Telco 2.0 and Forum Oxford conferences next week

There's a couple of great events next week that I'm attending / participating in, and which I'd recommend to anyone interested in next-gen telecoms strategies, or a more specific analysis of mobile applications.

First off, on the 16th & 17th, is the latest Telco 2.0 brainstorm event. I've chaired/attended various of the previous ones and they are a world away from the usual vendor-led powerpoint onslaught. Martin Geddes & Co usually give some extremely insightful angles on how incumbent & new-entrant operators can work towards valuable new revenue streams, without trying to fight stupid battles against the inevitabilities of the Internet & IP.
(Disclosure: I work collaboratively with the STL / Telco 2.0 guys on various things)

Next up, on the 18th, is the Forum Oxford Future Technologies conference. ForOx is a great online mobile-focused web forum, which is often host to some fascinating debates & insights. The event should be a good (& inexpensive) tour around emerging types of mobile application & service. It also features myself arguing against regular online sparring partner Tomi Ahonen in "The great mobile debate: Will the future of the Internet be shaped by mobile, or is the PC still in control?", which should be a fun session. I'll be contending that the overall structure or usage of the Internet isn't going to be meaningfully changed by people accessing it via mobile phones. I'm not going to give my arguments away in advance, but I'd imagine that words like "dongle", "spectrum", "multi-tasking" and "enterprise" will all crop up at some point.

Is WiMAX losing the battle to 3G for connecting laptops?

I've been looking at the 3G vs WiMAX battle from a number of angles recently, for some work I'm doing about spectrum. And I've also been layering on some analysis about how this fits with the continued explosion in mobile broadband for PCs, especially with HSPA dongles.

The battle seems to boil down to a few sets of variables:

• Can Intel get integrated, WiMAX-enabled laptops into the market as fast as it did for WiFi?
• Can mobile operators encourage (subsidise?) laptop manufacturers to embed 3G modules instead of (or as well as) WiMAX?
• Is the current laptop installed base going to churn as fast as did (about 3 years) when Centrino was introduced?
• While existing HSPA dongles & inexpensive mobile broadband subscriptions are flying off the shelves, can the networks scale fast enough (in terms of backhaul & maybe extra sites) to avoid worsening user experience?
• What happens when a laptop has both WiMAX and 3G in it/attached to it? How does the connection manager cope and assert preferences?
• Are 3G operators' existing frequency allocations (up until now underused) soon going to be struggling to deliver a decent broadband experience to a massmarket of PC users? What frequencies are available to them, and in paired (FDD) or unpaired (TDD) spectrum?
• How well can different operators deal with supporting pre-paid models for mobile broadband rather than monthly subscriptions?

Clearly, the 3G guys have been a bit rattled by WiMAX's successes in spectrum allocations. This doesn't relate to specific deployments (or delays) like SprintNextel's, but by the strategic success of the lobbying machine when it comes to important decisions like the ITU's acceptance of WiMAX as part of the IMT family of allowable technologies in 3G-designated spectrum. Add to this the recent movement in Europe towards supporting "technology neutrality", especially in 2.6GHz, and the recent endorsement of a report (CEPT #19) permitting national regulators to deviate from the supposedly-harmonised original band plan for 2.6GHz to permit more WiMAX-suitable TDD spectrum to be allocated, at the expense of 3G/LTE-optimised FDD.

Ofcom's new statement on the upcoming 2.6GHz auctions clearly demonstrates that it expects to push ahead with a flexible band-plan approach, and although some other EU regulators (Sweden & Austria) have toed the conservative 3GPP-friendly CEPT 05(05) line, I suspect others will follow Ofcom's path.

Conversely, it looks to me as if the WiMAX community is getting rattled by the seeming success of mobile broadband offers by the HSPA and EVDO operators. The whole 'dongle' phenomenon has sprung up in a narrow window of opportunity before WiMAX-enabled offers start to emerge widely. They're also supported by existing MNOs' huge retail and marketing presence, and arguably are setting price points that are making future new entrants wince as much as incumbents. And there are some early and very smart moves to support prepay for data.

I had a very persuasive briefing call yesterday with a leading WiMAX advocate who felt that existing 3G networks were going to saturate very quickly with the current consumer dongle offers, and felt that without extra capacity the propositions only had a limited shelf-life & appeal. While I think that some extra capacity may come from femtocells I don't see it changing the dynamics fast enough to make a huge difference - I reckon some of the European 3G networks will start to creak by the end of this year. As a side note and possible anecdotal evidence, my HSDPA modem on 3 UK now seems to struggle to get much above 300kbit/s, and it's often much worse.

So where are we? How will laptops be connecting in 3-5 years' time?

The future situation for laptop-suitable WiMAX spectrum is definitely improving, in some places more so than others.

But 3G operators have stolen an early lead in getting devices to market, although there are storm clouds gathering about scalability of their existing networks.

And as I've written about before, 3G-embedded PCs are still going nowhere, although ultra-cheap laptops (subsidisable down to £zero) may make a difference for those operators who have sufficient retail skills to sell & service computers.

And I certainly wouldn't write off WiFi, as it becomes more ubiquitous, easier to use, and increasingly free.

I think that the pivot point will be the perceptions of quality of existing 3G dongle-based service over the next 12 months as the networks fill up - and whether the existing mobile operators are getting sufficiently good margins to make them want to bid big for 2.6GHz spectrum, even in the face of a likely Intel-led onslaught of WiMAX-capable PCs.

Mobile context firewalls - aggregated mobile membership clubs??

An interesting thought occurred to me about how mobile advertisers hoping to exploit individuals' context might be disrupted. I keep hearing about how the unique personal nature of mobile phones will enable advertisers to target "the segment of one", and to quote Arun Sarin "we know who you are. We know what your age is. We know where you live. We know a lot of things about you".

Now to be fair, Sarin has also said that operators should be responsible about using contextual information, and even reward users for sharing it and opting-in. This is what Blyk does as well - you get free calls in exchange for giving away some element of your privacy.

But I wonder how the boundary will flex, between what is "responsible" and what is desirable by a marketing guy up against the end of the quarter. Knowing the industry's propensities for pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable until forced otherwise (eg on roaming charges, and previously on number portability), it wouldn't surprise me if there is the occasional mismatch in the perception of 'reasonableness' between operator/advertiser and end user.

I'm wondering if one of the best ways for users to collectively protect their privacy, and also get extra benefits (and a greater share of advertising revenue kick-backs) would be to organise into membership organisations for mobile services. Almost like affinity-group MVNOs, but without the need for a wholesale agreement.

Let's say that a Mobile Membership Club is established with 10,000 members. It could then attempt to negotiate discounted group mobile tariffs, similar to an enterprise. It could even potentially get customised handset UIs or applications, administer its own number ranges, perhaps even host its own services.

And it could act as a sort of "context firewall" by not identifying mobile user #7356. Obviously the network would still be able to guess quite a bit, by looking at location, usage patterns etc. But they wouldn't be able to pin the user to a specific name or address or demographic, unless the user or club decided to share that information. Obviously, for legal reasons, they'd have to identify a user to law enforcement officials, in the same way that an enterprise mobile account holder could be forced to identify an employee.

In fact, it may even be possible for the mobile membership club to switch user IDs inside its "private network" so that it would be even more difficult to identify people from outside. A sort of mobile equivalent of the Internet's dynamically-allocated IP addresses, with a NAT (network address translation) unit...

Now let's further wonder what might happen if the aggregator was titled something like "Facebook Users' Wireless Alliance" or "Google Mobile Club".....

(Yes, I know this is all competely speculative & rather difficult to do in practice. But I quite like the notion of disruption and re-intermediation where privacy and context ownership is concerned. If someone wants my context, they ought to pay me - or my agent - for it)

Edit - a bit of digging led me to other examples of consumer-oriented collective purchasing (or "Crowd Clout" as this very interesting page puts it). Apparently it's already happening at a basic level for discounted mobile phones & services in Holland, or the "tuangou" team-purchase philosophy in China. Now let's see if it can be spiced up with a bit more technology akin to one of the enterprise mobility gateways....

Post #500... so what's changed in 2.5 years?

This is my 500th post on this blog. By coincidence, it is almost exactly 2.5 years to the day since I started on this journey, so I'm averaging 200 posts a year.

It's been ages since I even thought about the stuff I was writing about in 2005, so I thought I'd go back to my very first post and see what's changed, what I'd got right/wrong.

