Convergence Conversation

Perhaps the singlest greatest block to future growth and success for telecoms operators is their collective insistence on thinking of every customer as a "subscriber". The technology base, the unstated assumptions about business models, the financial reporting, the internal KPIs and the marketing is almost entirely geared towards "subs".

Ironically, even the well-known term ARPU is actually really ARPS.

Whilst it is absolutely true that subscription-type contracts and prepaid accounts will continue to be important, it is also essential that operators wake up to other ways of engaging. More...

I've been following the proliferation of mobile broadband traffic management technologies for some considerable time now, having published a reseach paper on the bewildering range of options a few months back.

The continued hoo-ha around Net Neutrality is starting to catalyse open warfare between the advocates of different approaches to solving the mobile capacity crunch.

WiFi vs. femtocell offload competition is nothing new, but it's interesting to see new rivalry springing up between other purveyors of policy management and control. Flash Networks, for example, is one of a number of vendors that compress/optimise traffic, especially video destined for transmission over cellular networks. More...

Yesterday I read this Wired article on the "death of the phone call" - essentially pointing out that voice telephony is becoming increasingly sidelined in favour of other modes of communication, many of them asynchronous (SMS, Facebook etc).

This sort of flies in the face of my historical stance that voice is the forgotten saviour of the telecoms industry - overlooked, underestimated and shamefully sidelined in terms of product development. I've agreed with others - my associates at Telco 2.0, visionaries like Martin Geddes and all my friends in the VoIP community - that, surely, there must be a pot of gold left in telephony if only we can de-construct it and make it fit better with personal behaviour or companies' business processes. More...

Disruptive Analysis' tagline is "don't assume".... so I thought it might be interesting to examine what the main unspoken assumptions are in the telecoms industry as I see it. These are themes and concepts burnt into the mind of the "industry establishment", especially standards bodies and traditional suppliers; they are seen as unwritten laws.

But are they really self-evident and unquestionable? I don't think so. It needs to be remembered that the telecom industry has grown up around the constraints and artificial boundaries of 100-year old technology (numbering, for example, or linking of length of a conversation with value). More...

I've worked out the "dirty little secret", hidden in plain sight.

On the fixed Internet, Google doesn't actually care about prioritisation. In almost all developed markets, "best-effort" Internet access is perfectly adequate for YouTube and other "heavy" Google apps, especially when used with variable definition-quality, either at the user's control or using dynamic rate adaptation.

The agreement with Verizon means that VZ won't deliberately block or degrade YouTube or other content. That's one worry off the table for Google. But, interestingly, it also suggests that it can't prioritise either - something I'd been seeing expecting as a possibility for broadband business models. More...

A food analogy: I see no reason why telcos shouldn't be allowed to offer "Internet-flavoured access", or "Processed Internet Substitute" if they wish, perhaps "Now fortified with Extra YouTube!".

But they shouldn't be able to sell or market those services as 100% Certified Prime Internet Access.

Like everyone in the telecoms industry, I encounter the issue of Net Neutrality and policy management very frequently. I've been watching developments recently, with the Google/Verizon announcement, consultations occurring in the UK and Europe, Chile deciding on a "hard" neutral policy, Canada choosing a middle ground and various other endless examples of posturing and lobbying. More...

I had a meeting in a London hotel this morning, and saw a leaflet from this company at the concierge's desk. It was titled "Free Unlimited Internet - Rent an iPhone 3GS", with rates at between £12 and £18 per day, including £5 of outbound calling credit. The devices come pre-loaded with the London Lonely Planet and assorted other useful apps.

It follows on from another article I read recently about MiFi rental (£19 for 3 days), with the device sent to your hotel.

Both of these are welcome examples of a concerted push-back against the still-ridiculous prices for mobile data roaming (and of course the continued premium for roaming voice). More...

Quick post / question here.

This week has seen half the world's more paranoid and authoritarian countries make announcements about intercepting BlackBerry traffic. The main concern seems to be a belated recognition that the proprietary BBM IM service currently encrypted end-to-end from device to device - and in any case transits the RIM network and is processed in its data centres. Therefore unlike SMS traffic, it's not observable by the spooks - particularly those in countries without access to vaults-full of supercomputers.

It's conspicuous that RIM's announcements appear to have focused on damage-limitation in terms of any feares of its corporate customer base using BES/email service - whereas my read is that most of these governments are more worried about the new army of young BlackBerry *BIS* (Internet service) customers. More...

There is currently a clear shift among some operators towards device-specific data plans. In many ways, this is not new – 3G modem data for PCs has often had different price points to handset dataplans, for example. This has enabled operators to pitch 3G dongles against DSL competitors, reflecting typical higher monthly usage and so on. It has also reflected the lack of a voice plan sold concurrently, lack of (or lower) device subscriptions and so on. There have also been dedicated BlackBerry plans for many operators, incorporating BES / BIS email connectivity, or just reflecting the specific deals cut with RIM. More...

I've just seen my first "live" WiFi SSID from an Android device used as a tether - it came up in my local cafe as AndroidAP.

However, it's made me wonder if there is mileage for an Android offload service (run by Google), rather than a tether, which is essentially the opposite.

It is already well-understood that perhaps the most difficult part of WiFi offload is the on-device client and connection management experience, especially given the heterogenous nature of WiFi APs, between home, hotspot and work domains. There's a minefield of user interface, behavioural issues (eg switching off WiFi), log-on screens and so forth. More...