Summary slides on Telco-OTT rationale

Last week, Martin Geddes & I ran our first public workshop on Telco-OTT services, and why both fixed and mobile operators should be developing their own Internet-based services. This was a full-day event, with a varied attendance from operators, vendors, Internet companies, regulators and others. Rather than just being presentations from myself and Martin, we ran the event to get a good amount of discussion, interaction and networking among the participants.

We covered general trends in the telecoms industry that make it inevitable that the historic "federation" model of telecoms services is going to break down - and sources of value that remain open to operators as that happens. We examined some of the underlying and unspoken assumptions that the telecoms industry often makes. Importantly, we also looked at some of the practicalities and organisational challenges involved in telcos developing innovative products and services, some of which may cannibalise existing busineses.

Our view is that "managed and minimal self-cannibalisation" is far better than simply burying heads in sand and waiting for the Internet juggernaut to do it instead, in a much more catastrophic fashion. It's also much better than trying to compete with Internet-OTT services with poorly thought-out legacy solutions like RCSe.

Our view is that the industry spends too much time thinking about "Telcos vs. OTT" and too little time considering "Telcos exploiting OTT".

The event drilled into the four main areas of Telco-OTT services: Communications, Cloud, Content & Connectivity. These are all covered in much greater detail in my recent report on Telco-OTT Strategies and Case Studies.

If you want to get a quick backgrounder on the "story", we've uploaded a summary slide-deck. You can view it here.

Have a look through it, feel free to comment here on this blog, and if you'd like to take it further, please get in touch (information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com) or buy the full report.

We'll soon be announcing future public workshops, as well as conducting private internal sessions for specific clients (under NDA where appropriate). I've also been doing various in-depth consulting engagements in this area with vendors and operators, and would be happy to discuss your specific requirements.

Upcoming Events: Open Mobile Summit, NGMN, Small Cells & more

Future of Voice & Telco-OTT

Firstly, a big round of thanks to everyone who came to last week's London Future of Voice and inaugural Telco-OTT workshops. Martin & I were very pleased with the levels of insight & interaction, and the general atmosphere of learning and collaboration among supposed rivals. I've come out of the events with a range of extra thoughts and ideas, and will be feeding those back into our ever-evolving story.

On that topic, we're still finalising dates for our next public FoV / OTT workshops in the US (and after that, back in UK/Europe and maybe Asia later in the year), as well as talking to various companies about running internal private or custom workshops for staff/partners/customers. We're also thinking about shorter varieties for breakfast roundtables, press lunches etc.

If you're interested in hosting or sponsoring an event on Future of Voice, Telco-OTT or related areas, please drop me a line via information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com . More detail is also available on the main Future of Comms website.

In addition to my own smaller workshop-style events, I'm also going to be speaking at or chairing various other major conferences over the next couple of months.


Open Mobile Summit

In particular, I'll be at the Open Mobile Summit in London (link here) on May 29-30 . I’ll be moderating a panel on the possible operator responses to so-called OTT providers, including whether operators should launch their own OTT services (ie my Telco-OTT hypothesis). Dr. Rainer Deutschmann, SVP Core Telco, Deutsche Telekom and Daniel Gurrola, VP, Orange, are just 2 of the heavyweight operators participating in this session’s line-up. It wouldn't surprise me if my favourite topic of RCS crops up as well, so anticipate some fireworks and the odd awkward question....

I'm quite a fan of the OMS events, having spoken at four previous conferences. There's usually a good mix of senior people from across the value chain - generally focused more on services (next gen voice, cloud, advertising, payments and commerce etc), rather than infrastructure. Unlike some events I've been to, I also don't get the sense that vendor sponsors set the agenda unduly or get a free-ride.

Use discount code DISRUPTIVE or click here for special delegate rates.


NGMN Conference

I'm not going to be going to the LTE World Summit this year. In general, I'm moving away from attending the larger events and trade shows, unless they are both profitable for me and enjoyable. I'm not at CTIA next week either, and I probably won't be at MWC in Barcelona next year, since as it's moving from the Fira to some new faceless barn way out by the airport.

Instead, I'm going to be at the NGMN Industry Conference in San Francisco from June 13-15. (Link here) which looks to be stuffed with CTOs and senior strategists. Hopefully that means there should be a focus on what's actually realistic with 4G technology, rather than marketing fluff and hype. I'm moderating a panel session on devices including NTT DoCoMo, Bell Mobility, Samsung and Qualcomm representatives. I'll actually be wearing my "second hat" as an associate of STL Partners / Telco 2.0 , and primarily representing their work & world-view, where it is congruent with my own.

(That means that I won't be at the STL/Telco 2.0 London event that's running at the same time, which I'd also heartily recommend for a less-tech heavy view on telco & media business models and service opportunities)


Small Cell World Summit

My other main gig before the summer is back in London, at the end of June, at the Small Cell Summit (formerly the Femto Summit). Link is here. I'll be moderating a panel session discussing the practicalities of rolling out small cells on a large scale, and also probably chairing one of the other sessions. Should be interesting to see what's going on in the world of small cells & femtos - in my mind a really important part of increasing network capacity, rather than trying to over-engineer the core and policy parts of the infrastructure.

(Special plug here for the organisers, who've clearly got their priorities right, as they've arranged it at a venue which is walking distance from my house.)


Other events & speaker requests

Later in the year, I'll be doing an executive training course on key disruptive trends in telecoms in Singapore (Sep 20th) - more details in a later post. I'll also probably be at one or more of the Telco 2.0 events in the Middle East or Asia-Pacific in Oct/Nov.

If you're interested in getting me along as a speaker, moderator or chair for another event, please drop me an email at information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

My main topics are:

- Future of Voice (and messaging) services
- Telcos + OTT / Telcos vs. OTT / Telco-OTT strategies
- Mobile Data Policy/Traffic Management & Optimisation
- Wi-Fi (offload, devices, carriers, user experience etc)
- Operator Business Models
- Mobile Broadband Networks (3G / 4G)
- Mobile devices & ecosystems

Some of my current thinking about RCSe / Joyn

I realise that haven't commented on this blog about RCS in a while, although I've had numerous exchanges on Twitter over the past couple of months since the Joyn announcement. I've also had a chance to talk to various operators and vendors, both through general briefings and under-NDA private consulting engagements.

  

So this is a bit of an update on recent thoughts & conversations I've been having. The timing seems appropriate, given that next week there is both a legacy-view IMS conference in Spain, and for real telecoms thought-leadership, my own Future of Voice / Telco-OTT Strategies workshop with Martin Geddes (details here, sign up here).

