I've talked before about the notion of 3rd-party payment for a user's mobile data access, for example a venue owner or conference organiser sponsoring "free mobile broadband" for certain customers or attendees.
mBlox in particular has discussed its notion of "Sender Pays" data for chunks of content. For people without flatrate data plans, having a clear method to ensure the customer isn't going to face a big bill for downloading per-MB has to be a good thing.
However, the general contention that "Sender Pays" is analogous to the postage system's model is unfortunately rather underminded by this proposition by the UK's Royal Mail to make the "receiver" of letters pay as well....
(Note: my view is that "sender pays" content represents a small proportion of the overall opportunity for third-party sponsored connectivity, as I see content as merely a small, uni-directional sub-category of all applications. Most apps are bi-directional, with the user themselves sending a good proportion of the overall traffic. This is especially the case for user-generated content services like Qik)
Nice to know that evolution to two-sided markets isn't solely the domain of the telecoms industry.
Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Thought-leading wireless industry analysis
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Upcoming event on all that's cool in comms - eComm Europe
I've name-dropped the two SF-based eComm events before - always among the most fascinating of events, ranging from Voice 2.0 startups to visionaries thinking about industry governance and spectrum policy, with a handful of cool apps & mobile services thrown in for good measure.
This time, it's on this side of the Atlantic, in Amsterdam from 28-30 October. I'll be there, speaking about voice-on-LTE and radio issues, and no doubt throwing my oar in on some other themes as well.
I'd definitely recommend it - it gives a great flavour of the direction that comms technology could / should / might go, as well as some meat on businesses surround it. It's not explicitly pro- or anti- large operators, but it definitely is anti-status quo. Generally, the carriers that are represented there are the ones that "get it" - the conservative old guard tends to stay away. Quite a good barometer, really.
The details are here
This time, it's on this side of the Atlantic, in Amsterdam from 28-30 October. I'll be there, speaking about voice-on-LTE and radio issues, and no doubt throwing my oar in on some other themes as well.
I'd definitely recommend it - it gives a great flavour of the direction that comms technology could / should / might go, as well as some meat on businesses surround it. It's not explicitly pro- or anti- large operators, but it definitely is anti-status quo. Generally, the carriers that are represented there are the ones that "get it" - the conservative old guard tends to stay away. Quite a good barometer, really.
The details are here
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Net Neutrality in wireless
Another quick post.
I generally find it too hard to get worked-up about net neutrality, as in competitive markets everything tends to sort itself out. In the UK I have a choice of mobile broadband providers - some open to all content/apps, some more restrictive, with an array of price plans, coverage and customer service. I choose which I like.
The US tends to be more complex, because of the relative lack of true nationwide competition, and the barriers to consumers having (or trialling) multiple service providers, because of a lack of contract-free prepaid offers. It's much more difficult to exercise choice if you're locked into a 2-year monthly contract with onerous penalty exit clauses.
One solution may be for the FCC to impose a trial region (state?) for true open-access, let it run for 24 months and scrutinise the impact on user behaviour, network management, congestion and so forth. However, this would need to be imposed *after* network build-out, to give a true apples-for-apples comparison with differentiated-service territories. Even then, it would be necessary to monitor ongoing opex and operations to ensure a "fair fight".
The observation I'd make is that there appears to be clear consumer appetite for broadband pipes, even if they sometimes get congested. Another option could be that some form of naked and unmanaged pipe should be made available on a mandatory basis - perhaps as a % of total capacity in the air & backhaul, so customers could opt for best-efforts if they wanted, versus a fully-managed virtual partition of the rest of the network.
I generally find it too hard to get worked-up about net neutrality, as in competitive markets everything tends to sort itself out. In the UK I have a choice of mobile broadband providers - some open to all content/apps, some more restrictive, with an array of price plans, coverage and customer service. I choose which I like.
The US tends to be more complex, because of the relative lack of true nationwide competition, and the barriers to consumers having (or trialling) multiple service providers, because of a lack of contract-free prepaid offers. It's much more difficult to exercise choice if you're locked into a 2-year monthly contract with onerous penalty exit clauses.
One solution may be for the FCC to impose a trial region (state?) for true open-access, let it run for 24 months and scrutinise the impact on user behaviour, network management, congestion and so forth. However, this would need to be imposed *after* network build-out, to give a true apples-for-apples comparison with differentiated-service territories. Even then, it would be necessary to monitor ongoing opex and operations to ensure a "fair fight".
The observation I'd make is that there appears to be clear consumer appetite for broadband pipes, even if they sometimes get congested. Another option could be that some form of naked and unmanaged pipe should be made available on a mandatory basis - perhaps as a % of total capacity in the air & backhaul, so customers could opt for best-efforts if they wanted, versus a fully-managed virtual partition of the rest of the network.
RCS Phase 2 - some progress
OCT 11 2010 NEW REPORT AND BLOG POST ON RCS HERE
I'm utterly buried with work & travel this week, so can't dig into this very deeply, but the GSMA has just announced its next iteration of RCS.
A key feature seems to be support for PC clients, which makes a huge amount of sense - and indeed, is just about the only area where there's historically been traction for these kind of enhanced operator services, through the efforts of software vendors like Movial.
That said, at first sight the press release seems to focus on multi-device sharing and interoperability, rather than integration into web-based services. My view is that RCS would probably get most rapid traction if it came as a slick Facebook plug-in, or interoperable with other social networking platforms.
The problem will likely be that most of the mobile operators will try to "own" the address book and hook it into subscription databases, rather than leverage a more open (or at least access-independent) contact list located online.
Should also be interesting to see what happens if I put MNO#1's RCS client onto a PC or other device connected via #2's mobile broadband......
I'll try & get a full briefing from GSMA or one of the partners when I can, although it's not likely to be until next week at the earliest.
Incidentally, the membership list for RCS supporters still seems to be missing a few important potential members, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, HTC, Facebook, Skype , Palm, Vodafone, H3G, Sprint, Cisco and so on.
Although after the treatment of Google Voice by the Apple AppStore guys & the ensuing FCC brouhaha, the RCS folk must be smirking about their chances of getting a client onto iPhones without direct support from Mr Jobs....
I'm utterly buried with work & travel this week, so can't dig into this very deeply, but the GSMA has just announced its next iteration of RCS.
A key feature seems to be support for PC clients, which makes a huge amount of sense - and indeed, is just about the only area where there's historically been traction for these kind of enhanced operator services, through the efforts of software vendors like Movial.
That said, at first sight the press release seems to focus on multi-device sharing and interoperability, rather than integration into web-based services. My view is that RCS would probably get most rapid traction if it came as a slick Facebook plug-in, or interoperable with other social networking platforms.
The problem will likely be that most of the mobile operators will try to "own" the address book and hook it into subscription databases, rather than leverage a more open (or at least access-independent) contact list located online.
Should also be interesting to see what happens if I put MNO#1's RCS client onto a PC or other device connected via #2's mobile broadband......
I'll try & get a full briefing from GSMA or one of the partners when I can, although it's not likely to be until next week at the earliest.
Incidentally, the membership list for RCS supporters still seems to be missing a few important potential members, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, HTC, Facebook, Skype , Palm, Vodafone, H3G, Sprint, Cisco and so on.
Although after the treatment of Google Voice by the Apple AppStore guys & the ensuing FCC brouhaha, the RCS folk must be smirking about their chances of getting a client onto iPhones without direct support from Mr Jobs....
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Quick musing on Cloud Computing
I just heard the phrase "Everything as a Service" during a presentation on Cloud, SaaS and other forms of managed service offering.
I have no problems with hosted software in general - I use enough myself for email, blogging and so forth. I also outsource an awful lot of other things - financials to my accountants and so on.
But I can't get around the feeling that there's a fundamental lack of awareness among people in the tech industry, that every individual and company has specific criteria for owning vs. renting anything.
There are some things for which people prefer opex (renting, 3rd-party services, leasing etc) and some for which they prefer capex (buying stuff outright). This applies to all aspects of expenditure, from hardware to software, from physical infrastructure to one's personal possessions.
