In a couple of weeks the main broadband event of the year will be held in Paris, the Broadband World Forum, October 26-28th, CNIT La Defense.  By the numbers there will be 6000+ attendees, 280+ exhibitors, 200+ speakers, 125+ global carrier case studies & presentations.  The latter number is key, like MWC (Mobile World Congress) this is one of the few events operators attend. Including many old friends from the FSAN initiative.

Some of the themes I’m seeing emerge before the event are:

• Operators outside the US, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore are starting to commitment to FTTH (Fiber To The Home) taking advantage of stimulus funding and as its never going to get cheaper to deploy fiber because it requires people to install it (and their costs increase faster than inflation.)
• Hybrid TV and OTT (Over The Top) TV, this is really a follow-on from one of the main themes at IBC.  I covered this in extensive 114 page report on Hybrid TV and OTT TV earlier this year.
• Cloud Computing: A natural evolution for many operators in extending their internet hosting data centers.  Though operators need to take a more application-centric approach given the commoditization at the infrastructure layer.
• Home networking: a gap in every end-to-end broadband architecture.  Many home gateway and home network suppliers are at the event with a range of interesting innovations.  Though the critical issues remains: customers will not pay for a gateway (just like they will not pay for a femtocell) as the value is really to the network operator not the customer.  And critically we need a compelling, integrated set of services.

I show below the two sessions I’ll be chairing at the event.  The SDP session will have Mark from Verizon and Colin from KPN presenting their experiences.  On the panel session will be the presenters and Thomas from Oracle and Lucia from Huawei.  I’ve known all for most of this decade, they are the leading implementers and thinker in this space, so we’re going to have a stimulating discussion to say the least on the first day.

On the last day of the conference is a session I think will be great fun: Developer Communities and Service Innovation.  Mark and Christophe from Orange will be explaining what they are doing, then with Varun Arora (CEO GotoCamera, winner of last year’s InfoVision Award) and Sean O’Sullivan (CTO Dial2do, shortlisted for this year’s InfoVision Award) we’ll have a frank and open discussion between operators and developers.  I hope to see you there.
Tuesday 26th Oct 1430-1545: Service Delivery Platform Evolution Revolution, Convolution, Amalgamation, Elimination or Virtualization?
Examining the impact the confluence of several critical technologies / developments have on the SDP such as: cloud computing / managed services; and open initiatives such as Joint Innovation Labs, GSMA’s OneAPI, OMTP’s BONDI, Open IPTV Forum, and OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative).  Reviewing key trends in operators’ requirements and their competitive environment as web and telco converge. Present a view on the current and likely future evolution of the SDP: will it change, get more complex, will silos finally consolidate, or will it simply go away?

14.30 Chairman’s Introduction

14.35 Verizon’s SDP Experience – Mark Hahn, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Verizon, USA
Verizon is the leading converged operator with one of the largest IPTV deployments in the world of 3M subscribers in Q1 2010, and a mobile customer based of 93M customers. Their Service Delivery Ecosystem (SDE) is fundamental to Verizon’s vision of services available across all its networks. Verizon’s service vision results in customers considering their services as independent of a particular device and network: whether it be mobile, broadband or legacy networks. Services will be able to access common and shared infrastructure such as an identity management framework; finally removing multiple logons and conflicting security settings which plague most multiplatform services today.

14.55 KPN’s SDP Experience – Colin Pons, Senior Strategy & Business Analyst, KPN, Netherlands
KPN vision is to provide services to any device on any network at anytime. Eventually, it moves to “Everything-is-a-Service” model. From a user perspective consistent, on-par (Apple setting the bar) UX is one of the most important buying (and usage) motivation. Customer satisfaction efforts demand co-operation/partnership with others in the value chain, among which are (independent) developers, VARs, users, verticals, etc. Hence, services will encompass assets and capabilities from many different sources. Critical for this paradigm is fulfillment(including activation, registration, log-on), assurance and billing.

15.15 Panel Discussion: SDP Evolution
• Discussion of issues raised in the the presentations with the audience.
• Are SDPs relevant in a web-centric delivery model?
• Will the multiple SDP silos across mobile, IPTV, legacy and broadband converge?
• Are there gaps in the current standards?
Mark Hahn, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Verizon
Colin Pons, Senior Strategy & Business Analyst, KPN
Lucia Gradinariu, Chief Market Strategist, Consumer Software and Services, Huawei Software Company
Thomas Gronberg, Senior Director, Oracle Communications Business Unit, Oracle

15.45 Networking Break & Exhibition Visit

Thursday 28th Oct 1430-1545: Aligning to Developer Needs Using Developer Communities to Lead the Service Innovation Race
2009 was the year of the app store and developer community.  In 2010 how are we doing as an industry? This session brings together the leading developer community managers with leading developers to frankly discuss what’s worked and how to improve upon what has been achieved.

14.30 Chairman’s Introduction:

14.35 Verizon’s Application Network Interface and Open Development Initiative: Mark Hahn, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Verizon
Verizon is working to tap into the innovative energy of their customers, suppliers, and partners; and to leverage the combined power of IMS, the Web, and attached devices/networks. They have defined an Application-to-Network Interface (ANI) to expose key enablers (location, presence, conference, profile, address book, etc.) such that they are easily incorporated by developers into innovative new services; examples include Verizon’s Open Development Initiative (ODI) and Verizon’s Developer Community (VDC).

14.50 Case Study: Orange Partner: Christophe Francois, VP Multimedia Services and Head of Orange Partner
Orange wants to play a stronger role in the applications eco-system. Its Orange Partner program is being reshaped to offer an end-to-end set of services and a comprehensive Toolbox combining various APIs for developers wanting to use the Orange Application Shop as a distribution channel for their apps.

15.05 Panel Discussion: What are Developers’ needs?
• Why haven’t operator developer communities taken off like Apple or Android?
• What should / can an operator do to change the situation?
Varun Arora, Co-Founder and CEO of GotoCamera
Christophe Francois, VP Multimedia Services
Sean O’Sullivan, CTO, Dial2do
Mark Hahn, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Verizon

15.45 Networking Beak & Exhibition Visit