Bad timing O2, putting a banner advert in front of me for a 1-month contract SIM this morning. Hopefully, people will find this page via Google and realise that the way you can offer 1-month services like this is by failing to register peoples' new SIMs in the first place. O2, You've cost me business, time & reputation over the last few days - it's my turn to return the compliment.
My advice: STAY AWAY, potential new O2 customers. And CHURN, existing O2 customers. I know I will when I get a chance.
The sorry saga of my lost phone and unregistered new SIM has finally come to an end. After only about 60 hours of failure to register the new card on the network on the network - and countless calls to helplful Carphone Warehouse people, whose efforts were hamstrung by O2's "network error" message locking their systems, and O2's inaccessible and seemingly incompetent support staff.
Without going into detail, CPW's system doesn't allow them to enact changes on a customer account while their network provider (O2 here) has an unspecified "network error" in place. Their hands are tied, and the best CPW staff can do is "monitor the status" until O2 fixes the problem in their own sweet time. I tried to get contact details for the O2 network support department so I could give the people there a kick myself. But there's no inbound number, as they're too arrogant, scared or poorly-trained to talk to real end-customers. Or else they just spend the day in the pub instead.
Eventually I hear from CPW yesterday afternoon at 2pm to say things have been resolved, that my new SIM's registration is now going through the system & should be up and running soon. I say that I've retrieved the phone from Lost Property, and can they reactivate the IMEI on that as well. They agree, and tell me to throw away the old SIM card. Now roll forward another 10 hours. I'm STILL getting "SIM card not registered". I get a sinking feeling.
And then I have a brainwave. Maybe... just maybe.... and I'm right.
The old SIM card - the one I reported lost on Sunday night (directly to O2, not CPW as it was out-of-hours), but which I got back when I picked up the phone, is working. Luckily, I haven't yet thrown it away or destroyed it as was suggested to me. But not the new one, the number of which I have now given 4 times, is still dead as a dodo. As I hadn't had the phone for three days, I can't tell if the old SIM's been reactivated... or simply not barred in the first place. I suspect the latter, which is why an error might have occurred when I & CPW tried to register the new one in its place.
Frankly, this is appalling - and quite possibly negligent. If I have time, I'll put in a complaint to Ofcom about it. I'm certainly getting a refund for the useless new SIM. Luckily the phone was found by the honest & admirable people at Ariva bus company, not someone dodgier, as I'd have had a nightmare to prove I'd actually reported it lost in the first place in time.
Full marks to Dan, Jon & Charlotte at CPW, who've actually given me real personal customer service , though. I could sense their frustration at the inexplicable "network error" message. What they didn't realise was that it actually meant "sorry, you chose the wrong network in the first place, why don't you go to one of our competitors instead?"
Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Thought-leading wireless industry analysis
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Mobile network backhaul upgrades... are we there yet?
I realise I've "taken my eye off the ball" a bit over the last few months with regard to operators' strategies for upgrading their ageing, low-bandwidth backhaul networks. I'd sort of assumed it was in the progress of being fixed, and was only a short-term issue.
It's not as simple as that.
I went to an event last week called NetEvents. I've been going for years - it's an interesting 2 days of presentations and a dozen or so pre-organised vendor briefings, speed-dating style. (The bell rings and... "next!"). Mobile/wireless is only a small part, so I'm forced to catch up with bits of the networking industry I don't normally get exposure to. This time, there were a variety of metro ethernet vendors, as well as the metro ethernet forum, and some people doing clever things making multiple copper pairs work together where fibre isn't available. (step forward Hatteras, Actelis, Resolute)
I'll be honest, I find most in-the-background things to do with metropolitan fibre or copper networks deathly boring. But like many dull-but-worthy areas of the tech industry (I used to analyse enterprise storage for a while too...) it has a story to tell. I tackled the vendors about how fast they were seeing the much-ballyhooed wireless backhaul upgrades going.
The general consensus seemed to be that in the US and bits of Asia, things are going pretty well. Most North American cell sites have decent upstream capacity. But in Europe and some other countries, especially where there are older 3G networks (and limited fibre installed), progress remains very slow. Yes, this varies a lot between operators, and sure there's also a lot of microwave installation going on. Metro ethernet and all that cool stuff is still "in trials" rather than being rolled out aggressively in many wireless networks.
But the bottom line is that there's still an awful lot of base stations out there with 2 or 3 E1 connections (ie 4 or 6MBit/s connection to the network). Some of these are old and can't even support ethernet/fibre if the operator wanted, and will need outright replacement instead. These are bottlenecks as we move towards HSPA, LTE and so on. There's no point putting 100MBit/s on the radio side at a cell site if it's connected back to the core with a piece of wet string.
One of the problems is that the existing networks aren't at full capacity, and so convincing CFOs to stump up the case to replace them is tricky.
The paradox is that the "headroom" is now much lower. Imagine you have a 4Mb pipe from the cell site, and are selling normal WCDMA at 384kbit/s data speeds. You monitor usage... and at peak times maybe it's getting 3 users... then 4 users the next month.... 5 users two months later... you get time to plan an upgrade so that capacity is in place by the time 10x384 = about 4Mbit/s. Now move to today, launching 3.6Mbit/s-capable HSDPA devices. You monitor usage again, and this month you have zero users... then 1 user next month... and it's full.
Let's see how long it takes before the Metro ethernet community really reports some movement on actual deployments, representing a decent proportion of the installed base of cell locations.
It's not as simple as that.
I went to an event last week called NetEvents. I've been going for years - it's an interesting 2 days of presentations and a dozen or so pre-organised vendor briefings, speed-dating style. (The bell rings and... "next!"). Mobile/wireless is only a small part, so I'm forced to catch up with bits of the networking industry I don't normally get exposure to. This time, there were a variety of metro ethernet vendors, as well as the metro ethernet forum, and some people doing clever things making multiple copper pairs work together where fibre isn't available. (step forward Hatteras, Actelis, Resolute)
I'll be honest, I find most in-the-background things to do with metropolitan fibre or copper networks deathly boring. But like many dull-but-worthy areas of the tech industry (I used to analyse enterprise storage for a while too...) it has a story to tell. I tackled the vendors about how fast they were seeing the much-ballyhooed wireless backhaul upgrades going.
The general consensus seemed to be that in the US and bits of Asia, things are going pretty well. Most North American cell sites have decent upstream capacity. But in Europe and some other countries, especially where there are older 3G networks (and limited fibre installed), progress remains very slow. Yes, this varies a lot between operators, and sure there's also a lot of microwave installation going on. Metro ethernet and all that cool stuff is still "in trials" rather than being rolled out aggressively in many wireless networks.
But the bottom line is that there's still an awful lot of base stations out there with 2 or 3 E1 connections (ie 4 or 6MBit/s connection to the network). Some of these are old and can't even support ethernet/fibre if the operator wanted, and will need outright replacement instead. These are bottlenecks as we move towards HSPA, LTE and so on. There's no point putting 100MBit/s on the radio side at a cell site if it's connected back to the core with a piece of wet string.
One of the problems is that the existing networks aren't at full capacity, and so convincing CFOs to stump up the case to replace them is tricky.
The paradox is that the "headroom" is now much lower. Imagine you have a 4Mb pipe from the cell site, and are selling normal WCDMA at 384kbit/s data speeds. You monitor usage... and at peak times maybe it's getting 3 users... then 4 users the next month.... 5 users two months later... you get time to plan an upgrade so that capacity is in place by the time 10x384 = about 4Mbit/s. Now move to today, launching 3.6Mbit/s-capable HSDPA devices. You monitor usage again, and this month you have zero users... then 1 user next month... and it's full.
Let's see how long it takes before the Metro ethernet community really reports some movement on actual deployments, representing a decent proportion of the installed base of cell locations.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The year of enterprise FMC? But what problems lie ahead?
I'm increasingly impressed by the breadth and depth of commitment to corporate fixed-mobile convergence I've been seeing over the past few weeks. Post-3GSM I've spoken to or met with Avaya, Divitas and Siemens, and clearly Cisco and others have also been busy with their propositions.
Yes, there are differences in approach - handsets supported, WiFi-to-cellular roaming/handover, depth of software integration on the device, standalone vs integrated with a specific PBX. In addition, some offer various enhancements like PBX extension onto cellular-only devices, support for single-mode WiFi phones and so on. And there are still some gaps like SMS capability. But overall the number of different solutions that work is a very positive sign, validating the general proposition of dual-mode phones for enterprise users.
So what could go wrong?
Most readers will be familiar with the notion that new technologies often turn into bandwagons, gathering momentum and speed.... until the wheels fall off, everything goes wrong, cynicism sets in.... and then slowly it recovers to become accepted. A famous rival analyst organisation calls this the hype cycle.
Disruptive Analysis' mission is to flatten this cycle. By trying to predict the first (and maybe second) generation of practical problems before they emerge, work on fixing them can start early. So, in the consumer dual-mode world, it was painfully obvious 2-3 years ago that there would be issues around handset UI design, customer support, and configuration/interoperability with users' existing WiFi routers. For UMA, it was obvious as far back as 2004 that the lack of 3G support would be a major issue.
So... what are the issues that will bedevil the corporate dual-mode world as the solutions mature? What will breed disillusionment in 2008, as people realise "it's not as easy as it looks"?
Here are some stumbling blocks that I think Divitas, Siemens, Avaya, Cisco & co will have to deal with:
1) SMS integration - I've talked about this enough before
2) Single/dual number - I'm unconvinced by the "just put your fixed line # on your business card & route all calls through the PBX" rhetoric. Most employees' mobile numbers are already known by clients, suppliers, colleagues & embedded in their own handsets' phonebooks. Plan on dual-number solutions, but make the work well. Multiplicity will win.
3) WiFi coverage. One of the biggest limiting factors for enterprise VoWLAN is that for many organisations, the total proportion of office/campus area with decent WiFi coverage is still low.
4) Channel to market. The number of integrators/distributors that understand all the bits - PBXs, cellular, WiFi, handsets, data networks, security... is small. It will take huge & lengthy efforts to acquire, train and support a properly-effective dual-mode capable channel organisation.
5) Handset software client maintenance. This will be a never-ending exercise. New cellular-only and dual-mode devices will continue to emerge, with a range of both OS choices and, especially, application suites. The FMC vendors' clients will continue to need to evolve in both depth and breadth if they can hope to "own" the employees cellphone experience in a consistent way. This will require huge & ongoing resource to develop, extend and test handset software - a task which is usually 10x more complex than most people expect. Expect to have to support Symbian S60 and UIQ, Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS, a couple of Linux variants and maybe Apple too.
6) Least-cost-routing. Working out how to intelligently use inbound and outbound calls, the corporate fixed VPN, maybe doing callbacks if appropriate, dealing with changing or special tariffs, coping with roaming.... it's not easy. It will almost certainly need to combine intelligence both on the phone and in the enterprise network.
7) Security & provisioning. At NetEvents last week, I was chatting last week to a couple of WiFi security specialists. They were talking about things like policy management for devices attaching to the corporate wireless, identifying them by MAC address and ensuring that they had up-to-date security software and so on. Great for laptops, but they were a bit stumped when I chucked two dual-mode devices at them and challenged them to find the MAC. One was under the battery, the other needed a bizarre #-9-digits-# sequence to be keyed in. Now imagine you're a network manager with a stack of 1000 phones and having to get them provisioned on the WLAN without automation. I'm not a security specialist, but I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg.
8) "Guest" WiFi access for other dual-mode users visting the offices
There are others. But the point is this - listen up, enterprise FMC providers. You've done a great job getting this far, and have obviously been focused on getting the thing actually working. It's now time to look outwards, and second-guess the realworld problems (commercial, technical, usability etc) before they occur in reality. "Anticipatable" problems caused at least a year's delay in consumer dual-mode FMC rollout after the concept was validated. The same will occur in the corporate space, unless these and other problems are fully addressed at an early stage.
Yes, there are differences in approach - handsets supported, WiFi-to-cellular roaming/handover, depth of software integration on the device, standalone vs integrated with a specific PBX. In addition, some offer various enhancements like PBX extension onto cellular-only devices, support for single-mode WiFi phones and so on. And there are still some gaps like SMS capability. But overall the number of different solutions that work is a very positive sign, validating the general proposition of dual-mode phones for enterprise users.
So what could go wrong?
Most readers will be familiar with the notion that new technologies often turn into bandwagons, gathering momentum and speed.... until the wheels fall off, everything goes wrong, cynicism sets in.... and then slowly it recovers to become accepted. A famous rival analyst organisation calls this the hype cycle.
Disruptive Analysis' mission is to flatten this cycle. By trying to predict the first (and maybe second) generation of practical problems before they emerge, work on fixing them can start early. So, in the consumer dual-mode world, it was painfully obvious 2-3 years ago that there would be issues around handset UI design, customer support, and configuration/interoperability with users' existing WiFi routers. For UMA, it was obvious as far back as 2004 that the lack of 3G support would be a major issue.
So... what are the issues that will bedevil the corporate dual-mode world as the solutions mature? What will breed disillusionment in 2008, as people realise "it's not as easy as it looks"?
Here are some stumbling blocks that I think Divitas, Siemens, Avaya, Cisco & co will have to deal with:
1) SMS integration - I've talked about this enough before
2) Single/dual number - I'm unconvinced by the "just put your fixed line # on your business card & route all calls through the PBX" rhetoric. Most employees' mobile numbers are already known by clients, suppliers, colleagues & embedded in their own handsets' phonebooks. Plan on dual-number solutions, but make the work well. Multiplicity will win.
3) WiFi coverage. One of the biggest limiting factors for enterprise VoWLAN is that for many organisations, the total proportion of office/campus area with decent WiFi coverage is still low.
4) Channel to market. The number of integrators/distributors that understand all the bits - PBXs, cellular, WiFi, handsets, data networks, security... is small. It will take huge & lengthy efforts to acquire, train and support a properly-effective dual-mode capable channel organisation.
5) Handset software client maintenance. This will be a never-ending exercise. New cellular-only and dual-mode devices will continue to emerge, with a range of both OS choices and, especially, application suites. The FMC vendors' clients will continue to need to evolve in both depth and breadth if they can hope to "own" the employees cellphone experience in a consistent way. This will require huge & ongoing resource to develop, extend and test handset software - a task which is usually 10x more complex than most people expect. Expect to have to support Symbian S60 and UIQ, Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS, a couple of Linux variants and maybe Apple too.
6) Least-cost-routing. Working out how to intelligently use inbound and outbound calls, the corporate fixed VPN, maybe doing callbacks if appropriate, dealing with changing or special tariffs, coping with roaming.... it's not easy. It will almost certainly need to combine intelligence both on the phone and in the enterprise network.
7) Security & provisioning. At NetEvents last week, I was chatting last week to a couple of WiFi security specialists. They were talking about things like policy management for devices attaching to the corporate wireless, identifying them by MAC address and ensuring that they had up-to-date security software and so on. Great for laptops, but they were a bit stumped when I chucked two dual-mode devices at them and challenged them to find the MAC. One was under the battery, the other needed a bizarre #-9-digits-# sequence to be keyed in. Now imagine you're a network manager with a stack of 1000 phones and having to get them provisioned on the WLAN without automation. I'm not a security specialist, but I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg.
8) "Guest" WiFi access for other dual-mode users visting the offices
There are others. But the point is this - listen up, enterprise FMC providers. You've done a great job getting this far, and have obviously been focused on getting the thing actually working. It's now time to look outwards, and second-guess the realworld problems (commercial, technical, usability etc) before they occur in reality. "Anticipatable" problems caused at least a year's delay in consumer dual-mode FMC rollout after the concept was validated. The same will occur in the corporate space, unless these and other problems are fully addressed at an early stage.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
O2 and Carphone Warehouse... pathetic SIM registration system
As I mentioned yesterday, I recently lost my phone. My own stupidity, can't blame anyone else.
What I can blame people for, however, is the length of time it's taking to get up and running again with a new SIM and alternative phone.
I called CPW at the time I discovered I'd lost it (about 1.30am on Monday morning). The IVR system advised me to call O2 directly as it was out-of-hours. This I did, calling & putting a block on the old SIM, but not the phone itself as I didn't have the IMEI number. I then called CPW back at 9am to put a bar on the phone's identity as well. At 11am I went into my local CPW store, bought a new SIM, got put through to the call centre to register its details, my address etc, and was told to wait for it to register with the network, which could take up to 24 hours.
Unfortunately, no joy. "SIM not registered", still, at 9am this morning. Call through to CPW at 8am today, and get promised a call back to tell me what the problems is. Yeah right. Still not working at 2pm, and no call from Carphone. Try customer services again, and speak to a very helpful lady (Hi Charlotte if you're reading) who goes away to check what the problem is & explains it to me.
Apparently, there's a "Network Error" at O2, which means there's a conflict somewhere in the system, which prevents Charlotte & co at CPW from making any further changes on my account, like unbarring my new SIM. My take is that the O2 network guys are too busy sitting on their thumbs to do anything about this promptly. It'll take another 24 hours, and then CPW can actually do something. Why? There's no excuse for a day's latency in a critical business process which directly impacts O2's user experience and hence customer loyalty. Come to think of it, there's no excuse for getting something so apparently simple wrong in the first place.
In this case, I think the fault lies squarely with O2, not its service provider CPW (apart from the lack of phone-back to inform me).
By contrast, Ariva, which runs the coach on which I left my phone, has a lost property office. They informed me yesterday that they'd make a note of the details, and call me back if they found it. If I didn't hear within 24 hours, that meant they hadn't picked it up and I could be certain I'd lost it. This morning, 23 hours and 50 minutes later, I got a call to tell me they'd found it, and would they like it to be sent to their London office. Helpful, efficient, and on time.
So, O2 - how'd you feel, knowing your business processes are less modern & efficient than those of a bus company?
