There will be a reconstruction prototype: a flexible and segmentary set of adaptable practices and models that can be tailored to fit particular postcrisis environments. Technology companies use prototypes and “beta” models to allow room for trial and error—the underlying philosophy being that early-stage feedback for an imperfect product ultimately yields a better result in the end. (Hence the tech entrepreneur’s favorite aphorism: Fail early, fail often.) A prototype-like approach to reconstruction efforts will take some time to develop, but ultimately it will better serve the communities in need.
The main component of a reconstruction prototype—and what distinguishes it from, say, more traditional reconstruction efforts—is a communications-first, or mobile-first, mentality. The restoration and upgrading of communication networks have already become the new cement in modern reconstruction efforts. Looking ahead, upgrading broken societies to the fastest and most modern version of telecommunications infrastructure will be the top priority of all reconstruction actors, not least because the success of their own work will depend on it. Even in the last decade we’ve witnessed such a shift.
As recently as the early 2000s, post-conflict reconstruction wasn’t so much about telecommunications revival as it was telecommunications installation. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had any semblance of a mobile network prior to regime change. The Taliban government violently opposed almost every form of consumer technology (although it had a small GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] network limited to government officials) and Saddam Hussein banned mobile phones entirely in his totalitarian state. Once those regimes fell, the populations were left with virtually no infrastructure or modern devices; combatants in the ensuing conflicts were the only ones with some form of portable communications (typically radios).
When American civilian reconstruction teams entered Iraq in 2003, they found themselves in a telecommunications desert, and initial efforts to use satellite phones floundered as they discovered that the phones worked only if both users stood outside—needless to say, an inconvenient feature for a war zone.1 As a quick fix, the allies’ Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) gave MTC-Vodafone, a regional telecom company, a contract to install cell towers and establish services in the south of the country, while another telecom, MCI, got the nod in Baghdad. According to one former senior CPA official we spoke with, the towers were put up all over the country literally overnight, with officials and U.N. staff receiving thousands of mobile phones to distribute to important local political players. (Oddly enough, all the phones sported a “917” area code, sharing that distinction with New York’s five boroughs.) These efforts jump-started a moribund telecommunications industry in Iraq by building the physical infrastructure required, and within a few years, the sector was booming.
In Afghanistan, where the U.N. established a mobile network soon after the fall of the Taliban (with free service as an incentive for users), the mobile market has grown significantly in the past decade, thanks largely to the Afghan government’s decision to issue licenses to private mobile operators. By 2011, there were four major operators in Afghanistan, claiming some 15 million subscribers among them. The reconstruction teams who arrived in Iraq and Afghanistan found a blank canvas: poor infrastructure, no subscribers and dubious commercial prospects. Given the rate of mobile adoption around the world and how the telecommunications industry is expanding, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever encounter a similar blank slate again.
In Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, the primary communications task was not installation but widespread restoration of a badly damaged telecommunications infrastructure. Despite the devastation throughout the country, getting its communications networks up and running was a relatively fast process. The mobile infrastructure was badly damaged by the earthquake and aftershocks, but due to quick thinking and cooperation between local telecoms and the U.S. military, the carriers were able to restore functionality within only a few days. Ten days after the earthquake, the two largest mobile phone operators, Digicel and Voilà, reported that they were able to operate at 70 to 80 percent of their pre-earthquake capacity.
Jared, who was then with the State Department, remembers reaching out to the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia shortly after the Haitian earthquake for a debriefing on lessons learned after the 2004 tsunami that killed 230,000 people in fourteen countries in Southeast Asia. The message was clear: Get the towers up, get them running and overrule the people who think that telecommunications are secondary to emergency rescue. Fast networks aren’t secondary; they’re complementary.
Because the vast majority of cell towers in Haiti, even prior to the earthquake, relied on generators instead of electricity for power, maintaining coverage was often more a question of fuel than infrastructure. Donated cell towers had to be guarded lest desperate people try to steal their fuel. Still, the ability to maintain service despite the destruction and chaos proved vital in coordinating and sending aid organizations to areas and people who needed help most, as well as providing a way for friends and family to contact each other within and beyond Haiti. Some of the first images to come out of the country after the disaster were indeed taken and sent by Haitians using their mobile phones. Everyone involved in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake recognized how crucial working communications were in the midst of widespread physical destruction and human suffering.
The uprisings in the Arab world that began in 2010 represent another recent example of the advantages of a communications-first perspective. Vodafone’s speedy restoration of service in Egypt just before Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president foreshadows a more agile and shrewd telecom sector. Vodafone’s Vittorio Colao told us, “We had people sleeping in the network centers in order to make sure that we could be the first to offer service once the shutdown ended. We had food and water; we’d rented rooms in nearby hotels and we protected our premises, to make sure nobody could come and [disable] the network.” As a result of its efforts, Vodafone was the first operator to resume service—an important “first” for a company trying to reach a large Egyptian market that suddenly had a lot to talk about. Colao described a smart and empathetic strategy on the part of Vodafone to demonstrate value to its Egyptian customers: “We gave credit to our Egyptian customers so that they could call people at home, as a giveaway.” Vodafone also shaped the traffic load (that is, freed up space on the network for Egyptian users), “so that when the network came back up, we could make sure the first people using it could [make] twenty euros’ worth of calls to let relatives know [they were] safe.”
Today’s reliance on telecommunications is a reflection of how important this technology has become in even the poorest societies. In most cases today, when we talk about restoring the network, we’re specifically talking about voice and text services—not Internet connectivity. This will change in the next decade, as people everywhere begin to rely more on data services than on voice communications. After a crisis, the pressures to restore Internet connectivity will dwarf what we see today with voice and text, both for the sake of the population and because a fast data network will help reconstruction actors achieve their goals. If necessary, aid organizations will deploy portable 4G towers meshed together into a low-bandwidth ISP. Data can hop from a mobile device to the nearest tower, then from tower to tower until it reaches a fiber-optic cable connecting to the broader Internet. Browsing speeds will be slow, but such portable deployments will provide enough connectivity to accelerate rebuilding.