Some people rent houses, some own them. Preferences vary by individual and by cultural background. Some companies prefer to own and control their IT and communications elements, others prefer the predictability of outsourcing or "cloud services".
I've yet to see any good analysis of exactly what determines the optimum mix of rent vs. buy, or how this changes over time. Clearly there are hard aspects to this, like cost of capital, or the tax treatment of depreciation or capital investments. There are practical concerns, like uptime or connectivity limitations. Yet there are also softer issues, like trust or fear of lock-in. For consumers, there's even an emotional element - how many people would choose to use a "jewellery service" to rent their wedding rings?
This isn't an area where I have very strong opinions - but I do think it's important to have a good set of filters and questions to sift through some of the rhetoric and hype.
I have no problems with hosted software in general - I use enough myself for email, blogging and so forth. I also outsource an awful lot of other things - financials to my accountants and so on.
But I can't get around the feeling that there's a fundamental lack of awareness among people in the tech industry, that every individual and company has specific criteria for owning vs. renting anything.
There are some things for which people prefer opex (renting, 3rd-party services, leasing etc) and some for which they prefer capex (buying stuff outright). This applies to all aspects of expenditure, from hardware to software, from physical infrastructure to one's personal possessions.
Some people rent houses, some own them. Preferences vary by individual and by cultural background. Some companies prefer to own and control their IT and communications elements, others prefer the predictability of outsourcing or "cloud services".
I've yet to see any good analysis of exactly what determines the optimum mix of rent vs. buy, or how this changes over time. Clearly there are hard aspects to this, like cost of capital, or the tax treatment of depreciation or capital investments. There are practical concerns, like uptime or connectivity limitations. Yet there are also softer issues, like trust or fear of lock-in. For consumers, there's even an emotional element - how many people would choose to use a "jewellery service" to rent their wedding rings?
This isn't an area where I have very strong opinions - but I do think it's important to have a good set of filters and questions to sift through some of the rhetoric and hype.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Outdoor applications for mobile - underestimated?
I've been following the topic of indoor coverage for mobile for almost 10 years now. The general perceived wisdom is that most voice and data traffic on cellular devices involves communication from inside buildings (50%, 60%, 70% - pick your own number). This assumption has been the primary driver behind the growth of femtocells, and various solutions looking at WiFi offload.
I regularly see forecasts predicting that this proportion is going to grow, and certainly with the current usage patterns of 3G laptops and smartphones, that seems reasonable, at first sight.
But.... how solid is that assumption? I'm starting to wonder if the ground might be less certain than everyone thinks. Because fundamentally, the indoor/outdoor split comes down to use cases and applications. The problem is that most radio-network folk in the industry are often a long way from those thinking about next-generation applications, devices and services, and what impacts these might have on the network and traffic patterns.
I can see a few early signs of a new generation of "outdoor-centric" applications, that might reverse the trend. Most obvious is mapping/navigation in various guises. But there's also streaming audio/radio - it will be interesting to see how Spotify grows on mobile for example. Then there's the whole area of "augmented reality", cloud computing and quite a few other examples I can think of. Several of these might be more symmetric (or upstream-heavy) than current applications, too.
On balance, I suspect that any shifts will happen slowly, but it's quite possible that we'll suddenly all be surprised by a new app coming out of nowhere and getting rampant adoption, thanks to appstores and widgets and other mechanisms that make viral uptake simpler. I can think of a few hypothetical examples that might emerge, although I'm not going to mention them here. (Let me know if you're a VC, I might do one of them myself....).
It's not just applications either - factors around device and OS architecture will also make a difference. If iPhones supported background applications, cellular networks might be suffering even more pain than they are currently, for example.
If you're working in the radio part of the industry - on either the vendor or operator side - and you'd like to explore the risks of "outdoor applications" more thoroughly, please get in touch with me.
I regularly see forecasts predicting that this proportion is going to grow, and certainly with the current usage patterns of 3G laptops and smartphones, that seems reasonable, at first sight.
But.... how solid is that assumption? I'm starting to wonder if the ground might be less certain than everyone thinks. Because fundamentally, the indoor/outdoor split comes down to use cases and applications. The problem is that most radio-network folk in the industry are often a long way from those thinking about next-generation applications, devices and services, and what impacts these might have on the network and traffic patterns.
I can see a few early signs of a new generation of "outdoor-centric" applications, that might reverse the trend. Most obvious is mapping/navigation in various guises. But there's also streaming audio/radio - it will be interesting to see how Spotify grows on mobile for example. Then there's the whole area of "augmented reality", cloud computing and quite a few other examples I can think of. Several of these might be more symmetric (or upstream-heavy) than current applications, too.
On balance, I suspect that any shifts will happen slowly, but it's quite possible that we'll suddenly all be surprised by a new app coming out of nowhere and getting rampant adoption, thanks to appstores and widgets and other mechanisms that make viral uptake simpler. I can think of a few hypothetical examples that might emerge, although I'm not going to mention them here. (Let me know if you're a VC, I might do one of them myself....).
It's not just applications either - factors around device and OS architecture will also make a difference. If iPhones supported background applications, cellular networks might be suffering even more pain than they are currently, for example.
If you're working in the radio part of the industry - on either the vendor or operator side - and you'd like to explore the risks of "outdoor applications" more thoroughly, please get in touch with me.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Content: just a special sort of application
About 10 years ago, it became fashionable to say that "voice is just another sort of data on an IP network". VoIP, it was suggested, just turned telephony into mere bits, just like any others.
I want to extend and explore that description of subset/superset: I assert that "content is just a special sort of application on an IP network". It's just big chunks of software.
In both cases, there is a strong empirical evidence of truth, but the one word which is out of place in each sentence is "just", at least in the short term. Nevertheless, both assertions provide a view of how things change over much longer (10+ year) periods.
First, a quick re-cap of voice and VoIP. Certainly, at a network transport level, it is entirely feasible to get good voice quality with VoIP - most international calls use packet connections in the backbone. Millions use Skype and other VoIP services on the public Internet, while corporate IP-PBXs are mainstream. So at one, level, voice certainly can be viewed as just another form of IP traffic.
However, the word "just" is still not fully appropriate yet. Voice telephony has some very specific qualities that still mean it needs to be treated differently, and retains a quite high "value per bit". Aside from the obvious issues around latency and the need for realtime connectivity, it has some other , which have kept it at 60%+ of telecoms revenues. Firstly, numbering introduces barriers to entry and a need for interoperability. Secondly, regulatory issues remain wide and critical. Lastly, it has some very specific user-interface and experience issues - call setup times, the need for useable diallers and phonebooks, the natural human focus on time metrics (minutes) rather than IP packet volume, and so forth. There's also a hundred years of legacy experience, which conveys a lot of weight, authority - and sometimes arrogance.
The result is that voice telephony is indeed "special" - but over time, its importance and specialness are starting to wane. Basic voice revenues are falling - even in mobile, in some cases. The "phone call" is starting to blend into more complex voice interactions, new "voice 2.0" models are emerging in which context adds as much value as the media stream, and so forth. Networks are still designed with voice as a "special case", rather than just another packet stream. Voice is becoming blended with other applications and services, but arguably it is still over-represented and over-regulated compared with its long-term social and economic value.
Now, content. Compared with voice, the term "content" has always been a bit woolly in terms of definition; I've heard people refer to spreadsheets or even voice conversations as "content". But for most people in the industry, it tends to refer to visual programming media, chunks of written material, music, some images and so forth. The Wikipedia definition is:
"information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances. The word is used to identify and quantify various divergent formats and genres of information as manageable value-adding components of media"
Like telephony, content tends to bring with it some specifics that do make it "special" - regulation, legal and commercial rules (censorship, copyright, reproduction rights & so forth). Video and audio content often requires special treatment because of their-sensitivity and huge volumes of data. And of course, there are decades (video) or even hundreds of years (text) of user experience. There is also a huge sense of entitlement by the media industry, that makes its advocates believe in their own uniqueness.