That said, I'm not going to give away all of my new analysis about RCS in this post, just certain strands - the full story is reserved for my consulting and workshop clients, or paying subscribers to @DApremium on Twitter.

 

If you are interested in a consulting workshop about Joyn/RCSe please get in touch. I am particularly interested in hearing from COOs, CFOs or others having to make investment decisions, who need a counter-argument or "bear case" to set against the position of internal or vendor RCS advocates.

Note: One or two commentators on Twitter have accused me of having confirmation bias (giving disproportionate weight to data that confirms existing beliefs), so I've been very consciously "open-minded" about this whole area. At MWC I made sure I had a couple of Joyn demos without preconception or prejudice, and I seen the official GSMA "pitch" several times at conferences & webinars. Some of my opinions have shifted slightly, but overall I am still broadly negative.

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Status

It's too early to judge based on results - we've only had Vodafone Spain launch, albeit in a very limited beta/trial fashion (5-10k downloads and very mixed reviews according to Google Play, especially as some comments seem to be from internal VF folk). German operators have talked about May as a target date, and "summer" seems to be the timeframe for a broader European launch. Overall, there have been many delays and slippages - it's interesting to compare each GSMA presenter's charts at conferences with the previous ones to see what dates have moved. France, Italy and South Korea are all allegedly launching in H1'2012 as well - I'm willing to bet that at least one misses that date, especially for a full, all-MNOs, interoperable launch.

That said, one thing that seems to be clear recently is that RCS is being driven very heavily "from the top". There's definitely tighter marketing and messaging. I'm expecting to see IMS conference speeches with "See? We were right all along!" self-congratulatory (and very premature) messages. And to be fair, Joyn as a brand isn't bad, even if some amusing acronyms are possible. 

There's also a sense of urgency and committment which is (just) the right side of desperation. There are a lot more companies with "skin in the game", albeit with different levels of financial imvolvement. (Notably though, most vendors are dual-purposing their solutions for both IMS/RCS and also TelcoOTT-type use cases). The concept of "fake it till you make it" is understandable from a marketing point of view, but the mantra of "it's just there, it just works" is a huge liability, if it isn't/doesn't.

In my view, a better strategy would have been to target RCS at specific niches or use-cases, rather than pretend (against all evidence and realistic expectation) that it's going to suddenly become "ubiquitous".  (I wrote a piece about "the death of ubiquity" a while back). Nobody in the industry believes RCS will be everywhere - and certainly not on a 2-3 year timeframe - so it is credibility-damaging to assert it anyway. Not to mention the increasing share-of-wallet that will accrue to fragmented rather than ubiquitous telecoms services & capabilities.

What's it for? And why will people use it?

There are still very mixed messages about whether RCS is supposed to be a competitor to so-called OTT players, or something else entirely. I've yet to hear a single compelling reason why any existing user of WhatsApp or Kakaotalk or Facebook or BBM would be persuaded to switch to Joyn, and for which use-cases. 

The usual argument seems to be that "not everyone has smartphones" or "not everyone downloads WhatsApp, so this is a service for everyone else". Both of these arguments are completely specious - I cannot think of a single successful technology or service that was driven by late-adopters, especially a communications service which relies on Metcalfe network-effect square/exponential laws, and which is heavily driven by popular individuals as trend-setters or social "hubs". Plus, downloading apps is no longer onerous. Some people even view it as fun. (I suspect a lot of IMS engineers still have old Symbian phones, which might explain a few things).

Put another way - this late-adopters-first approach sounds like an attempt to "cross the chasm", but backwards.

Nevertheless, the force being applied to try to "make RCS a success" is commendable. I've met a number of people from operators recently - even from disruptive Telco-OTT business units - who seem to have had an edict handed down that they MUST have RCS compatibility. That said, it's fair to say I've spoken to a few supposed "converts" who have been singing its praises through gritted teeth.

Attitudes also seem to be different in the US to Europe. 

In Europe, the story is muddled. RCSe is being pitched as an OTT-beater (by some), SMS 2.0 (by others), an easy option for late-adopters without smartphones or Facebook (uh huh) and a variety of other mostly unconvincing stories. There's quite a lot of general skepticism about IMS, and an awareness of awkward practicalities such as 50-90% prepay users who buy phones unlocked without operator apps (and who SIM-swap a lot).

In the US, the approach is about much tighter coupling of RCS to VoLTE, to create a completely new personal communications experience for all-IP mobile networks. There's much more homogeneity in the user base (mostly on long contracts), less fragmentation among service providers, and a mentality that they can make IMS work. [We should see the re-unification of the now-divergent RCSe and full RCS in RCS5.0. At some point].

There's also more emphasis in the US on using RCS as a developer platform. In my view, it's a bigger bet, but a rather more coherent one, especially as 4G has become a marketing issue and the CDMA operators are being forced to LTE anyway. So they really need VoLTE or a VoIP alternative, and thus they seem to think that RCS might as well come along for the ride. Some of the demos and mockups I've seen (eg from Summit and D2) even look quite slick.

But it's also heavily interdependent on other issues - for example, if VoLTE struggles with radio issues (eg voice quality, cell handover or battery consumption) then RCS is tightly coupled and gets delayed as well. LTE outages on Verizon have also been blamed on the IMS core, which doesn't bode well.

Competition is intensifying - and not just from apps

And delay is critical here, because the longer it takes, the greater a foothold Apple, Google, Facebook and others (Microsoft/Skype?) will have. I can't see Apple ever putting a full, native RCS capability in its devices - they might do a server-side cludge via iCloud, but put a new telco comms client (and IMS!) on an iPhone to compete with iMessage and FaceTime, much less a SIM-free WiFi iPad or iPod? No, that seems implausible, especially in the short term.

Google is already allowing Android OEMs to implement RCS and presumably will do its own variants within Motorola (for now), but I'm unconvinced they'd put it in the basic Android build - again, not least because it's used increasingly in non-SIM/non-telco devices like tablets, and it won't want to sideline Google Voice, G+, GTalk, GMail and its various other comms properties.

There's also a sub-story with Google's involvement in WebRTC - it knows that much P2P communications isn't going to remain a "service" or even an "app" for long - it's going to be a simple feature of the browser, and that any service will need to be something provided over and above simple transport of voice, message or video. (WebRTC is a large-but-silent elephant in the communications services room. It'll take a few years to hit mobile in a big way, but has the potential to be the single biggest disruptor for the entire industry).