(footnote: in an amusing piece of bad - or good - timing, I've just got a PR email saying that O2 is updating its customer management system with a new one from Martin Dawes Systems. I'd love to know whether this will fix the problem.... or if it's actually the transition that's exacerbated it)
What I can blame people for, however, is the length of time it's taking to get up and running again with a new SIM and alternative phone.
I called CPW at the time I discovered I'd lost it (about 1.30am on Monday morning). The IVR system advised me to call O2 directly as it was out-of-hours. This I did, calling & putting a block on the old SIM, but not the phone itself as I didn't have the IMEI number. I then called CPW back at 9am to put a bar on the phone's identity as well. At 11am I went into my local CPW store, bought a new SIM, got put through to the call centre to register its details, my address etc, and was told to wait for it to register with the network, which could take up to 24 hours.
Unfortunately, no joy. "SIM not registered", still, at 9am this morning. Call through to CPW at 8am today, and get promised a call back to tell me what the problems is. Yeah right. Still not working at 2pm, and no call from Carphone. Try customer services again, and speak to a very helpful lady (Hi Charlotte if you're reading) who goes away to check what the problem is & explains it to me.
Apparently, there's a "Network Error" at O2, which means there's a conflict somewhere in the system, which prevents Charlotte & co at CPW from making any further changes on my account, like unbarring my new SIM. My take is that the O2 network guys are too busy sitting on their thumbs to do anything about this promptly. It'll take another 24 hours, and then CPW can actually do something. Why? There's no excuse for a day's latency in a critical business process which directly impacts O2's user experience and hence customer loyalty. Come to think of it, there's no excuse for getting something so apparently simple wrong in the first place.
In this case, I think the fault lies squarely with O2, not its service provider CPW (apart from the lack of phone-back to inform me).
By contrast, Ariva, which runs the coach on which I left my phone, has a lost property office. They informed me yesterday that they'd make a note of the details, and call me back if they found it. If I didn't hear within 24 hours, that meant they hadn't picked it up and I could be certain I'd lost it. This morning, 23 hours and 50 minutes later, I got a call to tell me they'd found it, and would they like it to be sent to their London office. Helpful, efficient, and on time.
So, O2 - how'd you feel, knowing your business processes are less modern & efficient than those of a bus company?
(footnote: in an amusing piece of bad - or good - timing, I've just got a PR email saying that O2 is updating its customer management system with a new one from Martin Dawes Systems. I'd love to know whether this will fix the problem.... or if it's actually the transition that's exacerbated it)
Monday, February 26, 2007
Carphone Warehouse still thinks BT owns O2.....
Went out to get a new SIM card, to replace the one in the phone I lost last night. Amusingly, O2 is still on Carphone Warehouse retail stores' systems as "BT" despite being demerged more than 5 years ago & subsequently bought by Telefonica.
On a related issue - it looks like the replacement for my lost SonyEricsson K800i may end up being the first handset I purchase at full retail price, as I wasn't insured. Leaving aside my professional awareness of the "real" unsubsidised cost of phones, I have to say it's a quite significant jolt to my usual consumer buying behaviour to be thinking about stumping up £220-£270 for a new one.
Do I really need another $500 phone? Or should I get a slim, basic device and also a separate unconverged pocket-sized digital camera - imaging being the main selling point of the K800i? It's made me think of all the expensive bits of hardware & software that were in the phone that I resent paying for - infrared obviously, but also the MP3/FM/music stuff I've used a total of twice. And... heresy here.... 3G, which I switch off most of the time to improve battery life.
And it's got me thinking that as phones get more like PCs, they should come with the same user-defined options that you get if you spec a computer on Dell's or a similar company's website. I mean, a basic PC is about the same price as a top-end phone, but much more easily customised.
So, for my next handset, I'd add an extra 512MB of onboard memory (+£10); delete 3G (-£20); pre-load a decent browser (free); delete charger as I already have one (-£5)..... now obviously this has a whole bunch of supply chain issues for the normal operator/retailer channel, but it shouldn't be impossible for an Expansys-type distributor to work with the manufacturers to make phones more modular. I guess the limiting factor is the physical accessibility of the interfaces, and the fact that changing the radio elements would probably need the device to be re-certified.
On a related issue - it looks like the replacement for my lost SonyEricsson K800i may end up being the first handset I purchase at full retail price, as I wasn't insured. Leaving aside my professional awareness of the "real" unsubsidised cost of phones, I have to say it's a quite significant jolt to my usual consumer buying behaviour to be thinking about stumping up £220-£270 for a new one.
Do I really need another $500 phone? Or should I get a slim, basic device and also a separate unconverged pocket-sized digital camera - imaging being the main selling point of the K800i? It's made me think of all the expensive bits of hardware & software that were in the phone that I resent paying for - infrared obviously, but also the MP3/FM/music stuff I've used a total of twice. And... heresy here.... 3G, which I switch off most of the time to improve battery life.
And it's got me thinking that as phones get more like PCs, they should come with the same user-defined options that you get if you spec a computer on Dell's or a similar company's website. I mean, a basic PC is about the same price as a top-end phone, but much more easily customised.
So, for my next handset, I'd add an extra 512MB of onboard memory (+£10); delete 3G (-£20); pre-load a decent browser (free); delete charger as I already have one (-£5)..... now obviously this has a whole bunch of supply chain issues for the normal operator/retailer channel, but it shouldn't be impossible for an Expansys-type distributor to work with the manufacturers to make phones more modular. I guess the limiting factor is the physical accessibility of the interfaces, and the fact that changing the radio elements would probably need the device to be re-certified.
IMPORTANT - LOST MY PHONE
Important message to clients, AR/PR people etc - I've managed to lose my phone (the number starting +44 7941 xxx). Hope to be up & running again tomorrow, but otherwise please email or use landline +44 20 7723 7993 or skype:disruptiveanalysis
Thanks
Dean
Thanks
Dean
Thursday, February 22, 2007
OK, now this is a surprise... mobile advertising for enterprise users
Vodafone Netherlands has just announced an extremely unexpected variant on the theme of mobile advertising. Normally people envisage mobile ads as targeted at consumers, following a broadly TV/web-banner type model, selling the usual cars / cosmetics / food / travel and so on via a B2C marketing proposition.
So the news that Voda NL is instead looking at B2B mobile advertising strikes me as pretty left-field. Basically it's insurance firms pitching to insurance brokers' mobiles, and drug companies / health info providers pitching to pharmacists.
So potentially your local chemist might get a free phone & cheap calls if he's happy to be pitched about the latest & greatest cardiovascular pharmaceuticals, instead of playing Java games, while he's on the bus to work.....
Weird. Possibly a great idea, or possibly a micro-niche distraction. Top marks for lateral thinking, though.
So the news that Voda NL is instead looking at B2B mobile advertising strikes me as pretty left-field. Basically it's insurance firms pitching to insurance brokers' mobiles, and drug companies / health info providers pitching to pharmacists.
So potentially your local chemist might get a free phone & cheap calls if he's happy to be pitched about the latest & greatest cardiovascular pharmaceuticals, instead of playing Java games, while he's on the bus to work.....
Weird. Possibly a great idea, or possibly a micro-niche distraction. Top marks for lateral thinking, though.
IMS handsets and IMS proxies
At 3GSM last week, I caught up with a number of providers of phones, SIP/IMS-related handset software, and their counterparts on the network side. I wanted to see how far things had moved on since I wrote my SIP- and IMS-capable Handsets report*. In the middle of last year, it was very evident that mobile operators' possible deployments of IMS faced a fairly insurmountable problem (in addition to all the other problems with IMS...) in the lack of IMS-capable phones, and the lack of any agreed standards or consistent specifications to create them. (And how to to integrate IMS and non-IMS apps on the phone, and myriad other issues).
Although numerous vendors have pitched "IMS client frameworks" for handsets, they have used proprietary interfaces internally with few open APIs and limited developer support, meaning that any innovating operator or application vendor would face a nightmarish porting challenge, if they wanted to get a cool new IMS app across multiple phones. While a few, very large and prescriptive carriers could possibly "standardise" on one specific framework, insisting that all handset suppliers used it, this is unlikely for the majority of service providers.
The net result - a bottleneck in handset development for IMS services. A few things have been standardised - PoC (push to talk) for example. The GSMA was highlighting its video-sharing interop trials in Barcelona last week. Big deal. Neither of these are going to generate even a small % of the revenues needed to build a business case for a mobile operator deploying IMS infrastructure. What is needed is either proper cellular VoIP (which has other issues), or some way for the "next MySpace" to be developed for IMS and adopted virally across a broad range of operators, handsets and IMS client software variants.
My discussions in Barcelona last week suggested that not much had changed, unfortunately. There's still no "alliance of IMS client framework suppliers" to foster interoperability. There's still no broadly-agreed basis of operator requirements for IMS phones (I know that OMTP was working on something, although no details are apparent yet). There's still a lack of developer support for software vendors wanting to write IMS applications that actually give a decent user experience on a range of phones.
Meanwhile, adoption of handsets which include a "naked" SIP stack, addressable by non-IMS 3rd party applications, continues to increase rapidly.
The only movement around IMS handsets appeared to be a growing consensus (OK, OK, perhaps a forlorn hope....) that a new Java API, JSR281, could fix the problem. The idea is that developers (operator-internal or 3rd party) could just write normal Java applets that use IMS capabilities. In principle this seems reasonable... apart from the fact that much of the cool stuff on handsets is now migrating to the browser rather than the Java engine, or else is in completely separate "domains" like a music or TV section of the phone's software. I'm somewhat pessimistic that JSR281 is a complete answer to the problem.
One alternative approach I've started to see is the possibility of using "IMS proxies" - basically embedding some form of IMS user agent in a home gateway, femtocell, PBX or something else, converting applications or content so that it can be used on "normal" non-IMS handsets. Clearly, this isn't an ideal option either, but it might end up being seen as a more practical choice in the short-to-medium term.
(*my IMS handset report is still the most in-depth published analysis available covering these issues. Contact me via info at disruptive-analysis.com for details)
Although numerous vendors have pitched "IMS client frameworks" for handsets, they have used proprietary interfaces internally with few open APIs and limited developer support, meaning that any innovating operator or application vendor would face a nightmarish porting challenge, if they wanted to get a cool new IMS app across multiple phones. While a few, very large and prescriptive carriers could possibly "standardise" on one specific framework, insisting that all handset suppliers used it, this is unlikely for the majority of service providers.
The net result - a bottleneck in handset development for IMS services. A few things have been standardised - PoC (push to talk) for example. The GSMA was highlighting its video-sharing interop trials in Barcelona last week. Big deal. Neither of these are going to generate even a small % of the revenues needed to build a business case for a mobile operator deploying IMS infrastructure. What is needed is either proper cellular VoIP (which has other issues), or some way for the "next MySpace" to be developed for IMS and adopted virally across a broad range of operators, handsets and IMS client software variants.
My discussions in Barcelona last week suggested that not much had changed, unfortunately. There's still no "alliance of IMS client framework suppliers" to foster interoperability. There's still no broadly-agreed basis of operator requirements for IMS phones (I know that OMTP was working on something, although no details are apparent yet). There's still a lack of developer support for software vendors wanting to write IMS applications that actually give a decent user experience on a range of phones.
Meanwhile, adoption of handsets which include a "naked" SIP stack, addressable by non-IMS 3rd party applications, continues to increase rapidly.
The only movement around IMS handsets appeared to be a growing consensus (OK, OK, perhaps a forlorn hope....) that a new Java API, JSR281, could fix the problem. The idea is that developers (operator-internal or 3rd party) could just write normal Java applets that use IMS capabilities. In principle this seems reasonable... apart from the fact that much of the cool stuff on handsets is now migrating to the browser rather than the Java engine, or else is in completely separate "domains" like a music or TV section of the phone's software. I'm somewhat pessimistic that JSR281 is a complete answer to the problem.
One alternative approach I've started to see is the possibility of using "IMS proxies" - basically embedding some form of IMS user agent in a home gateway, femtocell, PBX or something else, converting applications or content so that it can be used on "normal" non-IMS handsets. Clearly, this isn't an ideal option either, but it might end up being seen as a more practical choice in the short-to-medium term.
(*my IMS handset report is still the most in-depth published analysis available covering these issues. Contact me via info at disruptive-analysis.com for details)
Monday, February 19, 2007
Thought for the day – is reported mobile data use real?
I regularly see statistics around mobile data that seem to indicate decent levels of market growth. I read recently in a magazine, for example, that Orange UK is doing around 100,000 music downloads per month, or about 3k per day. I don’t want to pick on Orange specifically, but this is a good case study.
I’m wondering if all of these are actually “real punters” paying for music on their handsets. So, for example, can Orange’s statistical reporting discriminate between “proper” use, versus demos given in shops? Maybe there’s a separate APN for retailers’ SIMs, or maybe not. Or maybe there’s just internal billing reconciliation between the various divisions of the operator and its channel partners. Orange has 280 of its own shops in the UK, plus countless other retailers stock its wares, so it doesn't take an awful lot of demos-per-salesperson-per-day to rack up an appreciable fraction of 3000.
And what about testing? I’ve seen a number of presentations around the concept of “user experience monitoring”. Basically the idea is to stick probes in the network, or drive a bunch of phones around in a van, doing user-type stuff like sending MMS or downloading music. Now imagine a network with 10,000 cells, and you want to to do ongoing quality testing with various types of phones, in various network conditions. How many tests might you make per cell, per month? 1? 10? 100?
I’d guess a van with 10 phones in it could visit 100 cells a day, doing a variety of quality-of-experience tests. A fleet of 10 such vans seems reasonable for a decent-sized operator in a medium-sized country. So, maybe the operator conducts 10,000 tests of any given service per day. Or 300,000 per month.
And, of course, both distribution & testing could be outsourced, and any costs effectively just billed back as part of the contract’s expenses terms, making it even more difficult to separate out from real-world commercial use.
And lastly... how much reported data usage isn't from real Joe-Bloggs-in-the-Street, but from people like us in the industry, trying stuff out to see if it works, using it during meetings with advertisers and content owners, checking up on competitors, showing it to the world at Barcelona or wherever....
I could well be overlooking something very obvious here… but equally, it could be that the split of customer vs internal-ops usage of services is misreported by some operators.
I’m wondering if all of these are actually “real punters” paying for music on their handsets. So, for example, can Orange’s statistical reporting discriminate between “proper” use, versus demos given in shops? Maybe there’s a separate APN for retailers’ SIMs, or maybe not. Or maybe there’s just internal billing reconciliation between the various divisions of the operator and its channel partners. Orange has 280 of its own shops in the UK, plus countless other retailers stock its wares, so it doesn't take an awful lot of demos-per-salesperson-per-day to rack up an appreciable fraction of 3000.
And what about testing? I’ve seen a number of presentations around the concept of “user experience monitoring”. Basically the idea is to stick probes in the network, or drive a bunch of phones around in a van, doing user-type stuff like sending MMS or downloading music. Now imagine a network with 10,000 cells, and you want to to do ongoing quality testing with various types of phones, in various network conditions. How many tests might you make per cell, per month? 1? 10? 100?
I’d guess a van with 10 phones in it could visit 100 cells a day, doing a variety of quality-of-experience tests. A fleet of 10 such vans seems reasonable for a decent-sized operator in a medium-sized country. So, maybe the operator conducts 10,000 tests of any given service per day. Or 300,000 per month.
And, of course, both distribution & testing could be outsourced, and any costs effectively just billed back as part of the contract’s expenses terms, making it even more difficult to separate out from real-world commercial use.
And lastly... how much reported data usage isn't from real Joe-Bloggs-in-the-Street, but from people like us in the industry, trying stuff out to see if it works, using it during meetings with advertisers and content owners, checking up on competitors, showing it to the world at Barcelona or wherever....
I could well be overlooking something very obvious here… but equally, it could be that the split of customer vs internal-ops usage of services is misreported by some operators.
Flat, flatter, flattest?
One thing I was surprised not to hear more about at 3GSM was SAE - System Architecture Evolution, although perhaps that's unsurprising as it's such a bloody terrible name. For the unititiated, it's bacially about simplifying the bit of a mobile network "behind" the base stations (RNCs, SGSNs etc etc) that manages cell-to-cell handovers & a bunch of other functions. Should help reduce latency & offer a bunch of other good stuff. It's a work-in-progress item at 3GPP.
So yes, while I heard various people talk about "flatter architectures" at 3GSM, not many mentioned SAE specifically. Maybe that's the 2008 theme?
One thing, though.... all the femto vendors were also talking about flattened architectures for their products connection into the network. At the back of my mind I'm wondering whether operators will want to have two different sorts of flatness running concurrently, or whether they'd be keener to have some form of consistent view on what replaces today's RNCs at both macro and micro scales. It's possible that the requirements are so different that some form of heterogeneity is mandatory, but I haven't seen any evidence of any commonality at all thus far.
So yes, while I heard various people talk about "flatter architectures" at 3GSM, not many mentioned SAE specifically. Maybe that's the 2008 theme?
One thing, though.... all the femto vendors were also talking about flattened architectures for their products connection into the network. At the back of my mind I'm wondering whether operators will want to have two different sorts of flatness running concurrently, or whether they'd be keener to have some form of consistent view on what replaces today's RNCs at both macro and micro scales. It's possible that the requirements are so different that some form of heterogeneity is mandatory, but I haven't seen any evidence of any commonality at all thus far.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Completely fabricated 3GSM conspiracy story
7 Euros for 30 mins of WiFi???? 70 Euros for 300 minutes? What planet are these guys on? Blatant profiteering or just simple stupidity?
... or did the GSMA have a quiet word & tell Kubi Wireless to treble the normal prices, in case Viviane Reding dropped in. "See, cellular data charges aren't that high, after all! No need to regulate them at all, we're already competitively priced".
The funniest thing was that the venue's WiFi touts tried to persuade exhibitors to turn off their own WLANs, without realising that half of them were demoing stuff like VCC.....
Full marks to T-Mobile, Microsoft et al for sticking two fingers up to the Fira & giving free WiFi to people in their tents/suites. Let's see more of it next year.