I had a list of Over-hyped wireless technologies:

• UMA (unlicenced mobile access) - well, it still hasn't got much traction after another 30 months. Maybe 1.5m subscribers at Orange & T-Mobile US, plus some hopefulness around femtocells. My original forecasts (considered horribly pessimistic at the time) of 5.5m UMA homes at end-2009 now actually look insufficiently pessimistic after all.
• Cellular operator IM - I was spot on. Branded mobile operator IM, with a couple of niche national exceptions, has gone precisely nowhere. Even familiar Internet IM from MSN, ICQ, Y! Messenger has been pretty patchy on mobile to date, albeit a bit more popular in markets like the US where teenagers think that QWERTY phones are socially acceptable.
• Near-term massmarket WiMAX - Sprint's Xohm launch was delayed again yesterday. 'Nuff said.
• Free wireless VoIP - Sure, mobile VoIP still has some buzz, but it's been hit by complexities of handset user interface design, operator obfuscation of key APIs, power consumption issues, unwillingness of users to install 3rd-party applications.... and above all, ever-cheaper mobile circuit phone calls.
• Dual-mode WLAN/cellular phones - Yes, they're still important and the basis of lots of interesting new business models and FMC vendors. But predictions that "all phones would have WiFi" were misguided - most end-users are more prepared to pay for 5MP camera modules or a pink casing than 802.11 on their phones. And even where phones are dual-mode, quite often the WiFi is never or rarely used.
• Wireless presence - It's been overhyped like mobile IM, but more so. Maybe it'll make a return with the eventual rollout of IMS, and things like the rich communications suite. Or perhaps it'll get absorbed into some of the cool Mobile Web 2.0 and social networking applications that are emerging. But there's a lot of outstanding issues - such as whether operators want to subsidise presence capabilities for the mass of youthful prepay users, or whether their often low-end handsets can support it anyway. I still think it's overhyped although it's at least now a bit more feasible.
• Smartphones - I still think the industry cares more about smartness than end users do, although clearly the iPhone, Nokia N95 and assorted Blackberries & WinMob devices have raised the game. On the other hand, on a local trip to my closest Carphone Warehouse store, I counted 9 types of smartphone on the shelf, and 11 types of pinkphone. Hardware is still more important than software to Joe Public.
• "Seamless" roaming - I think Motorola's (tagline "Seamless Mobility") recent problems have perfectly highlighted the ridiculous 2005 hype around "seamlessness". As I've consistently said, seams are important and I see no reason to change my assessment.

And what about the things that I thought were under-hyped?

• Under-estimated- PBX/cellular integration - Certainly, this seems to be the ongoing focus of enterprise FMC these days. Yes, there are still plenty of "bin the PBX and use mobile centrex" announcements, but the story's the same as it was, and there's still virtually zero traction. I don't see it changing.
• Poor indoor performance of 3G, WiMAX and other services - The interest in the recent 700MHz auctions (and digital dividend frequencies in Europe in future) have partly sprung from an awakening awareness that 2GHz+ signals don't go through walls very well. It's also a huge limiting effect on WiMAX (especially at 3.5GHz) and metro-WiFi at 2.4GHz. It seems that the annoyances of basic physics have penetrated a bit further into mobile executives' brain tissue than into buildings.
• Novel in-building wireless coverage solutions - I first mentioned the term femtocell a month after the blog started. At the time it drew blank looks whenever I dropped it in meetings with clients - but now it might be time to transfer it to the list above.
• "Single-mode" (non-cellular) VoWLAN phones. OK, hands up, I got this one mostly wrong. I'd been expecting the price/feature curve to have intersected that of DECT and similar cordless devices by now. It's been very, very slow except for a couple of interesting-but-niche Skype handsets, and a handful of slightly less-clunky enterprise devices.
• Impact of VoIP on cellular pricing. It's difficult to dissect the drivers of flatrate and "big bucket" voice pricing in mobile - competition, regulation and VoIP all play a role in carriers' decisions. But VoIP and call-through is certainly exerting pressure on international tariffs.
• Upgrading cellular network backhaul. In 2005, backhaul was an unloved backwater of the industry. But it's now one of 2008's hottest topics, especially as 3G networks fill up with data from cheap flatrate HSDPA modems.
• Difficulty of integrating & testing new features on mobile handsets. There used to be an assumption that handset software was easy, because devices are small. So many firms have now had their fingers burned trying to get client software user-experiences working across a decent range of phones, that there's been a huge move to "put things in the browser" instead. Certainly, those companies that are doing handset client applications now seem to recognise the magnitude of the task they face. And then there are the prizes awarded by the likes of Apple & Google Android to sweeten the pain for app developers.
• The impact of a lack of "email portability" on FMC business models. My thought here was that many people still use ISP-based email addresses, and wouldn't want to switch broadband providers just to benefit from FMC. But to be honest, there's been so many other problems with consumer FMC propositions that email has been way down the list of pain points.
• The role of "service enabled" home gateways for FMC. In 2005, most home broadband users still had simple broadband modems, often USB-connected. In 2008, there is much greater interest in dedicated and sophisticated end-points like BT's Home Hub and Orange's LiveBox as an entry point to the "digital home". I expect this to continue.

So... where will this blog be when I get in post #1000, perhaps in late 2010?

Will we all be consuming huge amounts of mobile advertising, while talking via VoIP to our IMS-presence enabled buddies on our LTE iPhones running at 2.6GHz on our integrated home femtocell/gateways?

Femtocells - too large & clunky. What you need is an Attocell....

Congrats to ip.access on their new invention..... I've heard rumours that their engineering team, lead by CTO Olof Prila, has been hard at work on this for some time.

Will too many frequency band choices delay LTE?

A few years ago, the first 3G UMTS networks to be launched involved some relatively simple choices.

In Japan in 2001, DoCoMo launched its FOMA service initially with just a single frequency band supported. This was 3GPP Band I, using 1920-1980MHz paired with 2110-2170MHz, commonly just called the 2100MHz or 2.1GHz band. Initial devices were launched without 2G dual-mode support.

In Europe, operators used the same 2.1GHz band, but were reluctant to launch devices which didn't also support GSM for fall-back. This typically meant adding support for 900MHz and 1800MHz 2G into the handsets, which was one of the contributory reasons for the delay in wide launch of 3G handsets, as well as their expense, clunkiness and poor battery size.

Nevertheless, at least the handset designers and operators knew what they were dealing with, when it came to frequency support - the 2.1GHz was a known quantity: challenging, but at least the goal-posts were fixed.

Now ratchet forward to the future introduction of LTE.

What's going to be the main launch frequency for LTE in Europe and Asia?

Is it the forthcoming 2.6GHz band, for which auctions are already starting? This has a fair amount of capacity, but may suffer from poor indoor penetration or the need for much denser networks of cell sites. There are also some issues around possible interference from WiMAX or other TDD technologies in the middle of the band, especially if certain regulators like Ofcom look to adopt national-specific bandplans with a unique mix of TDD and FDD.

Is it refarmed 900MHz GSM spectrum? It's a prime frequency, but not every operator has some of this to refarm. Will regulators insist on a reassignment as part of the refarm process? And will this be enough for LTE, especially as the broadband business case really needs 10MHz or 20MHz channels? There's certainly not enough for 3 or 4 operators per country to have 10, 20 or more MHz.

Could it be 1800MHz refarmed spectrum? Again a possibility, but not for everyone.

Maybe a straight replacement of existing 2.1GHz 3G?

What about the UHF Digital Dividend spectrum down at 450MHz? That's also patchy, and not available until analogue TV is switched off in different places at different times.

Then there's 700MHz spectrum in the US, and various other local variants in Japan. And what about China?

The bottom line is that nobody really knows. 2.6GHz is looking like a probable candidate, but certainly not the only one. And if handset manufacturers and chipset vendors have to start out with dual- or tri-band LTE, and also support 2G and 3G radios for fall-back, I think that the timelines and costs will suffer.

Carnival of the Mobilists

Tip o'the hat to the Situational Marketing blog for referencing one of my recent posts on handset OS fragmentation in this week's Carnival.

And I also realised I missed the link at the previous one at Chetan Sharma's great blog as well.

Catching up - China and Heathrow Terminal 5

I haven't posted this week because I've been behind the Great Firewall of China, at ZTE's analyst conference (more on that company in a later post). While there seems to be a bit more flexibility in net non-neutrality from that part of the world these days (Skype & Yahoo Messaging, plus BBC News' website was fine, so no problems reading about events in Tibet), I couldn't access Blogger, or other blogs hosted on TypePad or Wordpress. Definitely another "ah hah" moment when I realised what was happening.

By coincidence, the trip meant that I was able to score a seat on this morning's inaugural flight BA26, from Hong Kong into Heathrow's gleaming new Terminal 5. As well as being another temple to architecture deity Richard Rogers, it also features a comprehensive WLAN infrastructure from Aruba. Apparently, as well as being used for baggage handling (which from my perspective seemed to work a lot more efficiently than other bits of LHR) airport operator BAA "acts as a service provider to .... multiple hotspot Internet service providers."

Unfortunately though, I had just flown in from Hong Kong's Chep Lak Kok airport, which is a similarly-impressive edifice (courtesy of Norman Foster) but conspicuously offers 24-hr free WiFi, courtesy of PCCW throughout. (Free WiFi at the hotel in Shenzhen, too).

That Heathrow T5 attempts to perpetuate the overpriced European WiFi paid-hotspot market, rather than looking at how to provide passengers with free access as a utility doesn't surprise me in the least. It's run by BAA, the rapacious mall operator best-known for forcing its customers through endless rows of shops, viewing the flights themselves as inconveniences that limit the 'retail experience'.

It's also been advised in wireless strategy by consulting and engineering firm Red-M. The system enables it to set & monitor policies about exactly what wireless coverage is available where. I imagine they've been able to extract similar rents from the hotspot & cellular guys as they do from ordinary retail stores.

And I noticed that I couldn't get a signal for Hutchison 3G, or 3G on my O2 phone, down in the Heathrow Express train station. Wouldn't want 3G modems to compete with the presumably lucrative contract offered to T-Mobile to run WiFi there, would they? Will be interesting to see how good 3G coverage is on each operator in the rest of the building - I'd guess that some operators were prepared to stump up the requisite cash and others weren't. Expensive-looking Vodafone 3G modem adverts adorn the arrival hall, so I guess that Big Red's network will be fine.