Facebook's 400m mobile users makes the Joyn story of "it's just there, it just works" look ridiculous already. It's already much more widely available than RCS will ever be (including down to featurephones with Facebook Zero, Java and even USSD / SIM toolkit applications - as well as being on PCs and tablets everywhere). If the telecom industry wants something "ubiquitous" it needs to go well beyond IMS-capable devices.

Then we have Microsoft, BlackBerry and numerous other players, none of which must see RCS as a panacea, even if they are getting arm-twisted into including it in devices by carriers. But if anyone thinks that RIM is going to willingly downplay the BBM experience, or that Windows/Skype messaging is going to be based 100% on an RCS API, they're on a different planet to me. [Edit - some details on WP8 + RCS here]

Developers, developers

Overall, I've got more sympathy for the US RCS approach, because at least there's a consistent story - and, critically, there's a clear developer angle. I think that RCS/RCSe/Joyn has very little chance of success (anywhere) as a messaging app but I can just about buy into the API story, at least in concept if not execution.

  

I can envisage certain B2C use-cases for video-share, such as customer support ("No, connect the wire to that socket"), or perhaps C2C mashups with a map ("I'm in the pub... where are you exactly? Look, I'll just send you a navigation widget"). But the problem with all of these - as with all other telco APIs - is convincing developers that this is the best route to solving the problem, something that is going to get ever-harder as the same features start appearing in HTML5 as well as native app plaforms. And I suspect that HTML5 - and even the telcos' own WAC-type device APIs - will be "just there" and should "just work" at least as well.

(It wouldn't surprise me if the industry tries to somehow tie such device APIs into RCS as part of its work in WAC and W3C - but I really don't expect that to be universal as HTML5 will extend far beyond mobile phones / SIM-enabled devices)

Some of what companies like Solaimes are doing around "thin client" RCS, with the bulk of the work done in the cloud, and just a much lighter app (or browser) on the device makes sense, especially as it makes it easier to do RCS-as-OTT implementations - something I think is critical if it's to succeed at  all. I'm less convinced that the phonebook / contact-list is where you would want to anchor such services on the phone, though.

OTT-RCS

One of the biggest failings of the current crop of RCSe concepts is tying the app to the SIM card - firstly because many devices don't have SIMs, and secondly because there needs to be the ability to download 3rd-party apps onto phones running on networks which haven't signed up. (eg a Vodafone Joyn app on a 3UK phone).

Increasingly,  people will also have multiple connected devices, and will start to want the same experience on all of them. If I've got a Vodafone SIM in my iPhone, an Orange one in my tablet, an unlocked MiFi with various national SIMs, a PC on WiFi, an MVNO-powered smart-grid electricity gadget, and a dual-SIM Android for travelling, I won't want to have a dozen separate RCS accounts. And that's even before I try porting them when I churn.

RCS is already usable over WiFi, so it will have to be OTT at least some of the time, especially on devices that don't have a SIM card. So that begs the question - why not have it OTT all of the time?

Interconnect

This plays into a critical theme. What's the interconnect business model (between operators) for RCS/Joyn? It's not something I've heard discussed openly anywhere.

Does an operator "terminating" messages or video-sharing get paid by the "originator"? On what basis? And if I start a chat with another person, but *they* upgrade the session to video or sharing, who's the originator anyway? Or is RCS going to be a "bill and keep" service where there is no commercial arrangement? How does it change for OTT-style RCS?

It could be that the reason I haven't heard anything is because RCS is going to be free at retail in perpetuity - and therefore will also be free between operators, so interconnect billing isn't needed. But that would be most unlike any other area of the telecoms industry, which mostly hasn't even been able to grasp the idea of "freemium" to any extent.

It's notable that some of the smaller European operators seem to be the most skeptical of RCSe, and I wonder if that's because they're worried that they become "net exporters" and end up having to pay out cash, just to deliver a service they can't even monetise directly with end-users.

In any case, re-hacking the wholesale billing and mediation side of operators' IT stack to handle RCS can't be too palatable for many, especially if they're currently in the middle of a transformation/upgrade cycle anyway. Add in dealing with RCS in the network policy and charging (eg how do you treat the "OTT" bits of RCSe traffic when it's sent to/from a PC?) and it becomes an even more expensive exercise.


International

The assumption behind Joyn is that the main use-case is similar to SMS - domestic peer-to-peer messaging between friends, for example. While that's also true for a lot of BlackBerry BBM use and (in certain countries) WhatsApp and some other Internet services, it's much less true for platforms like Skype which have a large international component.

Because RCS will only get adopted slowly (I think it will be doing very well if it achieves over 2% global active use, or over 10% for any country/operators, by end-2014) its uptake is likely to be much more community driven, or by specific niche use-cases. It will take a long time (if ever) to be expected to be available as a default by users.

One group that needs to be addressed, if RCS is really going to compete with Internet peers, is the international user base. Firstly: does it work, and secondly, does it cost extra? This brings the interconnect question right back to centre stage. To use an example, a friend of mine in London currently uses WhatsApp primarily to chat and exchange videos/photos/links with her girlfriend who's studying in the US (with a local US SIM). Alternatively, they use Skype for long calls or videocalls. The alternative - paid per-message international SMS or IDD voice - is clearly not a viable option.

Will RCS make any different to that scenario, where perhaps one user is on Orange, and the other on AT&T? Neither telco will want to risk cannibalising IDD telephony and international SMS revenues today, so can they construct a mechanism to allow Joyn-type apps to compete for that use case? If not, they can't expect RCS to be a realistic competitor to WhatsApp, Skype and its peers: "free IM... as long as your buddies aren't abroad" is a poor fit with user expectations.


Summary
 
As I noted above, this is a snapshot of my current thinking, on a few areas that RCS/RCSe/Joyn needs to address.  Overall, the technology is starting to look a bit more like a complete proposition, but it was already much too little, too late at end-2011 and it's now even later.

In 2012 we've already had Instagram annointed as "the next big thing", we've seen new services like Pinterest spring up as flavour of the month, and only yesterday I heard about astonishingly fast viral growth to 30m users of "Line" a new Japanese messaging app. It's added 20m just in the extra time that RCS launch in Spain has been delayed.

