Mobex 2016 Day 2 (Technically Day 3)

Hello from a rainy and floody day in Accra. Had a heck of a morning getting to today’s Mobex 2016 event because it decided to rain like hell and actually flooded parts of the city.

Anyway, got a bit late to the event, safe and sound. Today was the final day, which was Day 2 (technically Day 3)

Session 1: Over The Top (OTT) Services

A somewhat controversial topic. If you haven’t heard, MTN recently came out and said they want OTT services to be “regulated” because they’re losing money. The National Communications Authority (NCA) actually said they would consider MTN’s proposal for regulation.

It was a good discussion especially when it came to the Q&A session. Many people were pushing back on the whole idea of OTT services being regulated. Many people were like, “it’s my data and I can do what I want with it”.

At the end of the day, it looked like there was a consensus that telcos need to have a more collaborative posture with OTT applications. OTT services are here to stay, whether MTN and other telcos like it or not.

Session 2: Digital Entrepreneurship

This was a good session which focused on digital entrepreneurship in Ghana. We had some great person stories from the panelist on stage including almost going bankrupt three times, and having their car repossessed from failure to pay their loan on time.

The takeaway from this session is that entrepreneurship is not easy. But it’s better today to be an entrepreneur because the openness of the internet has made it easier to get resources which were once scarce.

I’m skipping the write up about the Session 3 which talked about Digital Terrestrial Television. Basically, it was a session about Ghana transitioning to digital television which hasn’t happened yet. So, it was mostly a lot of talk which nothing to really show. Maybe next time, when we’re all on digital television, there’ll be more content for me to write about.

Session 4: Gamification & eSport Culture

Is eSports and gaming in Ghana? Kind of. This session feature a panel consisting of the CEO of Leti Arts (Eyram Tawia) and Paul Ziem from GameNerd.

The takeaway from the sessions was this: If gaming and esports is going to grow in Ghana, people at the top for to throw gamers a bone. There needs to be sort of game development courses in academia and maybe some funding element.

Getting people to be involved in gaming is going to be a tough hill to traverse. The young kids are going to be enthused about it but parents and people of the older generation are going to hold out, especially in Ghana and Africa.

Also, resources for online play is kind of difficult to obtain. I mean, these mobile and internet providers aren’t helping much when it comes to data.

Good session. Wished it was more open and longer so we could have discussed more about gaming. Maybe next year.

And that’s it! Mobex 2o16 is done. Aside from the sessions, there were vendors at the centre. A lot of tech companies trying to sell you their products and software. Not really my taste. Oh well.

If you’re tech guy or just an internet nerd, I recommend you come to next year’s event. I have good first impressions of this event. I wish more startup companies were involved at the booths and not companies like MTN and Huawei. (no offense)

But all in all, we need more discussions about these sort of techs especially since we’re in a digital age.

That’s it for me. Signing off for now.