Put simply, this is another example of the danger of giving network policy tools to organisations whose policies are questionable. It wouldn't surprise me if BAA took a leaf out of China's book and also invested in some firewalling policy-management gear as well, and started to limit what websites or IP services are accessible via the WiFi.

So let me know if you manage to read this blog from T5's departure lounge, or whether I've been network-blacklisted for daring to make a negative comment about the BAA regime....

(Sidenote - British Airways gave passengers on my flight into T5 a small gift to commemorate the opening. Bizarrely, it's a wireless computer mouse, of the type not usually permitted for use onboard planes.)

Attn AR/PR folk: No, I'm not going to be at CTIA

...so please refrain from sending emails asking if I can meet with your clients there.

Cheers

Dean

US 700MHz - Will Qualcomm do something disruptive?

So the US 700MHz auctions are over, except for the unloved D-Block.

What's changed? Well, there's no Google, that's for certain (no big surprise there, to be honest, I really couldn't see it wanting to hire 1000's of radio engineers). And AT&T, Verizon, Qualcomm & Frontier Wireless hoovered up most of the licences on offer. Although it should be interesting to see if the requirement for openness makes a meaningful difference.

According to the FCC, 99 bidders other than the current US incumbents took over 700 individual licences between them, meaning that at least in theory, there are potential new wireless broadband competitors in each regional US market.

I'll be honest & say I don't know much about Frontier, which is essentially now a nationwide spectrum owner.

But the one that caught my eye was Qualcomm. It cherry-picked some of the key US markets - Boston, NY, LA, SF & Silicon Valley, Philadelphia - with some hefty bids for B- (12MHz of paired spectrum - FDD) and E-Block (6 MHz unpaired - TDD) spectrum.

Now, it already owns some spectrum that underpins its Mediaflo TV platform. I'm wondering if, just maybe, it might extend that model towards its own unloved UMB evolution of its main cellular technology, which seems to have been sidelined by LTE and WiMAX in recent months. UMB can work in both FDD and TDD spectrum.

It could potentially develop a wholesale network, which could then host services from (say) ISPs for fixed-broadband, local government & public safety (who often have regional requirements not needing full national coverage), and various other channels. Yes, it would potentially compete with Sprint's WiMAX Xohm network in some cases - but this could help salvage UMB, which could have the side-effect of persuading some remaining CDMA waverers (notably KDDI in Japan) to take the plunge as well.

I'll readily admit that this is all speculation - it could just be it wants more Mediaflo spectrum, or perhaps there's another hidden plan I've missed. But I have a sneaking suspicion that UMB will raise its head again somewhere.

Rant: Enough with the NXTcomm spam

I don't know if NTXcomm is a good trade show or not. I've never been. And I'll never go.

Two years ago I stupidly signed up for a press/analyst pass, as I thought I might be able to attend. That simple act, combined with exceptionally poor database management on the organisers' part, led to a seeming never-ending stream of emails about the show. I think they take the PR/analyst list & redistribute it to about 12 departments within the same company, none of whom bother to check to see if I'm a relevant target for their dross.

Last year I received over 40 emails from them. Despite clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at least 8 times.

Eventually, I got in touch with some of the PR folk & told them if it didn't halt, I'd write a pretty coruscating post about their capabilities in terms of data protection, and their lack of competence in managing something as simple as "unsubscribe" request . I asked that they delete every reference to me from their databases.

Now, I'm already receiving 2008 messages from the organisation. And again they've ignored unsubscribe requests.

I note that the US "CAN SPAM" act contains the legal instruction "It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. "

Now, at the moment it's just a nuisance. Although it's obviously very unprofessional of them, I'm not the sort of person to pursue legal action over something this trivial. I'd rather just give them a bit of a kicking throuhg this blog. But if you're an exhibitor or sponsor of the event, next time your sales representative calls, tell them to sort it out.

And if you're an journalist, analyst or other potential attendee of the event - can I suggest you set up a "disposable" email address with Yahoo or similar, rather than trust the system with your primary address.

EU stance on DVB-H: Inconsistency and irrelevance

I see that the European Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding has issued a pronouncement about mobile TV, encouraging companies & countries to standardise on DVB-H, rather than alternatives like T-DMB, 3GPP MBMS or Qualcomm MediaFlo or Nextwave's TDtv.

Yet the term "For Mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology" seems to be completely contradictory when compared with the emerging European view on technology neutrality in other mobile services, especially wireless broadband.

Ongoing trends such as WAPECS (EUspeak for tech-neutrality) in 2.6Ghz and 3.5GHz bands are looking like a certainty, while other moves are afoot to allow refarming of GSM spectrum for 3G or LTE (& maybe other) radios. Various arms of regulatory bodies are bending backwards to accomodate WiMAX in particular as a competitor to UMTS & LTE standards.

Plus, the European Commission seems to be stuck in 2003 when it comes to their bullish predictions on Mobile TV. Yet the general consensus (and my own long-term view) is that hardly anybody wants mobile broadcast - it's a niche application, not a massmarket one. It's much easier than any other new mobile service for customers to understand..... ("it's telly, on your phone").... yet it's almost universally viewed as an irrelevance.

The typical digital-TV subscription model also doesn't work too well with prepaid handset users, who account for the bulk of most European countries' user bases. This makes it much more difficult to create a business case as it will be based around pay-per-view or perhaps one-off payments for day/week/month access. Few operators will want to subsidise DVB-H functionality in phones if there's a chance that the customer may only ever spend €1 (or zero) on using it.

In order to succeed, there will also need to be some utility for TV-enabled phones working in "offline" (ie free) mode, to get people to become familiar with the general concept, then hope that revenues follow over time.

This gives a prime example of why government or supra-governmental organisations shouldn't try and pick technology choices. I guess we should be thankful that Reding chooses to standardise things that nobodyreally cares about, rather than the important ones.

Handset OS fragmentation is here to stay - and may even impact future network architecture

A couple of years ago there were lots of hand-wringing comments about how the proliferation of handset OS's was harming the chances of any consistency in mobile applications development and uptake of data services. Operators like Vodafone made pronouncements of how they intended to rationalise their software platform base.

At the time, I was skeptical that there would be any easy way to meaningfully reduce the number of smartphone OS's as well as proprietary featurephone platforms. And in fact, if anything the number has risen, with the continued growth of RIM, the emergence of Apple's OS, Google/Android on the horizon and a continued plethora of other Linux platforms vying for attention. Meanwhile, none of the major handset vendors has committed to phasing out their proprietary platforms like Nokia S40 or the various Moto / Samsung / LG / S-E equivalents.

On the merchant-featurephone software stack there have been a few changes to be fair, with Qualcomm's BREW/UIone appearing on some more devices, but with TTPCom's Ajar being absorbed into Motorola's software maelstrom. Others like OpenWave and Obigo and Intrinsyc are still around too.

There is no obvious emerging contender to sweep away all others, especially at a global level. I can't see Nokia pushing S60 much further down into S40's domain. I can't see Apple or Google making a huge mark outside North America. I can't see RIM or Microsoft abandoning the enterprise sector. UIQ and a couple of the Linux players are not the strongest, but if they disappear I'm sure there will be plenty of newcomers to take their place - isn't it about time we saw a reincarnated Java/SavaJe-type player, for instance?

Meanwhile, all the real action seems to be migrating to the presentation layer - Webkit browser, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and so forth. There seems to be at least a vague semblance of homogeneity emerging there, at least on high-end devices. Sure, even at that level there won't be "one platform to rule them all", but some variation of Web+Widgets+XML+various extensions is perhaps not as tricky as the current app-porting challenges.

There are some interesting side-effects of all this - even propagating through to the network side of the industry, despite the fact it likes to think itself divorced from developments with mere handset software.

In particular, the industry seems to be moving even further away from fully IMS-capable handsets. Sure, in some ways the IMS client framework is starting to get a little more realistic, but with the shift in value (and certainly the shift in innovation) towards the browser it's starting to look a little irrelevant. Yes, we might get some IMS-based apps on the phone - IM, presence, even full VoIP - but that's not where the cool stuff is, and I think that the web aspects of the handset are moving too fast to be captured in even a next-gen IMS/Web architecture.

In particular, the chance for VoIP to become an "anchor tenant" for IMS has diminished, with the standardisation of the fairly-pointless MMTel Multimedia Telephony. As I've mentioned before, 3GPP has totally missed the point with MMTel: next-gen mobile telephony will be about integration, mashups & web services.... not video-calling/sharing and other "media".

Given that some sort of VoIP is mandatory with LTE (unless operators want to run GSM/UMTS networks in parallel forever), somebody really needs to get working on a more useful mobile VoIP standard NOW, and work out how to implement it in phones. In fact, whoever does the work should start from the standpoint of the user, with a phone in his/her hand and then work backwards to determine what the network has to look like to support a proper version of Mobile Telephony v2.0.

One of the themes I've discussed with a few companies recently has been the impact this could have on cellular network architecture. In particular, I've been looking at the current converging mess at the edge of the network that is some combination of SBC, security gateway, softswitch, GGSN and assorted other functions. I've been speaking to companies like Stoke, Acme Packet, Sonus, Nextpoint, Mavenir etc recently, and I'm starting to wonder if the required aggregation models will be driven indirectly by device type & usage cases, as much as they are by infrastructure-based decisions for multi-access.