The idea that RCSe will be a "Top 10" success against such a fast-moving competitive background is improbable - and even if it does, getting beyond a short-term "one-hit-wonder" must have lottery-scale odds. I really can't see how it might stay the favoured, coolest messaging app given the furious pace of evolution by startups who actually employ designers and behavioural psychologists, and who can roll out an updated version tomorrow.

There is a (small) chance that RCS might evolve to be the next "lowest common denominator"  communications platform alongside telephony, SMS, email and postal services. But even if it does, it's far from clear that such ubiquitous forms of communication can retain more than a tiny fraction of today's telecom market - especially as WebRTC takes hold. Every user is building their favoured personal "wardrobe" of fashionable communications services. The share-of-wallet of the telecoms equivalent of basic, proletarian Marks & Spencer underpants isn't going to be very high.

I'm running out of terms for RCS - I've used "dead" and "zombie" already in the past. So I think I'll just stick with "inanimate". It's still not moving, and it's certainly not capable of running after its competition with much vigour.


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Which operator app-level collaborations actually work?

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I've just been having an email exchange with a client about telco collaborations.

The net result is a question I'm struggling with - have any recent multi-telco collaborations at the app or service level actually borne fruit?

There have been plenty of trials, initiatives, and pilots. WAC, OneAPI, in-country attempts at collaborative payment platforms (eg PayForIt in the UK), API exposure (eg in Canada) or IM connectivity (various).... but I'm struggling to think of anything new that has proven substantive so far.

The possible exceptions are for M2M (which is still quite slow-moving & actually involves a lot of in-the-network techniness rather than app skills), and a few security-type things like content-filtering for kids, alerts (eg tsunami warnings), or stolen-phone disablement, which are often driven by regulators anyway.

SMS, MMS and roaming don't count as they're all old, albeit with a few modern tweaks like roaming steering or local partnerships. But that's not app/service level really anyway.

Various collaborations between operators and non-operators are successful (eg 3UK/Skype, initial AT&T/Apple, Facebook Zero + various).

Yes, there's a bunch of new stuff just starting - Joyn/RCSe, payment collaborations in various places like New Zealand, identity stuff, talk about federating telco CDNs and so on.

But are there any recent examples of these type of collaborative arrangements actually working?

(Note: this isn't a "bash the operators" post - I'm genuinely interested in hearing of examples that have worked, because off the top of my head I can't think of any. And if they've all failed... what lessons have been learned so that the new ones might succeed?)

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London Telco-OTT & Future of Voice workshops April 26-27

Coming up in 3 weeks' time is the next of my & Martin Geddes' workshops on the Future of Voice (and messaging), in Mayfair in Central London. 

This time around, however, we're running two days rather than one - bookable separately or together. The first day is FoV, but the second is the first workshop specifically on Telco-OTT services, as covered in my recent report.

There's a lot of rhetoric about how operators should "deal with OTT", but I'm the only person to publish and speak specifically about how operators can and should become OTT players themselves. I've examined more than 100 different telco Internet-based offers, spanning a wide variety of service segments, and have advised operators around the world on opportunities and risks.
 
As before, these are small, interactive workshops - not just hours of slides. With a maximum of 25 attendees, there will be break-out group exercises, Q&A sessions with Martin & myself, roundtable debate and plenty of opportunities for networking. We carefully curate the attendees, to give a mix of operators (incumbent & challenger), vendors of different types, developers, consultants and sometimes regulators and investors.

The cost per delegate is £700 for one day, or £1000 for both days, plus 20% UK VAT.

(Also, if you're interested in attending / sponsoring a US TelcoOTT/FoV event in May or June, please get in touch with me)

Future of Voice

Day 1 (April 26th) is an evolution of our previous workshop format on the evolution of telephony, voice services, new communications business models and hot topics around personal connectivity and interaction. It spans everything from underlying psychology (why do people make phone calls? what are the fundamental drivers that determine why we want to connect with each other?) to the evolving nature of voice "beyond the phone call". It considers concepts such as:

- Peak Telephony
- Free, Freemium and Less-than-Free business models
- Why "voice" and "telephony" are not the same thing
- Personal portfolios of voice & messaging
- The slow death of standards & interoperability
- VoLTE & RCS / RCSe (including thoughts on Joyn)
- APIs and developer initiatives around VoIP & communications
- "Cloud voice"
- Operator innovation around voice
- Thoughts on regulation, interconnect & fixed VoIP

More detail and registration can be found here



Telco-OTT strategies & services

Day 2 (April 27th) is the first public workshop on Telco-OTT services. I'll cover some of the key themes explored in my recent report, plus additional insights gleaned in recent months of engagement with various clients, plus meetings at MWC and other events. It will span fixed and mobile OTT services, from mobile VoIP to online video, and from femtocells to cloud SaaS.

- History of Telco-OTT (there's a surprising amount!)
- The import / export model for telcos
- Death of Ubiquity: Why OTT is inevitable for operators
- Segmentation of Telco-OTT (comms, content, cloud, connectivity)
- Technology enablers & platforms
- Specific analysis of Telco-OTT VoIP & messaging services
- Partnering with Internet-OTT players vs. developing own-brand operator services
- Build vs. buy vs. acquire
- Case studies - success, failure & innovation
- Organisational & operational challenges for telco-OTT
- Implications for investors, regulators & industry bodies
- Round-up of vendors and operators' activities on Telco-OTT

Please get in touch with me if you'd like more details, or to book a place for one or both days. (information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com) or online booking via Amiando here

Operator WiFi: Seamless is the wrong approach

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As well as #TelcoOTT services and voice & messaging, many of my meetings over the last month or two have been about WiFi - specifically, its evolution as a carrier-driven technology for offload and other purposes. I've been speaking with various operators, vendors and industry associations. I also participated in a recent webinar (sponsored by iPass, a client of mine) about this theme.

There appear to be two broad trends:

1) There is massive operator interest in large-scale WiFi deployments - for example, the Chinese operators, KDDI in Japan and various players in North America
2) However, there is also massive confusion and naivety about exactly how WiFi is going to be controlled, especially in terms of the user experience from the handset

There seem to be various underlying causes of this confusion:

1) Market participants from the cellular side of the industry are mistakenly assuming that "offload" is the only, or most important, use of WiFi on a handset - often without a decent definition of what offload actually means.
2) Some market participants know that there are multiple use-cases for WiFi, but are actually engaged in trying to subvert this so that their needs and requirements are better-served than those of end-users.