... or did the GSMA have a quiet word & tell Kubi Wireless to treble the normal prices, in case Viviane Reding dropped in. "See, cellular data charges aren't that high, after all! No need to regulate them at all, we're already competitively priced".
The funniest thing was that the venue's WiFi touts tried to persuade exhibitors to turn off their own WLANs, without realising that half of them were demoing stuff like VCC.....
Full marks to T-Mobile, Microsoft et al for sticking two fingers up to the Fira & giving free WiFi to people in their tents/suites. Let's see more of it next year.
WiMAX as perfomed by the Royal Shakespeare Company
Picture the scene: Arun Sarin from Vodafone is seated at his desk. Enter the Ericsson sales rep, stage right, looking confident and holding a big folder with LTE written on it & a calculator with room for lots of zeros on the display.
"So", says Arun "I met this bloke from Intel the other day. Told me about this WiMAX thingy. Sounds awfully clever".
Ericsson rep shifts nervously in his seat & loosens his tie.
"Said it was going to be ready this year, apparently".
Mr Ericsson starts to look a bit pale.
"So", continues Sarin "what was it you said about the price of these gadgets you wanted me to buy?". He leans forward & looks quizzical, theatrically cupping his hand around his ear. "I'm sorry, could you say that again? Did I hear you say that IPR royalty rates were going to be much lower than for UMTS? How very kind of you to offer. Oh, and on your way out, could you ask the gentleman from San Diego to come in?"
"So", says Arun "I met this bloke from Intel the other day. Told me about this WiMAX thingy. Sounds awfully clever".
Ericsson rep shifts nervously in his seat & loosens his tie.
"Said it was going to be ready this year, apparently".
Mr Ericsson starts to look a bit pale.
"So", continues Sarin "what was it you said about the price of these gadgets you wanted me to buy?". He leans forward & looks quizzical, theatrically cupping his hand around his ear. "I'm sorry, could you say that again? Did I hear you say that IPR royalty rates were going to be much lower than for UMTS? How very kind of you to offer. Oh, and on your way out, could you ask the gentleman from San Diego to come in?"
Post-3GSM... some thoughts
Phew, what a week. Lots of stimulating discussions, meetings with companies new & old, briefings, client catch-ups & the occasional alcoholic beverage in amongst the canapes. And LOTS of walking about around the Fira complex.
This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness posting mostly intended to help me procrastinate & avoid tackling my email backlog.
There seems to be a brewing storm over the two next-gen 3GPP technologies HSPA+ and LTE. I heard some vendors say that HSPA+ "wasn't going to happen " and that operators would go straight from Rel6 to Rel8, while others saying that LTE was going to be really quick-to-market ....or take much longer than anticipated. I'm looking into all these 3G+ alternatives for an upcoming report I'll say more about at a later date, and I've come away more confused than when I arrived. Plotted on an axis of LTE vs HSPA+ enthusiasm, I reckon that Ericsson and Nortel are firmly on the LTE end of the scale, Motorola a bit more neutral, Nokia sitting on the fence and Qualcomm planted firmly in the HSPA+ zone.
Femtos, femtos, everywhere. Too much to talk about right now, I'll come back to it at another point. Interesting side-effect is that while femtos are all the rage for the future, it's having a beneficial "halo" effect on companies exploiting their already-mature bigger brothers, picocells. Everyone now knows what a small cellular BTS is, so companies pitching them for enterprise, remote-site, emergency services, maritime or military applications are finding it much easier to describe their offerings & get customer acceptance.
The biggest longterm competitor for cellular data? Flash memory. The price/performance curve for local storage far exceeds that of over-the-air data transmission. If you don't need absolute "immediacy", why on earth wouldn't you stick maps / music / videos / appplication etc on a chip?
Quite a lot of cool WiFi-capable phones, even one or two decent UMA-capable ones like HP's. E28's look good on the SIP-capable side, ditto some of I-Mate's offerings. I still think that RIM, Motorola, SonyEricsson and Samsung are behind the curve on this, though. Side-note: I can't see the "attach rate" of WiFi into handsets getting beyond 10% of phones before 2010, if ever.
For those who maintain that the network will always tell the phone what to do, rather than vice versa: both Qualcomm and Texas Instruments mentioned the magic number 1GHz in their handset chip roadmaps. Coupled with an OS and some decent apps, that's more than enough for the handset to outsmart the inflexible boxes in the core, and exploit the different connectivity options in a more intelligent fashion. "Bearer agnostic"? Yeah right, you wish....
Low-end phones and integrated featurephone application suites look much more mature these days. There seems to be a definite market niche for "not quite basic" phones for emerging markets, with a few aspirational features that take them beyond pure voice&text. Using a single-chip platform with an out-of-the-box, "good enough" suite with colour, camera, maybe FM radio or MP3 support, seems to be a valid market.
Increasing signs that PBX/cellular integration (rather than replacement/substitution) is a hot topic. Yes, there were a few of the usual suspects talking about Mobile IP centrex, but usually as an adjunct to a fixed PBX, not a forklift upgrade. Full marks to Broadsoft for bringing an operator partner along to the briefing (Cincinatti Bell, which has both fixed & mobile arms, as well as a solutions division with plenty of sales expertise & experience in dealing with PBXs). The award-winning Telepo pitch was also pretty cool at first sight.
Lost at sea: IMS and Mobile TV. Yes, there were some people pitching them, but you could sense their hearts weren't really in it.
Last point - Barcelona is so much better than Cannes, it's amazing. If 3GSM ever goes back again, I'm not going to follow it - I'll do CTIA instead.
This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness posting mostly intended to help me procrastinate & avoid tackling my email backlog.
There seems to be a brewing storm over the two next-gen 3GPP technologies HSPA+ and LTE. I heard some vendors say that HSPA+ "wasn't going to happen " and that operators would go straight from Rel6 to Rel8, while others saying that LTE was going to be really quick-to-market ....or take much longer than anticipated. I'm looking into all these 3G+ alternatives for an upcoming report I'll say more about at a later date, and I've come away more confused than when I arrived. Plotted on an axis of LTE vs HSPA+ enthusiasm, I reckon that Ericsson and Nortel are firmly on the LTE end of the scale, Motorola a bit more neutral, Nokia sitting on the fence and Qualcomm planted firmly in the HSPA+ zone.
Femtos, femtos, everywhere. Too much to talk about right now, I'll come back to it at another point. Interesting side-effect is that while femtos are all the rage for the future, it's having a beneficial "halo" effect on companies exploiting their already-mature bigger brothers, picocells. Everyone now knows what a small cellular BTS is, so companies pitching them for enterprise, remote-site, emergency services, maritime or military applications are finding it much easier to describe their offerings & get customer acceptance.
The biggest longterm competitor for cellular data? Flash memory. The price/performance curve for local storage far exceeds that of over-the-air data transmission. If you don't need absolute "immediacy", why on earth wouldn't you stick maps / music / videos / appplication etc on a chip?
Quite a lot of cool WiFi-capable phones, even one or two decent UMA-capable ones like HP's. E28's look good on the SIP-capable side, ditto some of I-Mate's offerings. I still think that RIM, Motorola, SonyEricsson and Samsung are behind the curve on this, though. Side-note: I can't see the "attach rate" of WiFi into handsets getting beyond 10% of phones before 2010, if ever.
For those who maintain that the network will always tell the phone what to do, rather than vice versa: both Qualcomm and Texas Instruments mentioned the magic number 1GHz in their handset chip roadmaps. Coupled with an OS and some decent apps, that's more than enough for the handset to outsmart the inflexible boxes in the core, and exploit the different connectivity options in a more intelligent fashion. "Bearer agnostic"? Yeah right, you wish....
Low-end phones and integrated featurephone application suites look much more mature these days. There seems to be a definite market niche for "not quite basic" phones for emerging markets, with a few aspirational features that take them beyond pure voice&text. Using a single-chip platform with an out-of-the-box, "good enough" suite with colour, camera, maybe FM radio or MP3 support, seems to be a valid market.
Increasing signs that PBX/cellular integration (rather than replacement/substitution) is a hot topic. Yes, there were a few of the usual suspects talking about Mobile IP centrex, but usually as an adjunct to a fixed PBX, not a forklift upgrade. Full marks to Broadsoft for bringing an operator partner along to the briefing (Cincinatti Bell, which has both fixed & mobile arms, as well as a solutions division with plenty of sales expertise & experience in dealing with PBXs). The award-winning Telepo pitch was also pretty cool at first sight.
Lost at sea: IMS and Mobile TV. Yes, there were some people pitching them, but you could sense their hearts weren't really in it.
Last point - Barcelona is so much better than Cannes, it's amazing. If 3GSM ever goes back again, I'm not going to follow it - I'll do CTIA instead.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
3GSM: Mobile content is officially dead. Long live the real Internet on mobiles.
Quick note while dashing between meetings: the only discernable megatrend emerging here in Barcelona is the confirmation that mobile-centric content and operator-specific portals are dead, or at least confined to a handful of small niches & individual national markets.
Everything else is about taking the real Internet onto mobile (there isn't, nor ever has been, nor ever will be, a "mobile Internet") . YouTube, Google, MySpace, Yahoo and so on - yes, optimised a little bit for mobile devices & networks, but only insofar as browser, screen and network technology can't quite cope with the full-on web today.
Vodafone's recent announcements of deals with almost all major Internet brands follows on from 3's X-Series, T-Mobile's Web'n'walk and assorted others. It's a recognition that the only place for viral adoption of cool new stuff is on the Internet, where choice of service provider is irrelevant when you tell your friends to "check this out!". Until there's another mechanism for innovators in a garage to reach 500 global operators' customers in a matter of months, without an army of lawyers drafting contracts, mobile-specific services and communities will be limited to a set of small-to-medium niches. (There's no real way for mobile to monetise "the long tail" without the Internet, either - but that's for another post).
Everything else is about taking the real Internet onto mobile (there isn't, nor ever has been, nor ever will be, a "mobile Internet") . YouTube, Google, MySpace, Yahoo and so on - yes, optimised a little bit for mobile devices & networks, but only insofar as browser, screen and network technology can't quite cope with the full-on web today.
Vodafone's recent announcements of deals with almost all major Internet brands follows on from 3's X-Series, T-Mobile's Web'n'walk and assorted others. It's a recognition that the only place for viral adoption of cool new stuff is on the Internet, where choice of service provider is irrelevant when you tell your friends to "check this out!". Until there's another mechanism for innovators in a garage to reach 500 global operators' customers in a matter of months, without an army of lawyers drafting contracts, mobile-specific services and communities will be limited to a set of small-to-medium niches. (There's no real way for mobile to monetise "the long tail" without the Internet, either - but that's for another post).
Friday, February 09, 2007
Avaya + Ubiquisys rumour? Mistaken identity, surely
Guy Kewney has a slightly left-field post over at NewsWireless, rumouring an acquisition of one of the most visible femtocell vendors, Ubiquisys, by enterprise telephony vendor Avaya.
I have my doubts, to be honest.
Firstly, Avaya's just bought SIP application server vendor Ubiquity so this could just be a case of Chinese whispers gone wrong. (Or else they should also take out these guys for the full set of Ubiqui-things). Secondly, femtos - especially the ones that Ubiquisys is pitching - are consumer-grade, although I guess conceivably they could fit into very small offices or homeworkers. Picocells are more-appropriate for enterprise. Thirdly, they're 3G-only, so of limited use for buildings/employees with poor coverage & 2G phones. And lastly, they operate in licenced spectrum, and Avaya's sales force doesn't generally sell to mobile operators - and its current channel won't be able to do cellular RF site surveys etc.
I could possibly believe Cisco might be a buyer (bolting femtos onto its Linksys division's products), or one of the large "normal" cellular infrastructure suppliers like Nokia-Siemens or Alcatel-Lucent. But Avaya? Seems both unlikely - and, if it happens - a big mistake in my view.
I've got a meeting with Ubiquisys at 3GSM anyway, so I'll see what I can dig up if nothing's announced.
I have my doubts, to be honest.
Firstly, Avaya's just bought SIP application server vendor Ubiquity so this could just be a case of Chinese whispers gone wrong. (Or else they should also take out these guys for the full set of Ubiqui-things). Secondly, femtos - especially the ones that Ubiquisys is pitching - are consumer-grade, although I guess conceivably they could fit into very small offices or homeworkers. Picocells are more-appropriate for enterprise. Thirdly, they're 3G-only, so of limited use for buildings/employees with poor coverage & 2G phones. And lastly, they operate in licenced spectrum, and Avaya's sales force doesn't generally sell to mobile operators - and its current channel won't be able to do cellular RF site surveys etc.
I could possibly believe Cisco might be a buyer (bolting femtos onto its Linksys division's products), or one of the large "normal" cellular infrastructure suppliers like Nokia-Siemens or Alcatel-Lucent. But Avaya? Seems both unlikely - and, if it happens - a big mistake in my view.
I've got a meeting with Ubiquisys at 3GSM anyway, so I'll see what I can dig up if nothing's announced.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Assorted interesting announcements
Hmm, quite a few press releases catching my eye this morning - obviously lots of people trying to beat the 3GSM rush:
- Telepo / Ericsson deal for an enterprise FMC solution. About time too - I would have thought that Ericsson's history in both PBXs and cellular would have made it a prime mover in the corporate dual-mode/FMC space, but it's been comprehensively beaten by Avaya, Cisco, NEC, Siemens et al. Also, the press release makes it sound a bit too operator-centric, rather than having the mobility management more clearly in control of the enterprise. I have a meeting with Telepo next week, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the likes of Divitas' solution
- Vodafone / eBay - much the same comments as yesterday re:MySpace. What will be interesting to see is whether there's any way Voda can use IMS in the sort of "inside-out" way I've talked about before. Basically, the idea is that the operator uses IMS as a smart pipe to enhance and interoperate with 3rd party Internet applications (better QoS, security, whatever) rather compete with them. KPN espouses this approach as "making the Internet even better for our customers".
- Nokia launching free downloadable maps for S60, and - get this - Windows Mobile devices, with S40 in future. Supports download, sideload via WiFi etc, supports memory cards as well as over-the-air. Looks a clever move at first sight. It'll drive a highly-desirable coach & horses through some of the more stupid operator mapping business models (look, we know maps are free on the Internet. Obviously we're not going to pay extra beyond access charges on the handset and a seeing bit of advertising, we're not stupid!). I have to say, Nokia seems to have taken a much more Internet/software/IP-centric view of late, rather than pretending that "everything will be a billable service" from operators. This is in stark contrast to Ericsson's philosophy, I'd say, which seems to involve a corporate disbelief that end users actually like to buy & own stuff outright.
- Telepo / Ericsson deal for an enterprise FMC solution. About time too - I would have thought that Ericsson's history in both PBXs and cellular would have made it a prime mover in the corporate dual-mode/FMC space, but it's been comprehensively beaten by Avaya, Cisco, NEC, Siemens et al. Also, the press release makes it sound a bit too operator-centric, rather than having the mobility management more clearly in control of the enterprise. I have a meeting with Telepo next week, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the likes of Divitas' solution
- Vodafone / eBay - much the same comments as yesterday re:MySpace. What will be interesting to see is whether there's any way Voda can use IMS in the sort of "inside-out" way I've talked about before. Basically, the idea is that the operator uses IMS as a smart pipe to enhance and interoperate with 3rd party Internet applications (better QoS, security, whatever) rather compete with them. KPN espouses this approach as "making the Internet even better for our customers".
- Nokia launching free downloadable maps for S60, and - get this - Windows Mobile devices, with S40 in future. Supports download, sideload via WiFi etc, supports memory cards as well as over-the-air. Looks a clever move at first sight. It'll drive a highly-desirable coach & horses through some of the more stupid operator mapping business models (look, we know maps are free on the Internet. Obviously we're not going to pay extra beyond access charges on the handset and a seeing bit of advertising, we're not stupid!). I have to say, Nokia seems to have taken a much more Internet/software/IP-centric view of late, rather than pretending that "everything will be a billable service" from operators. This is in stark contrast to Ericsson's philosophy, I'd say, which seems to involve a corporate disbelief that end users actually like to buy & own stuff outright.
A different approach to homezone pricing
Had an interesting meeting with Seeker Wireless this morning. Don’t have time to go into too many details, but they’ve basically come up with a clever way of helping operators do homezone-style pricing – without the complexities of UMA/SIP WiFi or femtocells, or the often-poor granularity of Cell-ID based systems.
Long story short, Seeker uses some clever software on the handset SIM which watches different base stations’ signal strengths, plus a location server, to work out where a given phone is compared to a pre-registered home address, then feeds it back to the billing system.
Obviously, this doesn’t give the improved indoor coverage/capacity or user-paid backhaul benefits of the WiFi or femto approaches, but it sounds a lot easier, and should work with any 2G or 3G handset without modification, as the software's on the SIM and not sitting on top of the OS.
(apparently it's not behind the KPN service announced the other day, though, which seems to be regular cell-ID after all)
Long story short, Seeker uses some clever software on the handset SIM which watches different base stations’ signal strengths, plus a location server, to work out where a given phone is compared to a pre-registered home address, then feeds it back to the billing system.
Obviously, this doesn’t give the improved indoor coverage/capacity or user-paid backhaul benefits of the WiFi or femto approaches, but it sounds a lot easier, and should work with any 2G or 3G handset without modification, as the software's on the SIM and not sitting on top of the OS.
(apparently it's not behind the KPN service announced the other day, though, which seems to be regular cell-ID after all)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Nice one, Vodafone
Full marks to Big Red for collaborating with MySpace, rather than attempting to create its own social-networking service. Clearly, MySpace works because it's international and access-independent; saying "no, sorry, you can't be my friend as you're on T-Mobile" is a non-starter.
Also, it seems to fit well with Voda's increasing focus on linking together mobile- and PC-based services. Something like MySpace will not work in a mobile-only context - some things like page-layout are obviously best done with the aid of a mouse & big screen, but at the same time it seems likely that a large % of photos uploaded will have originated on mobile handsets.