If the traffic delivered by handsets - and the capabilities valued by end-users - moves away from session-based services like voice & IM, and towards more web/browser/widget functionality - what effect does that have on the boxes at the edge? I haven't got a full answer to this yet, but it's definitely something I'm looking into closely.

eComm day 2 - Android and others

Some quick notes on today's presentations at eComm in Mountain View.

Rich Miner from Google/Android presented this morning. I've refused to be drawn in by the Android hype over the recent months, and today's pitch has done nothing to convince me either. I'm not quite at the stage of saying "The Emperor has no clothes" - idealists with money are inherently unpredictable - but I'm definitely not convinced that it's going to be very important, especially outside the US.

Miner's presentation got off to a very shaky start with the tired old canard about "1 billion Internet users, 3 billion phones" and how this somehow proves that many people would be "One screen" users only using their handsets. I realise that Google's expertise about fruit & vegetables is limited, but I would have thought they'd have worked out the difference between apples and oranges by now.

There are also many open questions about Android in terms of radio support (especially 3G), SIP APIs, and just how "open" it really is. It obviously still has the "Google can do no wrong" halo among developers in Silicon Valley, but there still appears to be a US-centric view that end-users actually want to install applications on their handsets.

At least Miner had a better answer to my question "why does this matter to prepay users who don't have data plans" than Symbian has in the past. (Answer: it'll scale down to low-end featurephones & reduce bill-of-materials, plus people can sideload apps rather than download them).

Overall - I'm not writing off Android. It is Google after all. But I'm deeply skeptical that it'll become very important, very quickly. It's certainly not going to be ubiquitous.

Apart from Android:

• Ribbit has a very clever-looking API platform for creating telephony mashups, based on a "big iron" Lucent class-5 softswitch. Discussions about blending voice+web have cropped up increasingly of late, and although this isn't my core area of coverage, it looks impressive at first sight.
• Intel had anthropologist talking about context, GPS sensors, location-based services and related topics. Very well-observed commentary distinguishing between "machine-readable" context [GPS, motion sensors, light/dark etc] and more personal forms of context [commute vs journey, home vs house, relevance to conversation etc]. She comprehensively demolished some of the sillier location-related business models like sending coupons/ads to passers-by at a particular location.
• Yahoo's Fire Eagle cross-platform location API and service platform sounds intelligently thought-through. It basically captures a wide variety of location inputs (GPS, cell, addresses etc) and maps them to a personalised profile for a person, enabling each "querying" application to have separate, user-defined permissions settings for what data & granularity is divulged. It also gives the users reports to work out which applications have been regularly asking for location lookups, so you can track which software has been snooping on you.
• Embarq gave a presentation about privacy vs security, which was interesting, but not as memorable as a phrase in the upfront disclaimer "some concepts are still in the ideation phase". I'm stealing 'ideation' as it's the most obtuse jargonese I've seen in ages.

Notes from eComm

I'm in Mountain View for the next couple of days, at eComm 2008, Lee Dryburgh's get-together for an impressive assortment of forward thinkers around personal communications, billed as the "trillion dollar rethink" - what telecoms will be when it grows up.

I'll add thoughts & edits to this post as the event evolves.

I'm not sure I agree with Lee's opening stance that "the telephone is dead, long term". The idea being that it morphs into a "relationship lifecycle management device". I'm not so sure - I think the phone has been around for 100+ years and people quite like it. For people with 2+ devices (or people with 1 device but not much money), I'm unconvinced that cool stuff like social networking & presence on their primary phone is very valuable or desired. Especially compared to (say) a camera, MP3 player or cute design.

David Isenberg (of "stupid network" fame) talked about Net Neutrality and "The Political Layer" above the usual ISO network protocol stack. He dragged Martin Geddes on stage and asked what I thought was a weird question "How many ISPs can you get access to in Edinburgh?". Martin answered "about 30", and I shrugged. Then he asked the (predominantly US-resident) audience members "Who here can get access to more than 1 or 2 ISPs?". Pretty much the only people raising their hands were the Europeans.

Now I understand why Americans get so exercised about open access, net neutrality and so on. I hadn't realised quite how appallingly competition policy had failed in the US - I knew it was bad.... but I hadn't really grasped just how bad. The stuff I take for granted in the UK - lots of wholesale ISPs, and quite a few local-loop-unbundled ones, plus cable - just doesn't map onto the reality in the US. I've realised that I sometimes assume that ordinary, mundane, competition will give deep packet inspection and application-blocking a solidly good kicking. Which is fine, if ordinary, mundane competition actually works.

Edit, 2pm Wednesday

There's been a lot of discussion about assorted voice-recognition technologies and applications, like Voice XML. Frankly, I don't think it's that interesting - I know lots of people seem to think that voice-based applications are some sort of magically futuristic appeal, but apart from widely-detested IVR systems and in-car handsfree voice-dialling, I'm just not convinced. Voice apps fail the "real world" test - I don't know anyone (outside the industry) who likes them, and I can't imagine anything that's likely to change that. Most of the suggestions I've seen are solutions looking for a problem, whether they're mobile-oriented or fixed.

Handset volumes - when's the point of inflection?

There's been quite a bit of discussion in financial circles over the past couple of days concerning a possible slowdown in the expected growth in handset shipments in 2008. Much of this seems to have been provoked by Texas Instruments' gloomy outlook, although this partly reflects Nokia's decision to source chipsets from more suppliers. TI has also suffered a bit compared to Qualcomm through having less exposure to 3.5G growth (lower volumes but higher margins), in areas such as HSDPA modems.

Nevertheless, despite the possible market-share shifts on the silicon side of things, it's also worth keeping a realistic view on the handset market itself. One issue is that the high end devices (eg 3G phones for mature markets) often have wholesale prices up to 10x that of low-end phones popular in emerging economies - and commensurately higher margins. Using overall headline figures like 1.1 bn handset shipments makes great statistics for the industry, but distorts the underlying picture of financial health.

A related thing to consider is the segmentation of the market between:

- sales of phones to new mobile users
- sales of replacement phones to existing users
- sales of 2nd / 3rd devices to existing users

Clearly, in mature markets the majority of purchases fall into the second two categories. Some interesting things to ponder there, though:

- Firstly, replacement phones are often highly contingent on operator-inspired upgrades. And it's notable that in markets like the UK, there's been a huge push recently to move people from 12 to 18/24-month contracts, to reduce the necessary costs of customer retention (eg subsidy) and reduce churn. This is especially true of 3G phones, where operators are loathe to upgrade people to their second or third 3G handset when they're not really using the network that much. Essentially, they'd just be subsidising people to move from a 2MP camera to a 5MP camera on the device - and currently they're using this as a lever to get people to sign up to longer terms.
- Secondly, additional devices (2nd/3rd phones) may well not be as expensive as a user's primary device. They might be cheap fashion-phones, or 3G dongles, or novelties like the 3 Skype Phone. This is good for volumes, but not average selling prices.

Overall, I can't see the handset market taking a nosedive. But I definitely think that some of the underlying dynamics are shifting in ways that perhaps the financial market hasn't priced-in.

The return of low power GSM

About 2 years ago, there was a sudden buzz of excitement around a new spectrum auction in the UK - referred to as "low power GSM", it represented a sliver of frequencies that were formerly a "guard band" between GSM @ 1800MHz and DECT. There wasn't enough spectrum to build out a national network, and it was expected that instead it would just be used for low-power indoor coverage, typically with picocells. And rather than selling the spectrum to a single operator, it was suggested that multiple indoor providers could share it - with operators expected to work with each other to avoid interference.

Ofcom sold 11 LPGSM licences for quite low prices, to an eclectic range of companies, from BT and C&W though to Swedish operator Spring and some very random ones like Philippines Long Distance Telecom.

Much excitement ensued, with speculation (by me among other people) that this was another interesting FMC route, competing with WiFi-based alternatives, using ordinary GSM phones. I'd been following the use cases for picocells since 2001, and this was quite a milestone. (Bear in mind that May 2006 was before the femtocell hype started to hit home).

But.....

Not much has happened since. The big problem is that having private indoor cellular networks is a great concept, but runs into practical and user-experience problems when people leave the building. There are four options for what happens next:

• The phone stops working. The SIM card is for the indoor-only operator
• The indoor service provider also has a macro service network outside, and the phone just hands over
• The user does a manual "network reselect" on their handset, either using two SIM cards or with the indoor operator doing something clever with a small offshore roaming service provider
• The indoor operator signs a "national roaming" deal (ie becomes an MVNO) with one of the main national MNOs for outdoor coverage.

The only UK LPGSM operator with its own macro GSM network is O2. But it seems to have been singularly distinterested in doing anything with its licence, and perhaps just bought it cheaply to check up on what everyone else was doing.

Two licencees already had MVNO deals in place that could have possibly enabled them to knit together overall solutions. But BT has been more focused on Fusion and dual-mode WiFi-cellular, and Carphone Warehouse probably doesn't have the enterprise reach needed to justify the price of picocells.

[Sidenote: picocells cost around $2k apiece. And most LPGSM opportunities are on corporate sites that would need integration with existing PBX and LAN infrastructure]

Until recently, Teleware's arm Private Mobile Networks was the only commercial LPGSM operator with a launched service and growing channel. I met with the company recently, and it has also developed a productised version of its solution tailored for the construction industry. Teleware's background is in developing communications servers & applications for the enterprise market, so it's got a lot of the important systems integration and channel-partner credentials. (And also, in the construction industry, building sites obviously don't have existing PBX/LANs).