The problems can be largely summed up with a single word: "seamless". The cellular industry has an unhealthy obsession with getting rid of "seams", not understanding that sometimes they are valuable and worth keeping (or even worth adding deliberately).

Sometimes, seamless is good - for example, when a mobile phone user is moving and moves from one cell-tower to the next mid-call, without noticing. Having your phone automatically hook up to WiFi when you get home is good too.

But in other cases, seamlessness is a mixed blessing - for example in the case of international roaming. While it undeniably convenient at one level for handsets to transparently connect to a visited network, the downside is that this can lead to "bill shock", anticompetitive pricing or conditions - especially for the dark art of data roaming. This is why the European Commission is currently trying to re-introduce seams, potentially allowing users to select a separate roaming provider to their home operator. It is also why so many users create their own seam - switching off data roaming entirely.

And finally, there are times when seamless connection is outright bad - for example, if a device is "forced" to use a specific network, when the user or perhaps an app would prefer a different one. This is especially relevant for WiFi, where there are frequently various options for connection, with different ownership, speed, price, security and features. Most WiFi use is private connectivity (it's WLAN - ie wireless ethernet), not offload, and operators have no business becoming involved in it.
 
Think about an iPhone versus an iPod Touch. Any WiFi use on the iPod is by definition private - it can't be offload as it doesn't have a cellular radio to offload from. Therefore the same use on an iPhone should also be considered as private WiFi access, not offload, and outside of telco visibility and control.

Some of the proposed standards even suggest switching on the device WiFi non-consensually by the network (see this post of mine about OMA), while others such as the 3GPP's ANDSF tries to push or enforce preferences for network selection.

While for certain use-cases this might be beneficial (eg a Kindle-type device connecting to WiFi in the background, with no user intervention), in other cases it will lead to a significant restriction in user freedoms, and may directly inhibit some innovative business models. For example, O2 UK is exploring an onload model for WiFi, aiming to capture users from other network operators, rather than offloading its own subscribers' cellular traffic. There is plenty of scope for conflict where the device (and its SIM-driven seamless connection policies) contradict an app the user has empowered to make its own WiFi decisions.

Another angle on seamlessness comes from a venue-owners' perspective. Imagine that you run a cafe, with WiFi available for customers as perk (pun, apologies!) for their patronage. Your customers like it, some of them connect their phones or laptops, and come back regularly for coffee. Others ignore the WiFi sign for various reasons - perhaps because they are chatting rather than browsing Facebook or doing Skype video calls. Now imagine the same cafe with seamless WiFi. All customers' phones connect automatically. The net result is congestion - users get a poor experience, the cafe owner needs to upgrade the broadband connection, and meanwhile the atmosphere of the venue changes as people spend more time on their phones than with their friends. That is not a positive outcome for seamlessness and automated WiFi log-on. In some cases a little friction is a *positive* for loyalty and promotion - it gives the marketeer a better image of customer-friendliness, while limiting their extra capex/opex. The same is true of airline frequent flyer schemes, which gain loyalty despite the fact it can be hard to actually redeem points for flights.

There are also other insidious aspects here - various vendors I've spoken to have products that can monitor a user's entire handset WiFi experience, tracking which access points you connect to, perhaps enforcing policies even where those APs are not operator-owned or -affiliated. While there are some corner-case exceptions here (eg the perennial content-control for kids use case), this is not acceptable for massmarket use. Indeed, for many enterprises, an attempt by a carrier to check up on private WiFi use could constitute an unacceptable security breach.

Overall, many of the operators and standards bodies involved in carrier WiFi need to go back to the drawing board and start again. Their connection-management designs need to recognise that seams must sometimes remain visible to users, or applications acting on their behalf.

Another way to think about it is that seam=border . And borders can be crossed in many ways - a simple signpost by the roadside (eg in Schengen Europe), basic passport checks, more involved arrival cards, paid visas, deliberate illegal entry (smuggling). Or you can be taken across against your will, blindfolded in the back of a van.

Personally, I don't want my WiFi "trafficked" across borders without my consent. Seamless WiFi has its uses, but it should not be viewed as a universal target or "obvious truth" by the cellular industry.

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The concept of the "minute" is killing the phone industry

We don't measure the value of communications in terms of time.

Movies aren't priced by the hour. Radio isn't sold per-minute. Books don't cost more if you're a slow reader.

Telephone calls are priced per-minute or per-second because that is reflective of the industry's cost structure (and billing sophistication) about 100 years ago. When you had a physical copper connection between points A & B, with a human doing the switching, both capex and opex had fairly logical temporal-based components.

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We already see with mobile data that a blend of volume, duration, use-case, location and maybe even congestion levels can be used as the basis for service pricing.

Yet voice telephony is always priced and measured with a time component, even if it's for the basis of statistics. I did a client workshop on VoIP yesterday, and thought how ridiculous it is that even voice innovators like Vivox have to use "billion minutes" as a measure of scale and size, even for non-traditional use cases like in-game chat.

Do you think Apple measures Siri's usage and success in terms of minutes of speech?

Is a 3-way conference call worth 1.5x as much as a 2-way phone conversation?

Do military radios measure usage minutes & bill back to each regiment?

The insidious effects of "the minute" bleed across the industry. It forces companies to chase after unprofitable or unattractive segments. It leads to arbitrary pricing by vendors. Roaming models look stupid & anachronistic because they are time-based. Our need for a uniform measurement unit creates stifling regulatory hoops & weird market inefficiences. It legitimises the equally absurd measurement of data "consumption" in terms of megabytes.

Now there is obviously the basic question of "if not minutes, then what else?". Unfortunately, we don't have a fundamental SI unit for the "value" or "utility" of human communications. But that doesn't stop us pricing other forms of communication appropriately.

I don't measure the number of words in my blog posts or reports (although I use page-count as a rough marker for the style of document). I certainly have no idea of how many words I've ever written, or whether I've put "pen to paper" more this year than last.

It seems ironic that the industry continually harps on about commoditised data and "dumb pipes", when the legacy telephony system is the dumbest it could possibly be. Why is gossip priced and prioritised in exactly the same way as negotiation or deal-making? Why are all of these speech-based transactions and content-flows going "over the top" of the telephone network, and why isn't VoIP based around monetisation? Where are the vocal optimisers and deep-conversation-inspection boxes? Where is the voice analytics engine?

I regularly ask operators "why do people make phone calls anyway?" and rarely get a good answer. We happily avoid examining exactly what all these minutes are for. How much is made up of long conversations between family members? Interminable dial-ins to conference calls? Quick 30-sec information blasts "No, I'm in the other pub, round the corner"?