Interestingly, it looks like the service won't allow users to view "full" MySpace pages on their handsets. This is unsurprising, as the pages can have huge numbers of separate subcomponents & be large in size, especially with streaming or animated elements which would severely tax the capabilities of network, browser, and handset memory/processor. Also, it would be near-impossible to guarantee QoS, as the component page elements come from all over the web.
(An interesting aside - apparently a single MySpace page can contain 200+ separate IP locations for the various elements, which could completely fry the DNS lookup capabilities of an operator's network).
Some questions remain:
1) How much will it cost?
2) Obviously, it has to be available to prepay subscribers - how will that work exactly?
3) What features aren't available, and which others involve paying extra?
4) Will it be part of a flatrate data plan?
5) What exactly are the terms of exclusivity? Just Europe, presumably? Or is the Helio/MySpace relationship threatened?
6) Does the exclusivity just refer to operators bundling the MySpace client? Can non-Voda users download it to their handset independently?
I still reckon the best MySpace mobile experience would be on a larger, web-tablet type device with a 480x800 or larger screen. I often use the example of a MySpace gadget as a stereotype killer-app for WiMAX.
Also, it seems to fit well with Voda's increasing focus on linking together mobile- and PC-based services. Something like MySpace will not work in a mobile-only context - some things like page-layout are obviously best done with the aid of a mouse & big screen, but at the same time it seems likely that a large % of photos uploaded will have originated on mobile handsets.
Interestingly, it looks like the service won't allow users to view "full" MySpace pages on their handsets. This is unsurprising, as the pages can have huge numbers of separate subcomponents & be large in size, especially with streaming or animated elements which would severely tax the capabilities of network, browser, and handset memory/processor. Also, it would be near-impossible to guarantee QoS, as the component page elements come from all over the web.
(An interesting aside - apparently a single MySpace page can contain 200+ separate IP locations for the various elements, which could completely fry the DNS lookup capabilities of an operator's network).
Some questions remain:
1) How much will it cost?
2) Obviously, it has to be available to prepay subscribers - how will that work exactly?
3) What features aren't available, and which others involve paying extra?
4) Will it be part of a flatrate data plan?
5) What exactly are the terms of exclusivity? Just Europe, presumably? Or is the Helio/MySpace relationship threatened?
6) Does the exclusivity just refer to operators bundling the MySpace client? Can non-Voda users download it to their handset independently?
I still reckon the best MySpace mobile experience would be on a larger, web-tablet type device with a 480x800 or larger screen. I often use the example of a MySpace gadget as a stereotype killer-app for WiMAX.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
So, hot topics at 3GSM this year?
I'm now on a score of about 47 booked-in meetings, receptions & other events next week in Barcelona. It's not quite a statistically-significant sample, but I'll take a punt on what the hot topics are going to be:
a) Femtocells. Not exactly new, but then nobody seemed to know what I was talking about last year whever I mentioned them. (Incidentally, I've been wading through the NGMN's white paper on future cellular technologies, and picos/indoor solutions got an honourable mention, so expect to see them designed-in to future mobile architectures upfront, rather than added on as an afterthought).
b) Social networking from your mobile. This seems to be the great hope of anyone trying to grow revenues from their mobile software client business - uploading pics & videos from your phone to your blog. Everyone's at it: OS companies, UI companies, on-device portal companies, remote-backup companies, photo application providers and so on. I bet there will be dozens of handset software firms that have added a "social networking module" to whatever they've been trying to sell for the last few years. So if you're thinking of joining the party - stop, you're too late, it's saturated already.
c) HSUPA - yep, high-speed uplink radio technology, just when you want to upload all your pics to Flickr and MySpace. Should make for better VoIP over cellular, too.
d) VCC - also around last year in "pre" versions, but a bit more real this time around. Expect to see a few cool-looking dual-mode WiFi/cellular SIP-based phones as well. I quite liked E28's devices when I met them the other week.
e) A million and one pointless messaging solutions. Look guys, we're just not interested. The world is either SMS (mobile operators) or IM (Internet players). All the rest is a distraction, with maybe a few interesting niches that a few % of people might play with. Both SMS and IM have such huge & loyal user bases that I expect to see neither mobile companies succeed in IM, nor IM companies succeed in dislodging SMS. In the longterm we'll see some tectonic-speed shifts, but for now the main outcomes are (a) price cannibalisation on SMS, and (b) IM players forced to interoperate & sometimes collaborate with operators. (And yes, I know that US SMS prices have risen recently. Strangling a golden goose is always one way to force a transition, I suppose).
f) A million and two pointless mobile search solutions. Especially the anti-Google operator consortium one. Yawn.
a) Femtocells. Not exactly new, but then nobody seemed to know what I was talking about last year whever I mentioned them. (Incidentally, I've been wading through the NGMN's white paper on future cellular technologies, and picos/indoor solutions got an honourable mention, so expect to see them designed-in to future mobile architectures upfront, rather than added on as an afterthought).
b) Social networking from your mobile. This seems to be the great hope of anyone trying to grow revenues from their mobile software client business - uploading pics & videos from your phone to your blog. Everyone's at it: OS companies, UI companies, on-device portal companies, remote-backup companies, photo application providers and so on. I bet there will be dozens of handset software firms that have added a "social networking module" to whatever they've been trying to sell for the last few years. So if you're thinking of joining the party - stop, you're too late, it's saturated already.
c) HSUPA - yep, high-speed uplink radio technology, just when you want to upload all your pics to Flickr and MySpace. Should make for better VoIP over cellular, too.
d) VCC - also around last year in "pre" versions, but a bit more real this time around. Expect to see a few cool-looking dual-mode WiFi/cellular SIP-based phones as well. I quite liked E28's devices when I met them the other week.
e) A million and one pointless messaging solutions. Look guys, we're just not interested. The world is either SMS (mobile operators) or IM (Internet players). All the rest is a distraction, with maybe a few interesting niches that a few % of people might play with. Both SMS and IM have such huge & loyal user bases that I expect to see neither mobile companies succeed in IM, nor IM companies succeed in dislodging SMS. In the longterm we'll see some tectonic-speed shifts, but for now the main outcomes are (a) price cannibalisation on SMS, and (b) IM players forced to interoperate & sometimes collaborate with operators. (And yes, I know that US SMS prices have risen recently. Strangling a golden goose is always one way to force a transition, I suppose).
f) A million and two pointless mobile search solutions. Especially the anti-Google operator consortium one. Yawn.
Monday, February 05, 2007
KPN's HomeZone service... more granular than German offerings?
I see that KPN has launched a mobile homezone-type service offering cheap mobile-based calls while a customer is at or near their home. In principle this is nothing new (O2 Genion in Germany has been running since 1999, and Vodafone has rolled out its At Home service in 7 countries). However, this line "The size of the vicinity covered ranges from about 100 metres in an inner city to several kilometres in the countryside" is a bit of an eye-opener, as Genion & peers generally provide a 2km radius for the cheap-rate calls.
100m brings the KPN service much closer to the type of location-specific granularity achieved by UMA or SIP dual-mode WiFi-based services, or that promised by femtocells in the future. It could be argued, however, that both of those target separate market niches - either people with lousy indoor 2G coverage (which neither the KPN nor Genion-type service improves), or those concerned with applications other than voice, for which high-speed local connectivity is a selling point.
Unfortunately, KPN's offer seems to be based on the increasingly fallacious notion that "the mobile phone offers the convenience of one device, one number and one address book". As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a great believer in "multiplicity" - the need for operators to support interoperability between users' multiple device, numbers, identities and so forth. The success of the various German homezone services is partly due to the fact that consumers can have two numbers - mobile and fixed - associated with their cellular handsets. A lot of phone calls to the home are of long duration - and it's unreasonable to expect relatives or friends to pay for an hour or fixed-to-mobile interconnect.
100m brings the KPN service much closer to the type of location-specific granularity achieved by UMA or SIP dual-mode WiFi-based services, or that promised by femtocells in the future. It could be argued, however, that both of those target separate market niches - either people with lousy indoor 2G coverage (which neither the KPN nor Genion-type service improves), or those concerned with applications other than voice, for which high-speed local connectivity is a selling point.
Unfortunately, KPN's offer seems to be based on the increasingly fallacious notion that "the mobile phone offers the convenience of one device, one number and one address book". As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a great believer in "multiplicity" - the need for operators to support interoperability between users' multiple device, numbers, identities and so forth. The success of the various German homezone services is partly due to the fact that consumers can have two numbers - mobile and fixed - associated with their cellular handsets. A lot of phone calls to the home are of long duration - and it's unreasonable to expect relatives or friends to pay for an hour or fixed-to-mobile interconnect.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Mobile spam'n'scam - fight back!
Couple of things have annoyed me recently about unsolicited calls & SMS to my mobile. But there are ways to get your own back....
The first was more serious. Two of my numbers have had examples of the "missed call" scam - someone rings you, but hangs up before you can answer. The caller-ID shows something like 0709xxxxxx. The 07 prefix tries to con you into believing it's a normal mobile number. But it's actually some other premium-rate thing & you get to pay some anonymous scammer a shedload of cash for the privilege. Luckily I smelled a rat before I returned the call, and Googled the number to discover (a) various people had had the same problem, (b) Ofcom had launched an investigation in to the company owning the number, and (c) the number was registered to company at the same address as its parent firm (with full contact details on the web). So I forwarded an additional complaint to the investigator at Ofcom, and also tried to contact the marketing director at the company concerned. Haven't heard back, but neither have a had any more such missed calls.
The second one concerns SMS spam. I hate it with a vengeance, and make 100% sure I never give my mobile number out to anyone I think might be disreputable. (One of the benefits of having a landline is the ability to enter it into any web forms you suspect may be harvested by SMS-happy marketing droids). I got two SMSs yesterday evening from some fly-by-night mobile content firm (nameless for now, I don't want to give it publicity) inviting me to download some dodgy Java app & pay £3 a week for some stupid "content", via an SMS shortcode. Oh, and it also graciously gave me the chance to "Opt out" by texting "OUT" to the same shortcode. What was ambiguous was whether this was opting out of the service itself, or just opting out of their spam database. It also didn't tell me if that itself would cost me money, or whether (like email spam) my confirming my existence would just perpetuate yet more spam as they sold on my number as "live".
Luckily, in this case, the no-hoper firm, when Googled, yielded a contact name at their London PR agency - whose other clients I speak to fairly regularly. A terse phone call & email has sent the PR guy (who I'm probably putting in a tricky position - sorry mate) trying to get an explanation from the marketing genius who thought that SMS spam was a great method to promote his service. Given he's obviously a budget holder (ie he must have employed & paid the PR agency), I've also informed him of the substantial fee I'll levy for deleting any more of his messages, and that sending any more to me automatically confirms acceptance of my terms. Dunno if that holds any legal water, but it should at least prove the point that unsolicited SMS spam is simply unacceptable. And it feels really good to give a spammer a proper two-fingered salute.
Thanks, Google, for helping me unveil & respond to the spam/scam lowlife.
Edit: Here's a thought - are there any SMS spam-filter software clients for smartphones?
The first was more serious. Two of my numbers have had examples of the "missed call" scam - someone rings you, but hangs up before you can answer. The caller-ID shows something like 0709xxxxxx. The 07 prefix tries to con you into believing it's a normal mobile number. But it's actually some other premium-rate thing & you get to pay some anonymous scammer a shedload of cash for the privilege. Luckily I smelled a rat before I returned the call, and Googled the number to discover (a) various people had had the same problem, (b) Ofcom had launched an investigation in to the company owning the number, and (c) the number was registered to company at the same address as its parent firm (with full contact details on the web). So I forwarded an additional complaint to the investigator at Ofcom, and also tried to contact the marketing director at the company concerned. Haven't heard back, but neither have a had any more such missed calls.
The second one concerns SMS spam. I hate it with a vengeance, and make 100% sure I never give my mobile number out to anyone I think might be disreputable. (One of the benefits of having a landline is the ability to enter it into any web forms you suspect may be harvested by SMS-happy marketing droids). I got two SMSs yesterday evening from some fly-by-night mobile content firm (nameless for now, I don't want to give it publicity) inviting me to download some dodgy Java app & pay £3 a week for some stupid "content", via an SMS shortcode. Oh, and it also graciously gave me the chance to "Opt out" by texting "OUT" to the same shortcode. What was ambiguous was whether this was opting out of the service itself, or just opting out of their spam database. It also didn't tell me if that itself would cost me money, or whether (like email spam) my confirming my existence would just perpetuate yet more spam as they sold on my number as "live".
Luckily, in this case, the no-hoper firm, when Googled, yielded a contact name at their London PR agency - whose other clients I speak to fairly regularly. A terse phone call & email has sent the PR guy (who I'm probably putting in a tricky position - sorry mate) trying to get an explanation from the marketing genius who thought that SMS spam was a great method to promote his service. Given he's obviously a budget holder (ie he must have employed & paid the PR agency), I've also informed him of the substantial fee I'll levy for deleting any more of his messages, and that sending any more to me automatically confirms acceptance of my terms. Dunno if that holds any legal water, but it should at least prove the point that unsolicited SMS spam is simply unacceptable. And it feels really good to give a spammer a proper two-fingered salute.
Thanks, Google, for helping me unveil & respond to the spam/scam lowlife.
Edit: Here's a thought - are there any SMS spam-filter software clients for smartphones?
First thoughts - 3 X-series
I finally got my hands on a Nokia N73 demonstrator from 3's new X-Series service the other day.
Verdict so far? 6 out of 10, I'd say. Good ideas, so-so execution, and still a tendency for 3's walled garden heritage to show its roots.
The good stuff:
- The concept, the box it comes in & the instruction manuals
- Skype works pretty well, although it seems to periodically need me to re-key my login ID. Also, there's no IM chat function - annoying as I often find myself IM'ng someone to double-check their presence status ("You there?"), as well as using Skype as my #1 or #2 IM client more generally.
The bad stuff
- Yahoo Go! is terrible. A pain to set up, then it ran OK downloading my Y! mail for about 24 hours, and now it's just stopped syncing. Last email was one I received 2 days ago and there seems to be no way to "refresh" the page. I've also got a Nokia E60 I use with T-Mobile Web'n'Walk, and the user experience of getting Y! mail (and the other Y! services) through the proper full-page HTTP web browser is much, much better.
- There's no "X-series" hotkey to get to either all the apps on the phone, or a dedicated starting page on the web.
- Where's Google? At the launch, quite a lot was made of the big G's involvement. No sign of it so far. The search defaults to Yahoo - and it starts with the UK search rather than global, which annoys me considerably, and then forces you to pick between Images, Products (trying to bloody sell me stuff again!!!!) and only then finally "Web".
- It's a right pain to get on the "real web". Various attempts have seen me diverted to WAP sites rather than the web, 3's own gateway keeps randomly asking me to sign up for an extra data subscription (!), and it needed quite a bit of configuration to stop me being diverted via 3's Planet 3 portal and have various ads for things I don't want to buy stealing my screen space.
- the N73's not the fastest device on the planet, especially for scrolling down a web page. E60 is far better.
- The process for "adapting pages for mobile browsing" is incredibly slow. Dunno if this is the browser trying to be clever, or a proxy server, and I don't care. Latency to load up this blog page? 10 seconds. There's no immediately-apparent way to configure it to stop adapting pages, either, if I decide I want the full unexpurgated web rather than its sanctimoniously-sanitised version.
So for example I fire up the browser (I think the phone has both Opera & the S60 one for some bizarre reason) and get a screen which reads "You will need the Wireless Web Add-on to access the Internet. Use the Red Key (eh?) and select Planet 3 add-ons". Or doing it another way, going via Y! search, I get a screen with "entering a chargeable content browsing area, check your tariff to see if data is included". I'm sorry, but 3's billing system should damn well check my tariff itself.
(Edit - I reckon it's Opera which is the problem. When I finally managed to force it to the S60 browser, I got a much better experience.)
Overall - not a bad start, I suppose, but a lot of work still to do. I haven't got a SlingBox, but I might try out Orb when I get a chance.
Verdict so far? 6 out of 10, I'd say. Good ideas, so-so execution, and still a tendency for 3's walled garden heritage to show its roots.
The good stuff:
- The concept, the box it comes in & the instruction manuals
- Skype works pretty well, although it seems to periodically need me to re-key my login ID. Also, there's no IM chat function - annoying as I often find myself IM'ng someone to double-check their presence status ("You there?"), as well as using Skype as my #1 or #2 IM client more generally.
The bad stuff
- Yahoo Go! is terrible. A pain to set up, then it ran OK downloading my Y! mail for about 24 hours, and now it's just stopped syncing. Last email was one I received 2 days ago and there seems to be no way to "refresh" the page. I've also got a Nokia E60 I use with T-Mobile Web'n'Walk, and the user experience of getting Y! mail (and the other Y! services) through the proper full-page HTTP web browser is much, much better.
- There's no "X-series" hotkey to get to either all the apps on the phone, or a dedicated starting page on the web.
- Where's Google? At the launch, quite a lot was made of the big G's involvement. No sign of it so far. The search defaults to Yahoo - and it starts with the UK search rather than global, which annoys me considerably, and then forces you to pick between Images, Products (trying to bloody sell me stuff again!!!!) and only then finally "Web".
- It's a right pain to get on the "real web". Various attempts have seen me diverted to WAP sites rather than the web, 3's own gateway keeps randomly asking me to sign up for an extra data subscription (!), and it needed quite a bit of configuration to stop me being diverted via 3's Planet 3 portal and have various ads for things I don't want to buy stealing my screen space.
- the N73's not the fastest device on the planet, especially for scrolling down a web page. E60 is far better.
- The process for "adapting pages for mobile browsing" is incredibly slow. Dunno if this is the browser trying to be clever, or a proxy server, and I don't care. Latency to load up this blog page? 10 seconds. There's no immediately-apparent way to configure it to stop adapting pages, either, if I decide I want the full unexpurgated web rather than its sanctimoniously-sanitised version.
