, traditional data collection methods are not cost-effective or timely. For instance, travel surveys are very expensive, collected every ten years, a period of time that does not cope with quick city changes, and using a relatively small sample of people. In this paper, we propose an algorithmic pipeline to infer the distribution of mode of transportation usage in a city, using mobile phone network data. Our pipeline is based on a Topic-Supervised Non-Negative Matrix Factorization model, using a Weak-Labeling strategy on user trajectories with data obtained from open datasets, such as GTFS and OpenStreetMap. As a case study, we show results for the city of Santiago, Chile, which has a sophisticated intermodal public transportation system. Importantly, our pipeline delivers coherent results that are explainable, with interpretable parameters at each step. Finally, we discuss the potential applications and implications of such a system in transportation and urban planning.

Measurements of Mobile Signal Received Power Level at Ringlet, Cameron Highland, Malaysia

Tenaga Nasional, the electric utility company in Peninsular Malaysia have been installing electronic meters that can establish wireless connectivity over the mobile phone network since 2005. Several locations including Ringlet, Cameron Highland have been pointed out as having difficulties in establishing a stable connection to the national main server. Empirical investigations had been carried out to determine the availability of service coverage and the associated signal received power levels at the said location. The findings are reported in this article. The outcomes from the measurement campaign were used to deduce the likely solution that is capable of establishing a more reliable link. Field trials involving installations of high-gain antennas and signal boosters as potential solutions were also carried out at selected sites within the district. It is the objective of the study to develop a total solution that can ultimately address the communication issue.

Unraveling pedestrian mobility on a road network using ICTs data during great tourist events

Tourist flows in historical cities are continuously growing in a globalized world and adequate governance processes, politics and tools are necessary in order to reduce impacts on the urban livability and to guarantee the preservation of cultural heritage. The ICTs offer the possibility of collecting large amount of data that can point out and quantify some statistical and dynamic properties of human mobility emerging from the individual behavior and referring to a whole road network. In this paper we analyze a new dataset that has been collected by the Italian mobile phone company TIM, which contains the GPS positions of a relevant sample of mobile devices when they actively connected to the cell phone network. Our aim is to propose innovative tools allowing to study properties of pedestrian mobility on the whole road network. Venice is a paradigmatic example for the impact of tourist flows on the resident life quality and on the preservation of cultural heritage. The GPS data provide anonymized georeferenced information on the displacements of the devices. After a filtering procedure, we develop specific algorithms able to reconstruct the daily mobility paths on the whole Venice road network. The statistical analysis of the mobility paths suggests the existence of a travel time budget for the mobility and points out the role of the rest times in the empirical relation between the mobility time and the corresponding path length. We succeed to highlight two connected mobility subnetworks extracted from the whole road network, that are able to explain the majority of the observed mobility. Our approach shows the existence of characteristic mobility paths in Venice for the tourists and for the residents. Moreover the data analysis highlights the different mobility features of the considered case studies and it allows to detect the mobility paths associated to different points of interest. Finally we have disaggregated the Italian and foreigner categories to study their different mobility behaviors.

Implementation project of the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment and m-communication to enhance maternal health care in rural Tanzania

BackgroundObstetric hemorrhage (OH) remains one of the leading causes of maternal mortality, particularly in rural Africa. Tanzania has a high maternal mortality ratio, and approximately 80% of the population accesses health care lower level facilities, unable to provide Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care (CEmOC). The non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) has been demonstrated to reduce mortality as it buys time for women in shock to be transported to or to overcome delays at referral facilities.MethodsThis report describes one component of an ongoing maternal health improvement project, Empower, implemented in 280 facilities in four regions in rural Tanzania. The NASG along with a Closed User Group (CUG) mobile phone network were implemented within the overall EmOC project. Simulation trainings, repeated trainings, and close hands-on supportive supervision via site visits and via the CUG network were the training/learning methods. Data collection was conducted via the CUG network, with a limited data collection form, which also included free text options for project improvement. One-to-one interviews were also conducted. Outcome Indicators included appropriate use of NASG for women with hypovolemic shock We also compared baseline case fatality rates (CFR) from OH with endline CFRs.Data were analyzed using cohort study Risk Ratio (RR). Qualitative data analysis was conducted by content analysis.ResultsOf the 1713 women with OH, 419 (24.5%) met project hypovolemic shock criteria, the NASG was applied to 70.8% (n = 297), indicating high acceptability and utilization. CFR at baseline (1.70) compared to CFR at endline (0.76) showed a temporal association of a 67% reduced risk for women during the project period (RR: 0.33, 95% CI = .19, .60). Qualitative feedback was used to make course corrections during the project to enhance training and implementation.ConclusionsThis implementation project with 280 facilities and over 1000 providers supported via CUG demonstrated that NASG can have high uptake and appropriate use for hypovolemic shock secondary to OH. With the proper implementation strategies, NASG utilization can be high and should be associated with decreased mortality among mothers at risk of death from obstetric hemorrhage.