It's ridiculous that a $700bn industry has so little idea of how and why and where it adds value to people's lives, which problems it solves, and which needs are unment. How much human communication and psychology isn't well-served by a minutes-based system?

The fact is that the minute is fundamentally an anchor to the past, when all voice was "telephony" and all telephony was "voice". The faster we get rid of our duration-centric obsession, the more likely we will be able to profit from The Future of Voice, before others less confined beat the telecoms industry to the punch.


Note: Martin Geddes & I are running a new series of Future of Voice workshops (combined with Telco-OTT) from April, starting with London (26-27 Apr) and the US East Coast (14-15 May). More details and sign-up available by emailing information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

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UTC OTT @ MWC

Walk onto any voice & messaging vendor's booth at MWC and you will see the official, standardised clients and servers. VoLTE, RCS, interoperability gadgets and so on.

But look a bit closer, and have a quiet word with the staff, and you'll get a different story.

If you're not a roving secret policeman for GSMA, you might get shown the more interesting, samizdat goods that are kept "under the counter" for *special* customers....

They've all got a telco-OTT solution (or several). They just don't shout about it yet, mostly. I've seen 3 OTT visual voicemail solutions already, various soft phones and so on.

UTC OTT. Sshhh, don't tell anyone!

The telecom services federation and QoS paradox

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There's a painful paradox emerging for next-gen comms. I don't think the telecom equipment vendors quite realise its implications yet.

Vendors say that they can offer prioritised, guaranteed QoS for specific mobile services, if Net Neutrality laws permitted it. They could optimise YouTube, Skype, whatever, right down to the packet scheduling at the base station, and provide end-to-end quality guarantees.

Let's imagine that they're right.

Let's imagine as well, that laws permit this to happen.

If that's the case, why would I, as an operator exec, bother to run my own telephony service in a core network any more? Given that voice revenues and margins are going to fall anyway, wouldn't I just use a third-party service? Maybe a hosted, multi-tenant, "cloud" or UTF version of VoLTE? Why would I want my own, when I could spend the money on something new and growing?

At the moment, telephony is a bizarre industry, with 1000 local manufacturers of a commodity product, despite it having near-zero shipping costs. Each has its own small factory, with the only difference being a special sticker with a "number" on each unit produced, issued by a local licencing authority. Each factory can do maintenance on the units produced in one of the other factories, but charges them quite a lot of money for the work.

In most similar industries these days, you get big regional manufacturers, with huge warehouses and efficient distribution networks.

The two perceived barriers to this model applying in telecoms are QoS, and regulation (which is usually consumer-centric).

If vendors and operators *really* enable QoS for third-party services, they make the "local voice manufacturer" model look even more archaic.


As regulation catches up, we will inevitably move to more centralised production of "commodity VoIP", and the local players will have to revert to being "cottage industries" producing specialised "craft voice" services.

I don't think that vendors have quite woken up to the dilemma that the more QoS equipment they sell, the less standalone telephony and comms services infrastructure is needed.

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Will a maverick operator hijack the RCSe launch with a Telco-OTT alternative?

This post is brief, entirely speculative and rather mischief-making.

The next few weeks and months are likely to see a lot of coverage of RCSe. Whether it's ultimately successful or not (I still think not), there's presumably a decent chunk of marketing budget allocated by GSMA, the G5 operators, and presumably some device vendors.

In other words, the idea of "mobile instant messaging" and "video sharing" ought to be penetrating the awareness of many of those that have so far ignored BBM, WhatsApp and all the alternatives.

Now, bear in mind that the initial RCSe launch is likely to be along the lines of "It's available on a few brand new phones.... plus these ones if you upgrade the OS.... and also on the iPhone & unlocked Android devices if you download this app". We might also see a PC client or a web dashboard or even a Facebook plug-in or two. And because they all have to conform to the same underlying specs, there is likely to be a strong flavour of mediocrity.

But the interesting ones are in the second half of that paragraph. On an iPhone, or a PC, any RCSe app will look just like any other app. Probably on a lot of Android devices too, and maybe other smartphones as well. They'll be delivered from the AppStore, be usable over any data connection, irrespective of the access provider.

In other words, they will be #TelcoOTT implementations of RCSe - euphemistically known as "broadband access".

Now in theory, each operator issuing such OTT versions of RCS ought to do the honourable thing and stick to its own customer base. If you're on Orange, you get the Orange version of the RCSe broadband access app. Maybe get them to enter their phone number and send them an SMS with an authentication code if they're a subscriber, or (on Android) just limit downloads to on-net users. In other words, restrict access in a similar way to, say, a mobile data quota app today. In the same way, I can't download an AT&T or SingTel "dashboard" app and expect it to work on my phone.

BUT....

That's only by choice.

What happens if one of the operators decides to do something disruptive? And they *do* allow anybody to download their RCSe app, irrespective of network? They could launch a true OTT version of RCSe, at the same time as the wider market launch, exploiting the marketing budget, but sticking two fingers up at the concept of interoperability.

Imagine seeing the adverts for "Vodafone Messenger - available now for everyone on any network!", with a differentiated UI, some cool extra features that make the "vanilla" RCSe look weak, a clever social-marketing approach, web mashups and so on. If I was an operator looking to launch a Telco-OTT messaging app, now would be the optimum time to do it. I might even steal and edit the GSMA's line "It's just on the AppStore. It just works properly".

You remember those old cowboy or gangster movies, where one of the gang members suddenly turns on his compatriots, just when they thought they were all working together? Or spy movies, when one of them is secretly "working for the other side"?

The GSMA is trying to turn Barcelona into some sort of mobile-entertainment version of Hollywood. Will this be the first blockbuster with a "double agent" plot? You know what they say... the old stories are always the best ones.

Press Release: Telcos versus OTTs: is it a phoney war?

[London, February 16th, 2012]

New study shows many telecom operators are also Internet players themselves

There are now more than 80 OTT-style Internet services run by telecom operators, according to a new study published by analyst firm Disruptive Analysis. The trend is accelerating, and represents a major opportunity for the industry over the next five years.

Dean Bubley

One of the loudest debates in today’s telecoms industry concerns the response of traditional network operators to so-called “over the top” (OTT) players. 

But a new report from Disruptive Analysis shows there is another option - Telcos can launch their own Internet-type services. Disruptive Analysis calls this a "Telco-OTT" approach.