So for example I fire up the browser (I think the phone has both Opera & the S60 one for some bizarre reason) and get a screen which reads "You will need the Wireless Web Add-on to access the Internet. Use the Red Key (eh?) and select Planet 3 add-ons". Or doing it another way, going via Y! search, I get a screen with "entering a chargeable content browsing area, check your tariff to see if data is included". I'm sorry, but 3's billing system should damn well check my tariff itself.
(Edit - I reckon it's Opera which is the problem. When I finally managed to force it to the S60 browser, I got a much better experience.)
Overall - not a bad start, I suppose, but a lot of work still to do. I haven't got a SlingBox, but I might try out Orb when I get a chance.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
4G.... yep, the industry is still breathing its own exhaust
I was at the Osney Media 3G LTE--> 4G yesterday & Monday, co-chairing with the ever-evangelical Tomi Ahonen, and with a fairly diverse set of speakers ranging from Ofcom & ETSI representatives through to visionaries from major operators & vendors.
Some interesting snippets:
- The "real" standards world is getting mightly irked by the misuse of the term 4G, which is seemingly bandied about by every mobile industry marketing dept lacking the imagination to come up with something clever.
- While even the standards folk admit 4G is still "vague", there is apparently a (fairly contentious) process ongoing at the ITU which will determine which technologies qualify as part of "IMT Advanced", the follow-up to "IMT 2000" (aka 3G).
- The WiMAX folk are clearly trying to crash the IMT/ITU party, firstly by submitting a request to be considered a 3G IMT-2000 technology along with UMTS, CDMA2000 etc, and secondly by lobbying early and hard for IMT-Advanced. I suspect the IMT-2000 pitch is unrealistic, but is perhaps nevertheless a really more a good exercise in enabling their lawyers to say "see? why tried to play by the rules, but they turned their backs, we're the good guys"
- Although the WiMAX Forum allows both SIM- and non-SIM authentication, the prevailing opinion seems to be toward the latter view. Sprint-Nextel won't use them, nor will WiMAX Telecom. A good thing in my view, especially as the initial incarnations of 802.11e appear to be very geared to non-phone consumer electronics devices like web tablets, MP3 players, gaming consoles, laptops etc.
- The ITU World Radio Congress at the end of the year is going to be a right laugh. I bet the world's tech lobbying industry is gearing up as we speak. The thorniest issues will be reclaiming some "digital dividend" from the broadcast industry, with lots of telecom folk pointing to the rise of "unicasting" and who's going to watch HDTV, anyway? Then there's how much more spectrum should be licence-exempt for future WiFi-esque developments - and whether Ofcom & others can convince the world of the benefits of tech-neutrality (apparently now referred to as WAPECS in Europe. Nice acronym...)
- Speaking of tech-neutrality, another elephant in the room was IPR. There seems to be a fairly strong argument that whatever 4G turns out to be, we're going to try to make sure that it hasn't been patented up to the eyeballs. Joe Barrett from Qualcomm was busy ensuring us of the Big Q's honourable intentions, and challenging Nokia, Ericsson & co to be as transparent in their royalty rates.
Now, the downside. I thought we'd killed the stupid "everything will be wireless, and integrated into your phone" mantra. Yet I still encounter numerous examples of people breathing their own exhaust fumes, usually flavoured with scent of Japan and Korea. While I am certainly one of the believers in SMS as an unstoppable train, I certainly don't buy the notion that "the web will migrate to the mobile". No, not even in emerging countries. There was also assorted wince-inducing blather about other niche/useless mobile enhancements like mobile search, micropayments, widgets and so on.
The conference had assorted proponents of this - obviously Tomi whose enthusiasm I respect, but also assorted others exhorting faith among the mobile planners and strategists. Loads of out-of-context quotes ("mobile is the future" XYZ CEO, April 2005) and misinterpreted/poorly-defined forecasts.
I simply do not believe any of this. Experience has shown that most Internet innovation takes account of the fastest, flattest-rate connections, the largest screens and the fastest processors. Yes, Korea has done wonderful things with mobile communities like CyWorld. But eBay, Skype, YouTube & blogging absolutely would not have occurred without PCs.
The notion that "PCs are for old people" and that anyone under 21 would rather use the web on a mobile phone is unspeakably ludicrous. Younger people are probably the most intensive users of PCs, outside of high-end business activities like CAD design. Every kid who sends 300 SMS per day probably also has a PC with 20 simultaneous IM sessions on the monitor, a richly-customised full-screen MySpace page, and assorted games requiring DVDs & a graphics card that would put Pixar to shame.
Let me put this succintly. Japan and Korea are different. They both have 2 main mobile operators plus one smaller one, they both have no heritage of prepay, heavy control by operators over handset requirements, better spectrum allocations than much of Europe - and, critically, assorted social/cultural issues. You can walk around Seoul or Tokyo with $1000 of phone & other electronics on you, use it in public, and not be worried that it's going to be stolen. Try the same in Barcelona, Nairobi, Rio or, hell, even parts of London.
If you're designing 4G around the assumption that the web is somehow magically going to transform itself to being mostly mobile-centric in 10 years time, and all the cool Web 2.0 / Web 3.0 stuff is yours for the taking, you're mad.
Some interesting snippets:
- The "real" standards world is getting mightly irked by the misuse of the term 4G, which is seemingly bandied about by every mobile industry marketing dept lacking the imagination to come up with something clever.
- While even the standards folk admit 4G is still "vague", there is apparently a (fairly contentious) process ongoing at the ITU which will determine which technologies qualify as part of "IMT Advanced", the follow-up to "IMT 2000" (aka 3G).
- The WiMAX folk are clearly trying to crash the IMT/ITU party, firstly by submitting a request to be considered a 3G IMT-2000 technology along with UMTS, CDMA2000 etc, and secondly by lobbying early and hard for IMT-Advanced. I suspect the IMT-2000 pitch is unrealistic, but is perhaps nevertheless a really more a good exercise in enabling their lawyers to say "see? why tried to play by the rules, but they turned their backs, we're the good guys"
- Although the WiMAX Forum allows both SIM- and non-SIM authentication, the prevailing opinion seems to be toward the latter view. Sprint-Nextel won't use them, nor will WiMAX Telecom. A good thing in my view, especially as the initial incarnations of 802.11e appear to be very geared to non-phone consumer electronics devices like web tablets, MP3 players, gaming consoles, laptops etc.
- The ITU World Radio Congress at the end of the year is going to be a right laugh. I bet the world's tech lobbying industry is gearing up as we speak. The thorniest issues will be reclaiming some "digital dividend" from the broadcast industry, with lots of telecom folk pointing to the rise of "unicasting" and who's going to watch HDTV, anyway? Then there's how much more spectrum should be licence-exempt for future WiFi-esque developments - and whether Ofcom & others can convince the world of the benefits of tech-neutrality (apparently now referred to as WAPECS in Europe. Nice acronym...)
- Speaking of tech-neutrality, another elephant in the room was IPR. There seems to be a fairly strong argument that whatever 4G turns out to be, we're going to try to make sure that it hasn't been patented up to the eyeballs. Joe Barrett from Qualcomm was busy ensuring us of the Big Q's honourable intentions, and challenging Nokia, Ericsson & co to be as transparent in their royalty rates.
Now, the downside. I thought we'd killed the stupid "everything will be wireless, and integrated into your phone" mantra. Yet I still encounter numerous examples of people breathing their own exhaust fumes, usually flavoured with scent of Japan and Korea. While I am certainly one of the believers in SMS as an unstoppable train, I certainly don't buy the notion that "the web will migrate to the mobile". No, not even in emerging countries. There was also assorted wince-inducing blather about other niche/useless mobile enhancements like mobile search, micropayments, widgets and so on.
The conference had assorted proponents of this - obviously Tomi whose enthusiasm I respect, but also assorted others exhorting faith among the mobile planners and strategists. Loads of out-of-context quotes ("mobile is the future" XYZ CEO, April 2005) and misinterpreted/poorly-defined forecasts.
I simply do not believe any of this. Experience has shown that most Internet innovation takes account of the fastest, flattest-rate connections, the largest screens and the fastest processors. Yes, Korea has done wonderful things with mobile communities like CyWorld. But eBay, Skype, YouTube & blogging absolutely would not have occurred without PCs.
The notion that "PCs are for old people" and that anyone under 21 would rather use the web on a mobile phone is unspeakably ludicrous. Younger people are probably the most intensive users of PCs, outside of high-end business activities like CAD design. Every kid who sends 300 SMS per day probably also has a PC with 20 simultaneous IM sessions on the monitor, a richly-customised full-screen MySpace page, and assorted games requiring DVDs & a graphics card that would put Pixar to shame.
Let me put this succintly. Japan and Korea are different. They both have 2 main mobile operators plus one smaller one, they both have no heritage of prepay, heavy control by operators over handset requirements, better spectrum allocations than much of Europe - and, critically, assorted social/cultural issues. You can walk around Seoul or Tokyo with $1000 of phone & other electronics on you, use it in public, and not be worried that it's going to be stolen. Try the same in Barcelona, Nairobi, Rio or, hell, even parts of London.
If you're designing 4G around the assumption that the web is somehow magically going to transform itself to being mostly mobile-centric in 10 years time, and all the cool Web 2.0 / Web 3.0 stuff is yours for the taking, you're mad.
Hotel WiFi - sign the petition
Nice one Silicon.com - I applaud your anti-ripoff petition for hotel WiFi.
I'd like to add a couple of extra points:
- Hotels should charge meeting/conference organisers for WiFi on a reasonable basis. Either included as part of the room rental, or roughly on a par with the cost of tea-and-biscuits or bottled-water-and-mints.
- Where hotels are new or refurbished, they should make sure that cellular coverage is provided throughout the building, using repeaters/DAS systems or similar.
I was at the Osney Media 3G LTE->4G conference yesterday, in the basement of the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch in London. Beautifully refurbished at a cost of £90m last year apparently. And only 15min walk from my house, so really convenient. So it's a pity that I have to suggest that all tech conference companies boycott the place, on account of its total lack of cellular coverage in the basement business centre, and its stupid £15 per day WiFi (that takes ages for non-guests to pay as they have to enter & print a full invoice).
(I was also going to nominate the XXXX Hotel in central London, especially as the reception informed me they'd "run out of vouchers" for the £10 WiFi. But then one of their tech guys gave me a free access code instead, so it'd be churlish to name them).
I'd like to add a couple of extra points:
- Hotels should charge meeting/conference organisers for WiFi on a reasonable basis. Either included as part of the room rental, or roughly on a par with the cost of tea-and-biscuits or bottled-water-and-mints.
- Where hotels are new or refurbished, they should make sure that cellular coverage is provided throughout the building, using repeaters/DAS systems or similar.
I was at the Osney Media 3G LTE->4G conference yesterday, in the basement of the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch in London. Beautifully refurbished at a cost of £90m last year apparently. And only 15min walk from my house, so really convenient. So it's a pity that I have to suggest that all tech conference companies boycott the place, on account of its total lack of cellular coverage in the basement business centre, and its stupid £15 per day WiFi (that takes ages for non-guests to pay as they have to enter & print a full invoice).
(I was also going to nominate the XXXX Hotel in central London, especially as the reception informed me they'd "run out of vouchers" for the £10 WiFi. But then one of their tech guys gave me a free access code instead, so it'd be churlish to name them).
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Broadband and MVNOs - the branding & differentiation paradox
How many brands do you have a strong connection with? Favourite TV channel? Make of car? Supermarket? A couple of designer clothing labels? Football team? Frequent flyer consortium?
I'll guess half a dozen, plus another few that you have billing/commercial connections to - your bank, your mobile operator, your fixed/broadband company, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft.
Now, consider that various of these launch MVNOs, or white-label broadband connectivity. Which one do you choose?
Here's the paradox. If it's "branding lite" with few extra services & add-ons, it doesn't matter that much. It's whichever catches your eye at the appropriate time. Basically, it's dressing up something commoditised in a colour you like. You pick one, but don't spend much extra as the service is basically the normal one.
But if it's fuller branding "experience", with a lot of unique differentiated value-adds in terms of content or commerce, which of your favourite brands do you choose? That's the problem - as long as they're not too expensive, you'll want two or more. You don't choose between your favourite airline and your favourite football team, if tickets for both are cheap.
So there's the paradox - if you can really differentiate a branded technology experience, you'd better be prepared to share it & deal with messy interoperability issues.
I'll guess half a dozen, plus another few that you have billing/commercial connections to - your bank, your mobile operator, your fixed/broadband company, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft.
Now, consider that various of these launch MVNOs, or white-label broadband connectivity. Which one do you choose?
Here's the paradox. If it's "branding lite" with few extra services & add-ons, it doesn't matter that much. It's whichever catches your eye at the appropriate time. Basically, it's dressing up something commoditised in a colour you like. You pick one, but don't spend much extra as the service is basically the normal one.
But if it's fuller branding "experience", with a lot of unique differentiated value-adds in terms of content or commerce, which of your favourite brands do you choose? That's the problem - as long as they're not too expensive, you'll want two or more. You don't choose between your favourite airline and your favourite football team, if tickets for both are cheap.
So there's the paradox - if you can really differentiate a branded technology experience, you'd better be prepared to share it & deal with messy interoperability issues.
Friday, January 26, 2007
WiFi and dual-mode phone sales
I see that one of my analyst peers has released a report on WiFi phone shipments. Always tricky to interpret actual data from a press release, as it never has the full set of definitions / assumptions, but I'm scratching my head about a couple of things.
"Samsung leads in dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue market share, followed by Nokia"
This seems unlikely, unless it specifically excludes smartphones from the definition of "handset". Nokia announced in its results yesterday that "The Eseries sold almost 2 million units since its introduction in the second quarter 2006.", presumably accounting for a fairly large chunk of the total €1bn sales of its Enterprise business unit. The E60, E61 and E70 have WiFi, while the E50 and E62 don't - and it seems to be the E61 that's the winner at present, which I guess goes for around $300 ex-factory price. Added to its N80, 6136 & other WiFi-based dual-modes, I'd be surprised if it hasn't shipped $500m+ on its own. I suspect HTC's in the same ballpark too with its various PDA-style devices, many of which have WiFi. Apart from the Samsung P200 and T709 UMA versions (which have probably shipped <100k units) I can't see where it's getting the volume, unless it's selling a shedload of WiFi/CDMA devices in Korea .
"Samsung leads in dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue market share, followed by Nokia"
This seems unlikely, unless it specifically excludes smartphones from the definition of "handset". Nokia announced in its results yesterday that "The Eseries sold almost 2 million units since its introduction in the second quarter 2006.", presumably accounting for a fairly large chunk of the total €1bn sales of its Enterprise business unit. The E60, E61 and E70 have WiFi, while the E50 and E62 don't - and it seems to be the E61 that's the winner at present, which I guess goes for around $300 ex-factory price. Added to its N80, 6136 & other WiFi-based dual-modes, I'd be surprised if it hasn't shipped $500m+ on its own. I suspect HTC's in the same ballpark too with its various PDA-style devices, many of which have WiFi. Apart from the Samsung P200 and T709 UMA versions (which have probably shipped <100k units) I can't see where it's getting the volume, unless it's selling a shedload of WiFi/CDMA devices in Korea .
Motion sensors - the next big thing in mobile phones?
I have a hunch, which unfortunately I don't have time to research & turn into a full report at the moment. So rather than let someone else steal my thunder, I'll blog about it instead.
I think the coolest thing about the iPhone isn't the multitouch screen or the industrial design, it's the motion sensor. No, the iPhone isn't alone - the Nokia 5500 has one too ("Nokia plans to introduce other phones that use 3D-motion-sensor technology in the near future"), and I've seen references on the web to some others - in particular, it wouldn't surprise me if some local-only Japanese or Korean devices have them. Then of course there's the Nintendo Wii as well.
I'll take a punt here & predict that motion sensors will become pervasive surprisingly quickly, and that we're only at the tip of the iceberg in understanding the applications. Sure, we know we can use it as a gaming controller, or to detect which way up the screen should be displayed if the device is held horizontally/vertically, or to monitor your sporting achievements. But I reckon there's a lot more to come.
I've seen quite a few references to motion sensors being used to recognise someone's walking pattern. The suggestion is to use this as an anti-theft "locking" function - someone half-inches your dog & bone, and the tea leaf's different gait alerts the phone to prompt you for a password. (OK, sorry about the rhyming slang, it's Friday...).
But I reckon the biggest thing is that it could appeal to operators as well as being used for "local" uses like the ones above. Given that operators specify (and certify and often subsidise) many handsets, having something that has dual-appeal both direct to the end-user for applications, and to the operator for services as well is likely to be a winner. It's why cameras took off (User: takes snaps; Operator (in theory!) gets MMS/email revenue) or even Bluetooth (User: use headset in car safely. Operator: more minutes of use). And it's one of the reasons why WiFi attach rates in handsets haven't grown faster - it's often difficult for the user to exploit the WiFi for their own purposes as well as the operator's (more on this in another post).
So, what could be motion-sensor based services? I reckon it comes back to a theme I'm developing about "context" being more important than "content". If operators get access to the sensor APIs, they could determine a lot more about how you want to communicate. It should be possible for an advanced presence function to have status descriptions like "walking", "on a train", "in a car" and so on. How about a service which uses multi-context data - if the phone's on charge and there's been no vibration consistent with footsteps for an hour, then there's a good probability that the user is either out of the room, or asleep. Or which detects the combination of a car's movement "fingerprint" plus registers a Bluetooth headset being used - inference being that the user won't be able to look at the screen, and therefore sends video calls straight to the mailbox.
These are just of the top of my head. Yes, all of these could suffer horribly from false-positives and false-negatives. I've said before how much I hate technology which tries to second-guess me, unless it's done really well (eg Google's "did you mean...." mistype-correction function).