Shopping mall attraction and social mixing at a city scale

In Latin America, shopping malls seem to offer an open, safe and democratic version of the public space. However, it is often difficult to quantitatively measure whether they indeed foster, hinder, or are neutral with respect to social inclusion. In this work, we investigate if, and by how much, people from different social classes are attracted by the same malls. Using a dataset of mobile phone network records from 387,152 devices identified as customers of 16 malls in Santiago de Chile, we performed several analyses to study whether malls with higher social mixing attract more people. Our pipeline, which starts with the socio-economic characterization of mall visitors, includes the estimation of social mixing and diversity of malls, the application of the gravity model of mobility, and the definition of a co-visitation model. Results showed that people tend to choose a profile of malls more in line with their own socio-economic status and the distance from their home to the mall, and that higher mixing does positively contribute to the process of choosing a mall. We conclude that (a) there is social mixing in malls, and (b) that social mixing is a factor at the time of choosing which mall to go to. Thus, the potential for social mixing in malls could be capitalized by designing public policies regarding transportation and mobility to make some malls strong social inclusion hubs.

Application progress of M-learning mode in health education among patients with diabetes mellitus

The paper introduced the application of M-learning mode in health education among patients with diabetes mellitus at home and abroad. It introduced the application experience such as mobile phone messages, application program and network platform in detail. Moreover, how to apply M-learning mode well to improve the effects of health education was proposed so as to provide a reference for nursing workers in China to develop and apply M-learning mode to improve the quality of health education. Key words: Review; Diabetes mellitus; Health education; M-learning mode

Two types of social grooming methods depending on the trade-off between the number and strength of social relationships.

Humans use various social bonding methods known as social grooming, e.g. face to face communication, greetings, phone and social networking sites (SNS). SNS have drastically decreased time and distance constraints of social grooming. In this paper, I show that two types of social grooming (elaborate social grooming and lightweight social grooming) were discovered in a model constructed by 13 communication datasets including face to face, SNS and Chacma baboons. The separation of social grooming methods is caused by a difference in the trade-off between the number and strength of social relationships. The trade-off of elaborate social grooming is weaker than the trade-off of lightweight social grooming. On the other hand, the time and effort of elaborate methods are higher than those of lightweight methods. Additionally, my model connects social grooming behaviour and social relationship forms with these trade-offs. By analysing the model, I show that individuals tend to use elaborate social grooming to reinforce a few close relationships (e.g. face to face and Chacma baboons). By contrast, people tend to use lightweight social grooming to maintain many weak relationships (e.g. SNS). Humans with lightweight methods who live in significantly complex societies use various types of social grooming to effectively construct social relationships.

Front and Back Covers, Volume 34, Number 4. August 2018

Cover caption, volume 34 issue 4Front Cover: INNOVATION IN A MEXICAN VILLAGEWhen Mexico's largest telecom companies refused to provide mobile phone service to the remote Zapotec mountain village of Talea de Castro, Oaxaca, residents responded with astonishing creativity: in March 2013, they built the world's first autonomous mobile phone network. The community‐owned network uses open‐source software to link mobile phones globally over the Internet using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).It was developed in collaboration with a non‐profit organization, hackers and sympathetic activists committed to the idea of mobile access as a human right. Centuries‐old practices, including tequio (communal work party) and the asamblea (citizens' ‘assembly’ or town hall meeting), played a central role in enabling Zapotec citizens to give life to the network.Today residents of nearly 20 Zapotec, Mixtec and Mixe villages throughout Oaxaca can send and receive calls and texts within their communities for free, while long‐distance and international calls cost a small fraction of what commercial companies charge throughout the country. The network has provided villagers with an affordable and reliable system for maintaining family relationships and cultural continuity across national borders.However, Talea de Castro's community‐owned network is now under threat because Movistar, a giant telecom corporation based in Spain, has aggressively moved into the community. The case of Talea de Castro raises important questions about the roots of innovation, creative problem‐solving and the existential threats facing autonomous technological systems.Image source: DANIELA PARRA/REDES ACBack Cover: NORTH KOREANorth Korean students against the backdrop of a statue of Kim Il‐sung (1912–1994) in Mansudae, central Pyongyang, 2007.Kim was the founding leader of North Korea and commanded the country's People's Army during the Korean War (1950–1953). For a decade after the war, his charismatic leadership contributed to turning the war‐torn society into a strong industrial economy. The importance of the last legacy is strongly propagated by the country's current leadership.In his guest editorial in this issue, Heonik Kwon considers the possibilities of a rapprochment between North Korea and the USA.Image source: (STEPHAN) / CC BY‐SA 2.0C

Zapotec innovation in a Mexican village: Building an autonomous mobile network

In 2013, a Zapotec village in the Mexican state of Oaxaca drew international attention when its citizens successfully created an autonomous mobile phone network. Using open‐source software and with technical assistance from an NGO (non‐governmental organization), the people of Talea de Castro obtained antennae, a base station and software that enabled them to build a fully functional mobile network with global reach. This article examines theoretical questions about the nature of innovation and the conditions that might help promote it. It also places the network in broad historical and social contexts. The article reviews the political, legal and technical processes by which villagers were able to create the network. For many years, Talea has been a centre of technological creativity and experimentation. The network might be seen as the village's latest innovation in a centuries‐long process in which creative problem‐solving is integrated with indigenous patterns of mutual aid, reciprocal labour and cooperativism. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges facing the network and its users.

