Convergence Conversation

Today’s blog post is courtesy of my friends and colleagues Clive Gringras and Claire Walker who have published a helpful guide to the new European Data Protection proposals.

“Today, 25 January 2012, the European Commission unveiled its proposals for far reaching changes to EU privacy legislation.

We foresee the Regulation being in force by 2015. Every aspect of an organisation’s compliance obligations will increase – and there will be fines of up to 2% of global turnover for breach. We highlight the top three immediate action points to consider. We also provide seven further action points to address in the months ahead. More...

If they say a picture is worth a thousand words then the following graph is no exception.

Using Tesco market share data from TNS/Kantar Worldpanel, there seems to be an interesting correlation between changes in their market share and changes in the reward value of Tesco Clubcard.

With declining market share in 2007-2008, Tesco implemented the Double Points Promotion which gave customers a huge lift in loyalty value and in response, Tesco didn't just stem the decline in market share, they lifted it 5.5% from 2008 levels.

In 2010 the double points promotion was changed to make it less generous, reducing reward deals from 4x value to 3x. More...

Every telco, fixed or mobile, operates its own telephony service. Some operate two or more - either with separate enterprise platforms, IMS (mostly fixed, but VoLTE for some in the future), or OTT-style VoIP.

This is ridiculous.

The conventional telephony market is peaking, and in various areas declining. Apart from emerging markets with new users, even mobile telephony is reducing in price and popularity, as people switch to messaging or in some cases Internet-based VoIP alternatives. Pricing regulation, and accounting changes, are also driving down the measured market size.

Yes, we see some consolidation in terms of networks for various reasons, but really, given that data use is growing and voice telephony is falling, it makes sense to decouple them. More...

Churn has a simple definition for a wireless operator – it is the number of net deactivations (i.e. gross adds minus net adds) divided by the average number of the subscriptions during the year. Mobile telecommunication market has changed from a rapidly growing market, into a state of saturation and fierce competition. The focus of [...]

Even in 2012, we continue to see half-hearted attempts by local authorities, government and telcos in addressing the rural broadband problem and the deprivation it continues to inflict. Even comprehending the issues the lack of connectivity is causing, let alone the solutions, appears to be beyond the wit of man if you believe some of the latest thinking coming out of local and central govt.

I've just returned fom a drive along the Mallerstang Valley where not a single property has anything approaching broadband, despite NWDA wasting £60k on a non-functional wireless solution (on top of the abject failure that was Project Access) to try to live by the spin that Project Access actually achieved *anything*. More...

Bezeq, the Israeli incumbent plans for a field trail of GPON FTTH. As part of a several months long trial in Petach Tiqva the operator will connect hundreds of GPON FTTH subscribers. These are surprising news from Israel where no serious FTTH seemed not to be considered by any major provider. There’s an article with more details about the project in Hebrew.

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A BlackBerry design concept from 2009 has been leaked and divides opinion at Telco 2.0.

Perhaps the really interesting question is whether the state-of-2009 BlackBerry OS, hardware, and service experience would have benefited that much from more exciting industrial design. After all, a very big chunk of the iPhone's appeal has been concentrated in the software and in the supporting cast of iTunes features and services.

While other vendors (naming no names) came up with some very complex streaming models, Apple concentrated on keeping your content in sync between different devices and making sure you could get it from any of them to any playback device that might be hanging around. More...

The web is agog about the launch of Free.fr's mobile network, long awaited. Om Malik interviews CEO Xavier Niel, and it's quite impressive how much Telco 2.0 comes up.

"Since it is our own set-top box, we can innovate around it," he says. "In the U.S., they buy their set-top boxes from other providers." That's a mistake and lost opportunity, Niel says and proceeds to outline how pivotal these set-top boxes are for his company and its future.

They're referring to the Freebox Revolution devices Free pushed out last year. We've long been arguing the importance of better CPE, and pointing to Free as a case study of how to do it (they engineer them in house, based on open-source software). More...

The international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada this week. Consumer and enterprise technology industry analysts will use this exhibition to determine where all the leading vendors are focusing their attention for the coming year.

Ovum has shared some pre-show trend predictions as follows:

Consumer Market Related Trends at CES 2012

Media Tablets: Expect more Google Android "Ice Cream Sandwich" devices, as well as Samsung's Windows 8 tablet. OEMs will pursue the high-margin enterprise tablet market -- as well as the consumer market --so expect to see Mobile Device Management capabilities and partnerships. More...