Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Broadband Connectivity: FCC to switch USF over to fibre deployment, and back PSTN replacement?
• Regulation: BSG - bring us your cost estimates and help build UK broadband
• Emerging Markets: Megatender is off, Unitech Wireless relies entirely on tower sharing
• Technology Disruptions: DARPA: the troops need an app store based on Google Android and they need it now!
• 2-Sided Business Models: The secrets of Amazon.com

We may be facing a major moment in industry history: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is looking at using the Universal Service Fund (USF) to fund broadband deployment. In the past, the use of the USF has been purely voice-oriented, and has hitherto transferred large sums of money from urban and suburban telecoms users to rural operators.

If this goes ahead, watch out for many operators deciding that it’s time to set an out-of-service date for the PSTN itself - USF subsidies are assessed by PSTN line, and if they start flowing in other ways, there’s not much reason to go entirely cellular or to VoIP.

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 News Review" »

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Detailed information for 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London, complete with on-line registration is now live on the event website.

The Brainstorm will take place at the Grange St Pauls Hotel, London on April 28-29 and features dedicated one day summits on Digital Entertainment 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, as well as the very latest from Telco 2.0 on the 2-sided business model roadmap.

Check out our last blog on the event agenda and the website for more.

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Three major news items underline the centrality of applications development to the future of the telecoms industry.

The first is the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) - this essentially extends the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) proposal, originated by Vodafone, Softbank, and China Mobile, to a brief who’s who of major world operators, 28 carriers in all. The aim is to establish a common environment for mobile apps development and deployment. By ‘apps’, however, they mostly mean JIL-style Web widgets.

The second is Meego, a merger of Nokia and Intel’s mobile linux efforts, and the third is Ericsson’s eStore.

In short, that’s three major applications platforms who will line up against Google Android, Apple, and RIM at the top of the industry.

We’ll be discussing these in detail with senior representatives from all of these initiatives at the 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London on 28-29 April but, in the meantime, to whet your appetite, below is an analysis of what this all means and why it matters?

Continue reading "WAC, Meego, eStore: Three Big Moves in Mobile Platform Consolidation" »

Posted at 12:00 PM | Link to this article | 1 comment

You really must show more application. According to a TNS poll, apps are now the joint second factor in subscribers’ choice of device - neck-and-neck with brand loyalty, behind look-and-feel. This rises to the first factor for the 16-30 age group.

Unsurprisingly, the other kind of applications - the ones that happen when you aren’t looking - are also burgeoning. Here’s yet another warning about the threat from malware - especially from the possibilities of a fake femtocell.

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 News Review" »

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We’ve just published our latest report on New Voice and Messaging 2.0: API Use Cases on our sister research site, which contains details of three new real-life ‘use cases’:

* an in-store feedback service
* a mobile and remote decision support application
* a resource tracking opportunity

These use the principles of ‘Communications-Enabled Business Processes’ (CEBP) to add value to enterprise customers by reducing costs, increasing revenue, and improving services. The latest applications use automated and user-activated processes to deliver voice, SMS and IM messages.

We’ve long said that Enterprises represent the key value opportunity for telcos. We also argue that this should primarily be through API-enabled applications and developer communities as a route to market, rather than direct retail engagement, because of the complexity of the market, and flexibility / low cost approach to implementation required.

From speaking to practicioners recently it looks as if this business model is increasingly taking root, and these New ‘Use Cases’ and others like them are needed to help both the developer and end-user enterprise communities grow the market. If you have examples you’d like to contribute, please comment on this article.

You can also bone-up on other innovative ideas through our Voice and Messaging 2.0 Innovators Directory.

(Ed: We’ll also be exploring how new voice and messaging API based applications can be applied across the enterprise value chain at our EMEA Brainstorm in London, April 28-29, 2010.)

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Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Technology Disruptions: Google steals Mobile World Congress!
• Developer Communities: RIM - your new advertising threat
• Voice & Messaging 2.0: Verizon Wireless meets Skype
• Broadband Connectivity: Is the mobile data wave real?
• Privacy: School FAIL

All the ‘sparkle’ at last week’s Mobile World Congress seemed to be about software and developers. While Nokia chose this year to keep off the conference site itself, Google showed up for the first time. Eric Schmidt made a show-stealing keynote speech which we reviewed here after the stardust had fallen from our eyes. Alternative views are here.

In addition, anyone who had anything to do with Google Android had rockstar status, Google told the world that it was willing to invest in 1Gbit FTTH projects, and launched a virtual tour of the Trans-Siberian Railway. To which we can only quote the view of someone on Gordon Cook’s listserv, to the effect that telcos spend money on lobbyists and lawyers, but when Google feels the need for influence, it carries out a small but spectacular tech project and everyone loves it.

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 News Review" »

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Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, bedazzled the 2010 GSMA Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona. In his keynote address he told the industry exactly which parts of their lunch that Google will eat, simultaneously appeared to offer peace, showcased mesmerising new technologies, effortlessly took 45 minutes of questions from the floor, and then disappeared to widespread applause.

Don’t get us wrong - we were impressed too. It was a great speech and a great show. Dr. Schmidt is a very, very capable and inspiring person, and there is no doubt that Google is brimming with ideas, vision, and ability to make things happen.

We’ve recently published a Telco 2.0 perspective in our report ‘Google: where to cooperate? Where to compete?’ and are running a session specifically on ‘Living with Google’ at the April 2010 Telco 2.0 Brainstorm. In our view, some of the most important information was not just in what he said but what he said quietly or didn’t say at all.