My understanding is that MVNO terms from the major operators have been less-than-generous. Understandable, given that the LPGSM model represents a possible cannibalisation threat for their corporate business. Also, the timing of rollout of corporate dual-mode WiFi FMC was also delayed, so this more cellular-centric approach hasn't even been considered as useful hedge. That situation has changed recently however, with real-world dual-mode deployments in some UK companies (eg BT Corporate Fusion) & education facilities.

But now, C&W has finally cut a roaming deal with Orange to become another live LPGSM operator. (see the press release and also articles like ZDnet's). It's intending to launch a corporate FMC solution by the end of 2008.

One of the interesting thing is that C&W's recent business update presentation refers to its supplier for the solution as Ericsson. The significance is that Ericsson has long talked up its 2G femtocell (rather than picocell) products. Most of the femto vendors have been focused on 3G rather than 2G because of a different set of challenges in network integration, and the fact that 2G coverage is generally pretty good anyway. Presumably this will bring the capex requirement per-site down from a few thousand pounds towards a much lower figure.

I've also heard rumblings that a few of the other LPGSM providers are also stirring from their slumber. Having 2G femtos available as well as picos should definitely help. I suspect we'll see a few more announcements over the next few months.

Whatever happened to HSUPA?

It seems to me that in the rush to deploy and enhance HSDPA services, scaling downloads speeds from 3.6 to 7.2 to 14.4 and onwards, most operators have put their plans for high-speed uploads, through HSUPA, on the backburner.

According to the GSA (Global Mobile Suppliers Association) and also GSMA, we're on about 28 network launches, with another 24 in the works. There's a good table here. And there are now about 30 devices (the GSA says 33, GSMA says 26).

Sounds promising on the face of it, but it seems to be a much slower ramp-up compared with HSDPA, and certainly slower than the migration to higher speeds within HSDPA. And it's also worth noting that the vast majority of devices are still laptop data cards/dongles and fixed modems. In terms of phones, there's just a handful on DoCoMo's network in Japan, and a couple of HTC and i-Mate high-end PDA-type devices. It was conspicuous that none of the major handset vendors at 3GSM last month were talking up 'full HSPA' in their devices.

I think the problem is that nobody really knows what the added-value of HSUPA is. Just as most consumers don't really scrutinise upstream bandwidth for home DSL/cable, there doesn't appear to be an immediate need for symmetry on mobile either.

Yes, I know about user-generated content - but to be honest, just how many MB of video can any average person upload per month? Otherwise, yes, I can see the benefit for low-latency gaming (HSUPA improves ping time as well as bandwidth). And yes, professional photographers would like to send their 10-megapixel images to the newsdesk or a media agency. But ironically, most of the other HSUPA applications are probably "naughty" ones that the operators don't really want to encourage - VoIP, P2P, TV place-shifting (SlingBox et al), and people illicitly using their wireless endpoint as a web server.

And given that HSDPA is selling like hotcakes at the moment..... why move to HSUPA before it's really needed, given that the proposition is much less clear?

eComm interview about wireless, openness and spectrum

I had a conversation the other day with Jonny Bentwood, who has recently updated his Top 100 Analyst Blogs chart. He commented that as well as blogging, I could probably benefit from looking at some of the other Web 2.0 and social media approaches to distributing my blog content and building a greater community around my research themes. As well as things like Twitter, we also discussed podcasting and other approaches. I'm certainly going to try and look into some of these, and I'll mention them here as time goes on.

It's therefore also a pleasing coincidence that Lee Dryburgh has put up a transcript and audio recording of a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago. He interviewed me in advance of my presentation at eComm, about some of my thoughts on wireless VoIP, new ways of looking at spectrum regulation, and the general move towards 'openness'.

One of the areas that Lee touched on was the concept of 'open spectrum' - whether people will ever be able to 'hack' radio in the same way they do software. I'm not convinced, beyond the current existing unlicenced frequency bands. While I can certainly appreciate the concept of free-market, democratic, innovation-inspiring access to the airwaves, I think there's just too much risk of interference and other unwanted side-effects from allowing a free-for-all. Nevertheless, I'm definitely curious about whether there are methods to stimulate more clever RF inventions, and less bureaucratic revelations. If anyone else has any thoughts on how we might practically create a "radio playground" I'd be fascinated to hear them.

Verizon Wireless - $40 for 50MB... are they joking?

Sometimes, the differences between national pricing for the exact same services staggers me.

In the US, Verizon Wireless has just revamped its mobile data plans. It now has two - on at $40, and one at $60. Fair enough, you might think. Except that the $60 plan has 100x the bandwidth cap of the $40 one - 5GB vs 50MB.

This compares to the now-standard UK rates of $20 for 1GB, and $30 for 3GB per month with 3G modems, or about $15 for pseudo-flatrate data (typically in the 100's of MB at least) on handsets.

In other words, rather than going for small / medium / large, Verizon has decided to segment its customer base between just "occasional" and "lots" (ie business user). It appears absolutely uninterested in the massmarket consumer mobile broadband market that seems to be blazing a trail across Europe.

Starting to dismantle the Tyranny of the SIM card

About 18 month ago, I wrote a deliberately provocative post titled "The Tyranny of the SIM Card". It tackled the thorny issue of whether the SIM (which is essentially 'an operator on a chip') should maintain its central role as old-school cellular telephony moved towards FMC or triple/quadplay.

In an FMC world, if you don't have a SIM in everything that you connect to the network (phones, PC, TV etc), does it still make sense to have a SIM in anything?

A discussion I had recently with a company called Blueslice (which primarily makes advanced variants of HLRs for mobile networks) has sparked off a revision of my thoughts.

I think the SIM's usefulness is gated by its name - an Identity Module. This is valuable for when I need to have a single, consistent identity associated with a service. When I want the service provider's infrastructure to be able to recognise me "Ah, that's Dean Bubley trying to connect".

The most important use case I can think of in mobile comms, of having a single, consistent identity is having a consistent phone number.

But equally, there are also plenty of instances where the user might want multiple, or perhaps temporary identities to be associated with a single device. A classic case is mobile broadband access from a PC. Yes, I might want to have an ongoing account relationship with a given HSPA service provider - but I may also want to get temporary access to a second, third or tenth provider because of the specifics of local availability, price, speed and so on. I'm not taking inbound calls, so I don't need consistency of identity - I just want local connectivity. (And perhaps local services & content too - this isn't a 'dumb pipe' rant).

Yes, roaming performs the function too - but it's expensive & hugely complex. And unnecessary much of the time. If it weren't for the identity aspect of the phone number, why would I want my home operator to "lend" my identity to another service provider? If I use an Internet Cafe, they don't bill me via my home broadband. If I rent a car in the US, it's not added to my UK car lease. When I stay in a hotel room in Spain, they don't contact my London landlord to add the cost to next month's rent with a 10x markup.

Sure, there are exceptions when certain aspects of security and log-on convenience are involved, and so companies like iPass can make sense for business users. And yes, you can always buy a local operator's SIM card and put it in an unlocked device, although that's not always convenient either, especially for data access.

And even more counterintuitive is the notion that you would use a clunky mobile SIM card to authenticate for services or devices that are usually SIM-free. A classically pointless example has been the use of EAP-SIM for registering for WiFi on a laptop. Well, that's fine if I actually want to use a mobile operator's own WiFi hotspots, but what about the other 90% of the time? It's just another attempt to use a hardware form of lock-in on what has traditionally been an unlocked device. I've criticised SIM-based WiFi authentication for years, and my opinions seem to have been vindicated as it's shown very limited traction to date.

The thing I liked about some of Blueslice's usage cases were that they allow operators to be much more pragmatic. For example, combining phone+SIM authentication for voice, plus laptop+username/password authentication for WiFi - in the same subscriber record in the HLR, but with 2 separate profiles. This makes a huge amount of sense, especially as we move towards multi-access infrastructures. It seems that most WiMAX devices won't be SIM-based, so combining a single user account spanning GSM/UMTS plus WiMAX services might otherwise be tricky.

Other solutions to this class of problem include a growing number of dual-SIM phones, or "soft SIMs" of which a given device might support several simultaneously.

Bottom line - don't force physical-card SIM authentication onto products or services where the user might reasonably want to have multiple or temporary identities, or where roaming is an overengineered solution. Think about the growing likelihood of customers having multiple devices, some of which might be operator-specific (eg a subsidised & customised phone) and needing consistent identity, but also others which have a much more ephemeral connection to a given operator and for which using or obtaining a SIM is an unnecessary burden.

[Edit - apologies for overuse of the word 'tyranny' in two consecutive posts - writing the first item made me remember to do an update on the second]

Challenging the Tyranny of Consensus (Off topic)

OK, no real post here.

Just that I came up with the phrase "challenging the tyranny of consensus" in a discussion with a friend this evening, and thought I'd claim it publicly, as it epitomises much of what I stand for.

If I didn't already have "Don't Assume", it would make a great tagline for Disruptive Analysis.

E-Mobile's E-Monster - VoIPo3G in Japan

I've written before about the new Japanese operator E-Mobile, that's been supporting VoIP on its HSPA network, via a data-centric device, with a client from Jajah.

