Category Archives: Fixed Mobile Convergence

What is it that you do?

I’m asked this question surprisingly often, “Alan, what is it that you do?” My stock answer is, “I wander the world helping people.” Which generally results in a wry smile from those who know me; else a questioning or annoyed look from someone who was expecting a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. When I […]

Telecom Application Developer Summit

Most of my working life has been spent building telecom applications within telcos (BT), vendors (Lucent, Cambridge Technology Partners), in my start-up Teltier (mobile presence applications), and working with many tens of telecom application developers as an independent. Based on this experience, telecom application developers exist and are grossly under-served by the telecom industry.  A […]

IMS World Forum and Policy Control and Real-Time Charging Conferences

The week of the 23-26 April is going to be busy for anyone involved with IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) or policy control and real-time charging. From the 23rd-26th April 2012 at the NH Eurobuilding, Madrid, Spain the IMS World Forum will be running.  In reviewing the status of IMS: Verizon continues its aggressive roll-out of […]

New Report: The Services Domain. Market Status, Case Studies, Analysis, and Recommendations

An operator is composed of three domains: Network, IT and Services.  Historically we’ve treated the services domain as something that can be solved by a piece of technology, called the SDP (Service Delivery Platform).  This has resulted in the industry’s slow response to the competitive threats of web-based service providers, which are now starting to […]

SDP Asia, Mobile VAS, Smartphone Apps & OS, and Convergent Billing Conference. 27-30 March 2012 Singapore

The 6th SDP Asia Summit is being held in conjunction with 3 other conferences: Smartphone Applications & Operating Systems (OS) Asia 3rd Mobile Value Added Services Asia OSS/BSS & Convergent Billing Asia The report “The Services Domain. Market Status, Case Studies, Analysis and Recommendations” report discusses the importance of the services domain to the future […]

BBWF Highlight: Real World Convergence

As promised in the Day 1 BBWF article, here is a sample of the excellent presentation given by Matthias Linder, CTO Magyar Telekom providing an open and frank discussion on their experiences around convergence (many suppliers/consultants call it business transformation to make it sound more expensive.) The key to success in convergence isn’t about technology, […]

Broadband World Forum Summary Day 2: The Yawning Gap between Operations and Suppliers Continues

The vendor keynotes on Day 2 of the Broadband World Forum were again rather dry and focused on why operators should buy more complex networks.  A common vendor claim was that a 10% increase in broadband connectivity results in some % increase in GDP (Gross Domestic Product).  I have a sneaking feeling that there is […]

Broadband World Forum Summary Day 1: FTTH is now Global, but we’ve got to Stop Wishing Business Models and Start Building Viable Business Models on Top

The Broadband World Forum continues to grow with attendees from 120 countries, 280 speakers (most were operators), 150 sponsors and exhibitors, 400 service providers and over 7500 attendees.  Gavin Whitechurch and his team deserve much respect for transforming BBWF into the Broadband event of the year.  At the session I chaired on next generation broadband […]

SDP World Summit and Broadband World Forum

We’re reaching an interesting stage in operators’ attempts to remain relevant to customers beyond voice and internet access, which still remains a nice business, yet commoditization continues, albeit at a slower pace than most have predicted.  The slow pace shows the strength of state-granted duopolies / oligopolies.  Though we’re seeing a mounting chorus in the […]

Recent Workshops

A common theme on many of my projects is providing either at the start or end of a project an in-depth workshop. The focus of these workshops is varied: providing a fast-track understanding on new technologies or business models; separating hype from reality; explaining the unsaid agendas of the suppliers and service providers; providing a […]