Yet for all its power and "specialness", it is starting to be put in its place. According to PWC/Cisco the entire market for digital media is worth about $300bn, including digital broadcast [non-Internet] TV. The software industry is also worth in excess of $300bn - and is shifting to either "cloud" applications or over-the-network downloaded apps like the iPhone. The video game industry alone is worth $30bn or more. Even the software piracy industry costs $50bn a year.
There's clearly many different ways to slice the statistics, depending on definitions or what's included/excluded - Internet vs. non-Internet, inclusion of things like SMS or web advertising, is user-generated material "content" in its conventional sense, and so on.
But to my eye, there's a close parallel here. Content is getting subsumed into applications like social networks or music-based communities. Amazon's valuation is about much more than the "content" stored in its warehouses or servers - it's the platform itself which is the core of the business. Facebook's value is about it's user base and APIs, not third-party chunks of media. Even for Apple, the AppStore is much sexier than iTunes, capturing a far greater share of industry attention.
And just like VoIP, digital content is also feeling the pinch of arbitrage on pricing. I don't just mean piracy - look instead to the failing of the print newspaper industry, as value moves to other application-based sources. (Are blogs "content"? I don't think of this post as an application, but I'd wince if someone called it content, in the same way I wince if they call me a blogger). And in future, what might happen to the value of news or live sports/music, if I stream and back-up all I see and hear to a server in the cloud via "life-streaming" or a similar application? Do content rights apply to my optic nerve?
Just as I think that the telecom industry is facing a dead-end in the notion of communication as simply sessions (see my recent posts on IMS), I think the media industry is similarly constrained in thinking of content as "chunks" of video or audio material. I also think that designing next-generation networks that are content-centric is as wrong as creating them session-centric.
Let's be honest. Ultimately, if voice is just data, rthen content is just software. We're not there yet, but they're both inevitable in the long term. Lobbyists and incumbents in both cases will plead for special treatment - justifiably, sometimes. Both telephony and content come with huge expectations on the part of users and regulators, and need to be protected in various ways.
But let's not lose sight of the end-game either - or entrench decades-old prejudices or business models in the underlying technology architectures. The content tail should not be allowed to wag the future application-networking dog.
I want to extend and explore that description of subset/superset: I assert that "content is just a special sort of application on an IP network". It's just big chunks of software.
In both cases, there is a strong empirical evidence of truth, but the one word which is out of place in each sentence is "just", at least in the short term. Nevertheless, both assertions provide a view of how things change over much longer (10+ year) periods.
First, a quick re-cap of voice and VoIP. Certainly, at a network transport level, it is entirely feasible to get good voice quality with VoIP - most international calls use packet connections in the backbone. Millions use Skype and other VoIP services on the public Internet, while corporate IP-PBXs are mainstream. So at one, level, voice certainly can be viewed as just another form of IP traffic.
However, the word "just" is still not fully appropriate yet. Voice telephony has some very specific qualities that still mean it needs to be treated differently, and retains a quite high "value per bit". Aside from the obvious issues around latency and the need for realtime connectivity, it has some other , which have kept it at 60%+ of telecoms revenues. Firstly, numbering introduces barriers to entry and a need for interoperability. Secondly, regulatory issues remain wide and critical. Lastly, it has some very specific user-interface and experience issues - call setup times, the need for useable diallers and phonebooks, the natural human focus on time metrics (minutes) rather than IP packet volume, and so forth. There's also a hundred years of legacy experience, which conveys a lot of weight, authority - and sometimes arrogance.
The result is that voice telephony is indeed "special" - but over time, its importance and specialness are starting to wane. Basic voice revenues are falling - even in mobile, in some cases. The "phone call" is starting to blend into more complex voice interactions, new "voice 2.0" models are emerging in which context adds as much value as the media stream, and so forth. Networks are still designed with voice as a "special case", rather than just another packet stream. Voice is becoming blended with other applications and services, but arguably it is still over-represented and over-regulated compared with its long-term social and economic value.
Now, content. Compared with voice, the term "content" has always been a bit woolly in terms of definition; I've heard people refer to spreadsheets or even voice conversations as "content". But for most people in the industry, it tends to refer to visual programming media, chunks of written material, music, some images and so forth. The Wikipedia definition is:
"information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances. The word is used to identify and quantify various divergent formats and genres of information as manageable value-adding components of media"
Like telephony, content tends to bring with it some specifics that do make it "special" - regulation, legal and commercial rules (censorship, copyright, reproduction rights & so forth). Video and audio content often requires special treatment because of their-sensitivity and huge volumes of data. And of course, there are decades (video) or even hundreds of years (text) of user experience. There is also a huge sense of entitlement by the media industry, that makes its advocates believe in their own uniqueness.
Yet for all its power and "specialness", it is starting to be put in its place. According to PWC/Cisco the entire market for digital media is worth about $300bn, including digital broadcast [non-Internet] TV. The software industry is also worth in excess of $300bn - and is shifting to either "cloud" applications or over-the-network downloaded apps like the iPhone. The video game industry alone is worth $30bn or more. Even the software piracy industry costs $50bn a year.
There's clearly many different ways to slice the statistics, depending on definitions or what's included/excluded - Internet vs. non-Internet, inclusion of things like SMS or web advertising, is user-generated material "content" in its conventional sense, and so on.
But to my eye, there's a close parallel here. Content is getting subsumed into applications like social networks or music-based communities. Amazon's valuation is about much more than the "content" stored in its warehouses or servers - it's the platform itself which is the core of the business. Facebook's value is about it's user base and APIs, not third-party chunks of media. Even for Apple, the AppStore is much sexier than iTunes, capturing a far greater share of industry attention.
And just like VoIP, digital content is also feeling the pinch of arbitrage on pricing. I don't just mean piracy - look instead to the failing of the print newspaper industry, as value moves to other application-based sources. (Are blogs "content"? I don't think of this post as an application, but I'd wince if someone called it content, in the same way I wince if they call me a blogger). And in future, what might happen to the value of news or live sports/music, if I stream and back-up all I see and hear to a server in the cloud via "life-streaming" or a similar application? Do content rights apply to my optic nerve?
Just as I think that the telecom industry is facing a dead-end in the notion of communication as simply sessions (see my recent posts on IMS), I think the media industry is similarly constrained in thinking of content as "chunks" of video or audio material. I also think that designing next-generation networks that are content-centric is as wrong as creating them session-centric.
Let's be honest. Ultimately, if voice is just data, rthen content is just software. We're not there yet, but they're both inevitable in the long term. Lobbyists and incumbents in both cases will plead for special treatment - justifiably, sometimes. Both telephony and content come with huge expectations on the part of users and regulators, and need to be protected in various ways.
But let's not lose sight of the end-game either - or entrench decades-old prejudices or business models in the underlying technology architectures. The content tail should not be allowed to wag the future application-networking dog.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Various quick things
I'm hugely busy at the moment, but a couple of quick things:
Skype's reported acquisition is very interesting, and it will be interesting to see what evolved. I'd expect to see:
- either collaboration or competition with Google's Wave. I'm increasingly thinking that the 100-year notion of a phone call or session as the basic unit of telecoms "conversation" between people is nearing end-of-life (well, on 20 year view, anyway)
- perhaps a proprietary carrier-grade service for VoIP on LTE or HSPA+, avoiding the IMS / CSFB etc conundrum
- I've got to believe that $100bn of profitable SMS revenue worldwide is a very tempting target, especially given the success of local alternatives like MXit in South Africa
- maybe the MVNO / SIM approach being targetted by Truphone and others
I see that 3UK is launching Novatel's MiFi. EDIT: Apparently it's actually a Huawei device (see comments). I'd thought it was the Novatel, but in a custom plastic shell; I stand corrected.
The UK's leading political blogger Guido Fawkes agrees with me about the faddish nature of Twitter.
I'm also skeptical about Android - I've said before that it's massively over-hyped and according to Andy, it seems like AT&T agrees with me. He's also had another great post up recently about service vs. product.
Symbian's David Wood has a blog post evoking something I wrote about a year ago - femtocell-optimised handsets.
Lots of noise about netbooks supplied via mobile operators, perhaps subsidised - but I'm waiting to see the outcome, as I reckon the market opportunity has been overestimated. I'm hearing anecdotal evidence that customers recognise it's cheaper to get a separate retail netbook and data contract rather than a bundle.