It's now announced two more voice-centric devices, one a modified HTC TyTn II affectionately called the eMonster, and the other from Toshiba. Insofar as I can work out from the press releases, these work on "broadband voice" which I think is marketingspeak for VoIP.

Out of coverage areas, the phones' voice roams onto DoCoMo's network (for an extra fee). It's not obvious whether this means it hands over to circuit, or carries on using HSDPA.

(btw - if anyone more familiar with the product can confirm that it's using VoIP rather than circuit, please post a comment - thanks)

What's a Normob?

You know that feeling when you encounter a new word... and then within a couple of days you start noting it everywhere?

Well, if you hadn't spotted it already, let me open your eyes to this particular neologism:

Normob = Normal Mobile User.

Basically a non-geek, non-mobile industry person who wants to use their handset to make calls, send SMS's, take some photos and maybe play a built-in game. Maybe they use the MP3 function, and occasionally they'll Google on the phone to cheat in a pub quiz. But someone who doesn't know what a smartphone is, and doesn't care. Not interested in "finding" things, downloading applications, using GPS, changing the softkeys, customising the menus or anything else. Someone probably on prepay, and who chose the phone either because it looks nice, or it's an update of their old one.

About 90% of people, in other words.

I'm not sure who coined it, but it could be from here or here.

The evolution of MVNOs

I moderated an interesting panel debate session while I was in Barcelona, on behalf of billing vendor Highdeal. It was titled "What do MVNOs want to be when they grow up?" and it featured speakers including representatives of

• Highdeal
• Carrefour (a French retailer operating MVNOs in 5 European countries)
• SAP (which offers business support capabilities like payment collection)
• Experian (which offers MVNE services)
• Index Europe (which offers hosted web portals for MVNOs)

The session was quite lengthy, so I'm not going to review all of it here, but a couple of points really jumped out at me:

• The easy times for MVNOs finding niches are swiftly passing. It's taken them a while, but competition has forced the incumbent operators to tighten their game in segmentation. Successful MVNOs will probably have to evolve their offerings continually, to avoid being copied by rivals with broader market visibility.
• The increasing popularity of owning multiple handsets works in MVNOs' favour. They don't need to substitute outright for a given customer's entire existing mobile experience - instead, they can lower entry/switching barriers by targetting certain use cases via a second phone & SIM. Then, over time, they can look to supplant an increasing proportion of the user's total activity & spend.
• Distribution really matters. The speaker from Carrefour pointed out that a very sizeable % of the French population walks through his stores on a regular basis. Conversely, a number of high profile MVNO failures have been attributable to a lack of retail presence. Clearly, this impact those MVNOs that bundle handsets rather more than those that rely on "SIM only" deals sent by mail.
• Following on from this, the handset issue remains a headache. Availability of unlocked phones varies widely by country, and even where they are available, they are often difficult to use for advanced features other than voice & SMS. (Blyk uses MMS to deliver its adverts... sorry, "brand messages"). On the other hand, customising phones is a horribly expensive exercise, as Helio has found out in the US.
• There was quite a lot of discussion about low-cost airlines' business models in comparison with MVNOs'. One particularly good observation was about Ryanair, which although provides a very cheap underlying product (airfares), then loads up with 100 extra revenue streams, like snacks and drinks on the plane, insurance, hold baggage, and now even airport check-in. I keep expecting to have to pay extra for a seatbelt or using the toilet when I fly with them. In an MVNO context, the parallels are with content, advertising or other sources of business. (Of course, most mobile operators have also long taken the same view of "customer service" as the airline's famously abrasive CEO, Michael O'Leary).
• The need for flexibility in terms of billing and back-office systems came up several times (unsurprisingly given the event's sponsor) but it is something that I certainly agree with. There is still significant mileage in constructing innovative pricing schemes that appeal to think slices of the mobile population, as well as the need to adjust and amend these with a broad range of parameters. In addition, given the lack of certainty about exactly which of the future revenue streams may prove popular (or how to package/bundle them) retaining the maximum set of choices rather than "hard wiring" billing options makes sense.
• There was an interesting question about the use of NFC chips in conjunction with retailers' MVNOs (or possibly bands), for applications like loyalty cards, payments and so forth. I'm pretty skeptical about NFC as a massmarket mobile proposition (although I don't write it off entirely), but I can see it making limited sense in some circumstances.

One area I couldn't really drill into was around data and corporate-focused MVNOs, which is where I think some significant innovation is occurring at the moment. But as I noted last week I'm seeing a definite increase of interest around dual-mode devices, unified communications and systems integration. To me, this is among the best ways in which MVNOs can differentiate sustainably. I'll cover "advanced MVNOs" in future posts.

Lastly, and also more food for thought, was some discussion around the concept of how 'mobile virtuality' plays out as more of the overall telecoms industry moves towards some messy combinations of outsourcing, bundling, multi-play and managed services. Arguably, the classical view of MVNOs as a simple wholesale/retail proposition starts to look a bit monochrome in the face of the quadplay, web services, network-sharing and new entrants like Nokia Ovi. Again, worth another look in more detail at another point.

Standalone Mobile Apps vs Web Apps on Mobile

Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity has a very well-observed post on why he thinks mobile applications are dying, and are being replaced by web applications instead.

"app development on the mobile web sucks less than the alternative"

And Michael adds a very witty obituary:

"In loving memory of the mobile applications business. Adoring child of Java, Psion, Palm OS and Windows Mobile; doting parent of Symbian, Access Linux Platform, and S60; constant companion of Handango and Motricity. Scared the crap out of Microsoft in 2000. Passed away from strangulation at the hands of the mobile industry in 2008. Awaiting resurrection as a web service in 2009. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a donation to the Yahoo takeover defense fund."

In general, I agree. Barcelona was full of widgets & web services, and I've been telling my handset software customers for some years that they should be working on the best browser implementations they can.

I've also often pointed out that future operator/vendor "next gen walled garden" initiatives like IMS are driving the most creative developers towards AJAX and Web 2.0. And I certainly feel that the concept of "aftermarket" mobile applications (ie downloaded by end users) is almost an irrelevance to most users, apart from maybe games. Normal people don't download software to their phones, even if Nokia does try to rebrand them "multimedia computers". Come to that, normal people don't care if their phone is "smart" or not - most smartphone owners neither know nor care what's powering their phone or what it's theoretical capabilities might be.

There's also been no mechanism for popular mobile apps to spread virally - you can't just tell all your friends how cool something is, and suggest that they download it now. You need to know which phone, which OS/firmware, which operator, which data tariff etc etc. There's friction. The web is easier, at least once everyone has a decent-ish browser and a flat-ish data plan (give it 3 years in developed markets, I'd say).

I don't think the situation is quite that clear-cut though, and that there will be plenty of reasons to continue using native apps on smartphones, together with other virtual machines and on-device portals like Java, Flash, BREW and SurfKitchen.

In particular, the following use cases remain for native (or virtual machine) device applications:

• Pre-installed applications at the factory.
• Pre-installed applications by the operator or other service-provider (eg RIM)
• Pre-installed applications by the retailer or distributor
• Certain markets are a bit more application-savvy (eg the US, with its history of PDA users), although other markets still view installing (or even thinking about) handset software as a geek-only activity.
• Applications installed by enterprises for their end users
• Applications like VoIP that need access to underlyig device APIs and capabilities like codecs.
• Applications (maybe IMS apps) for which carriers are able to design & enforce a complex over-the-air automated download & install process. Likely to only work in situations where the user has a deeply-customised phone, rather than a 'vanilla' device.
• Games, and even then only by certain demographics.
• End-to-end services coupled to specific devices or a limited range, rather than generic handsets (eg BlackBerry, Amazon Kindle)

Bottom line - I totally agree with Michael that web-based applications are becoming much more important relative to "installed" mobile apps. But I think it's a little early for the obituary, deeply amusing though it is.

Fixed lines.... rising or falling?

We're constantly bombarded by mobile industry propaganda that people are "cutting the cord" and moving to become mobile-only..... particularly in the US, there seems to be a perception that, to quote fellow blogger Carlo Longino "the landline's days are numbered".

Now absolutely there is ongoing fixed-mobile substitution in terms of originating call minutes, although the difficulty of tracking VoIP minutes (especially within VoIP communities like Skype or internal corporate PBX networks) muddies the water. Certainly, most of my own calls are mobile-based.

And yet.... perhaps reports of landlines' demise have been exaggerated.....

I just noticed, for example, that France Telecom's recent results has a KPI spreadsheet showing its base of landlines has been rising, slowly but consistently, for the last 5 quarters, up to 34.2m at end-07 from a low of 33.7m in mid-06. The growth has largely been driven by wholesale connections - ie particularly used by its competitors for triple play (with VoIP) and naked DSL.

I think it's definitely fair to say that the PSTN is slowly dwindling. And I don't see an awful lot more copper being installed. But taken together, fixed VoIP / triple-play connections, fixed-DSL, and increasingly fixed-fibre still has legs, in my view.

WiFi vs 3G and session-based mobile broadband

The problem with paid WiFi hotspots is that the one-off cost and hassle of getting access can often be too high. In theory, the session-based approach is quite elegant as it affords the user plenty of choice, but practical and economic constraints mean it's often poorly provisioned in reality. And it's almost impossible to sell ongoing WiFi subscriptions to massmarket users - you can never be sure of the availability of (say) BT Openzone or T-Mobile or Boingo, and roaming isn't perfect.

