Quick thoughts on MWC

I haven't really had much time to write posts this week as I've been dashing about between dozens of meetings here in Barcelona.

But some quick things to mention;

• Nokia's 6700 Classic is a really nice small phone - I'm definitely a believer in nice well-engineered metals and other materials, rather than squeaky plastic.
• QVGA screens are really starting to look tired on handsets, especially for web browsing and heavy-duty email. I think iPhone-style 480x320 or VGA (640x480) or WVGA (800x480) are pretty much essential for decent smartphones from now on.
• Oberthur's integrated accelerometer-on-SIM is quite clever. But like most SIM innovations, it will suffer from the fact that most users keep their SIMs longer than their phones unless they churn, so it's easy to put new stuff in the handset itself.
• Lots of policy management and DPI products. Lots of different pitches and usage cases too. Some are pretty good as they focus on integration with customer intelligence, providing data to marketing teams. Still lots of unrealistic expectation of app-level policies, often backed up by a deep lack of understanding about application environments and user behaviour.
• Mostly realism about LTE, with timelines being pushed out a bit. Outside Verizon and Docomo, it's becoming clear that the only other big player in a rush towards it is T-Mobile. I'm wondering if any CTO-to-CFO friction will result in them dusting off their HSPA+ scenarios instead.
• Recognition that Voice over LTE is still not fixed, although various propositions are being suggested. Since I identified issues with VoIPo3G and VoIPoLTE more than a year ago, there's been fair progress, but it's still slow.
• ...although not as slow as IMS handset development. Yes, there's some release-1 RCS phones around, with trials being expected for H2 2009. But the really useful stuff like integration with Facebook, plus the addition of iPhone and Blackberry and other members remains at some indeterminate point in the future. There still seems a lack of thought about prepaid vs. RCS as well, while a 3rd-party SDK doesn't seem to be even on the horizon. There's a big risk that dedicated RCS clients will be made redundant by more full-featured browser and web runtimes that can access handset APIs, and which are more open to innovative developers.
• Truphone launched it's Local Anywhere service, based on multi-IMSI technology. Looks differentiated from the other VoIP / roaming offers., Will be interesting to see how this evolves as it looks to sign up partner operators in different countries
• Adobe is still quietly building up an impressive footprint for Flash and its Open Screen project.
• I met the CEO of possible the world's only prepay quadplay operator at the Highdeal round-table I moderated. Very cool business model & billing/charging system indeed.
• I'm a lot less surprised than many people about the announced Nokia / Qualcomm relationship for US Symbian phones, although I'd guessed that it would be Samsung rather than Nokia that would bring them into the fold.
• Lots of noise (and foot-fall on the stands) among the picocell and femtocell crowd. A lot of feeling that "it's actually happening!" now.
• The GSMA OneAPI platform for opening the network capabilities to third parties is emerging rapidly. I saw a good demo on the Aepona stand.
• Apple is conspicuous by its absence. Not that surprising really.
• A fair amount of noise about Android, as expected. But I've met one or two fellow unbelievers around. We'll probably be burned as heretics by the Googlistas.
• My little Samsung netbook has got a full day of battery life for undemanding tasks like writing meeting notes. No carrying around a charger & power cord this year.
• Not much mobile TV or NFC hype, although there's a bit of "digital money" and remittances talk.
• Continued interest in developing SMS as a service. Interesting pitch from Acision about it's new open platform for playing with SMS - for example delayed rather than instant deliveries. Forget the doomsayers predicting the replacement of SMS by IM - it's easier to grow a $100bn business by 20%, than a $10bn business by 1000%. Oh, and SMS over LTE needs to work just as well as voice.
• Less overall pessimism about the economy than I expected. Although that might be because the real doom-mongers all had their travel expenses cut this year.