I'll keep watching on this, as the more I think about it, motion-sensing is a key part of the multicontext environment which will swiftly replace the current narrow obsessions with content & multimedia on mobile devices. If I was part of the Symbian or Windows Mobile teams, I'd make sure I had an open sensor API on my near-term roadmaps, and I'd suggest the JCP gets working on a Java one too....
PS - just noticed that this handset-centric sensor company got more funding 2 weeks ago. Nice to know I'm looking ahead at the same time as the VCs (who include Qualcomm, interestingly)....
PS2 - just seen this very detailed article - if the price point is already at the $2 level, and they look small enough to fit in a phone, I reckon this is a done deal. I can see this getting to 10-20% penetration in the next 3 years, ie >100m devices. Get writing, apps developers.....
I think the coolest thing about the iPhone isn't the multitouch screen or the industrial design, it's the motion sensor. No, the iPhone isn't alone - the Nokia 5500 has one too ("Nokia plans to introduce other phones that use 3D-motion-sensor technology in the near future"), and I've seen references on the web to some others - in particular, it wouldn't surprise me if some local-only Japanese or Korean devices have them. Then of course there's the Nintendo Wii as well.
I'll take a punt here & predict that motion sensors will become pervasive surprisingly quickly, and that we're only at the tip of the iceberg in understanding the applications. Sure, we know we can use it as a gaming controller, or to detect which way up the screen should be displayed if the device is held horizontally/vertically, or to monitor your sporting achievements. But I reckon there's a lot more to come.
I've seen quite a few references to motion sensors being used to recognise someone's walking pattern. The suggestion is to use this as an anti-theft "locking" function - someone half-inches your dog & bone, and the tea leaf's different gait alerts the phone to prompt you for a password. (OK, sorry about the rhyming slang, it's Friday...).
But I reckon the biggest thing is that it could appeal to operators as well as being used for "local" uses like the ones above. Given that operators specify (and certify and often subsidise) many handsets, having something that has dual-appeal both direct to the end-user for applications, and to the operator for services as well is likely to be a winner. It's why cameras took off (User: takes snaps; Operator (in theory!) gets MMS/email revenue) or even Bluetooth (User: use headset in car safely. Operator: more minutes of use). And it's one of the reasons why WiFi attach rates in handsets haven't grown faster - it's often difficult for the user to exploit the WiFi for their own purposes as well as the operator's (more on this in another post).
So, what could be motion-sensor based services? I reckon it comes back to a theme I'm developing about "context" being more important than "content". If operators get access to the sensor APIs, they could determine a lot more about how you want to communicate. It should be possible for an advanced presence function to have status descriptions like "walking", "on a train", "in a car" and so on. How about a service which uses multi-context data - if the phone's on charge and there's been no vibration consistent with footsteps for an hour, then there's a good probability that the user is either out of the room, or asleep. Or which detects the combination of a car's movement "fingerprint" plus registers a Bluetooth headset being used - inference being that the user won't be able to look at the screen, and therefore sends video calls straight to the mailbox.
These are just of the top of my head. Yes, all of these could suffer horribly from false-positives and false-negatives. I've said before how much I hate technology which tries to second-guess me, unless it's done really well (eg Google's "did you mean...." mistype-correction function).
I'll keep watching on this, as the more I think about it, motion-sensing is a key part of the multicontext environment which will swiftly replace the current narrow obsessions with content & multimedia on mobile devices. If I was part of the Symbian or Windows Mobile teams, I'd make sure I had an open sensor API on my near-term roadmaps, and I'd suggest the JCP gets working on a Java one too....
PS - just noticed that this handset-centric sensor company got more funding 2 weeks ago. Nice to know I'm looking ahead at the same time as the VCs (who include Qualcomm, interestingly)....
PS2 - just seen this very detailed article - if the price point is already at the $2 level, and they look small enough to fit in a phone, I reckon this is a done deal. I can see this getting to 10-20% penetration in the next 3 years, ie >100m devices. Get writing, apps developers.....
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Femtocells - will they really work with absolutely-standard phones?
... sure, they will technically, but what about the realities of the usage case?
I'm just sitting at the Mobile Converged Devices conference in London, and a few people (including myself & a representative of Ubiquisys) have commented about whether femto's might obviate the need for the complexity of WiFi-based dualmode phones.
But listening to some of the operators & vendors presenting, it's struck me that some of the real-world practical issues of FMC will probably apply to femto's - and their users' handsets - as well.
For example - should a handset have a display icon to demonstrate it's on the femto rather than the macro network? An audio tone? Given that many operators are thinking of different tariffs or applications for indoor use, that might be important. Should any of the applications (eg music players, browsers etc) be made aware that speed/price/latency/context (eg indoor vs outdoor) might have changed? Should the user somehow be notified if the femto isn't working (perhaps if it's unplugged when someone's doing the hoovering....)?
None of this is that tricky - but it could shave a few months off the ultimate time-to-market if it's considered now, rather than waiting for the results of a consumer trial & needing iteration at that point.
(BTW - If you're an operator thinking about femtos, and you want to short-circuit the "tuning and tweaking" phase by identifying probable issues upfront, you know who to contact...)
I'm just sitting at the Mobile Converged Devices conference in London, and a few people (including myself & a representative of Ubiquisys) have commented about whether femto's might obviate the need for the complexity of WiFi-based dualmode phones.
But listening to some of the operators & vendors presenting, it's struck me that some of the real-world practical issues of FMC will probably apply to femto's - and their users' handsets - as well.
For example - should a handset have a display icon to demonstrate it's on the femto rather than the macro network? An audio tone? Given that many operators are thinking of different tariffs or applications for indoor use, that might be important. Should any of the applications (eg music players, browsers etc) be made aware that speed/price/latency/context (eg indoor vs outdoor) might have changed? Should the user somehow be notified if the femto isn't working (perhaps if it's unplugged when someone's doing the hoovering....)?
None of this is that tricky - but it could shave a few months off the ultimate time-to-market if it's considered now, rather than waiting for the results of a consumer trial & needing iteration at that point.
(BTW - If you're an operator thinking about femtos, and you want to short-circuit the "tuning and tweaking" phase by identifying probable issues upfront, you know who to contact...)
3GSM fatigue
It's still almost a month away, but I'm already exhausted by 3GSM.
I've just looked at my calendar to find that I already have 36 briefings, meetings, dinners & other events booked in, plus I know I have assorted others "pending" and I've already had to turn away some interesting (and some not-so interesting) invitations. I reckon I'm getting around 5-8 inbound event requests or notifications per day at the moment - and that's without GSMA letting analysts register as media on the system.
Some tips for any other latecomers thinking of sending out "Are you at 3GSM?" requests to analysts:
- Don't organise daytime events offsite. At all. If you're really important I might take the 3mins to walk over the Plaza de Espanya to that big hotel, but if you think I'm taking a coach or metro for 40mins somewhere else.....
- Lowest on the pecking order are press conferences and combined press+analyst briefings. These are invariably too stage managed, oriented around product launches rather than strategy, and designed to stop analysts asking too many tricky questions in Q&A time. These are the first things I'll skip or cancel if I get clashes
- 1 hour is about right - enough time for you to give me blurb about whatever-it-is you're announcing, and for me to ask what I want to know, plus an opportunity to chat a bit about the bigger picture, what's hot/cool .... and still have 5 min buffers at each end to transit between meetings
- PR people: if your client is based in London, or if the execs come through here regularly, there's no point in me travelling 700 miles to see them somewhere else
- Read this blog. If there's stuff I've never written about, or doesn't fit with my typical research themes, I'm probably not interested in it. Examples - obscure electronic subcomponents, yet another me-too mobile IM/email client, most "content" stuff. Caveat: if you've got a really cool party, I might be persuaded, like that company last year that had a live gig by Juliette Lewis & her band. I forget their name......
I've just looked at my calendar to find that I already have 36 briefings, meetings, dinners & other events booked in, plus I know I have assorted others "pending" and I've already had to turn away some interesting (and some not-so interesting) invitations. I reckon I'm getting around 5-8 inbound event requests or notifications per day at the moment - and that's without GSMA letting analysts register as media on the system.
Some tips for any other latecomers thinking of sending out "Are you at 3GSM?" requests to analysts:
- Don't organise daytime events offsite. At all. If you're really important I might take the 3mins to walk over the Plaza de Espanya to that big hotel, but if you think I'm taking a coach or metro for 40mins somewhere else.....
- Lowest on the pecking order are press conferences and combined press+analyst briefings. These are invariably too stage managed, oriented around product launches rather than strategy, and designed to stop analysts asking too many tricky questions in Q&A time. These are the first things I'll skip or cancel if I get clashes
- 1 hour is about right - enough time for you to give me blurb about whatever-it-is you're announcing, and for me to ask what I want to know, plus an opportunity to chat a bit about the bigger picture, what's hot/cool .... and still have 5 min buffers at each end to transit between meetings
- PR people: if your client is based in London, or if the execs come through here regularly, there's no point in me travelling 700 miles to see them somewhere else
- Read this blog. If there's stuff I've never written about, or doesn't fit with my typical research themes, I'm probably not interested in it. Examples - obscure electronic subcomponents, yet another me-too mobile IM/email client, most "content" stuff. Caveat: if you've got a really cool party, I might be persuaded, like that company last year that had a live gig by Juliette Lewis & her band. I forget their name......
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Alternatives to end-to-end QoS: how to monetise smart pipes
Fantastic post over at Telco 2.0 today. Talking about simplifying the architecture behind IMS and other QoS-managed networks, by virtue of simply charging different "entry fees" at the edge of the network.
It always amazes me that a lot of people in the telecom industry completely fail to understand how yield management works in the airline industry "Oh, our network will enable you to give first-class service to out premium customers, and business-class for realtime traffic like voice". That misses out on the clever part - the fare code system. Making different amounts of money from exactly the same product. If I'm in economy with a V-class ticket, and you're sitting next to me with a Y-class, you will have paid a different amount, but you'll still get the same meal and legroom. (OK with some tickets you get a bit more flexibility re: cancellation & changes). It's partly to do with capacity - selling the cheapest seats first - but also to do with distribution (ie which travel agent). Budget airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet can be even cleverer about all of this, too, dynamically changing their pricing at a whim, and upselling with new "products" like early boarding.
I'm doing some research on wireless VoIP at the moment, and it still amazes me how primitive much of the rhetoric around QoS is. "Oh, it's voice, so it absolutely must have priority". Nonsense - you should be differentiating voice traffic based on context: your users do. I'll use SkypeOut for a briefing call with a company in the US that wants to pitch its strategy to me, but I'll use my landline if it's a client who's actually paying me money.
It always amazes me that a lot of people in the telecom industry completely fail to understand how yield management works in the airline industry "Oh, our network will enable you to give first-class service to out premium customers, and business-class for realtime traffic like voice". That misses out on the clever part - the fare code system. Making different amounts of money from exactly the same product. If I'm in economy with a V-class ticket, and you're sitting next to me with a Y-class, you will have paid a different amount, but you'll still get the same meal and legroom. (OK with some tickets you get a bit more flexibility re: cancellation & changes). It's partly to do with capacity - selling the cheapest seats first - but also to do with distribution (ie which travel agent). Budget airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet can be even cleverer about all of this, too, dynamically changing their pricing at a whim, and upselling with new "products" like early boarding.
I'm doing some research on wireless VoIP at the moment, and it still amazes me how primitive much of the rhetoric around QoS is. "Oh, it's voice, so it absolutely must have priority". Nonsense - you should be differentiating voice traffic based on context: your users do. I'll use SkypeOut for a briefing call with a company in the US that wants to pitch its strategy to me, but I'll use my landline if it's a client who's actually paying me money.
Monday, January 22, 2007
So exactly what is a byte when transmitted via a mobile data service?
Now, possibly this question will be irrelevant in a couple of years' time if we all move to flatrate mobile data (including roaming), but for now, I'm surprised it's an issue that hasn't cropped up more often.
I've just got a press release from LogicaCMG about their web compression ("optimisation") product which is essentially a proxy server which squeezes down web images & generally monkeys around with content to make it render better on a small screen. No, this isn't a particularly new concept, various others have done it in a similar way, or via on-device client software like the Opera Mini client/server approach. Yes, there's also a bunch of question about whether I, the user, am happy (or even know that) my expected pristine Internet experience is being filtered & squished & re-ordered according to what the network thinks I'd prefer, if I can get it a bit quicker. That's a topic for another day (for example, how does it know what screen resolution I can display? does it adjust for what browser I'm using? what happens with Flash and AJAX and all that good stuff?)
But how about the question of what this - and other techniques, think caching or multicast - means for the billable traffic flow. Am I billed for the actual bits that go over the air to my phone? Or the raw pre-optimised content going into the server? What about if some of the content is cached locally at the base station? do I & multiple others pay for that as well? (various people have suggested that this is an option). Or if some stuff gets multicast? Is there any "overhead" that I don't get to use or even see - am I paying for that too? No big deal if it's flatrate of course, but I pain if it's €10 a MB on international 3G. Or if it's a mid-size bundle, how do I know my consumption is being judged accurately?
I'm reminded of my Yahoo mail. I know that if I get a 3MB mail attachment with a 2-line text email, for some reason Yahoo claims that I received 4MB or 4.5MB in total into my inbox. Eh? As I'm not paying for it, I'm not really bothered. But I certainly would if a mobile operator tried to pull the same trick & then charge me by volume.
Now, lots of phones have a data "meter" which shows total traffic in & out - but it doesn't generally split this by port number, so you don't know what's going to a "free" application (from the data traffic perspective) like MMS or even the operator portal site, and what's charged at off-portal rates.
I would have thought a 3rd-party solution for this sort of thing would be highly relevant for applications like push email, especially for businesses whose staff roam a lot. Do you have an audit trail for your roaming traffic?
I've just got a press release from LogicaCMG about their web compression ("optimisation") product which is essentially a proxy server which squeezes down web images & generally monkeys around with content to make it render better on a small screen. No, this isn't a particularly new concept, various others have done it in a similar way, or via on-device client software like the Opera Mini client/server approach. Yes, there's also a bunch of question about whether I, the user, am happy (or even know that) my expected pristine Internet experience is being filtered & squished & re-ordered according to what the network thinks I'd prefer, if I can get it a bit quicker. That's a topic for another day (for example, how does it know what screen resolution I can display? does it adjust for what browser I'm using? what happens with Flash and AJAX and all that good stuff?)
But how about the question of what this - and other techniques, think caching or multicast - means for the billable traffic flow. Am I billed for the actual bits that go over the air to my phone? Or the raw pre-optimised content going into the server? What about if some of the content is cached locally at the base station? do I & multiple others pay for that as well? (various people have suggested that this is an option). Or if some stuff gets multicast? Is there any "overhead" that I don't get to use or even see - am I paying for that too? No big deal if it's flatrate of course, but I pain if it's €10 a MB on international 3G. Or if it's a mid-size bundle, how do I know my consumption is being judged accurately?
I'm reminded of my Yahoo mail. I know that if I get a 3MB mail attachment with a 2-line text email, for some reason Yahoo claims that I received 4MB or 4.5MB in total into my inbox. Eh? As I'm not paying for it, I'm not really bothered. But I certainly would if a mobile operator tried to pull the same trick & then charge me by volume.
Now, lots of phones have a data "meter" which shows total traffic in & out - but it doesn't generally split this by port number, so you don't know what's going to a "free" application (from the data traffic perspective) like MMS or even the operator portal site, and what's charged at off-portal rates.
I would have thought a 3rd-party solution for this sort of thing would be highly relevant for applications like push email, especially for businesses whose staff roam a lot. Do you have an audit trail for your roaming traffic?
Thursday, January 18, 2007
iPods and musicphones
The prolific Tomi Ahonen has a couple of viciously-detailed posts about the iPod's fall from prominence in comparison with music-capable mobile phones. It's pretty difficult to argue with the main thrust of his argument.
My one over-riding question though.... exactly where ARE these 400m active musicphone users, outside of Japan or Korea?
I'm struggling to think of a country I've visited in the last 12 months (out of I guess 20 or so) where "identifiable" MP3 listeners in cafes/public transport were predominantly phone-based. Forget the surveys for a moment, and think about what you actually see in real life. I don't mean white earbuds, lots of non-Apple devices have them, but actually people you can see selecting tracks, changing the volume and so on. Sure, there's a fair few SonyEricssons being used, and a susprising number of standalone non-Apple players, but I honestly don't see that many RAZRs, Chocolates or Nokias being used with headphones.
I know the UK is an Apple stronghold, so I realise that real-world empirical observations of music listeners on London's Tube (I'd guess 4:1 in iPod's favour) aren't globally representative. so I'd be interested if any of other readers around the world could do a "straw poll" of MP3 listeners they see on their daily commute or around college.
I also disagree with Tomi's stance on using the mobile as the centre of your "music life" rather than a PC. Apart from the easier user interface, faster/cheaper broadband and greater storage, I have to believe that most active music-lovers will treat unfettered access to iTunes, Amazon, bands on Myspace and assorted streaming services as much more usable on a PC, irrespective of their preference for iPod or musicphone.
One other thing.... what happens when today's downloaded music purchasers switch operators or upgrade handsets & lose some of their content because it's DRM-locked to that phone? Will we see a sudden clamour for "Content Portability" laws to go along with number portability?
Update
OK, I don't want to start a statistical flame war, but I see that Tomi has updated his blog to give some ests of geographic split of where the supposed 400m musicphone users are. Now, I actually think his underlying message that the iPod's domination is over is sort-of right, especially in countries which Apple's pricing or language limitations put it out of contention. But I do reckon he's still exaggerating the importance of musicphones quite substantially.
Now I delve into it, I think this 400m number is way out. Its based on an assumption that 15% of worldwide handset users listen to MP3s. But the Continental Research report he cites is UK-only, not worldwide, based on around 2400 responses. Further, based on the write-up in this article only 15% of these 2400 people had listened to an MP3 file on their phone in the last 12 months, of whom only 70% used it at least weekly (ie 10% overall), but only 13% on a daily basis.