Conversely, the problem with mobile broadband (HSPA) is that generally it is only available on a subscription basis (or sign-up-to-a-specific-operator prepaid in a few countries). In addition, data roaming charges are often prohibitive, you can only access a given carrier's network even if others are available, and you may have to deal with lousy operator-specific connection manager software.

When you just want to access the Internet from a laptop, there is almost no reason to haul all the traffic through an operator's core network - especially backhauling it internationally to your home operator's GGSN. It should just be linked out to the Internet at the closest and cheapest connection point to your present location. Sure, some services may need to be routed back (eg operator-specific messaging or VoIP), but the bulk of traffic should be able to transit the most convenient access. [And yes, I know there's always lots of industry blather about content filtering, but I see no reason why it should apply to laptop 3G but not laptop WiFi].

There is an urgent need for HSPA/EVDO session-based broadband access. If I travel to the US, I want to be offered a menu accessible from my PC, with with T-Mobile and AT&T competing to provide me mobile broadband access for the duration of my stay - and maybe Verizon & Sprint too if I've got a dual-mode modem. I don't want to be confined to whichever happens to have a roaming relationship with my UK operator. Sure, I want that as an option, but there's absolutely no reason to be locked in to it. I want lots of different payment models - the hotel cuts a deal with AT&T, maybe my client has a guest HSPA network with T-Mobile via a picocell and so on.

Initially, I thought this operator-neutral approach to mobile broadband could be achieved with local, cheaply-bought extra 3G dongles. Buy one (or rent one) at the airport on arrival, preloaded with SIM and 5GB / 5 days / whatever, and drop it in a recycling bin on the way out. Maybe even get one lent to you for an hour with a cappucino, or given free to you as a conference delegate (as per the GSMA's approach to some analysts & journalists in Barcelona). But my recent experience with clashing modem drivers and dodgy connection managers has made me rethink this.

In a nutshell, 3G modems, either built-in to laptops or as separate modems, need to be able to easily and switchably support multiple operators. No software glitches, no need to get an extra SIM card from a shop or by mail, no onerous registration tasks. Sure, some people will opt for the subscription route anyway because it meets their needs precisely, but there need to be alternative models as well.

I think the WiMAX guys already "get" this. But a lot of mobile operators are still beholden to their custom modems and software clients and SIM cards. They need to face up to the reality that mobile PC users are different from mobile phone users - there's no need for a consistent inbound phone number, and therefore much less need for a continuous relationship with just a single service provider.

Multiplicity management - sharing data & content between devices

Just spotted this article about a company called doubleTwist which seems to enable consumers to swap content, contacts & other files across multiple handset types (& other devices).

"provides sync support for the Sony PSP, Nokia N Series, Sony Ericsson Walkman and Cybershot phones, LG Viewty, and Windows Mobile smart phones such as those from HTC and Palm. Apple iPhone users will soon be able to view content they receive from friends by accessing doubleTwist from their phone's Safari browser"

This sounds like exactly the type of business model I have in mind when I talk about enabling users to enjoy multiplicity - "You want 3 devices? No problem, we'll help you."

In the long term, I can see this type of philosophy being much more successful than something like a Microsoft or Nokia/Ovi platform trying to steer people towards loyalty to a single OS or handset family.

Virtuality Squared - IBM has a virtual virtual operator in Finland

I had an interesting meeting with entreprise FMC vendor Telepo in Barcelona last week. They have some interesting innovations around that space - they are trying to occupy the middle ground between operator- and enterprise-controlled approaches to FMC. They don't extol a "bin the PBX" message, but also acknowledge the role of the operator in areas like SMS.

But the thing that really caught my eye was this announcement.

If I'm reading it correctly, it's an IBM-branded and operated corporate UC/FMC service, running on top of GSM Suomi's network. Now my Finnish isn't too hot, but both comments from Telepo's representatives, and posts like this suggest that GSM Suomi is itself an MVNO.

I've been wondering for a while if IBM or other large IT systems integrators would move into the corporate MVNO space. However, my impression has been that they've balked at the depth of negotiations required and the difficulty of constructing a global footprint. Maybe this is the next-best solution - offering a virtual branded service - in this case, via a virtual operator.

I guess I'll be the first to coin the term MVVNO.....

I actually have an analyst briefing with Big Blue tomorrow, so I'll grill them about it....

(Separately, one of Telepo's go-to-market routes is via an OEM deal with Ericsson, which has this morning sold its Enterprise Comms division to Aastra. That doesn't surprise me too much, as Ericsson has long looked a little embarrassed about its non-operator business selling 'legacy' PBXs instead of toeing the company line on IMS and hosted services. I wonder if Alcatel will follow suit).

The problem with mobile broadband - operator connection manager software

Regular readers will have gathered that I'm quite a fan of flatrate mobile broadband for my PC. I have an ZTE HSDPA modem from 3 UK which I use regularly, and I had the use of a Telefonica / Huawei one last week at 3GSM. I've also written a detailed white paper on HSPA for the enterprise, on behalf of the GSMA. Sure, there are still serious issues with egregiously-high data roaming costs, but it now looks like the operators will fix that problem themselves in the next few months , or else Viviane Reding and the European Commission will do it for them.

There is, however, another downside. I'd already mentioned that the Telefonica modem I got given in Barcelona had some driver conflicts with my existing software. I also noticed during the week that it caused difficulties with downloading POP3 email, either across the 3G network or using WiFi (eg on the free WiFi in T-Mobile's hospitality tent). Without going into the technical details, it did something horrible in conjunction with Outlook and Norton Security on my PC that stopped me downloading mail.

Annoying, but not a huge problem at the time as I had webmail access & another device anyway. But now I'm home, and I just spent 3 hours fixing the problem, in conjunction with Norton's support - eventually solved by deleting all traces of the Telefonica software (via its Spanish-language interface....), reinstalling Norton, rebooting about 4 times and holding my breath / swearing a lot.

Not ideal. And this isn't just a Telefonica problem either - the 3 software seems to dislike downloading or sending email from time to time as well, although it seems to be behaving itself now. And at least removing the Telefonica software hasn't taken out or disabled its rival as collateral damage (something I'd feared).

Now all this wouldn't be a problem if people used the same operator for the lifetime of the laptop. But in many cases this isn't going to happen. In fact, I had several discussions at 3GSM which talked about the need for a "session based" connection model for HSPA - where you basically choose service providers in a similar fashion to choosing WiFi connections. That's a topic for another post, especially as it poses some interesting issues around the use of SIM cards.

The bottom line is this:

Operators need to stop developing their own connection manager software and expecting end-users to install it on their PCs. The same goes for related applications like messaging clients, security functions and probably the IMS Rich Comms Suite I was dismissive of the other day. Developing PC software is a huge undertaking, and has huge potential for software conflicts - especially where users are likely to want to install competing versions of connectivity clients.

The connection manager "engine" needs to go down in the operating system, and perhaps be customisable at a UI level by operators who want to brand it differently. There should not be dedicated clients per-operator until they have demonstrated interoperability (between themselves & with popular mail & security software) and ease of removal. I do not want operators mucking around with the underlying connectivity settings of my PC - I don't trust them to have my best interests at heart (which may include churning or dual-sourcing).

Actually, this isn't just mobile operators' HSPA clients either. BT's diagnostics toolkit on my fixed broadband seems to slow everything down, and don't get me started on handset vendors' PC connectivity suites either - I have an obscure SonyEricsson dialog box inviting me to "Switch to" every time I boot up my PC.

Bottom line - there needs to be a Universal Connection Manager in the next version of Windows, which will allow branded operator services to be provided - but will also allow the customer to control (and add/remove) multiple operators' experience and clients on their computer. My Yahoo and Skype messenger clients don't fight each other or kill my email. If operators have any hopes of offering "rich" PC-based experiences, they need to prove that they can match or exceed their rivals' software abilities. I suspect they'll be forced to do it via the web & browser plug-ins, rather than dedicated software.

Handsets and interference on planes

Like many readers in the industry, I'm pretty skeptical that mobile handsets can cause problems with aircraft electronics. I always thought the laws were a legacy of the old, more powerful analog phones of the past. At worst, I thought there might be the sort of "dum di di dum" sounds in poorly-shielded headphones - the type you get through the sound systems at conferences when the speaker's phone rings in his pocket close to the microphone.

Which is why I was rather surprised to hear an announcement this afternoon, midway back from Barcelona on an Iberia Airbus A320 saying;

"The pilot has requested that all passengers check again that their mobile phones are switched off, as the aircraft systems are registering interference"

and again 15 minutes later

"The aircraft systems are still experiencing interference. Would passengers please switch off all electronic products now"

Anyone else ever heard something similar? I'm guessing that a flight back from Barca today after 3GSM would have a higher than usual number of cellular gizmos.... and perhaps some precertification prototypes, but this still really surprised me.

3GSM in Barcelona... no surprises

For the first time in years, I haven't used my own cameraphone to actually take any pictures at 3GSM this week. Nothing's made me say "wow". Nothing's been particularly unexpected. There's no new 'shiny thing' that's a must have. That said, there's been a lot of business and serious discussion going on.

