The Mobile Broadband Explosion: Mobile Broadband finally reaches the Tipping Point

A mobile broadband Tipping Point has been reached: HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) is ‘good enough’ for customers and prices have fallen by a factor of 16 in less than two years.  Three UK (H3G UK) now offers mobile broadband prepay, 10 GBP ($20) buys up to either 1GB or 1 month of access, and […]

Defining SOA, SDP and IMS; and how they fit together

I would like to thank Jeroen Visser from BT for his suggestion of this article to explain SOA, SDP and IMS; and then explain how they fit together. Service Oriented Architecture Defined SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) has emerged as a successful integration framework for BOSS (Business and Operational Support Systems) within operators.  We are now […]

Start-ups to Watch: AirG, the Largest Inter-Operator Mobile Community in the World at 20M+ Members

The title is a bit of an oxymoron, how can a ‘start-up’ also be the largest inter-operator mobile community in the World?  I’m being a little loose in the definition of ‘start-up’ as airG is really a profitable, established business.  However, they still have the entrepreneurial zeal of a fresh-face start-up, and being secreted in […]

Upcoming Events, Voice Peering Forum and Sigma Systems User Conference

As requested by reader feedback, I’m providing some foresight on up-coming conferences I’m attending, rather than just reviewing conferences I’ve attended.  For June I’ll be running panel sessions at Sigma Systems‘s first user conference and at the Voice Peering Forum. Sigma Systems‘s first user conference (June 4th-6th, Barton Creek Resort, registration is free), will explore […]

SofNet Day 3

Just summarizing my panel session speech on day 3 of SofNet, “A Pragmatic Approach to Developing IMS-Services.”  I addressed two questions I’m often asked. “Is IMS dead?”  Both Sprint and Verizon are deploying their flavors of IMS for the simple reason they decided voice over EVDO (the CDMA version of 3G) will be supported by […]

SofNet Day Two. A Jungle of Capabilities and a Services Desert

Summarizing day two of SofNet. Panel session, “How Can 21CN Help Make Customers Successful?”  was a who’s who on UK telecom executives with John Cunliffe, Ericsson; John Frieslaar, Huawei; Geoff Hall, Nortel; John-Paul Hemingway, Ciena; Phil Dance, BT; David Soldani, NSN; Andy Stevenson, Fujitsu; and Phil Tilley, ALU.  With so many suppliers in such a […]

SofNet Day One

SofNet brings together three of the main drivers in the telcom industry, NGN (Next Generation Network), Web 2.0 and the telecom service layer (also known as the SDP, Service Delivery Platform).  Now when it comes to the definition of SDP, I’m usually reminded of this quote from “Through the Looking Glass:” `I don’t know what […]

Operators and their Application Developer Communities

“But shouldn’t our suppliers be building the developer programs?” I hear some operators asking. However, infrastructure suppliers make money by selling boxes, software licenses, maintenance and support; those suppliers do not understand the end customers as well as the operator. If they do, then the operator will likely not be independent for long. There is […]

Startups to Watch: HomeCamera, home monitoring made easy

HomeCamera enables people to securely see what’s going on at home without being an expert in geeky stuff like DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name System), NAT (Network Address Translation) and port forwarding, which are generally required for the home surveillance solutions on the market today.  HomeCamera aims to be an easy-to-use home surveillance system, with any […]

OSS Consolidation Part 2: Recommendations on Service Delivery

What is a ‘service delivery architecture’?  It really depends upon with whom you are talking.  Are they are a vendor trying to sell IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), or a Java games download platform; or are they an operator responsible for value-added communication services, IPTV, or content services.  Each will likely give quite different answers.  Service […]