Monthly Archives: January 2009

If you are an Operator who is not selling iPhones, why haven’t you built your iPhone App already?

In a previous weblog article on “Open Access Service Examples,” one case includes an “Operator Community Widget.”  Where I provided some use cases on how an operator can harness Facebook.  The business model for the operator would be to insert itself into the 16%-20% of online time being spent for social communications; enhancing that experience; […]

eComm Conference 2009 Update, March 3-5 2009, San Francisco Airport Marriott

Last year I heard many people (Thomas Howe, Martin Geddes, and Brough Turner to name just a few) talking very positively about a new conference, eComm (Emerging Communications Conference), it attracted 300 people and 80 speakers from 15 countries.  eComm brings together people leading the change in telecoms from both inside the industry and out.  […]

Apple App Store: Don’t Forget the iPod Touch is in the Numbers

On the 16th January Apple App Store achieved 500 million downloads, granted most of the downloads are for free applications.  But regardless this is a great achievement and a testament to focusing upon the needs of the customer and application developer.  The Apple App Store was not the first App Store, some of its predecessors […]

IN (Intelligent Network) Returns!

Many of the incumbent vendors are bringing their old IN (Intelligent Network) systems to end of life; and in some cases proposing technology that was built 5-10 years ago so is generally based on old or proprietary architectural principles, e.g. Ericsson TSP (Telecom Server Platform) – some of us may remember the TSP announcements made […]

Case Study of Managed Service Success: IMIMobile

A previous article provided ‘A Managed Services Primer.’ Managed Network Services (MNS, aka Outsourced Network Operations) was a $10B business in ’08, with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 16%.  Europe accounts for 45% of the market.  The leading supplier in the market, Ericsson, rips-out other supplier’s equipment and installs its own in the […]

Customer Behavior drives Operators to Open Innovation

Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Yahoo! are continuously offering new services for customers to experience, then refining those services within weeks/months based upon customer feedback.  The typical operator product development process is usually: an opportunity is identified, market research is performed, a project is created once budget can be found, the new product development process runs […]

Re-inventing the On Device Portal – The App Store

The Apple App Store (AAS) recently achieved over 300M application downloads, the AAS web front page is shown below.  It provides a template for the telecom industry on how to work with developers and how to sell applications to customers, as discussed in the End of Year Review weblog article.  Granted it’s only for a […]

Policy Management in Telecommunication Networks: Are the standards bodies making it too complex?

Policy management has been a topic of discussion in telecom networks for over a decade.  The focus of this article is on policy management and consumer services/networks.  Policy management appears in the PDF (Policy Decision Function) of the 3GPP IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) specifications, within many SDP (Service Delivery Platform) implementations, and a number of […]

Secure Remote Access Review

Mobile workers now account for over 25% of the worldwide worker population, about 750 million workers.  This is using a broad definition of mobile worker; one who works away from their main office, whether it is on the road, in a home office, or in locations away from their company’s offices. Using a definition that […]