It'll take a while to sink in, but some more comments and observations for now:

• A surprising lack of discussion around 900MHz UMTS or spectrum refarming
• Orange (and to a lesser degree Telefonica) are emerging as the key proponents of old-school mobile operator thinking ("We can control everything - content, handset UIs, home networking etc"). They seem to be believing the IMS/walled-garden mantra of customer lock-in. I probably need to understand their domestic French & Spanish markets a little more, but I think they'll probably fail.
• Linked to this, the IMS Rich Communications Suite was announced by a partnership of operators and vendors. It's basically a 2002-era Yahoo Messenger client for IMS, running on PCs and handsets, bundling messaging, file/image sharing, IM and so on, but linked to the user's phone number and account. At first glance, I think it risks turning into another "coalition of the losers" as it doesn't directly peer (or easily integrate via web services) into today's defining social platforms like Skype or FaceBook. Maybe it'll be adopted by certain groups, or perhaps there will be a reason for it to be used as Social Network #4 by some users. I can't see an easy route to it becoming the primary network - operators aren't cool/differentiated enough, plus it'll probably involve payment. Bottom line - interesting as an IMS application. But unlikely to be popular, and certainly not an Internet-beater. At least it's been better thought-through than the useless basic IMS videoshare application, though.
• There's an interesting spectrum of opinion emerging as to whether we'll be dashing straight to LTE, or dropping off via HSPA+ (also called HSPA Evolved) on the way. Some vendor-specific preferences (Qualcomm = HSPA+, Nortel = LTE, everyone else sitting on the fence but leaning in one direction or the other). It's likely to be geo-specific, with DoCoMo (which doesn't have a 2G GSM network to run in parallel, and has lots of spectrum) pushing hardest for LTE, while European operators may balk at 2G/3G/LTE coexistence and could procrastinate for years.
• VCC seems to have been downplayed a lot this year (and UMA seems to be dependent on femtos rather than dualmode for any future operator sign-ups). Is WiFi/cellular dead? No, definitely, but there's certainly more pragmatism about operator-led deployments. And, thankfully, the word "seamless" seems to have been confined to the dustbin of history.
• I'll be talking a lot more about femtocells in weeks to come. I saw some interesting demo's of how to take them beyond just cheap-voice-at-home. That said, there's a lot of debate about realistic timelines for their deployment. I wish we had a standardised way of defining telecom technology trials, akin to the pharmaceutical industry's Phase 1/2/3 methodology.
• Smartphones are, like, so 2005.... It looks like the industry has woken up to the reality that the majority of end users don't care about smartness. They want a 5MP camera, cool design and GPS, not the ability to download software. Sure, the proportion of open OS's will creep up slowly, but many of the coolest devices (and likely best-selling) new devices around at the show used embedded RTOS.
• The world seems to be dividing between those who think Google Android will save the planet, and those who are saying "Android - yeah, so what? They're underestimating how tough this whole mobile thing is". I'm in the latter camp for now.
• WiMAX seemed "real" this year. I'm still unconvinced that massmarket phones are round the corner though - despite the prototypes.

More to come next week.

And to finish - thanks to the GSMA (and Huawei & Telefonica) for the HSDPA dongle & temporary broadband wireless access during the show. It worked very well (noticeably better than the 3 network in my part of London, in fact). Now just rename the show from MWC back to 3GSM for next year, and I'll promise not to be too negative about things like the IPX....

Quick thoughts from 3GSM

I've got a couple of minutes free, so some initial thoughts on what's hot & what's not here in Barcelona:



- Mobile VoIP seems to be being downplayed, especially by the larger handset vendors like Nokia & Samsung

- We won't be seeing many HSUPA phones till 2009 (there's a couple from HTC & I-Mate and Toshiba), although there's quiet a few dongles supporting it

- Lots of LTE demos - but a surprising amount of skepticism about timelines

- However, HSPA+ seems to be bubbling under as a more important near-term upgrade (see Vodafone's trial announcement this morning). I think this makes a lot of sense, especially for operators that aren't sure they can get 10 or 20MHz spectrum chunks for LTE.

- Given a choice of putting WiFi, GPS or a 5MP camera in a phone being designed-down to a budget, the camera wins, with GPS a close second and WiFi trailing after.

- An awful lot of navigation stuff, much of whch actually looks quite cool

- A surprising amount of Mobile TV, which seems to be making a second attempt at wooing the industry. It still looks like a highly questionable proposition except for a few niches though.

- Apart from a few ultra-top end phones (iPhone, some Windows Mobile ones mostly), there's not much sign of VGA screens. Outside the Japanese market, the standard top-end phone is still 320x240 pixel QVGA.

- Conspicuous lack of presence from Apple & Google

- Some cool new devices - I like the G900 from SonyEricsson, and the N96 from Nokia, and the Samsung Soul.

IMS MMtel - does anyone apart from Ericsson care?

This may come as a surprise to you, but there is a 3GPP standard for a "PSTN replacement" form of VoIP. Supposedly, it will enable both fixed-line (TISPAN) and mobile operators to deploy a single, bearer-independent telephony application that will supplant existing circuit telephony and bring new revenues from its ability to blend speech with video, messaging and other elements. It will be, allegedly, the basis for Telephony 2.0

It's called IMS Multimedia Telephony, or more briefly, MMtel.

Ericsson takes every opportunity to talk it up, insisting that it will drive IMS business cases, be usable over everything from DSL to HSPA to LTE, will help operators defend against 3rd-party VoIP, and may even itself be a developer platform.

But if you haven't heard of it before, I wouldn't be at all surprised. Almost nobody has. I ask plenty of people who should have heard of it - operator applications people, interoperability bodies like the MSF who work on IMS interconnection, a variety of SBC vendors, VoIP specialists, handset platform providers. Almost universally, I get blank stares when I ask "what do you think of MMTel?". And the handful who have heard of it usually display zero enthusiasm, or even pitch an alternative approach.

Ericsson seems alone. Even the main book on the subject is written by people from Ericsson Research.

The problem is evident from the name. The word "multimedia" was last considered sexy in about 1995. MMS has been a failure. Sure, people like video stuff like YouTube, but they don't want videotelephony or videosharing except in a tiny fraction of circumstances. Generally, multimedia doesn't need to be realtime - it's more important to capture multimedia for later upload to social networking sites or for other applications. I've written before about the uselessness of things like video share.

Yes, it will be possible to "delete" all the multimedia baggage from MMtel and just use it for "plain vanilla" VoIP. But I bet that's not the cheapest or best-optimised method to deliver it.

The next generation of voice isn't about adding & dropping extra streams of video or messaging. It's more about three other things:

• 1) Today's telephony but better - better quality, better coverage, lower price
• 2) Intelligent telephony - calls which use the user's context better. So perhaps the telephony application knows that the phone is on charge, in a darkened room, and hasn't been moved in 5 hours. It injects an announcement before connecting saying "the user may be asleep - press 1 to go straight to voicemail"
• 3) Non-telephony voice - as I've discussed before, it is becoming important to blend voice with other applications. A variety of VoIP mashups will add value to both consumer and enterprise services.

These ought to have been the central tenets behind the standard for next-gen telephony, not pointless focus on minuscule niche requirements like realtime video. 3GPP (and Ericsson) need to seriously rethink MMtel.

But at least they can take heart from one thing. The fact that nobody else has heard of MMtel means they won't need to work too hard to re-educate the market and its expectations.

Mobile PBX Fundamentalism.... the acid test

I regularly criticise the notion of mobile centrex as a plausible standalone replacement for PBXs. Absolutely, it has a role to play in certain niches - salesforces, certain small companies (if you can get the channels right) and so on. And in the context of a larger consultancy-driven managed services offerings (think BT Global Services), with plenty of IT systems integration involvement, there is a possibility of more wide-scale adoption of telephony "in the network".

But I still keep getting blustery press releases from vendors and operators which essentially say "throw your PBX in the bin on Friday night, and start using your mobile handset instead on Monday morning, with your operator as your service provider".

I've posted at length before about why this is utterly unrealistic as a massmarket, generic proposition, whether it is FMC-based, IMS-anchored, IN-resident or any other variety.

So I've thought up a simple test for whether this can fly in reality, particularly in a heavy-duty, mission-critical enterprise context:

Show me a mobile operator which runs its own main customer call centre via a network-hosted platform, rather than a discrete ACD or PBX. And which has taken away all the deskphones from its finance department. Then (and assuming it works!) I'll start to change my mind.

A cellular radio network planner's worst nightmare......

The picture above is taken from the NetEvents conference I'm attending in Barcelona before the start of 3GSM. It's a room of about 80 technology analysts and journalists, most of whom are using laptops to take notes. The event is "green" in that there are no paper handouts - presentations are downloaded from the web. There is free WiFi for delegates which runs fast.

The conference room is in a hotel basement, with thick walls & ceilings and lots of marble.

It just struck me to think: could this all be managed using cellular? Leaving aside the issue of roaming costs in Spain, the radio problems alone would be horrible. I'm sure it would be technically feasible given enough effort (eg HSPA macrocell in the corner of the room with 100MB ethernet for backhaul)... but could it ever be provided at a cost suitable for a conference?

It's not just the raw bandwidth capacity either - a pico or femtocell would struggle to deal with the number of simultaneous data connections (PDP contexts etc).

And from a business point of view... how would the organiser contract with all the attendees' various operators to offer "free" coverage during the event? Or would they have to give a separate prepaid 3G dongle to each person, irrespective of whether they already had 3G deal with their normal operator.... and how would the connection manager software deal with that?