Let's go with the weekly figure as a reasonable indicator of "active usage", and assume that Continental's sampling methodology is rigorously representative of the market as a whole, despite the rather cheap price of its report. That gives 10% of UK mobile users listening to music on phones regularly - ie about 5m people (or 1m using them daily using the other figure). Personally, I still don't think this reconciles well with my own empirical observations of peoples' behaviour in the UK, where I reckon I see around 4x iPod users vs. musicphone+other MP3 users - and no way are there 20m iPod users in the UK!
I don't have enough knowledge about the Chinese market to say whether 90m is reasonable, but I'd guess that the German & especially Spanish figures (14m out of 40m total population) look a too high as well (I have an "on the ground" anecdotal comment on my own blog from Madrid saying that musicphone usage is pretty rare, so I can't believe that 1 in 3 people of all ages is a regular user).
If I had to make a punt, and given that the UK (outside of Korea & Japan) is probably comparatively high-usage than most places, I'd estimate that a more realistic worldwide number is 4-6% of mobile users are regular musicphone listeners, ie around 130m, rather than 400m, with probably only 3-4% for non-Korea/Japan markets. Observationally, I'd say this seems to feel "about right" as well.
Still a good number cf. iPods but certainly it's not as clear-cut a ratio as he suggest.s
My one over-riding question though.... exactly where ARE these 400m active musicphone users, outside of Japan or Korea?
I'm struggling to think of a country I've visited in the last 12 months (out of I guess 20 or so) where "identifiable" MP3 listeners in cafes/public transport were predominantly phone-based. Forget the surveys for a moment, and think about what you actually see in real life. I don't mean white earbuds, lots of non-Apple devices have them, but actually people you can see selecting tracks, changing the volume and so on. Sure, there's a fair few SonyEricssons being used, and a susprising number of standalone non-Apple players, but I honestly don't see that many RAZRs, Chocolates or Nokias being used with headphones.
I know the UK is an Apple stronghold, so I realise that real-world empirical observations of music listeners on London's Tube (I'd guess 4:1 in iPod's favour) aren't globally representative. so I'd be interested if any of other readers around the world could do a "straw poll" of MP3 listeners they see on their daily commute or around college.
I also disagree with Tomi's stance on using the mobile as the centre of your "music life" rather than a PC. Apart from the easier user interface, faster/cheaper broadband and greater storage, I have to believe that most active music-lovers will treat unfettered access to iTunes, Amazon, bands on Myspace and assorted streaming services as much more usable on a PC, irrespective of their preference for iPod or musicphone.
One other thing.... what happens when today's downloaded music purchasers switch operators or upgrade handsets & lose some of their content because it's DRM-locked to that phone? Will we see a sudden clamour for "Content Portability" laws to go along with number portability?
Update
OK, I don't want to start a statistical flame war, but I see that Tomi has updated his blog to give some ests of geographic split of where the supposed 400m musicphone users are. Now, I actually think his underlying message that the iPod's domination is over is sort-of right, especially in countries which Apple's pricing or language limitations put it out of contention. But I do reckon he's still exaggerating the importance of musicphones quite substantially.
Now I delve into it, I think this 400m number is way out. Its based on an assumption that 15% of worldwide handset users listen to MP3s. But the Continental Research report he cites is UK-only, not worldwide, based on around 2400 responses. Further, based on the write-up in this article only 15% of these 2400 people had listened to an MP3 file on their phone in the last 12 months, of whom only 70% used it at least weekly (ie 10% overall), but only 13% on a daily basis.
Let's go with the weekly figure as a reasonable indicator of "active usage", and assume that Continental's sampling methodology is rigorously representative of the market as a whole, despite the rather cheap price of its report. That gives 10% of UK mobile users listening to music on phones regularly - ie about 5m people (or 1m using them daily using the other figure). Personally, I still don't think this reconciles well with my own empirical observations of peoples' behaviour in the UK, where I reckon I see around 4x iPod users vs. musicphone+other MP3 users - and no way are there 20m iPod users in the UK!
I don't have enough knowledge about the Chinese market to say whether 90m is reasonable, but I'd guess that the German & especially Spanish figures (14m out of 40m total population) look a too high as well (I have an "on the ground" anecdotal comment on my own blog from Madrid saying that musicphone usage is pretty rare, so I can't believe that 1 in 3 people of all ages is a regular user).
If I had to make a punt, and given that the UK (outside of Korea & Japan) is probably comparatively high-usage than most places, I'd estimate that a more realistic worldwide number is 4-6% of mobile users are regular musicphone listeners, ie around 130m, rather than 400m, with probably only 3-4% for non-Korea/Japan markets. Observationally, I'd say this seems to feel "about right" as well.
Still a good number cf. iPods but certainly it's not as clear-cut a ratio as he suggest.s
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Fudging the numbers, part 2
Last summer I wrote a post called "Fudging the numbers", which looked through some of the statistical dirty laundry of the mobile industry. Time for a follow-up, methinks....
11. "X% of handset owners use feature Y or service Z"
Fudge: How often do they use it? Hourly? Monthly? Once? What do they use it for?
12. X million musicphones were sold
Fudge: What's a musicphone? One which can play long audio files? One with a dedicated music player & library software suite? One optimised for music, or one which just happens to have a software client buried down in the entertainment menu somewhere? One with dedicated buttons (play/stop etc)? Or maybe just one with an FM Radio, not an MP3 capability?
13. 3G phone shipments vs. 3G users
Fudge: Some 3G phones are sold into markets without a 3G network and just work in 2G mode. Others are shipped without a 3G SIM (this happened personally to me "Oh, your old SIM should be fine"), or people switch them manually to 2G when they find it doubles the battery life.
14. "X% of customers would switch broadband subcribers to sign up to Operator Z's fixed-mobile service or Carrier Y's quad-play"
Fudge: did your survey mention they'd also have to change their email address (and their family's) if the change ISPs?
15. "Lots of people are willing to 'cut the cord' and go mobile-only"
Fudge: Ah, so that'll be the segment of the population that can't afford a PC & so doesn't want fast uncapped broadband then? ... and no, they wouldn't want IPTV on a big plasma screen, or other services in the future. And, er, do they own a fax machine or an online home security system by any chance?
16. Heavily subsidise data-oriented devices, then charge a higher tariff
Fudge: If you tie your BlackBerry or 3G data card customers into an 18/24-month contract, you can increase your data ARPU by implicitly including the device purchase cost in the revenue stream
17. Classification of "miscellaneous" billed revenue
Fudge: On the revenue breakdown, where do you put things like handset insurance? Or an extra fee for itemised bills? Or per-minute charges to call a customer care line on an 0870 or other premium-rate number? I bet these don't go under "voice"......
18. Mobile Internet use are/will be more important than PC-based use
Fudge: Not everyone who clicks on the WAP/web browser icon on their handset is "using the Internet". And there's a huge difference between users and usage - lots of people may have tried the web icon on their handset when they first got it, or even used the number-pad keys to Google something ultra-important after a few drinks. But looking at actual ongoing use measured by pages / bytes / pixels consumed / time online / online purchases is still 99% PC-based (& yes, I know, Japan & Korea are exceptions). [99% - rough guess. Can anyone show me website logs which breakdown page hits by browser with >1% identifiable mobile browsers? Look at this analysis]
19. "We're a next-gen content / VoIP services / social networking / managed services provider"
Fudge: So why don't you tell us just how much of your revenue stream is actually made up of mundane stuff like interconnect/termination revenues or SMS gateways?
20. Use of 3G / smartphones increases ARPU
Fudge: Cause & effect - can you prove that using 3G or a smartphone increases a given individual's spend against their previous usage... or do existing high-spending users just tend to migrate faster to 3G/smartphones & skew the averaged figures? (do you actually offer 3G or smartphones to prepay customers, for example? or is the measured user base actually self-selected contract users?)
11. "X% of handset owners use feature Y or service Z"
Fudge: How often do they use it? Hourly? Monthly? Once? What do they use it for?
12. X million musicphones were sold
Fudge: What's a musicphone? One which can play long audio files? One with a dedicated music player & library software suite? One optimised for music, or one which just happens to have a software client buried down in the entertainment menu somewhere? One with dedicated buttons (play/stop etc)? Or maybe just one with an FM Radio, not an MP3 capability?
13. 3G phone shipments vs. 3G users
Fudge: Some 3G phones are sold into markets without a 3G network and just work in 2G mode. Others are shipped without a 3G SIM (this happened personally to me "Oh, your old SIM should be fine"), or people switch them manually to 2G when they find it doubles the battery life.
14. "X% of customers would switch broadband subcribers to sign up to Operator Z's fixed-mobile service or Carrier Y's quad-play"
Fudge: did your survey mention they'd also have to change their email address (and their family's) if the change ISPs?
15. "Lots of people are willing to 'cut the cord' and go mobile-only"
Fudge: Ah, so that'll be the segment of the population that can't afford a PC & so doesn't want fast uncapped broadband then? ... and no, they wouldn't want IPTV on a big plasma screen, or other services in the future. And, er, do they own a fax machine or an online home security system by any chance?
16. Heavily subsidise data-oriented devices, then charge a higher tariff
Fudge: If you tie your BlackBerry or 3G data card customers into an 18/24-month contract, you can increase your data ARPU by implicitly including the device purchase cost in the revenue stream
17. Classification of "miscellaneous" billed revenue
Fudge: On the revenue breakdown, where do you put things like handset insurance? Or an extra fee for itemised bills? Or per-minute charges to call a customer care line on an 0870 or other premium-rate number? I bet these don't go under "voice"......
18. Mobile Internet use are/will be more important than PC-based use
Fudge: Not everyone who clicks on the WAP/web browser icon on their handset is "using the Internet". And there's a huge difference between users and usage - lots of people may have tried the web icon on their handset when they first got it, or even used the number-pad keys to Google something ultra-important after a few drinks. But looking at actual ongoing use measured by pages / bytes / pixels consumed / time online / online purchases is still 99% PC-based (& yes, I know, Japan & Korea are exceptions). [99% - rough guess. Can anyone show me website logs which breakdown page hits by browser with >1% identifiable mobile browsers? Look at this analysis]
19. "We're a next-gen content / VoIP services / social networking / managed services provider"
Fudge: So why don't you tell us just how much of your revenue stream is actually made up of mundane stuff like interconnect/termination revenues or SMS gateways?
20. Use of 3G / smartphones increases ARPU
Fudge: Cause & effect - can you prove that using 3G or a smartphone increases a given individual's spend against their previous usage... or do existing high-spending users just tend to migrate faster to 3G/smartphones & skew the averaged figures? (do you actually offer 3G or smartphones to prepay customers, for example? or is the measured user base actually self-selected contract users?)
Friday, January 12, 2007
How strange, I wasn't asked to speak at the March UMA conference.....
It's funny, given the number of conferences that Informa asks me to speak at or chair, that I hadn't been aware that they were running their second UMA forum in March, until I spotted this post on Guy Kewney's site.
The last one in mid-2006 in Barcelona was quite interesting, although my usual, measured analysis (OK OK, I had a slide called "salvaging something from the wreckage of UMA") was comparatively tame when set against my analyst peer John Strand's stream of invective.
Anyway, so what can we infer from the agenda? Well, there's the usual set of suspects presenting, on both the vendor (Moto, Kineto, Alcatel , LG & the usual grudging "well, in some contexts, if you really insist" line from Nokia) and operator side (BT, TeliaSonera, FT/Orange, Telecom Italia). There's someone from Orascom in Egypt, which maybe indicates a new convert to the cause, plus what look to be some "Devil's advocate" counter-pitches from Hello AS and VIPnet.
Then there's the new-found hope for UMA, the femtocell vendors. I'm quite a believer in this as an application, as I've long held that the "killer app" for UMA was authentication-over-IP, not dual-mode handset access & handover. Femto's don't move in & out of WiFi/cellular coverage, and they don't have a UI, which makes them much better-suited to the technology than actual phones. (I noticed that BT is actually referring to its new Fusion handsets as WiFi-capable, which should put the cat among the pigeons when buyers expect to use them in a similar fashion to their other WiFi devices - eg networking them to their desktop PC's hard drive to swap music files....)
The last one in mid-2006 in Barcelona was quite interesting, although my usual, measured analysis (OK OK, I had a slide called "salvaging something from the wreckage of UMA") was comparatively tame when set against my analyst peer John Strand's stream of invective.
Anyway, so what can we infer from the agenda? Well, there's the usual set of suspects presenting, on both the vendor (Moto, Kineto, Alcatel , LG & the usual grudging "well, in some contexts, if you really insist" line from Nokia) and operator side (BT, TeliaSonera, FT/Orange, Telecom Italia). There's someone from Orascom in Egypt, which maybe indicates a new convert to the cause, plus what look to be some "Devil's advocate" counter-pitches from Hello AS and VIPnet.
Then there's the new-found hope for UMA, the femtocell vendors. I'm quite a believer in this as an application, as I've long held that the "killer app" for UMA was authentication-over-IP, not dual-mode handset access & handover. Femto's don't move in & out of WiFi/cellular coverage, and they don't have a UI, which makes them much better-suited to the technology than actual phones. (I noticed that BT is actually referring to its new Fusion handsets as WiFi-capable, which should put the cat among the pigeons when buyers expect to use them in a similar fashion to their other WiFi devices - eg networking them to their desktop PC's hard drive to swap music files....)
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Off-topic - Rekindling my other blog
A while back I started up a second blog, covering environmental issues, climate change and similar topics. To be honest, I haven't really spent much time on it at all, but I've decided that should change this year.
As the oh-so-imaginative name Disruptive Environment suggests, it's not exactly a consensus-oriented effort either. Like my views on wireless, I'm sometimes contrarian, sometimes controversial, but hopefully thought-provoking nonetheless..... if you get a chance, please stop by.
As the oh-so-imaginative name Disruptive Environment suggests, it's not exactly a consensus-oriented effort either. Like my views on wireless, I'm sometimes contrarian, sometimes controversial, but hopefully thought-provoking nonetheless..... if you get a chance, please stop by.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Apple, Cingular, service creation and operator requirements
I've seen a few comments about Apple's new "Visual Voicemail", which enables random access to a Cingular mailbox from the new iPhone. What's not 100% clear is whether the concept comes from Apple, and they've got Cingular to adopt it, or vice versa - or even maybe it's a third party vendor's idea that they've both licenced.
Let's suppose it's Apple's idea, that they've made it a core app on the iPhone, and as Apple puts it "Cingular is the first supported carrier". In which case, isn't this going to involve a lot of work for any other carrier that wants to be "supported" by Apple? They'll have to rejig their voicemail platform as well.
But....most vendors and operators are enthusiastically pushing their next-gen "service creation" environments, whether based on IMS, Parlay, Web Services or whatever, as making it (supposedly) ultra-rapid and ultra-cheap to create & deploy new apps.
Now, the original idea was that the operator (or maybe a 3rd party developer) would be the innovator & drive the design & creation of these apps, then implement them rapidly. But this has failed - the operators (generally) aren't innovative or fast enough, while 3rd party developers haven't had the support & tools.
Now... imagine that someone like Apple comes along and TELLS the operator "Hey, we know you've got a new rapid service creation environment that you've been bragging about! So come on, let's see you develop an app that works with OUR vision & our device. We've done the innovating, and you can do development really quickly, so let's get on with it"
So if these things really DO work as advertised, and it only takes a week or a month (let's say) to develop a parallel voicemail service for Apple, then why not? And why not do a Nintendo one, or a Nokia one or whatever?
At the moment, operators put out lengthy requirements documents for the handset suppliers. Maybe this is the first instance of a handset supplier turning the tables and putting out requirements for the operator to adhere to. "Support Visual Voicemail, or we won't sell our product through you, and your customers will buy it from someone else instead & churn". Maybe Motorola should have taken that approach with the RAZR - if you have a "must have" product, the usual competitive dynamics of "power of supplier" and "power of customer" might get realigned. Of course, it helps if (like Apple) you don't have any existing carrier relationships to jeopardise by playing this type of game.
Let's suppose it's Apple's idea, that they've made it a core app on the iPhone, and as Apple puts it "Cingular is the first supported carrier". In which case, isn't this going to involve a lot of work for any other carrier that wants to be "supported" by Apple? They'll have to rejig their voicemail platform as well.
But....most vendors and operators are enthusiastically pushing their next-gen "service creation" environments, whether based on IMS, Parlay, Web Services or whatever, as making it (supposedly) ultra-rapid and ultra-cheap to create & deploy new apps.
Now, the original idea was that the operator (or maybe a 3rd party developer) would be the innovator & drive the design & creation of these apps, then implement them rapidly. But this has failed - the operators (generally) aren't innovative or fast enough, while 3rd party developers haven't had the support & tools.
Now... imagine that someone like Apple comes along and TELLS the operator "Hey, we know you've got a new rapid service creation environment that you've been bragging about! So come on, let's see you develop an app that works with OUR vision & our device. We've done the innovating, and you can do development really quickly, so let's get on with it"
So if these things really DO work as advertised, and it only takes a week or a month (let's say) to develop a parallel voicemail service for Apple, then why not? And why not do a Nintendo one, or a Nokia one or whatever?
At the moment, operators put out lengthy requirements documents for the handset suppliers. Maybe this is the first instance of a handset supplier turning the tables and putting out requirements for the operator to adhere to. "Support Visual Voicemail, or we won't sell our product through you, and your customers will buy it from someone else instead & churn". Maybe Motorola should have taken that approach with the RAZR - if you have a "must have" product, the usual competitive dynamics of "power of supplier" and "power of customer" might get realigned. Of course, it helps if (like Apple) you don't have any existing carrier relationships to jeopardise by playing this type of game.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Apple iPhone.... first thoughts
Good:
- Screen 320x480 pixels looks awesome
- Touchscreen UI looks intuitive in demo's
- Decent memory 4/8GB
- Two batteries to avoid confusion between talktime & audiotime
- Proper multitasking
- Looks like my joking was wrong. It does do music after all....