Skype's reported acquisition is very interesting, and it will be interesting to see what evolved. I'd expect to see:
- either collaboration or competition with Google's Wave. I'm increasingly thinking that the 100-year notion of a phone call or session as the basic unit of telecoms "conversation" between people is nearing end-of-life (well, on 20 year view, anyway)
- perhaps a proprietary carrier-grade service for VoIP on LTE or HSPA+, avoiding the IMS / CSFB etc conundrum
- I've got to believe that $100bn of profitable SMS revenue worldwide is a very tempting target, especially given the success of local alternatives like MXit in South Africa
- maybe the MVNO / SIM approach being targetted by Truphone and others
I see that 3UK is launching Novatel's MiFi. EDIT: Apparently it's actually a Huawei device (see comments). I'd thought it was the Novatel, but in a custom plastic shell; I stand corrected.
The UK's leading political blogger Guido Fawkes agrees with me about the faddish nature of Twitter.
I'm also skeptical about Android - I've said before that it's massively over-hyped and according to Andy, it seems like AT&T agrees with me. He's also had another great post up recently about service vs. product.
Symbian's David Wood has a blog post evoking something I wrote about a year ago - femtocell-optimised handsets.
Lots of noise about netbooks supplied via mobile operators, perhaps subsidised - but I'm waiting to see the outcome, as I reckon the market opportunity has been overestimated. I'm hearing anecdotal evidence that customers recognise it's cheaper to get a separate retail netbook and data contract rather than a bundle.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Does telecoms NEED a unified control plane?
My IMS=Dead Parrot post the other week drew a significant amount of attention and argument, as I anticipated. It was followed by more comments in another post.
One of the consistent arguments that was advanced was that IMS is the only standardised mechanism for the control plane for telco-grade IP networks.
From my stance, a central part of my argument is that I don't see IMS as a suitable platform for future revenue-generating, customer-demanded services and applications, at a device level or through integration with Web/consumer electronics/enterprise/IT. I also think it is inflexible in terms of supported business models, for example around wholesale or SIM-free adhoc services.
In a nutshell therefore - is it better to have:
a) A cast-iron control layer for services that nobody wants, or...
b) A less-optimal control layer that permits more service innovation?
From a million-foot view, are we moving to a situation where the notion of a single, all-encompassing telecom control plane is a ridiculous notion, similar to the idea of a government controlling all its citizens through a single database and monitoring system?
(See what I just did there, political wonks reading this?)
Are the costs and inflexibilities and "injustices" (in technology, anything which is user-unfriendly) worth it, just to achieve pure elegance of the ultimate machine?
The more I think about this, the more the whole notion of a single IMS control plane for IP looks exactly like a totalitarian state, where everything is done "for your own good". Policy control is the equivalent of the nannying Health and Safety Executive, the HSS and SIM is the equivalent of the National ID Database and ID cards, DPI is the equivalent of pervasive CCTV cameras. And the whole thing is hugely expensive for taxpayers (end users) and doesn't actually work because there are always flaws in the system.
Personally, I much prefer to live in a libertarian society, where there are specific checks and balances at particular points. I'm happy with passport controls at borders, or fines for people jumping red lights. I don't mind tax evaders being pursued. I'm in favour of jury trials and punishing prison sentences. But I don't want to live inside The Matrix.
The Internet works well enough without a centralised control plane. Various point solutions like CDNs or peering points act as a form of decentralised, distributed and collaborative control, which works pretty well, most of the time. Other large-scale systems work well without central control as well - in fact, the whole basis of capitalist economies revolves around the concept.
Apologies for the high-level "philosophical" nature of this post. But after the last week or two of discussions, I am increasingly of the opinion that IMS has a flawed central assumption: that an all-encompassing "control plane" is necessary, feasible or even desirable.
One of the consistent arguments that was advanced was that IMS is the only standardised mechanism for the control plane for telco-grade IP networks.
From my stance, a central part of my argument is that I don't see IMS as a suitable platform for future revenue-generating, customer-demanded services and applications, at a device level or through integration with Web/consumer electronics/enterprise/IT. I also think it is inflexible in terms of supported business models, for example around wholesale or SIM-free adhoc services.
In a nutshell therefore - is it better to have:
a) A cast-iron control layer for services that nobody wants, or...
b) A less-optimal control layer that permits more service innovation?
From a million-foot view, are we moving to a situation where the notion of a single, all-encompassing telecom control plane is a ridiculous notion, similar to the idea of a government controlling all its citizens through a single database and monitoring system?
(See what I just did there, political wonks reading this?)
Are the costs and inflexibilities and "injustices" (in technology, anything which is user-unfriendly) worth it, just to achieve pure elegance of the ultimate machine?
The more I think about this, the more the whole notion of a single IMS control plane for IP looks exactly like a totalitarian state, where everything is done "for your own good". Policy control is the equivalent of the nannying Health and Safety Executive, the HSS and SIM is the equivalent of the National ID Database and ID cards, DPI is the equivalent of pervasive CCTV cameras. And the whole thing is hugely expensive for taxpayers (end users) and doesn't actually work because there are always flaws in the system.
Personally, I much prefer to live in a libertarian society, where there are specific checks and balances at particular points. I'm happy with passport controls at borders, or fines for people jumping red lights. I don't mind tax evaders being pursued. I'm in favour of jury trials and punishing prison sentences. But I don't want to live inside The Matrix.
The Internet works well enough without a centralised control plane. Various point solutions like CDNs or peering points act as a form of decentralised, distributed and collaborative control, which works pretty well, most of the time. Other large-scale systems work well without central control as well - in fact, the whole basis of capitalist economies revolves around the concept.
Apologies for the high-level "philosophical" nature of this post. But after the last week or two of discussions, I am increasingly of the opinion that IMS has a flawed central assumption: that an all-encompassing "control plane" is necessary, feasible or even desirable.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Femto industry needs to get real about WiFi
I've had two conversations this week with senior, technically- and commercially-savvy representatives of the cellular industry, both from very well-known organisations at the core of the mobile world.
Both have expressed severe reservations about the femtocell model, at both technical and commercial levels. They mentioned various issues I've discussed before, including the need to support multiple operators within a single household, and the prevalence of WiFi in almost all devices creating meaningful volumes of cellular data traffic.
Yet I still see various protagonists in the femtocell industry suggesting that femtos could potentially replace WiFi as an access mechanism in homes or businesses. (I'm going to leave public hotspots for a moment, as their owners have typically made a multi-year mess of pricing and ease-of-use, which is another bugbear of mine).
In my view, the positioning of femtos as WiFi-replacements diminishes the credibility of the companies involved - not just in the eyes of those who actually understand WiFi, but also in the eyes of those skeptics in the hardcore macrocellular community who believe that "outside-in always wins".
Yes, there are marginal cases where the precise configuration of a connection manager client on a PC or iPhone might divert a few MB of traffic one way or the other. But the lack of awareness of how ethernet (yes, remember WiFi = WLAN = Wireless Ethernet) works and gets deployed and managed is sometimes scary. I've sat through hour-long panel debates on supposed opportunities for enterprise femtos without a single mention of terms like "firewall", "power over ethernet" or a recognition that companies like to manage *their* LAN without bits of it being managed by a third party that typically *outsources its own servers*.
The same arguments apply in the home. Ethernet and WiFi are now pervasive, and I see no reason that they're likely to disappear.
My view is that the femto industry needs to tackle this issue head on, and learn how to play *nicely* with WiFi, rather than pretend it's either irrelevant or a competitor. Otherwise it is going to find it hard to convince even the skeptics in the mobile industry, let alone the IT world.
Both have expressed severe reservations about the femtocell model, at both technical and commercial levels. They mentioned various issues I've discussed before, including the need to support multiple operators within a single household, and the prevalence of WiFi in almost all devices creating meaningful volumes of cellular data traffic.
Yet I still see various protagonists in the femtocell industry suggesting that femtos could potentially replace WiFi as an access mechanism in homes or businesses. (I'm going to leave public hotspots for a moment, as their owners have typically made a multi-year mess of pricing and ease-of-use, which is another bugbear of mine).
