Convergence Conversation

It's now been six weeks since I announced the launch of @DApremium, my second Twitter stream - one which is available only to paid subscribers. (The original announcement with the background of the disruptive and ground-breaking concept is here).

Since then, I've added 173 tweets to @DApremium, and signed up a couple of dozen followers; a mix of standalone paying Tweet-stream subscribers, and those who have obtained access bundled with purchasing the new Telco-OTT Strategy Report, or various consulting engagements.

Firstly, it has been pretty exciting to see an entirely new business model come to life. More...

More...

The report is now available.

• 135 pages
• 88 operator services mentioned
• 4 service categories
• Content, video & portals
• Communications, social & identity
• Corporate & cloud 
• Connectivity

Comprehensive discussion of what "Telco-OTT" means, why it's inevitable, and key success factors for making it work. Covers everything from VoIP to femtocells to SaaS to IP-VPNs to portals to IPTV-anywhere.

More details coming over the next few days.

For pricing details & to purchase the report, please email:
                                         information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

More...

This thread is from my Facebook page. The original poster is a 23yo friend, others range up to about 40-45yo. I thought it was worth a post as it highlights the reason why re-organising a trillion-dollar industry about something as near-obsolete as the 100-year old "phone call" is so dangerous.

[Note: I don't know "Samuel" who defends the phone call, but by an interesting coincidence there's someone on LinkedIn who's a "technology analyst" with the same age & academic background].

More...

It's time for the annual merry-go-round of analyst predictions, and so I'll thrown my hat into the ring as usual. Some of these will come as "no surprise" to my regular readers & clients, others represent a bit of a change of stance.

I'm hideously busy before I head off for the holidays, so I'm afraid these are just bullet points. More detail & explanation will crop up here over time, or on my new subscription @DApremium Twitter channel.

• Telco OTT services & business models
• Loyalty business models for telcos
• Charging/billing related policy engines
• Non-seamless operator wifi (offload, onload & other models).

More...

What am I doing? 

I am launching the first analyst paid channel for Twitter: a subscription for "premium" exclusive tweets of my analysis, opinion and market observations.



Why am I doing this?

I've been using Twitter for over a year and a half, posting as @disruptivedean. I was a hold-out for a long time before grudgingly signing up. Although I've got a fairly good "reach" from it, I've been vocal in criticising it. I'd much prefer to just use something more useful like LinkedIn or Quora for "status" updates and more detailed discussions instead.

But unfortunately, Twitter is like tax - as an analyst, you have to grit your teeth and do it, painful, time-consuming and distasteful as it is. More...

I've discussed for several years (via private advisory work and this blog) the prospect of operators running their own "access independent" services. This means mimicking the major Internet players' role by offering what I'm calling "Telco-OTT" services. In other words, decoupling the network from the application - something which is highly controversial, especially for telecom traditionalists.

Google, Facebook, Skype and others have shown the power and value of standalone applications and services. Finally, operators are exploiting the scale of the multi-billion user Internet, the flexibilty of PCs, and the ease and virality of the smartphone app paradigm, to go beyond the narrow confines of their own access customer base. More...

I'm sitting at the Layer123 conference on EPC and LTE in London.

I've just heard a joint presentation on VoLTE from the GSMA and the MSF. The latter was about the recent interop trial, and the former was a general flag-waving / propaganda pitch. Apparently "everyone" is now agreed on VoLTE deployment. (I assume that comes from the same GSMA dictionary as "ubiquitous" used in discussions on RCS / RCSe). The subsequent presentation is from Germany consultancy Detecon, and the former one was from BT Wholesale.

Some outputs so far on LTE Voice:

- General agreement that CSFB still reduces QoE by increasing call setup time and dropping the LTE data connection
- "Pure" VoLTE should be available without handoff when the user moves out of LTE coverage in late 2012 / early 2013, after trials in early/mid 2012
- E911 support is a bit of a hassle for the US and a short-term cludge will be needed
- VoLTE with SRVCC (for handoff to 2G/3G at the edge of coverage) is late an More...

This is a very quick post, before I dash to the airport. I'll be in Singapore for the rest of this week at Telco 2.0's New Digital Economics event, speaking on both Mobile Broadband, and also on the telco-world implications of HTML5. More to follow on that topic another time.

I was out with a friend last night, and he bemoaned the fact that he can't easily adjust the number of rings his phone does before it diverts to voicemail. (He's using an Android handset on a major operator). He said he'd been able to do something via some obscure code like *7529# , but it had taken him ages to find it - and he's a serious geek as well. More...