Continue reading "How Google's Chief Magician Stole the Show" »

Posted at 12:20 AM | Link to this article | 5 comments

Telco 2.0 is, of course, at Mobile World Congress this week. Something that’s very obvious this year is the come-back of the North American industry, and specifically anything that involves Android or developers. All the device vendors who ship substantial volumes of Android devices are heavily present. Samsung is practically rolling in Androids. Despite the announcement of the new version of Microsoft Windows Mobile, HTC is big on Android as well. Android software developers are everywhere.

However, an interesting phenomenon is making itself felt. Rather than - or as well as - being a top-end product for the latest smartphones and early adopters, Android has been heavily adopted by vendors looking for an economical platform to get into the smartphone market. This places some strains on the technology itself and may have significant long-term consequences for the Android ecosystem.

Continue reading "MWC Watch: Developers, Developers, Developers" »

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Fraudsters have relieved a Safaricom M-PESA agent of 35,000 Kenyan shillings. This may not sound like a lot (about €340), in a business where figures in the tens of billions are routine, but it’s a business-killing loss for a Kenyan reseller agent. In fact, it’s equivalent to 26.8% of per capita GDP. With a savings ratio of 17%, it would take a typical Kenyan a little over 18 months to replace the capital loss. (Actually it’s worse - there’s no reason to think the savings ratio is evenly distributed. Usually, the rich save more, because they have money to spare.)

And if your business depends on thousands of reseller agents, anything that can wipe out their capital in 20 minutes is a serious threat. Therefore, security is a major challenge in delivering the promise of mobile money.

Continue reading "Security Breach at M-PESA: Telco 2.0 Crash Investigation" »

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Informa Telecoms & Media has a series of pre-Mobile World Congress (MWC) interviews up with a roundup of industry luminaries including Virgin Mobile founder Tom Alexander, O2 vice president Mike Short, Bell Labs UK director Louis Samuel, Ericsson CTO for Northwest Europe John Cunliffe, and T-Mobile UK head of technology strategy Tony Weiner, on the theme of “2020 Vision” (heh). The (rather weak) editorial is here.

We won’t dwell on the fact that one of the panel predicted that the hit technologies of the future would be 3G video calls and NFC (!), and instead cut to this:

By way of illustration, Bengt Nordstrom [one of the interviewees] takes a punt on the 2020 Mobile World Congress awards. The event, he suggests, will be happening in Beijing. “‘Facebook Free Talk & Chat’, already the world’s most popular voice and messaging service, also wins a GSMA award,” he predicts (although it will be surprising if the GSMA hasn’t had a rebrand of its own by this stage).

We’d instead go for the following winners at MWC 2020:

Continue reading "Blurred Vision..." »

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We’ve just published our analysis of the business model impact of the Apple iPad. See here for a free preview at the Telco 2.0 Subscription Service portal.

Posted at 12:03 PM | Link to this article | 1 comment

We are delighted to give our readers a preview here of Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live!

This is a new service from the Telco 2.0 Initiative (and partners), created in response to requests from our community. Telco 2.0 ‘Best Practice Live!’ provides what will be the first carefully curated, online, video-based, interactive knowledge bank of cutting-edge ‘Telco 2.0’ services, business models and solutions from around the world.

It opens on 28-30 June 2010 with live online broadcasts of case studies to three geographic regions, each incorporating interactive discussions and panels, and supported by a major online exhibition. All materials are available afterwards ‘on-demand’ and then updated every six months via a new live broadcast and exhibition.

Below are details of the objectives, rationale, participants and agenda. If you would like more details of how to get involved, please email us. A website will be available next week too.

Continue reading "Introducing Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!'" »

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Cutting through the hype, two presentations at the 8th Telco 2.0 Brainstorm held in Orlando gave real examples of how telcos are making money today from mobile money services by utilising and building on their existing assets.

Keith McMahon, senior analyst with the Telco 2.0 Initiative dispelled some of the myths surrounding mobile money services, saying it was neither technology nor demographic choices that dictate the success or otherwise of mobile money services. From our work developing the Mobile Money Use Case Research Keith cited two very different examples - Safaricom’s M-Pesa service in Kenya and NTT Docomo’s Felica mobile wallet service in Japan. He explained that the common success factors were in fact based on scale and control of the platform.

Profits Possible
The mobile money solutions offered by Safaricom and NTT Docomo have one very important thing in common - they are both profitable. Safaricom has 8 million M-Pesa users, accounting for 50% of its customer base and is operating on margins around 20%; Docomo has 10 million users, around 20% of its total customer base and a decent sized credit card-like business in any market.

It is the scale that makes their mobile money businesses attractive and that scale is based on two factors.

Continue reading "Mobile Money 2.0: strategic lessons from top case studies" »

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If you’re interested in opportunities in Smart Grids, do log in to this global virtual event on 30th March to 1st April at this link. It’s free.

Details and agenda below:

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 Smart Grids Virtual Event: 30 March - 1 April" »

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Mobile advertising is starting to come of age. Agencies are beginning to build successful campaigns based on a growing understanding of the strengths of the channel, and opening interesting new business model opportunities for telcos in the process.

That was the view of David Lang, President Mindshare Entertainment, speaking at the 8th Telco 2.0 Brainstorm held in Orlando in December. He said that agencies and clients are starting to use its two-way capacity to build communities and content and therefore creating alternative value chains in which telcos can play more than just a distribution role.

Lang comes to mobile advertising from a creative angle - he has a TV production background - and his message was one about the potential for advertising to become cool content for operators to promote and attach their own brands to, rather than just being a channel.

He described two examples of just how valuable that can be to both advertiser and telco. Both involved Sprint Nextel, and in both the distinction between content creator, advertiser and distribution channel roles had blurred.

Continue reading "Digital Advertising 2.0: A New Value Chain" »

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