GSMA Says Major World Carriers Working Together to Share Big Data for Social Good
Sixteen of the world’s leading mobile operators agreed to leverage their big data to address natural disasters and epidemics, said GSMA Director General Mats Granryd in a keynote at the Mobile World Congress Tuesday, streamed from Barcelona. The operators have…
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more than 2 billion subscribers, he said. “We will establish scalable common processes and build an ecosystem to support timely planning and response to crisis.” GSMA will launch a pilot this summer, he said. Initial trials are to start in June, with Bharti Airtel in India, Telefónica in Brazil and Telenor in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, said a GSMA news release. None of the major U.S. carriers is on the list, though T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom is participating. Granryd also said the wireless industry is fully committed to meeting UN sustainable development goals. SDG No. 1 is no poverty, he said. “Mobile money is driving social and financial, economic impact for millions of people in the developing markets,” Granryd said. “Over the last 10 years, mobile money has done more to extend the reach of financial services than traditional brick and mortar banks have done in the last 100 years.” SDG No. 5 is gender equality, he said. “The mobile industry is focused on increasing women’s access to and use of mobile services in low- and middle-income countries around the world.” Data continue to show that 200 million more men than women have mobile phones worldwide, he said. Women “are missing out on key social-economic opportunities and that cannot be right,” he said. Last year, GSMA launched a connected women initiative and 24 operators made 32 commitments to close the gender gap, he said. GSMA is committed to working on all of the SDGs as an industry, Granryd said. The environment is also important to GSMA, and as of Tuesday, the group, all its events and offices, were certified carbon neutral in 2016, Granryd said. “We are committed to lowering our environmental impact and actively committed to fighting against climate change.” Companies must support the U.N.’s SDGs, said Takashi Niino, CEO of NEC, who also spoke Tuesday. “Profit is no longer just about the bottom line,” Niino said. “It is about generating sustainable benefits and a sustainable future.”