And lastly, the "villains of the year" award goes to the GSMA Stasi demanding photo ID to get into the Fira precincts in the morning. Yes, I know security is an issue, but I'm not interested in attending any event that's based on Stalinist "We need to see your papers" approaches. Have they been taken lessons in authoritarianism from Gordon Brown & Jacqui Smith?

Prepaid data - my thanks to the Wiki

If you travel a lot, and you haven't seen it before, I'd heartily recommend checking out the prepaid wireless data resource here.

It lists prepaid data SIMs and tariffs in numerous countries - invaluable if you want to avoid ridiculous and unjustifiable mobile broadband data roaming prices.

Thanks to the Wiki, I managed to get hold of a Yoigo prepay SIM in Barcelona, and it gives me flatrate (albeit slowish) mobile data for €1.20 a day. The SIM costs €10 and comes with €10 of credit. It's great for email and web access on my phone, plus I'm finally able to use Google Maps and navigate myself in a foreign city, for less than the price of an equivalent taxi ride.

It was a bit of a pain to find and buy the SIM. I needed to take my passport as ID, and the sign-up process took about 15 minutes in the store. In other countries like Portugal, the process is a lot smoother.

It's a very good advert for the benefits of unlocked, unsubsidised smartphones. It's also highlighted that I need to get myself an unlocked or reflashed 3G dongle.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an equivalent provider in the US - even on just with flatrate EDGE would be useful.

Time to ditch the phrase "over the top"

One of the big themes of this year's MWC appears to be the justification of LTE deployment business cases. The received (but largely whispered) wisdom seems to be that plain-vanilla "pipes" for normal mobile broadband just won't cut it. You might as well just stick with HSPA and sweat the assets. The CTO of an operator might like LTE's architecture, spectrum flexibility and overall performance - but I can imagine some interesting discussions when CFOs ask "So, what new stuff does it do? How much extra money can we make - or save - and in what timeframes?"

One answer is around operator-managed end-to-end device + service combinations, perhaps for in-car or healthcare sectors. That seems a reasonable target, although I definitely have my doubts about locked or "walled-garden service" laptops.

But I'm also hearing from various large vendors that LTE should enable new revenue streams from exposing QoS or other network assets to web-based businesses or software providers. Fair enough, that's very aligned with Telco 2.0, two-sided business model philosophies.

But there seems to be little emphasis on actually convincing those upstream providers that they really need these extra capabilities - or that the incumbents can be trusted. Given the issues around DPI and Net Neutrality, it would hardly be surprising if many of the Internet application providers viewed these "offers"with wariness. Perhaps they would be better off just lobbying for ever-bigger pipes?

One particular aspect stands out. I've never heard anyone from Google, Facebook, Skype or an enterprise PBX vendor refer to themselves as an "over the top" provider. It's a phrase only used by incumbent operators or major vendors - and usually in a disparaging tone. I get the distinct impression that it's usually used as a more polite alternative to "parasite", on the orders of the speaker's PR team.

I think "over the top" exemplifies the arrogance of the telecom establishment. Most operators wouldn't like their networks and services to be dismissed with hand-waving terms like "plumbing", "legacy" or "dinosaur".

Given that the telecom industry wants to convince these companies to spend money on enhancing "quality of experience", perhaps buying QoS-managed pipes, or advert insertion, or identity management services - shouldn't the industry start being a bit more polite towards their target customer base?

The computing industry refers to third-party applications by the neutral term "ISV" (independent software vendor). Perhaps an equivalent term like "IAP" (independent application provider) would be more appropriate in discussions like these?

There also needs to be an acknowledgement of symmetry. For every capability exposed by an operator and consumed by an Internet player (eg location or messaging or QoS guarantees), there is likely to be a reciprocal relationship in the opposite direction. Why shouldn't an operator use Amazon's data centres for hosted storage - or even use Skype or Facebook as identity and contacts management providers?

If the mobile industry (and also fixed broadband providers) continue to sneer down their noses at Google et al, they should expect to see a even more strenuous efforts by those players to force operators into being plumbers.