This year I brought my wife and 2-year-old son to Barcelona; we arrived on the Thursday before MWC (Mobile World Congress). Barcelona is great for small children with lots of playgrounds, some with crèches that bring out their toys to play with making it great fun. The restaurants go the extra mile in making the […]
This weblog has discussed previously the technology bias of the telecom industry given its history. Building a reliable, cost-effective, national network requires significant focus on technology and architecture. However, people need a phone service, so selling isn’t required only marketing, the business side is relatively easy. But when the objective is a service not the […]
We’ve discussed previously the missed opportunity of operators’ websites in educating customers on all the services they offer. Normally there’s a service name, a terse incomprehensible description, and a monthly price. Its designed to fail in today’s environment when use cases (videos, cartoons, simple text and graphic descriptions), freemium and trial-to-buy business models are essential. […]
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 […]
I’ve worked across the Cable / Telco divide for several years and remain perplexed at the lack of communications between the two groups. The analogy I draw between the Telco and Cable industries is that of a Jungle and a Smurf village, see picture below. In Telco the operators within a country are in competition […]
At the Sigma Systems Evolve 2010 conference: deliver what’s next I gave a presentation, shown at the end of this article in the Accelerating Service Innovation session. This user conference focuses upon next-gen OSS and service fulfillment, bringing together progressive operators, thought leaders, strategists, and partner. The presentation splits into two sections: the first focuses […]
I was thinking the other day how little I now use my phone for day-to-day communications, and then started to think, why is that? To start with operators have been rather unsuccessful with their communication VAS (Value Added Services) – most people call them communication apps these days. There are hundreds of them, for example […]
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 […]
Firstly, thanks to the over 150 survey responses to the Telco Business Model Evolution Questionnaire. Responses came from all around the world with a even split between Americas, EMEA, and APAC; from mobile, converged and cable operators; their suppliers, application developers and a few web-based service providers. The responses to the multi-choice questions are available […]
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 […]