Category Archives: Mobile Industry General

Case Study on why Ripping out the old IN to put in an open source NG SDP makes business sense

Even though M1 is a small mobile operator, roughly 1M customers, it remains one of the most innovative mobile operators.  M1’s business strategy is simple: to constantly deliver value to its customers by rolling out new and innovative applications and services.  In mid-2008, M1 began its search for a next generation service delivery platform (NG […]

Quantifying the Extent to which US Mobile Operators are not Customer Centric

Previous articles have raised the problem of poor customer service from US mobile operators based on my own experience, with the punative charging regime that severely limits the trust customers place in operators for experimenting with new services. I was chatting yesterday with Ed Finegold from Validas, who help consumers and companies save on their […]

Looking Back and Looking Forward

This article reviews some upcoming themes and the passed year’s themes. Looking Forward: MWC 2010 and some themes for the coming decade What will probably be the main themes of MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2010? Unfortunately, LTE (Long Term Evolution) will be a key focus of the show.  I’ve discussed previously why most operators do […]

Why Telco’s Continue to Loose Customers’ Hearts

Apologies for the gap in publishing, with the birth of my son, Liam, on the 28th Nov, and a rush of end of year projects; I’ve just not had the time.  But with the holidays coming up, I have a backlog of material to publish 🙂 Today I had an experience that is critical to […]

An Analogy to Genghis Khan: How to avoid becoming a Vassal (pipe provider) of the Mongolian State (Cloud-based Service Providers)

Last year I was reading Jack Weatherford’s book “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.”  One of Genghis Khan’s early critical achievements was stopping the inter-clan wars, so the Mongols focused outside Mongolia, and went on to conquer most of the known world.  Taking each city-state in turn through a simple 3 step […]

Broadband World Forum Summary

The Broadband World Forum is the main telecommunication industry’s event for broadband, drawing thousands of attendees from more than 100 operator companies and all the top broadband vendors.  Keynotes at the event came from industry leaders such as Hans Vestberg, CEO Ericsson, Jean-Phillip Vanot, SVP of Innovation and Marketing for Orange, and Mika Vehviläinen, COO […]

Let’s Not Forget the Customer Service Basics in the Race to Innovate: Poor Customer Service Example from T-Mobile US

As a consumer, of all my bills my mobile/wireless phone bill remains the most troublesome.  Electricity, water, gas, broadband, TV and even fixed/VoIP telephony appear with few surprises.  A quick search online shows there is a significant problem with mobile operator’s billing.  My recent experience with T-Mobile US made me realize they do not understand […]

Why the US lags behind Europe on Mobile Broadband – its a Bundled Netbook and a 600-2000% higher price!

North America is an exception in the mobile broadband (MBB) market amongst developed nations.  At the end of Q1 2009 there were 17.3 million data-only HSPA subscriptions in Europe, 14% of all broadband connections are now mobile and mobile is growing at 5 times the rate of fixed broadband.  Depending on how you calculate it, […]

Smart Pipes Conference Day Two

Opening Points: A smart pipe strategy is now critical to an operator’s service innovation plans as we saw with Vodafone, Joint Innovation Labs, Orange Partner, Telenor CPA; plus there are many more operators making money today in working with third parties, e.g. Globe, Telus, etc. However, all is not well in this ecosystem.  Yesterday we […]

Smart Pipes Conference Day One

The Smart Pipes conference had about 80 attendees from across the value chain; not just operators, suppliers and consultants.  In attendance were Steve Glagow, head of Orange Partner; Pieter Knook, head of Vodafone Internet Services, Sune Jakobsson, Telenor Open Services; James Parton, head of O2 Litmus; plus many more operators.  As well as leaders from […]