In my view, the positioning of femtos as WiFi-replacements diminishes the credibility of the companies involved - not just in the eyes of those who actually understand WiFi, but also in the eyes of those skeptics in the hardcore macrocellular community who believe that "outside-in always wins".
Yes, there are marginal cases where the precise configuration of a connection manager client on a PC or iPhone might divert a few MB of traffic one way or the other. But the lack of awareness of how ethernet (yes, remember WiFi = WLAN = Wireless Ethernet) works and gets deployed and managed is sometimes scary. I've sat through hour-long panel debates on supposed opportunities for enterprise femtos without a single mention of terms like "firewall", "power over ethernet" or a recognition that companies like to manage *their* LAN without bits of it being managed by a third party that typically *outsources its own servers*.
The same arguments apply in the home. Ethernet and WiFi are now pervasive, and I see no reason that they're likely to disappear.
My view is that the femto industry needs to tackle this issue head on, and learn how to play *nicely* with WiFi, rather than pretend it's either irrelevant or a competitor. Otherwise it is going to find it hard to convince even the skeptics in the mobile industry, let alone the IT world.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Nokia using Windows, Microsoft using Java.....
I'm horribly busy so don't have time to write reams of analysis, but the juxtaposition of two announcements today really caught my eye:
1) Nokia announcing a Windows-based netbook (sorry, "booklet"). I wonder if they'll ship all of them with 3G modems embedded - how will that play with retailers like Carphone Warehouse that want to sell them on multiple operators' networks? Most of the MNOs don't (yet) sell data-only SIM-only packages, so will the stores have to stock multiple operator-specific "flavours" of the PC?
2) Microsoft announcing a Java app for featurephones, intended to hook into web/cloud services like Facebook and Twitter (and Windows Live mentioned quietly). Microsoft has long neglected the still-huge featurephone marketplace, so given that its smartphone business is only trickling along, this is perhaps an interesting way to get a foothold in emerging markets' mobility ahead of Google & Apple & BlackBerry.
1) Nokia announcing a Windows-based netbook (sorry, "booklet"). I wonder if they'll ship all of them with 3G modems embedded - how will that play with retailers like Carphone Warehouse that want to sell them on multiple operators' networks? Most of the MNOs don't (yet) sell data-only SIM-only packages, so will the stores have to stock multiple operator-specific "flavours" of the PC?
2) Microsoft announcing a Java app for featurephones, intended to hook into web/cloud services like Facebook and Twitter (and Windows Live mentioned quietly). Microsoft has long neglected the still-huge featurephone marketplace, so given that its smartphone business is only trickling along, this is perhaps an interesting way to get a foothold in emerging markets' mobility ahead of Google & Apple & BlackBerry.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
IMS post up on Carnival of the Mobilists
Many thanks to MobileStance, this week's curator of the Carnival roundup of mobile blog posts, for including my IMS/LTE post.
See the rest of the week's articles here
It's been interesting to get some back-channel feedback on the post. I've had a couple of emails along the lines of "Oh no, IMS is alive and well and coming to an operator near you", and quite a few more messages and phone calls amused and agreeing with my sentiments.
Interesting that relatively few people are willing to openly comment on the post itself, though.... it wonder if I will be made to suffer from having broken the "code of silence"....
See the rest of the week's articles here
It's been interesting to get some back-channel feedback on the post. I've had a couple of emails along the lines of "Oh no, IMS is alive and well and coming to an operator near you", and quite a few more messages and phone calls amused and agreeing with my sentiments.
Interesting that relatively few people are willing to openly comment on the post itself, though.... it wonder if I will be made to suffer from having broken the "code of silence"....
Friday, August 14, 2009
Facebook messaging - an SMS substitute?
I use Facebook quite a lot in my personal life.
I've started noticing how much it's impacted on my use of various other messaging services. Firstly, about 50-60% of incoming messages to my main Yahoo! personal email address are now Facebook notifications and alerts. Secondly, Facebook IM has now risen to about 50% of my total IM sessions, typically with a different set of people to those I contact via Yahoo! or Skype IM.
I'd also say that since the beginning of this year, I've added maybe 120 Facebook contacts, compared to maybe only 30 new friends' numbers in my phone. And there are definitely some scenarios where I'll prefer to send people Facebook messages rather than email - especially if it relates to an event, but also because the threading makes it more like an ongoingand personal conversation, perhaps because you're only a click away from someone's profile, so you always have a better idea of what's going on in their life, compared with normal email.
But yesterday saw a new example of Facebook messaging - I was due to meet a friend around lunchtime, and she posted a message on my Facebook wall saying "be there in about an hour". The thought process there is an interesting one - firstly, there's an assumption that I check (or am alerted) to Facebook regularly enough to view it as "almost realtime". Secondly, that it's not much clunkier than getting an SMS (wrong, in my view). But also, I realised that she *probably doesn't have my phone number stored in her handset*, or wanted to avoid the cost of sending an SMS. She has an iPhone with flatrate data & an easy-to-use Facebook client... so she sent a message instead.
More interestingly, it was actually a public "wall post" rather than a private message, so there's an interesting sub-communication to any other mutual friends that they should think about dropping by, if they're also in the area at the same time.
I'm struggling to think of an easy way that a mobile or fixed operator could do the same thing - a sort of casual open invitation to a large group of people, as part of what is otherwise a simple person-to-person message. It's probably the sort of thing that Twitter's good at, if I knew more than 2 people who actually use it. In this instance, nobody else turned up, but I got a message later in the day saying "oh, I wish I'd known earlier" - from someone who doesn't (yet) have always-on Facebook access.
Apart from anything else, it would be almost impossible to come up with a decent charging model for this - I reckon in this instance, 80% of the value was in the person-to-person arrangement of logistics, and 20% was in the offhanded mention for other people. Given that there were perhaps 20-40 people in my social group who might theoretically have been interested, could a telco ever price and bill this?
Despite the title of this post, I don't think Facebook will kill SMS any more than Twitter will. But I find the interplay and hidden value in different messaging platforms fascinating. It's also exactly the sort of unintended, casual use that IMS messaging almost certainly couldn't replicate.
I've started noticing how much it's impacted on my use of various other messaging services. Firstly, about 50-60% of incoming messages to my main Yahoo! personal email address are now Facebook notifications and alerts. Secondly, Facebook IM has now risen to about 50% of my total IM sessions, typically with a different set of people to those I contact via Yahoo! or Skype IM.
I'd also say that since the beginning of this year, I've added maybe 120 Facebook contacts, compared to maybe only 30 new friends' numbers in my phone. And there are definitely some scenarios where I'll prefer to send people Facebook messages rather than email - especially if it relates to an event, but also because the threading makes it more like an ongoingand personal conversation, perhaps because you're only a click away from someone's profile, so you always have a better idea of what's going on in their life, compared with normal email.
But yesterday saw a new example of Facebook messaging - I was due to meet a friend around lunchtime, and she posted a message on my Facebook wall saying "be there in about an hour". The thought process there is an interesting one - firstly, there's an assumption that I check (or am alerted) to Facebook regularly enough to view it as "almost realtime". Secondly, that it's not much clunkier than getting an SMS (wrong, in my view). But also, I realised that she *probably doesn't have my phone number stored in her handset*, or wanted to avoid the cost of sending an SMS. She has an iPhone with flatrate data & an easy-to-use Facebook client... so she sent a message instead.
More interestingly, it was actually a public "wall post" rather than a private message, so there's an interesting sub-communication to any other mutual friends that they should think about dropping by, if they're also in the area at the same time.
I'm struggling to think of an easy way that a mobile or fixed operator could do the same thing - a sort of casual open invitation to a large group of people, as part of what is otherwise a simple person-to-person message. It's probably the sort of thing that Twitter's good at, if I knew more than 2 people who actually use it. In this instance, nobody else turned up, but I got a message later in the day saying "oh, I wish I'd known earlier" - from someone who doesn't (yet) have always-on Facebook access.
