How GSM phones changed our conversations

Last year, at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa, United States President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, were recorded taking a selfie (a self-taken photograph with a camera phone). The three leaders were seen grinning excitedly, like a bunch of teenagers, into a mobile phone held by Schmidt as she clicked away. The faux pas was a major talking point of the memorial. The incident is the perfect example of how the Global System for Mobile Communications or GSM has changed our everyday experiences; how individuals, businesses, and communities engage in the new communication age.

 Ever since the world’s first GSM call in July 1991 by the then Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri to the mayor of Tampere, Finland, business and interpersonal engagements have changed perceptibly. Today, over 86% of the world population in more than 210 countries is connected via the GSM technology. In Nigeria, GSM networks account for 97% of telephony services. Broadband development has pushed the boundary of possibilities with the convergence of voice, data and multimedia services, making GSM even more relevant to everyday life.

 The new world of mobile

When the first GSM call was made, it probably was hard to imagine the kind of impact mobile communications would have on lives and relationships; its dominance in the telephony sector in Nigeria was certainly never envisaged when MTN and Econet Wireless rolled out in 2001. Some 23 years after Holkeri’s call and 13 years in Nigeria, however, the mobile phone now defines social engagement. This is definitely true of millions of Nigerians who are connected to the GSM technology. They use their mobile phones to define their personality, affinities and idiosyncrasies. To use a footballing term, the mobile phone has changed the complexion of the relationship game, be it in business or private life.

Arguably, the greatest impact of the GSM age on social engagement is the freedom it gives the individual to choose his/her method of engagement; no longer is he restricted to voice as with fixed phones or to words as with letters. Selfies have become as effective in communication as spoken or written words. In fact, photographs totally eliminate the need for words to capture and convey a response or feeling. By the way, selfie, a mobile-phone originated word, has found its way into the English dictionary!

 The term “global village” is best understood if we consider that space and time are no longer important factors in communication. Australia, for instance, is a whole day’s journey away from Nigeria, but only a second away through your GSM-enabled mobile phone. Thus, one could do a video chat through Skype and even much more efficiently via platforms like the MTN telepresence in real time with a friend, client, colleague, family member, or business partner who lives in Australia or elsewhere in the world.

Noticeable impact

Instant news updates in the form of short message services are conveyed through the mobile phone networks round the clock. As a result, Nigerians are now very knowledgeable about local and world events. You would be shocked at how comfortably a mango seller in Mile 12, Lagos, for instance, discusses the missing Malaysian plane MH370 or the going-ons at the Central Bank of Nigeria in Abuja. An opinion poll taken at Ketu, Lagos, market area shortly after the suspension of Lamido Sanusi as CBN governor elicited some thought provoking responses. The average mobile phone user is now a publisher; he/she can disseminate news or information to thousands of others in an instant via SMS, voice call, pictures, videos, chats, and several other platforms without knowing he is i-reporting. 

 Millions of Nigerians, through their phones, contribute content on Twitter, Youtube, Goal.com, Google, Facebook, MySpace and many others that such sites are now being optimized for Nigeria. It is estimated that over 35 million Nigerians are online daily. Many of these online activities are via GSM phones.

 A community of equals

Interestingly, social barriers, such as education, race, class, religion, sex, among others, are no longer important to social engagements through the mobile phone networks as they would have been in a face-to-face interaction. It is easy, for instance, to chat with someone you ordinarily cannot gain access to. David Cameron is on Twitter and can be engaged by anyone; President Goodluck Jonathan can be engaged via his Facebook account. Language use is important to this ease of engagement.

 The online community has developed its own language called text-speak (basically abbreviations and acronyms), which emphasizes brevity and directness. The company where I work, for instance, is called XLR8. This is a creative manipulation of the more orthodox “accelerate” and is obviously a fall-out of today’s digital reality. Where once verbosity and prudence were considered dignified and intelligent, not so with the online community. On the contrary, lengthy words are now tiresome and unseemly. Thus, terms like selfie, lol, asap, pic, etc are standard in chatrooms, SMSes, emails, and online conversations. Text-speak makes engagement seamless. A Chinese can easily converse with an Igbo man, the Hausa engages the Itsekiri and the Yoruba the Ibibio without dialect interference. The ability to speak text-speak helps to foster relationships across ethnic and religious divide as virtual communities are created.

 Giving mobility to businesses

Businesses have equally benefitted immensely from the spread of mobile telephony. Businesses typically have a need for multi-pronged stakeholder engagement with the customer, the employee, and regulators/governments, the communities, trade unions, etc. GSM technology has helped to make these engagements seamless. As more consumers have access to the internet or mobile broadband through their phones, smart businesses are beginning to engage them online, ensuring ease and speed of doing business. Many businesses engage the consumer on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, emails, forums, etc. Some banks, for instance, now enable account opening online. Online shopping is catching on fast in the country with the likes of Konga.com; Jumia; OLX, pricecheck.com, and Tatafoo. According to a survey by FirstData, an electronic payment portal, “The lines between in-store commerce, e-Commerce and mobile commerce are blurring. Consumers expect a more integrated buying experience that is quick, consistent, secure and available wherever they happen to be, at any time and through any type of device.”

Peter Singer