Bad
- 2MP camera is a bit sub-par for a premium phone. There is a definite "credibility threshold" at 3MP at which point it's a proper replacement for a pocket digicam.
- EDGE only, not HSDPA on Cingular, and therefore maybe not even WCDMA in Europe
- Looks rather big.... will need a big pocket. Mind you, the original iPod isn't small either.
Who knows
- Apple OS X - unclear how well this will transition to phone OS
- It's got SMS... but not much other typical cellular stuff. May be tricky to hit usual operator specs & requirements
- Very Cingular-centric launch doesn't suggest an early European launch date. I wonder if Apple's at 3GSM next month.....
Right, I'm off for a few drinks courtsesy of Symbian. I wonder what their thoughts will be about the new kid on the block....
The problem with IMS is the "M"
Just musing a bit here.
I'm wading through some 3GPP documents about "Multimedia Telephony" that could run over a 3G network, and it's struck me how there's far too much emphasis on bundling different "media" streams, and not enough about bundling "context" streams.
What's struck me is that much of IMS' cumbersome nature seems to be driven by an unshakeable belief that the most important aspect of new telecom services will be to hook together voice, video, text, image etc. Add media streams, drop media streams, direct them to different people, have the same QoS and control mechanisms & supplementary services to apply equally across the board.
The problem is that 99% of calls are "just" voice. The whole of IMS - right down to its quaint 1990s-era name - seems to be geared around the notion that "the answer" to telcos' problems is "add videotelephony & make sure it works as well as voice". Rather than improving & extending the 99% of voice-only sessions, the vast bulk of effort seems to be around hoping that the 1% of multi-media sessions might become 2%, 5% or 10%. Despite a lack of obvious demand, or the fact that a huge % of mobile conversations are made when people can't watch the screen for fear of walking into a lamp-post.
So, for example, in the literature I've been reading, VoIP on a future 3G network is being treated as a "special case" of multimedia telephony. Personally, I think that it would make far more sense for video/multimedia telephony to be thought of as a special-case "enhancement" on top of vanilla VoIP.
And it's not the only possible enhancement - I'd argue that "context" is much more important in VoIP than adding video. Presence information, mood information, timezone, location, device characteristics, reputation, calendar info, messaging/reachability preferences, numbering preferences, multi-device ringing and 100 other things that go int the whole "Voice 2.0" phenomenon that's evolving.
As a result, I think that a lot of 3GPP IMS standards - and therefore much implementation by mainstream mobile operators - are hugely over-complicated and delayed by this dogged insistence on multimedia sessions. Meanwhile, nimbler startups are starting with voice+context at the core, and adding on other "media" as supplementary services on the side. Skype and most fixed operators are good examples. (Yes, fixed videotelephony is being pitched, but here it's being treated a "special case" and, of course, the lamp-post problem doesn't arise).
It's also worth noting VoIP has been designed-in to CDMA EV-DO Rev A & being deployed now, while it's still very much an afterthought on (maybe) HSUPA or even LTE. The 3GSM community is wasting too much time and effort on "multimedia" when instead they should just focus on plain-old VoIP with "multicontext" capabilities.
I'm wading through some 3GPP documents about "Multimedia Telephony" that could run over a 3G network, and it's struck me how there's far too much emphasis on bundling different "media" streams, and not enough about bundling "context" streams.
What's struck me is that much of IMS' cumbersome nature seems to be driven by an unshakeable belief that the most important aspect of new telecom services will be to hook together voice, video, text, image etc. Add media streams, drop media streams, direct them to different people, have the same QoS and control mechanisms & supplementary services to apply equally across the board.
The problem is that 99% of calls are "just" voice. The whole of IMS - right down to its quaint 1990s-era name - seems to be geared around the notion that "the answer" to telcos' problems is "add videotelephony & make sure it works as well as voice". Rather than improving & extending the 99% of voice-only sessions, the vast bulk of effort seems to be around hoping that the 1% of multi-media sessions might become 2%, 5% or 10%. Despite a lack of obvious demand, or the fact that a huge % of mobile conversations are made when people can't watch the screen for fear of walking into a lamp-post.
So, for example, in the literature I've been reading, VoIP on a future 3G network is being treated as a "special case" of multimedia telephony. Personally, I think that it would make far more sense for video/multimedia telephony to be thought of as a special-case "enhancement" on top of vanilla VoIP.
And it's not the only possible enhancement - I'd argue that "context" is much more important in VoIP than adding video. Presence information, mood information, timezone, location, device characteristics, reputation, calendar info, messaging/reachability preferences, numbering preferences, multi-device ringing and 100 other things that go int the whole "Voice 2.0" phenomenon that's evolving.
As a result, I think that a lot of 3GPP IMS standards - and therefore much implementation by mainstream mobile operators - are hugely over-complicated and delayed by this dogged insistence on multimedia sessions. Meanwhile, nimbler startups are starting with voice+context at the core, and adding on other "media" as supplementary services on the side. Skype and most fixed operators are good examples. (Yes, fixed videotelephony is being pitched, but here it's being treated a "special case" and, of course, the lamp-post problem doesn't arise).
It's also worth noting VoIP has been designed-in to CDMA EV-DO Rev A & being deployed now, while it's still very much an afterthought on (maybe) HSUPA or even LTE. The 3GSM community is wasting too much time and effort on "multimedia" when instead they should just focus on plain-old VoIP with "multicontext" capabilities.
Monday, January 08, 2007
BT Fusion consumer WiFi ... no new phones, but HotZones & distribution are int
BT's finally announced its consumer variant of WiFi Fusion. I'm a bit disappointed to be honest - I'd thought the delayed launch vs Orange, Telecom Italia et al meant that they'd been waiting for an ideal opportunity to announce some new WiFi UMA phones. But it's the same-old A910, P200 and 6136 - not even the recently-announced Nokia 6086. I guess all the device manufacturers are waiting for 3GSM next month.
The reference to BT's Wireless Cities is interesting, and is a differentiator vs. quite a lot of other HomeZone-only FMC pitches. But it raises some interesting issues around scaling up hand-off. I haven't got the stats, but I'd be surprised if the average consumer Fusion user actually uses the WiFi/cellular or cellular/WiFi handoff more than a couple of times a week. Maybe 100 times a year, let's say. I mean, how often do you actually walk in or out of your front door at home, mid-call?
... but in an urban area, there's likely to be lots more WiFi "dark spots" - getting on the Tube, walking in and out of buildings, and in some cases the WiFi no-service area will overlap with a cellular no-service area, with all sorts of funny effects on the fringes. I guesstimate that the average user will probably have 10x or 20x more handoff events in a metro/hotzone setting than just using it at home. Should be interesting to see how the devices, the networks, the user interface & the batteries all cope with this.
Also interesting is BT's pitch on pricing & distribution. I definitely like the "four minutes talk for the price of one" as it's pretty easy-to-understand, although how it competes in the longer term with "free" courtesy of Skype/other VoWLAN is less clear. Elasticity being what it is, though, I suspect "75% off" in consumers' eyes is almost as good as "free". The Phones4U deal sounds promising as well - but what isn't stated in the press release is whether it will also bundle BT Broadband, and whether Fusion will also start to be made available for non-BT Broadband customers.
The reference to BT's Wireless Cities is interesting, and is a differentiator vs. quite a lot of other HomeZone-only FMC pitches. But it raises some interesting issues around scaling up hand-off. I haven't got the stats, but I'd be surprised if the average consumer Fusion user actually uses the WiFi/cellular or cellular/WiFi handoff more than a couple of times a week. Maybe 100 times a year, let's say. I mean, how often do you actually walk in or out of your front door at home, mid-call?
... but in an urban area, there's likely to be lots more WiFi "dark spots" - getting on the Tube, walking in and out of buildings, and in some cases the WiFi no-service area will overlap with a cellular no-service area, with all sorts of funny effects on the fringes. I guesstimate that the average user will probably have 10x or 20x more handoff events in a metro/hotzone setting than just using it at home. Should be interesting to see how the devices, the networks, the user interface & the batteries all cope with this.
Also interesting is BT's pitch on pricing & distribution. I definitely like the "four minutes talk for the price of one" as it's pretty easy-to-understand, although how it competes in the longer term with "free" courtesy of Skype/other VoWLAN is less clear. Elasticity being what it is, though, I suspect "75% off" in consumers' eyes is almost as good as "free". The Phones4U deal sounds promising as well - but what isn't stated in the press release is whether it will also bundle BT Broadband, and whether Fusion will also start to be made available for non-BT Broadband customers.
Nokia, Skype, Internet tablets..... and Sprint?
Let's join the dots.
- Nokia launches new N800 WiFi Internet Tablet, following on from N770
- Nokia announced deal with Skype, to provide its VoIP service via WiFi on the N800
- Nokia conspicuously chooses CES in the US to launch more of its N-series "multimedia computers" including the WiFi-equipped N93i (the "i" seems to be Nokiaspeak for consumer/Internet-centric, not operator-centric, hence the N80i with native VoIP client)
- Nokia designated as "key consumer electronic device vendor" for Sprint's forthcoming WiMAX network, for which it will "develop and market WiMAX-enabled mobile devices in significant volumes, including multimedia computers and Internet tablets
- A fascinating post on Michael Mace's Mobile Opportunity blog about Sprint's embracing of openness, device agnosticism and no-contract-required service on its WiMAX network.
Now, would anyone like to place a bet with me on the likely inclusion of WiMAX chips in the N900 or whatever the version is called? And perhaps a couple of N-series WiMAX-Phones (sorry, WiMAX-Multimedia-Computers)? And, just conceivably, Sprint following 3's trailblazing and extolling the virtues of Skype?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Mobile phone radiation: truth, science and Clarins face spray
I generally stay away from writing about all the hoo-ha around "do mobiles / masts / laptops fry your brain". There's a huge amount of both utter rubbish & intelligent comment available from other people.
The physicist in me just thinks "it's just yet another form of electromagnetic radiation, at relatively low power". Yes, in sufficient doses, it probably causes some form of physiological effect, just like any other form of radiation - like light, for example, or ultraviolet, or gamma rays. I'm sure if you swallowed a kilowatt TV transmitter it probably wouldn't do you much good either.
But in the big scheme of things - ie "relative risk" - it's really not worth getting worked up about. Modern society brings a bunch of stuff that tend to mean that most things with "upside" have a little bit of downside too. I'd rather live to an expected 78 years old with a minuscule extra risk of cancer, than go back to living till 35 in a cave in the African Rift Valley with a large extra risk of getting eaten by a leopard. Dying horribly from some awful mobile-phone induced disease lies on my personal "risk meter" somewhere between accidental poisoning with Polonium-210 and getting hit by an asteroid. Or rather less risk than getting hit by too many cosmic rays when I'm flying, come to that. Same reason I wasn't too worried about spending a couple of hours at Chernobyl in August. Put simply - I've got better things to worry about.
So when my friend told me yesterday that he'd been barraged by an intense sales pitch from one of the nice Clarins cosmetics ladies in a large London department store, I fell about laughing. A wonderful new product, apparently made with extracts of thermophile bacteria that can live in extreme environments, will protect you from various sorts of radiation. Er, right. Looks like Clarins pre-announced this a few months back, but rather than a belated April Fool joke, it now seems they were serious about launching. Apparently, he was told it protects him from the ultra-mysterious "laptop rays" too. One of her lines after spraying a sample on his face was "see how refreshing & invigorating that feels?"..... "Er, yes. Like spraying water, in fact".
I'm just deeply insulted by the fact that their market research obviously told them that Londoners were the most gullible people on the planet, and thus most suitable for the launch location....
I'm quite tempted to go & waste some of their time myself, for the sake of comedy anecdotes for conferences.....
The physicist in me just thinks "it's just yet another form of electromagnetic radiation, at relatively low power". Yes, in sufficient doses, it probably causes some form of physiological effect, just like any other form of radiation - like light, for example, or ultraviolet, or gamma rays. I'm sure if you swallowed a kilowatt TV transmitter it probably wouldn't do you much good either.
But in the big scheme of things - ie "relative risk" - it's really not worth getting worked up about. Modern society brings a bunch of stuff that tend to mean that most things with "upside" have a little bit of downside too. I'd rather live to an expected 78 years old with a minuscule extra risk of cancer, than go back to living till 35 in a cave in the African Rift Valley with a large extra risk of getting eaten by a leopard. Dying horribly from some awful mobile-phone induced disease lies on my personal "risk meter" somewhere between accidental poisoning with Polonium-210 and getting hit by an asteroid. Or rather less risk than getting hit by too many cosmic rays when I'm flying, come to that. Same reason I wasn't too worried about spending a couple of hours at Chernobyl in August. Put simply - I've got better things to worry about.
So when my friend told me yesterday that he'd been barraged by an intense sales pitch from one of the nice Clarins cosmetics ladies in a large London department store, I fell about laughing. A wonderful new product, apparently made with extracts of thermophile bacteria that can live in extreme environments, will protect you from various sorts of radiation. Er, right. Looks like Clarins pre-announced this a few months back, but rather than a belated April Fool joke, it now seems they were serious about launching. Apparently, he was told it protects him from the ultra-mysterious "laptop rays" too. One of her lines after spraying a sample on his face was "see how refreshing & invigorating that feels?"..... "Er, yes. Like spraying water, in fact".
I'm just deeply insulted by the fact that their market research obviously told them that Londoners were the most gullible people on the planet, and thus most suitable for the launch location....
I'm quite tempted to go & waste some of their time myself, for the sake of comedy anecdotes for conferences.....
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Alcatel - Lucent... overdoing the rebranding and FMC groupthink
OK, a test for all you out there. Go to the brand new post-merger Alcatel-Lucent website and see how long it takes you to find any product information about its CDMA EV-DO Rev A network offerings. I gave up. Maybe they've canned it all during the merger, as I'm damned if I could find anything on the main website & I didn't have time to dig up my password to the former Lucent analyst extranet.
Go on, you have a try.
Yes, that's it.... a single bullet point in the general EV-DO section, which itself lurks under the smarmy and oh-so-intuitive heading of "Broadband for all", next to the equally wince-inducing heading of "User centric experience". Then think... is Rev A about "Mobile Penetration"? Or "Mass Market Broadband"? Or "Leading Edge Services"?
Urgh. I'd like to buy 17 user-centric experiences & a dozen competitive transformations, please, Mr Account Manager. And can I get fries with my "business critical communications"? What a load of rubbish.
Note to the new Alcatel-Lucent web marketing head honcho - You represent a technology company, so have a tab on the website so that people who know what technology they're looking for can go straight to it , without having to wade through your branding quicksand. Yes, maybe its easier for your internal organisation to group together a bunch of disparate access technologies like ADSL and EV-DO. But just label it "Access", and then have a hierachical menu split between fixed and mobile. We all know that that there's lots of clever FMC evolution going on, but for now, 99% of people have something quite specific in mind, so why not help them?
Go on, you have a try.
Yes, that's it.... a single bullet point in the general EV-DO section, which itself lurks under the smarmy and oh-so-intuitive heading of "Broadband for all", next to the equally wince-inducing heading of "User centric experience". Then think... is Rev A about "Mobile Penetration"? Or "Mass Market Broadband"? Or "Leading Edge Services"?
Urgh. I'd like to buy 17 user-centric experiences & a dozen competitive transformations, please, Mr Account Manager. And can I get fries with my "business critical communications"? What a load of rubbish.
Note to the new Alcatel-Lucent web marketing head honcho - You represent a technology company, so have a tab on the website so that people who know what technology they're looking for can go straight to it , without having to wade through your branding quicksand. Yes, maybe its easier for your internal organisation to group together a bunch of disparate access technologies like ADSL and EV-DO. But just label it "Access", and then have a hierachical menu split between fixed and mobile. We all know that that there's lots of clever FMC evolution going on, but for now, 99% of people have something quite specific in mind, so why not help them?
And by the way, your search engine and product catalog sucks too - do you really think it enhances readability to spell out "Alcatel Lucent" for every single product in your alphabetic listing? Just because you spent $$$m on a corporate image consultancy, please don't try and get your money's worth by trying to beat the world record for repetitive brand-per-page count.
So, when is HSUPA going to arrive?
I've seen an awful lot of roadmap slides for different wireless technologies this year. And quite a lot of them put HSUPA deployments a year on from HDSPA.
Yet by December 2005, Cingular had launched its service commercially in the US, and O2 had launched on the Isle of Man. Over 50 other networks were in deployment or planning at the end of 2005, with a trickle of launches through H1 2006 and accelerating through H2 to almost 100 networks live now. Even then, the vast majority of usage has been for laptops or PDA-style devices, rather than true handsets.
Thus far, there has been very little noise about real-world HSUPA deployments or even large-scale tests, although various operators have mentioned it in passing. I'd be surprised if we see any commercial launches in H1 2007 - my guess would be perhaps around October. This means a ramp-up of launches in mid-2008, ie probably about 20 months behind HSDPA. It also probably means we shouldn't be expecting handset form-factor HSUPA products to ship in meaningful quantities until perhaps Q4'08 or Q1'09.
Yet by December 2005, Cingular had launched its service commercially in the US, and O2 had launched on the Isle of Man. Over 50 other networks were in deployment or planning at the end of 2005, with a trickle of launches through H1 2006 and accelerating through H2 to almost 100 networks live now. Even then, the vast majority of usage has been for laptops or PDA-style devices, rather than true handsets.
Thus far, there has been very little noise about real-world HSUPA deployments or even large-scale tests, although various operators have mentioned it in passing. I'd be surprised if we see any commercial launches in H1 2007 - my guess would be perhaps around October. This means a ramp-up of launches in mid-2008, ie probably about 20 months behind HSDPA. It also probably means we shouldn't be expecting handset form-factor HSUPA products to ship in meaningful quantities until perhaps Q4'08 or Q1'09.
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