“Telecom operators need to go on the attack,” said Dean Bubley, the report’s author and founder of Disruptive Analysis. “They must exploit the scale and ‘viral’ adoption of new services by billions of Internet and smartphone users, using similar tactics to the familiar web- or VoIP-type providers. It is no longer enough to rely on slow-moving standards or cumbersome collaborations. Telcos need to act alone, or with specialist technology partners”.

OTTs are companies such as Facebook, YouTube, Skype, WhatsApp and Netflix, which offer growing and profitable services “over the top” of raw Internet access from mobile or fixed telcos.

As Facebook’s recent $100bn IPO filing demonstrates, such companies are deriving huge value from applications that ultimately depend on operators’ broadband infrastructure. And this is happening just at the time when telcos are starting to see their traditional voice and messaging business flatten and start to decline (sometimes called “peak telephony”). The value in “services” seems to be shifting to the web.

Operators and their suppliers are trying to work out what to do. The usual suggestions include:

• Charging customers extra to use such services, with data plans tiered by application type ("Personalise")
• Throttling – or even blocking - applications at the network level ("Prioritise")
• Attempt to extract money from "upstream" OTT players ("Monetise")
• Competing through inter-telco collaboration on new standards like RCS / RCSe

But all of these options face challenges. Net Neutrality laws and various technology limitations stand in the way of application-based charging. Internet companies show little need or inclination towards paying for “quality”, especially on networks with poor coverage. Disruptive Analysis’ previous research has shown that RCSe’s success is highly unlikely.

However, according to a new report from Disruptive Analysis, many telcos already offer their own OTT-style services via generic Internet access. The study identifies more than 80 operator initiatives of this type, spanning four main service categories:

• Content
• Communications
• Cloud
• Connectivity

Disruptive Analysis believes that Telco-OTT enables operators to

• Expand their user-base reach to a billion users or more, even in countries in which they have no network footprint.
• Improving existing subscribers’ experience when they are “off-net”, for example helping them access their TV or voice services, from PCs or mobile devices connected via other networks.
• Benefit from both new revenue streams and the higher equity valuations placed on Internet businesses.

Telco-OTT has its own opportunities and challenges. Few services are easy to monetise, and experiment (and sometimes failure) will be needed. But customers want open-Internet services – they like the choice and flexibility, and that trend is unstoppable. 

If telcos are to survive in the long-term, they need to embrace OTT, not fight it. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

"Semi-OTT" extension services for telcos - less risky than full standalone Telco-OTT

Often, when I refer to Telco-OTT Services (Twitter hashtag: #TelcoOTT) people assume that I mean operators creating standalone Skype-type services, or running completely open social networks or web portals accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

Yet while that is certainly a critical area for operators going forward, many are more cautious about stepping into the wider world of content or communications services, wary of the execution risks, software expertise required, and cultural dislocation to hit "Internet speeds".

A key intermediate step is what might be termed a "semi-OTT" approach. This involves extending an existing access-based, network-resident service out over the Internet, typically to existing access customers using different devices or in different places.

There are numerous sub-types and subtleties described in my new report but the most obvious two examples are:

• Extending an operator's core voice and messaging services out to softphones or on-device apps
• Deploying "TV anywhere" services which give access to home IPTV, from a mobile device

I'm not going to drill into the TV-anywhere trend in this post, although I will note that even Verizon has stepped into that fray recently - and point out that the OTT play is a bit less controversial, as fixed IPTV and cable operators usually only play regionally, so extending reach seems "natural".

The voice and messaging extension is more disruptive, as the services tend to look "Skype-like", at least for existing subscribers. There are numerous sub-types of proposition here - PC vs. smartphone apps, full VoIP vs. "dial-through", WiFi vs. 3G connections, consumer vs. business, roamers vs. domestic and so forth. Some are driven by fixed operators, some by mobile, some by hybrid providers. UMA could also be considered distant relative of this type of thing, as it worked as a Telco-OTT service extension technology, albeit without full VoIP. The report goes through a selection of variants in some depth.

Even with VoIP and SIP, there is some history here back to 2006-2007 and some early attempts at FMC (fixed-mobile convergence - remember that acronym?) from companies like BT (Corporate Fusion) and Telekom Austria (A1-over-IP). To be fair though, none exactly set the world on fire at the time.

The more recent examples of Telco-OTT Voice & Messaging Extension services are more polished, however, exploiting better smartphones, HTML5 browser apps, better UI designs on touchscreens & faster processors, improved SMS integration, faster & more prevalent broadband and WiFi, and so on.

The latest one to emerge is Rogers' OneNumber in Canada, laptop-based, powered by CounterPath's software and hooked into an existing IMS core network and using an existing mobile number. There's a good write-up here.  [disclosure: CounterPath is a client of Disruptive Analysis]

It is highly noteworthy that Rogers has gone for a proprietary OTT extension to IMS. In my mind, this makes MUCH more sense than trying to use a standardised client such as RCS or VoLTE.

• Firstly, it's faster to market and doesn't need protracted rounds of negotiation between local operators. The telco has the choice to start with PCs, smartphones, featurephones, WiFi or whatever depending on its local conditions and can get started without waiting for the standards bodies to catch up
• Secondly, it can use a variety of best-of-breed components - browser-driven vs. app, acoustic elements like codecs that are the operator's choice and so on. The UI or UE is much more customisable, for example with aspects like "friend invitation" and presence.
• Thirdly, it exploits the cloud for doing interoperability only where the operator wants and where it makes commercial sense. Sometimes, interop can be blocked for marketing and competitive reasons (the video-call aspect of the Rogers service is on-net only between subscribers). The cloud platform can also do security, transcoding and so on.
• Fourthly, the operator can make various "controversial" local partnerships - for example with Skype or a foreign operator if they choose.
• Fifthly, it makes working around local preferences for numbering, identity, interconnect rules more flexible. For example, a Middle-Eastern telco might want to use email or password/PIN as a login, as many users keep mobile phone numbers strictly private.
• Sixthly, it doesn't require extending IMS down to the device. This means it's usable on non-SIM devices, competitors' phones, it's not hard-coded into the OS or chipset, it can be easily removed or updated or debugged - it looks like any other app or browser client, rather than tightly-integrated telco bloatware.

