With a new child at home I’ve been limiting travel, well trying to, so this year only the two most important conferences in my calendar are attended: Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Feb and Broadband World Forum (BBWF) in October. Informa have taken over BBWF so their massive conference machine, and in particular Gavin Whitechurch, […]
I’ve been a long time proponent on the importance of APIs (Application Program Interfaces) to operators’ evolving business models, in fact, of APIs for any web based business model as discussed in this API Management Whitepaper. However, time is moving on and operators continue to struggle with implementing the basics given their business model (charge […]
This old weblog article from 2008 discusses the cost structure of a typical mobile operator, and I show below the structure graphically. The key figure is transport costs (backhaul) are roughly 7% of total costs back in 2008. Some operators have seen that jump to over 15%-20% of total costs in under 2 years. The […]
Interesting innovations regularly come from island nations, for example the first 3G trial on the Isle of Man (where I grew up), from Singapore (Goto Camera), and most recently Sri Lanka with hSenid’s SDP in the Cloud, which was recently released and then deployed with Etisalat – Sri Lanka (formerly known as Celltel & then […]
Nokia recently announced its to ditch Symbian software for its high-end smartphones, instead using MeeGo that was announced at Mobile World Congress this year. The N-series has been Nokia’s crown jewel for years and dominated the smartphone space before the arrival of Apple’s iPhone (be-careful how you hold it) and HTC’s Android-based devices. “Going forward, […]
My good friend Mac Taylor is conducting an industry wide survey on operator relationships with developers and what developers expect and want from operators. The survey is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CGGMPY7 Some of the questions he’s asking include: Is capability and service exposure relevant? Will operators be able to attract developers and build a developer community? What […]
I was reviewing some old slides last night and saw some material I put together nearly 3 years ago that made me both happy and sad. Funny how three years later telcos are still struggling, whereas the consumer electronics / OS / web service providers have done and moved on… 1. Without direct Customer Access […]
In previous articles I’ve discussed the three dimensions upon which a customer pays: cash, time/attention and privacy. As we’re seeing with Facebook and Google’s problems, society is starting to realize the value of privacy – businesses of all sizes should be even more concerned. Google has caused significant market disruption using a very old business […]
I recently responded to a friend’s weblog post, Ric Ferraro, when I read through his article about a day in his life in 2020. I thought I’d use this article to give my perspective on how some technologies and behaviors may look by then, as well as some ramblings on a few related topics. An […]
Hybrid TV is not new; it’s been within the industry’s lexicon for many years, the transition should not be a surprise. However, for many executives the shift to hybrid TV has been a quiet revolution. Especially given two of the telco industry’s most successful TV deployments, Verizon FiOS (2.9M customers in Q4 2009) and Orange […]