Apart from anything else, it would be almost impossible to come up with a decent charging model for this - I reckon in this instance, 80% of the value was in the person-to-person arrangement of logistics, and 20% was in the offhanded mention for other people. Given that there were perhaps 20-40 people in my social group who might theoretically have been interested, could a telco ever price and bill this?
Despite the title of this post, I don't think Facebook will kill SMS any more than Twitter will. But I find the interplay and hidden value in different messaging platforms fascinating. It's also exactly the sort of unintended, casual use that IMS messaging almost certainly couldn't replicate.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Mobile IMS and LTE networks: Dead Parrot
I listened in on a call yesterday that discussed the ongoing issue of voice and SMS on LTE networks. I've written before about 3GPP and certain vendors trying to use LTE as a lever to strong-arm operators into adopting IMS.
A year ago, it seemed like IMS had finally been put out to pasture by the mobile industry. Some innovation was occurring with partnerships like 3/Skype and E-Mobile/Jajah and Mobilelom/fring. But I underestimated the perpetual and desperate attempts by vendors, the 3GPP and the GSMA (through the ill-thought-out RCS initiative) to position it as the "default" choice for services on LTE networks. Although some vendor representatives grudgingly admit that LTE doesn't *mandate* IMS, it's still being heavily skewed towards it.
I've long held that IMS voice is precisely the wrong choice for mobile networks, for assorted reasons relating to handsets, web integration, emphasis on "multimedia", dependency on SIM cards and the overall cost/complexity involved. I'd now go further and say that the whole notion that "sessions" are a good way to describe human-to-human communication is fundamentally wrong - look at social networks as an example of this.
But despite the efforts of certain vendors to embrace the inevitability of integration with Internet applications, others still seen unable to grasp the realities. They can't bring themselves to mention words like "Skype" or "Facebook", "iPhone" or (whisper it) "Google Voice and Google Wave". They can't even bring themselves to use words like "handset" or "smartphone", still referring to "terminals" as if they were dumb green-screen boxes from the 1980s.
I'm simply staggered that some people still brazenly claim that IMS is "inevitable" in mobile, using phrases like "platform of choice". It just defies reality, especially from an end-user perspective.
Initially, I was going to make an ostrich analogy. But then another bird seemed more appropriate....
(With apologies to John Cleese and Michael Palin)
Scene: The Mobile Infrastructure shop. An operator enters a vendor's shop.
Operator: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The vendor does not respond.)
O: 'Ello, Miss?
Vendor: What do you mean "miss"?
O: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
V: We're closin' for lunch.
O: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this IMS platform I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
V: Oh yes, the, uh, the 3GPP standard...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
O: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
V: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
O: Look, matey, I know a dead application platform when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
V: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable platform, the 3GPP standard, idn'it, ay? Beautiful combinational multimedia services!
O: The multimedia don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
V: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
O: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up!
(shouting at the cage)
'Ello, Mister IMS! I've got a lovely fresh LTE network for you if you show...(owner hits the cage)
V: There, he moved!
O: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!
V: I never!!
O: Yes, you did!
V: I never, never did anything...
O: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO IMS!!!!!
IMS!!!! Come on, wake up! IMS!!!
(Takes application platform of the cage and thumps its VoIP and messaging servers on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
O: Now that's what I call a dead platform
V: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
O: STUNNED?!?
V: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! IMS platforms stun easily, major.
O: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've 'ad just about enough of this. That platform is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged wait for a suitable LTE network.
V: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the Rich Communications Suite
O: PININ' for the RCS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he completely ignore the Internet the moment I got 'im home?
V: The IMS prefers ignorin' the Internet! Remarkable platform, id'nit, squire? Lovely multimedia combinational services!
O: Look, I took the liberty of examining that platform I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its LTE network in the first place was that it had been NAILED there by the standards committee.
(pause)
V: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that platform down, it would have nuzzled up to those OTTs, opened its APIs, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!
O: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this platform wouldn't "voom" if you put four million sessions through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!
V: No no! 'E's pining!
O: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This platform is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! This is a late platform!
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the LTE network 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the handset!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PLATFORM!!
V: Well, I'd better replace it then
O: If you want to get anything done in this industry, you've got to complain until you're blue in the mouth
V: Er, sorry guv, but we're right out of platforms
O: I see, I see, I get the picture
V: I've got a DPI and differential QoS box
O: Does it work?
V: Not really, no
O: It's scarcely a replacement then, is it?
V: I tell you what.. if you go to my brother's infrastructure shop in the cloud, he'll replace your platform for you.
O: Alright
A year ago, it seemed like IMS had finally been put out to pasture by the mobile industry. Some innovation was occurring with partnerships like 3/Skype and E-Mobile/Jajah and Mobilelom/fring. But I underestimated the perpetual and desperate attempts by vendors, the 3GPP and the GSMA (through the ill-thought-out RCS initiative) to position it as the "default" choice for services on LTE networks. Although some vendor representatives grudgingly admit that LTE doesn't *mandate* IMS, it's still being heavily skewed towards it.
I've long held that IMS voice is precisely the wrong choice for mobile networks, for assorted reasons relating to handsets, web integration, emphasis on "multimedia", dependency on SIM cards and the overall cost/complexity involved. I'd now go further and say that the whole notion that "sessions" are a good way to describe human-to-human communication is fundamentally wrong - look at social networks as an example of this.
But despite the efforts of certain vendors to embrace the inevitability of integration with Internet applications, others still seen unable to grasp the realities. They can't bring themselves to mention words like "Skype" or "Facebook", "iPhone" or (whisper it) "Google Voice and Google Wave". They can't even bring themselves to use words like "handset" or "smartphone", still referring to "terminals" as if they were dumb green-screen boxes from the 1980s.
I'm simply staggered that some people still brazenly claim that IMS is "inevitable" in mobile, using phrases like "platform of choice". It just defies reality, especially from an end-user perspective.
Initially, I was going to make an ostrich analogy. But then another bird seemed more appropriate....
(With apologies to John Cleese and Michael Palin)
Scene: The Mobile Infrastructure shop. An operator enters a vendor's shop.
Operator: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The vendor does not respond.)
O: 'Ello, Miss?
Vendor: What do you mean "miss"?
O: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
V: We're closin' for lunch.
O: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this IMS platform I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
V: Oh yes, the, uh, the 3GPP standard...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
O: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
V: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
O: Look, matey, I know a dead application platform when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
V: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable platform, the 3GPP standard, idn'it, ay? Beautiful combinational multimedia services!
O: The multimedia don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
V: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
O: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up!
(shouting at the cage)
'Ello, Mister IMS! I've got a lovely fresh LTE network for you if you show...(owner hits the cage)
V: There, he moved!
O: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!
V: I never!!
O: Yes, you did!
V: I never, never did anything...
O: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO IMS!!!!!
IMS!!!! Come on, wake up! IMS!!!
(Takes application platform of the cage and thumps its VoIP and messaging servers on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
O: Now that's what I call a dead platform
V: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
O: STUNNED?!?
V: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! IMS platforms stun easily, major.
O: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've 'ad just about enough of this. That platform is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged wait for a suitable LTE network.
V: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the Rich Communications Suite
O: PININ' for the RCS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he completely ignore the Internet the moment I got 'im home?
V: The IMS prefers ignorin' the Internet! Remarkable platform, id'nit, squire? Lovely multimedia combinational services!
O: Look, I took the liberty of examining that platform I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its LTE network in the first place was that it had been NAILED there by the standards committee.
(pause)
V: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that platform down, it would have nuzzled up to those OTTs, opened its APIs, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!
O: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this platform wouldn't "voom" if you put four million sessions through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!
V: No no! 'E's pining!
O: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This platform is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! This is a late platform!
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the LTE network 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the handset!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PLATFORM!!
V: Well, I'd better replace it then
O: If you want to get anything done in this industry, you've got to complain until you're blue in the mouth
V: Er, sorry guv, but we're right out of platforms
O: I see, I see, I get the picture
V: I've got a DPI and differential QoS box
O: Does it work?
V: Not really, no
O: It's scarcely a replacement then, is it?
V: I tell you what.. if you go to my brother's infrastructure shop in the cloud, he'll replace your platform for you.