In Rogers' case it looks like the deployment is slick but relatively conservative (as I'd expect from Canada - a market where 3-year mobile phone contracts are still common) but it will be interesting to see how it evolves. It appears to be intended to displace some users' Skype/SkypeOut use when on their PCs, by giving better experience for SMS and more free calls. The GigaOm article speculates about a Facebook-embedded version similar to T-Mobile US's Bobsled, for example. I'm curious to see what a smartphone or tablet version might look like.

One of the things I'd note about services of this type is that localisation is very important. So for this example, outside the US, the PC-to-mobile call switching concept might encounter problems from regulators, as interconnect fees depend on whether termination is on a fixed or mobile device / number. In the US and Canada, there isn't the same distinction in numbering or termination fees. Other regional variations will reflect Net Neutrality rules, the prevalence of WiFi, demographics of laptop ownership and so on.

I think that this type of "unilateral" service innovation using OTT-style components is far more likely to succeed than the "forced ubiquity" seen in new standardised service platforms like RCSe. As I pointed out the other day, the lowest-common denominator approach is likely to fail - and may even accelerate damage to core voice and messaging revenues if badly implemented. 

Mobile broadband traffic volumes: Watch out for dodgy offload & optimisation claims and stats

The next two weeks are going to be uncomfortable for a lot of "mobile data traffic management" vendors. Whether they have WiFi offload solutions, video optimisation offerings, small cells, policy enforcement boxes, charging and "personalisation" platforms or various other bits of network-control machinery, they will all have to think carefully about their pitch for MWC.

The problem is that the (in)famous scissor diagram of diverging mobile data traffic and revenues, that we've all seen 1000 times..... seems to be wrong. Increasingly, we see evidence that it looks more like a pair of pliers, with the lines curving back together rather than expanding exponentially away from each other, especially in more mature markets.

Now I'll be the first to say that the "big" number of TB, PB or EB delivered doesn't tell you much about actual busy cell / busy hour congestion, but it's still an interesting data-point, especially as it is so central to  many spectrum-lobbying and solution-marketing arguments.

We're in the middle of financial reporting season for telcos, and so far we haven't seen much hand-wringing about unsustainable traffic growth this time around. Vodafone's 20% data growth matches its revenue growth. AT&T's is down to about 40%, far less than it predicted in its FCC filings for its for the ill-fated T-Mobile acquisition.

Telefonica and other operators' results are due soon too. Then we've got the new Cisco VNI study and forecast out this week (I'm expecting a downgrade of its mobile data forecasts), and at some point we should get a full-year 2011 report from Ericsson & Akamai as well. The last two updates have shown different patterns - 8% Q-on-Q growth for Q2 rebounding to 18% in Q3 with the note that there are "large differences in traffic levels across markets and regions".

To be fair, it's still too early to tell if flattening data volume growth in more mature markets is a major trend, or a temporary one-off blip/correction as many operators shift to tiered plans. Yet other factors are also in play - especially WiFi use, as well as some in-network policy and optimisation.

So if the "tsunami" has indeed receded, then a few things will occur:

• Every single vendor will claim "See? It was us that saved the world!" and give some form of data as supporting evidence, rather than admitting the problem was overstated in the first place
• If you add together all the "we saved 20%", "our solution saved 40%" claims, we should be back at zero by now, or even negative traffic.
• The marketing will stress "If you don't carry on buying our solution, congestion will reappear again tomorrow, even worse than before"
• There will be 10x more emphasis on network-resident kit having solved the problem, rather than simple pricing plans (or wider free WiFi availability, or better-designed apps) changing user behaviour
• There will be 20x more emphasis on traffic "tonnage" than on signalling load, even though for many networks that its *still* much more of a real problem
• Lots of vendors will overlook the fact that most traffic on many networks still comes from laptops rather than smartphones.
• There will be subtle digs at the other options, as vendors realise that the operators don't really need ALL the solutions they are being pitched. Expect "WiFi offload is more cost-effective than optimisation", or "Adding extra radio resource with small cells is easier than messing around with complex policies", or "Dynamic pricing & charging by user profile is better than trying to guess applications with DPI"

Most of all, though, we will see a broad range of highly questionable stats ("dodgy", in English English), especially in the PR bombardment at Barcelona, when a big slab of hyperbole is often necessary to get attention from the media.

Offload is probably going to be the biggest culprit. I'm expecting to see a lot of hype from vendors and WiFi aggregation providers claiming that X% of data traffic has been offloaded on Operator Y's network, saving $Z in incremental capex/opex.

The key question to ask (especially if you are at an operator) is "What % of total WiFi traffic do you think is actually genuine offload?". As the chart below illustrates, smartphone WiFi is much more than just offload. There is also

• Baseline private WiFi use driven by the user, which was never intended for 3G/4G use
• "Elastic" WiFi use, where offload actually increases total volumes compared to what would have been done over cellular. I've heard a suggestion from an operator that this can lead to a doubling or trebling of total usage.
• WiFi Onload, where a third-party operator diverts traffic to its WiFi and away from a rival's 3G/4G, in the hope that it can use the channel for extra services like advertising or location-specific deals (eg O2 WiFi)
• App-driven WiFi (not on the chart), where a specific application drives WiFi connectivity and choice of access (for example, Skype's tie-up with Boingo, or Sky TV and its WiFi network The Cloud in the UK)

Also, it's important to think about laptop MBB differently to smartphones. Many laptop users "onloaded" to 3G only because there wasn't enough WiFi about to begin with. Increasingly, there is available WiFi, so they're not really "offloading", but merely going back to what they hoped for in the first place. A subtle difference, but important as it may mean they abandon dongles completely at some point.


A couple of discussions I've seen on Twitter and elsewhere suggests that "elastic" and some portion of private WiFi might get counted as "offload" to pump up the stats. Caveat lector....

We may also see some numbers from the video optimisation vendors, about the amount of traffic "saved". Those numbers are perhaps more realistic (ie volume in vs. volume out), but it's also important to understand "volume the user didn't bother with in the first place" with behavioural change from pricing shifts.

And of course, that's the problem. None of these things is truly independent. There are lots of feedback effects, accidents of user demographics on specific networks, impacts of shifting mix of devices - and perhaps, the impact of application and content providers doing their own "self-optimisation", for example with adaptive bitrate streaming.

Ironically, however, the main real underlying reason for flattening data growth is Cisco's VNI mobile data forecasts numbers themselves. They have been so scary, used by some many people, and seen so many times, that they seem to have prodded everyone else in the industry into action, to make sure they didn't come true.

In other words, the most important technology involved in mobile broadband traffic management is probably Microsoft Excel.

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