Biotelemetry marches on: A cost-effective GPS device for monitoring terrestrial wildlife.

The availability of low-cost wildlife trackers increases the capacity to collect valuable ecological data when research budgets are limited. We converted a commercially available global positioning system (GPS) product into a low-cost tracking device that sends data via the mobile phone network, and assessed its performance under varying conditions. We established a stationary test, deploying devices along a continuum from open urban areas to topographically and structurally complex forested sites. We tested three features of the device: (a) the GPS, by measuring fix success rate, fix precision and horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP), (b) remote download capacity via the mobile phone network and (c) battery drain. Measures of GPS performance demonstrated high fix success rates and precision. HDOP values were influenced by habitat type and topographical position, but generally remained very low, giving an acceptable degree of error for most applications in wildlife research. Devices experienced delayed data transmission at sites with less phone reception, and faster battery drain at sites with denser vegetation. We recorded device malfunctions in 8.2% of the 110 sampling locations, but these were not associated with habitat type or topography. Our device was effective under a wide range of conditions, and the development process we used provides guidance to other researchers aiming to develop cost-effective wildlife trackers. Reducing the financial and labour costs of acquiring high-quality movement data will improve the capacity to increase sample size in animal movement studies.

Graph Management Systems: A Qualitative Survey

In the recent years many real-world applications have been modeled by graph structures (e.g., social networks, mobile phone networks, web graphs, etc.), and many systems have been developed to manage, query, and analyze these datasets. These systems could be divided into specialized graph database systems and large-scale graph analytics systems. The first ones consider end-to-end data management issues including storage representations, transactions, and query languages, whereas the second ones focus on processing specific tasks over large data graphs. In this paper we provide an overview of several graph database systems and graph processing systems, with the aim of assisting the reader in identifying the best-suited solution for her application scenario.

Customer satisfaction/delight and behavioural intentions of cell phone network customers – an emerging market perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the extent to which the satisfaction/delight experienced by customers of cell phone network service providers is influenced by their perceptions of the networks’ employee service delivery skills and the value that the customers derive from the networks’ offerings. In turn, the influence of the extent of their satisfaction/delight on future behavioural intention (BI) is determined.Design/methodology/approachA descripto-explanatory research design is followed and data are collected from satisfied/delighted cell phone network service provider customers using self-administered questionnaires. A total of 593 responses were suitable for analysis. An exploratory factor analysis is used to uncover the interrelationships between the items measuring the study’s constructs. Furthermore, the measurement and structural models are assessed.FindingsPerceived employee service delivery skills (PESDS) and value significantly and positively influence customer satisfaction/delight experiences, whereas customer satisfaction/delight experiences significantly and positively influence their BIs.Research limitations/implicationsThe model tested confirms the hypothesised relationships between PESDS, perceived value, customer satisfaction/delight experiences and BIs of cell phone network customers. Customer satisfaction/delight experiences are linked to their two antecedents (PESDS and value) and their outcome, BI.Practical implicationsThe findings assist cell phone network service providers in understanding how PESDS and value can foster customer delight, ultimately leading to positive BIs from customers.Originality/valueThis study focuses only on satisfied customers and determines the interrelationships of the extent to which they encounter customer satisfaction/delight experiences and related constructs. Few research studies, however, have examined how customer satisfaction/delight experiences relate to its antecedents and outcome.

Evaluation of the reinforced integrated disease surveillance and response strategy using short message service data transmission in two southern regions of Madagascar, 2014\u201315

BackgroundThe Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy was introduced in Madagascar in 2007. Information was collected by Healthcare structures (HS) on paper forms and transferred to the central level by post or email. Completeness of data reporting was around 20% in 2009–10. From 2011, in two southern regions data were transmitted through short messages service using one telephone provider. We evaluated the system in 2014–15 to determine its performance before changing or expanding it.MethodsWe randomly selected 80 HS and interviewed their representatives face-to-face (42) or by telephone (38). We evaluated knowledge of surveillance activities and selected case definitions, number of SMS with erroneous or missing information among the last ten transferred SMS, proportion of weekly reports received in the last 4 weeks and of the last four health alerts notified within 48 h, as well as mobile phone network coverage.ResultsSixty-four percent of 80 interviewed HS representatives didn’t know their terms of reference, 83% were familiar with the malaria case definition and 32% with that of dengue. Ninety percent (37/41) of visited HS had five or more errors and 47% had missing data in the last ten SMS they transferred. The average time needed for weekly IDSR data compilation was 24 min in the Southern and 47 in the South-eastern region. Of 320 expected SMS 232 (73%) were received, 136 (43%) of them in time. Out of 38 alerts detected, four were notified on time. Nine percent (7/80) of HS had no telephone network with the current provider.ConclusionsSMS transfer has improved IDSR data completeness, but timeliness and data quality remain a problem. Healthcare staff needs training on guidelines and case definitions. From 2016, data are collected and managed electronically to reduce errors and improve the system’s performance.