O: Alright
Mobile payments = logo on a plastic card #2
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about O2 launching "mobile payments" by simply sticking their brand on a plastic card, with the focus on pre-paid credit cards, often used by teenagers or those without bank accounts in a given country.
It's a lot easier than messing about with NFC or various other clunky handset-based payment mechanisms, with convoluted value chains and numerous practical difficulties. Done well, it can probably share back-end software components and may over time evolve to something mre sophisticated.
But for now, convergence at a brand level in payment services is much easier than at a technical level.
Evidence of this is provided by UK mobile retailer Phones4U now doing much the same thing.
I'm sure others will follow suit (and perhaps have done already - these two are just prominent UK examples).
It's a lot easier than messing about with NFC or various other clunky handset-based payment mechanisms, with convoluted value chains and numerous practical difficulties. Done well, it can probably share back-end software components and may over time evolve to something mre sophisticated.
But for now, convergence at a brand level in payment services is much easier than at a technical level.
Evidence of this is provided by UK mobile retailer Phones4U now doing much the same thing.
I'm sure others will follow suit (and perhaps have done already - these two are just prominent UK examples).
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
OTT is dead... long live ACPs
Credit where credit is due - Alcatel Lucent seems to have "got it" around the inappropriateness and confrontational aspects of the term "over the top". This contrasts with many others in the telecoms industry who seem to use the term only because their PR people won't let them say "parasite" and spit on the floor during presentations.
It was actually at the pre-MWC analyst day in Barcelona, held by ALU this February, that I put some of their executives on the spot, asking if they felt "over the top" could be seen as a rather dismissive and derogatory term for a telco's hoped-for future customers. It was the first time I'd asked the question publicly to anyone. Given that ALU has probably been the most consistent big-vendor proponent of Telco 2.0 and 2-sided business models, there was a certain level of embarassment I could sense. I've since seen quite a few ALU presentations talking about "non-user revenues" and the possibility of operators partnering with "upstream" players like Internet content and services providers.
In that February blog post, I suggested the use of the term "IAP" for "Independent Application Provider", similar to ISVs in the software industry, as being a good example of a neutral, non-judgemental term that could help foster a more healthy and collaborative tone.
I've just seen a post in the FierceWireless daily newsletter, called "Customers will pay for a better mobile experience" and sponsored by ALU (I can't find a link yet, it's not yet up on the Next Gen Comms microsite) which refers to ACPs - third party Application and Content Providers. It talks about "partnership options" with network operators, "bandwidth availability", "subscriber data profiling" and "leveraging the incumbent IP assets of the new phones".
No mention at all of the OTT acronym, and a very telling comment that "network providers must find a way to monetise new apps to drive increased revenues.... without stirring the net neutrality [hornets'] nest.". Separately, I see that ALU has just bought a content delivery network, so I assume it will be helping to look for common ground and ways to generate win-win business models here.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else follows suit. If I was at NSN, Ericsson, Cisco or a few other vendors, I'd choose now to swallow my pride and establish "ACP" as an industry-wide standard term, and get on with helping "under the floor" operators grow up and partner with Skype, Google & co, rather than continue seeing them as implacable OTT enemies.
It was actually at the pre-MWC analyst day in Barcelona, held by ALU this February, that I put some of their executives on the spot, asking if they felt "over the top" could be seen as a rather dismissive and derogatory term for a telco's hoped-for future customers. It was the first time I'd asked the question publicly to anyone. Given that ALU has probably been the most consistent big-vendor proponent of Telco 2.0 and 2-sided business models, there was a certain level of embarassment I could sense. I've since seen quite a few ALU presentations talking about "non-user revenues" and the possibility of operators partnering with "upstream" players like Internet content and services providers.
In that February blog post, I suggested the use of the term "IAP" for "Independent Application Provider", similar to ISVs in the software industry, as being a good example of a neutral, non-judgemental term that could help foster a more healthy and collaborative tone.
I've just seen a post in the FierceWireless daily newsletter, called "Customers will pay for a better mobile experience" and sponsored by ALU (I can't find a link yet, it's not yet up on the Next Gen Comms microsite) which refers to ACPs - third party Application and Content Providers. It talks about "partnership options" with network operators, "bandwidth availability", "subscriber data profiling" and "leveraging the incumbent IP assets of the new phones".
No mention at all of the OTT acronym, and a very telling comment that "network providers must find a way to monetise new apps to drive increased revenues.... without stirring the net neutrality [hornets'] nest.". Separately, I see that ALU has just bought a content delivery network, so I assume it will be helping to look for common ground and ways to generate win-win business models here.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else follows suit. If I was at NSN, Ericsson, Cisco or a few other vendors, I'd choose now to swallow my pride and establish "ACP" as an industry-wide standard term, and get on with helping "under the floor" operators grow up and partner with Skype, Google & co, rather than continue seeing them as implacable OTT enemies.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Which web services should ISPs give maximum QoS to?
Just a quick cynical thought here.....
...I'm doing a bunch of research at the moment on whether there are particular Internet services that broadband operators (fixed or mobile) might choose to prioritise, or indeed deprioritise/throttle. I'm especially interested in whether there's any real-world business models where "upstream" service providers actually pay cold hard cash to the access network owner to get extra QoS / bandwidth guarantees.
It's just struck me that there's certainly one group of websites that it's worth ISPs prioritising if at all possible, even if they don't actually charge for it: speed-testing services.
I wonder if any of the DPI boxes have been programmed to recognise "speedtest.net" or similar, and make sure that there's as much optimisation as possible thrown at that particular HTTP session?
I'm reminded of some car companies which (rumour has it) only give reviewers the most "special" examples of their new vehicles to test....
...I'm doing a bunch of research at the moment on whether there are particular Internet services that broadband operators (fixed or mobile) might choose to prioritise, or indeed deprioritise/throttle. I'm especially interested in whether there's any real-world business models where "upstream" service providers actually pay cold hard cash to the access network owner to get extra QoS / bandwidth guarantees.
It's just struck me that there's certainly one group of websites that it's worth ISPs prioritising if at all possible, even if they don't actually charge for it: speed-testing services.
I wonder if any of the DPI boxes have been programmed to recognise "speedtest.net" or similar, and make sure that there's as much optimisation as possible thrown at that particular HTTP session?
I'm reminded of some car companies which (rumour has it) only give reviewers the most "special" examples of their new vehicles to test....
Friday, July 31, 2009
If I was running M&A at an operator looking at consumer web services businesses....
.... I'd be digging deep in my pockets and looking to buy Spotify, and keep it (largely) independent of access provision. Not that it's likely going to be up for sale for a while, but it's the sort of thing that could extend across multiple fixed and mobile network operators' handsets and PCs, and which seems to have a feasible advertising-based business model.
It could be the basis for social networks (both mobile & PC based), it could be blended with all sorts of carrier intelligence and assets/APIs about users, it could be offered in "enhanced" version when bundled with own-brand access or in "independent" mode across other competing networks. It could tie in with other initiatives in advertising or content.
It could compete with iTunes and Ovi, and integrate neatly with Facebook and other social networks.
It's exactly the sort of service that many providers would denigrate as being "over the top". And yet it's exactly the sort of thing they should be building "over the top" of their competitors.
But I suspect that even given the opportunity, most mobile operators would rather waste the money deploying a pointless IMS application environment, with its weak focus on legacy "session-based" services.
Oh well. I guess it'll probably end up with Google or Microsoft or Facebook instead.
It could be the basis for social networks (both mobile & PC based), it could be blended with all sorts of carrier intelligence and assets/APIs about users, it could be offered in "enhanced" version when bundled with own-brand access or in "independent" mode across other competing networks. It could tie in with other initiatives in advertising or content.
It could compete with iTunes and Ovi, and integrate neatly with Facebook and other social networks.
It's exactly the sort of service that many providers would denigrate as being "over the top". And yet it's exactly the sort of thing they should be building "over the top" of their competitors.
But I suspect that even given the opportunity, most mobile operators would rather waste the money deploying a pointless IMS application environment, with its weak focus on legacy "session-based" services.
Oh well. I guess it'll probably end up with Google or Microsoft or Facebook instead.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Enterprise mobile developers need to geta grip on API standardisation initiatives
I've just got off a call hosted by the Mobile Entertainment Forum, with the GSMA, Vodafone & O2, talking about mobile APIs that are being exposed to developers. A lot of good stuff about categorising & standardising APIs, and some really good insight into what developers and content companies seem to want to get access to.
HOWEVER, as can be surmised by the MEF trying to insert itself in the process, this is very heavily "entertainment-centric", and here we are mostly talking about "legacy content", ie purveyors of monolithic chunks of video, music etc.
My general view, though, is that in the big scheme of things, legacy content really isn't that important. Internet-resident applications and services, communications, enterprise functionality and various other macro-types of interaction are far more wide-reaching than sending chunks of "content" (ugh, horrible term anyway) from "owners" to "consumers".
But it's not obvious to me that these other groups are as effective at communicating their needs as the legacy media & content industry. In particular, enterprise-focused developers (both internal and 3rd-party ISVs) do not appear to be getting their collective acts together to say what *they* want from operator network-side APIs (or handset-side either, for that matter).
In my mind there are some very specific differences. In particular, there will be a requirement for a much more flexible split of control and security management - the presumption that the operator will always be in ultimate control is not valid. There might need to be APIs for "secure location" or "encrypted call" or "set up VPN connection". Reporting tools sufficient for compliance purposes may be required. Certain things like remote-wipe of stolen devices may need to be presented via a web interface to the internal head of security. APIs around charging may need to be modified to take account of corporate deals and tariffs, not just simple individual end-user retail price plans. There might need to be hooks into enterprise IT management platforms, and so on.
As far as I know, though, there is not a single "Mobile Enterprise Forum" working on an equivalent set of API definitions to the "Mobile Entertainment Forum". There should be.
HOWEVER, as can be surmised by the MEF trying to insert itself in the process, this is very heavily "entertainment-centric", and here we are mostly talking about "legacy content", ie purveyors of monolithic chunks of video, music etc.
My general view, though, is that in the big scheme of things, legacy content really isn't that important. Internet-resident applications and services, communications, enterprise functionality and various other macro-types of interaction are far more wide-reaching than sending chunks of "content" (ugh, horrible term anyway) from "owners" to "consumers".
But it's not obvious to me that these other groups are as effective at communicating their needs as the legacy media & content industry. In particular, enterprise-focused developers (both internal and 3rd-party ISVs) do not appear to be getting their collective acts together to say what *they* want from operator network-side APIs (or handset-side either, for that matter).
In my mind there are some very specific differences. In particular, there will be a requirement for a much more flexible split of control and security management - the presumption that the operator will always be in ultimate control is not valid. There might need to be APIs for "secure location" or "encrypted call" or "set up VPN connection". Reporting tools sufficient for compliance purposes may be required. Certain things like remote-wipe of stolen devices may need to be presented via a web interface to the internal head of security. APIs around charging may need to be modified to take account of corporate deals and tariffs, not just simple individual end-user retail price plans. There might need to be hooks into enterprise IT management platforms, and so on.
As far as I know, though, there is not a single "Mobile Enterprise Forum" working on an equivalent set of API definitions to the "Mobile Entertainment Forum". There should be.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Is the "subscription" mentality holding back the telecom industry?
Whenever I see discussions about new network technologies like LTE or WiMAX, the usual metrics and terms always crop up: subscribers, ARPU, "per month" and so on.
Yet I've had a nagging feeling for some time that it's this focus on subscribers and subscriptions that is holding back the telecom industry, especially in mobile. It's frozen into business models, standards, architectures, financial reporting and expectation, remuneration and bonus structures and countless other facets of the industry.
A couple of months back I pointed out how this mentality leads to standards that further entrench existing business models. I've also highlighted what I refer to as The Tyranny of the SIM Card on numerous occasions. It's no coincidence that the S in SIM stands for "subscriber".
Now obviously subscription models are certainly desirable, whether they are on a long-term contract basis or a prepaid model. But the notion of an ongoing, regular "monogamous" commercial relationship is not necessarily necessary or appropriate, especially for data connectivity.
The main benefit of "subscription" relationships from the end-user standpoint is a consistent phone number, and in fixed telecom a consistently-managed piece of wire. Having an easy payment mechanism is useful too.
But we already benefit from many other telecom services than those we "subscribe" to ourselves. They're embedded around us in daily life: credit-card swipe machines, hotel broadband services, WiFi hotspots, click-to-call websites and so forth.
As individuals, we don't "subscribe" to electricity, yet it's all around us, and we use it multiple times a day, with multiple individuals or companies or governments picking up their share of "our" usage fees. Imagine if you had to have roaming agreements, that meant you paid a fee for your implicit electricity consumption when you sat underneath another person's or company's light bulb.
I'm wondering if this is a model we should look at for telecoms as well. If I'm in a bar, trying to tell a friend how to find it, why am I doing it on *my* phone? Why not the bar's phone, as that instance of communications is part of the bar's implicit business model?
Certainly, there's a huge argument for embedding data connectivity into devices - why should I need a "subscription" to connect my PC to mobile broadband? Maybe Samsung or the retailer should bear the cost and administrative overhead?
I think this will happen gradually, and with it I also see the supposed link between "subscription" and identity evaporating even further. I think Google gets this with Google Voice - why should a network operator presume to "own my identity" simply because they provide me with a number?
Whenever I see "subscriber" numbers for LTE or 4G, stretching out to 2015, 2020 or beyond, I see someone who's blinded by the subscription philosophy. I think by 2020, it will be a concept seen as quaint or niche, rather than typical. Yes, I know it will make all the business model spreadsheets messy, but that's tough - I just don't think subscription-type relationships are the way people will consume most of their communications in future.
Yet I've had a nagging feeling for some time that it's this focus on subscribers and subscriptions that is holding back the telecom industry, especially in mobile. It's frozen into business models, standards, architectures, financial reporting and expectation, remuneration and bonus structures and countless other facets of the industry.
A couple of months back I pointed out how this mentality leads to standards that further entrench existing business models. I've also highlighted what I refer to as The Tyranny of the SIM Card on numerous occasions. It's no coincidence that the S in SIM stands for "subscriber".
Now obviously subscription models are certainly desirable, whether they are on a long-term contract basis or a prepaid model. But the notion of an ongoing, regular "monogamous" commercial relationship is not necessarily necessary or appropriate, especially for data connectivity.
The main benefit of "subscription" relationships from the end-user standpoint is a consistent phone number, and in fixed telecom a consistently-managed piece of wire. Having an easy payment mechanism is useful too.
But we already benefit from many other telecom services than those we "subscribe" to ourselves. They're embedded around us in daily life: credit-card swipe machines, hotel broadband services, WiFi hotspots, click-to-call websites and so forth.
As individuals, we don't "subscribe" to electricity, yet it's all around us, and we use it multiple times a day, with multiple individuals or companies or governments picking up their share of "our" usage fees. Imagine if you had to have roaming agreements, that meant you paid a fee for your implicit electricity consumption when you sat underneath another person's or company's light bulb.
I'm wondering if this is a model we should look at for telecoms as well. If I'm in a bar, trying to tell a friend how to find it, why am I doing it on *my* phone? Why not the bar's phone, as that instance of communications is part of the bar's implicit business model?
Certainly, there's a huge argument for embedding data connectivity into devices - why should I need a "subscription" to connect my PC to mobile broadband? Maybe Samsung or the retailer should bear the cost and administrative overhead?
I think this will happen gradually, and with it I also see the supposed link between "subscription" and identity evaporating even further. I think Google gets this with Google Voice - why should a network operator presume to "own my identity" simply because they provide me with a number?
Whenever I see "subscriber" numbers for LTE or 4G, stretching out to 2015, 2020 or beyond, I see someone who's blinded by the subscription philosophy. I think by 2020, it will be a concept seen as quaint or niche, rather than typical. Yes, I know it will make all the business model spreadsheets messy, but that's tough - I just don't think subscription-type relationships are the way people will consume most of their communications in future.
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