Analytics, Ford and OTT Threat

Authored by: David Andrews on Apr 25, 2013

As the dust settles on MWC 2013, I thought I’d share my Top 3 takeaways from the show.

Firstly as an industry, we seem to have overcome our initial excitement around big data technology and are now more focused on how we can use this technology to drive business success.

In a recent webinar, The Now Factory promoted the concept of having a ‘narrow focus on big data’ by encouraging people to focus on their business objectives and apply Big Data technologies to address these. This was different to the more common approach of focusing on deploying a Big Data technology platform and then figuring out what to do with it. At the recent MWC show in Barcelona, I was encouraged to see more and more people taking the narrow focus point of view, and that gaining analytical capability into big data is now a much stronger theme within the industry.

The second thing that struck me at MWC was the large stand occupied by Ford at the show. While M2M has long been discussed and promoted, seeing Ford exhibit at MWC shows how close we are to The Internet of Things becoming a reality. In fact, on the flight over to Barcelona, I was sitting beside a resident of California and he was telling me he has nine subscriptions to mobile services because more of the ‘things’ he owns have become connected.

Two things came to mind about this: firstly, M2M traffic characteristics are likely to be very different for consumer-generated traffic and will put different stresses on both networks and engineering teams. Secondly, companies like Ford could become OTT players by providing IP voice capability from cars using mobile networks. They could also begin to participate in the information economy and then aggregate and resell information based on people’s movements.

The last thing that struck me at MWC was the size of the event. Much of the press around our industry focuses on falling voice and SMS revenues, and the potential sidelining of CSPs as network operators providing dumb pipes, while OTT players drive a new services industry.

While this is a real risk, the size and diversity of the MWC event highlighted the activity in this sector. It showed the speed at which the sector is changing and the massive opportunities available for those who are smart and fast enough to address them. Helping operators figure out how to do that is what will keep us busy at The Now Factory until MWC 2014 rolls around.

Click here to watch David’s recent interview on “Big Data Turning Insights into Profit”

Apple calling the shots on LTE performance?

According to a report in telecoms.com, Apple is refusing to offer its newest iPhone 5 as an LTE device unless operators can pass a number of stringent network performance tests set by the leading device manufacturer.

On first look, the story would seem to point to the growing influence and control device manufacturers like Apple are exerting over network operators.  Some use the story as further evidence that operators are being relegated to the status of dumb pipes. But in another way, the story highlights the importance of device manufacturers and network operators working together to deliver the best possible experience for mobile customers. One thing that has helped Apple to become one of the World’s leading technology companies is its obsession on the user experience, spanning everything from its tightly closed OS to the design of its products.

LTE: Unlocking the immediate ROI opportunity

When it comes to mobile services, the relationship between the carrier and their customers today is perhaps a parental one. The customer looks to the carrier for security of service. When they have an issue with Netflix or an OTT messaging or VoIP service like, Google Talk or Whatsapp, they don’t contact Netflix or Google; they contact the carrier. This presents as much opportunity for carriers as it does a challenge in enabling differentiated service, not strictly through applied Quality of Service parameters, but by engaging with 3rd party service providers for engineered delivery. This provides not only for savings in network utilization but also an enhanced customer experience.

At the recent LTE North America 2012 conference in Dallas, senior representatives from carriers and vendors got together to discuss both the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging LTE technologies.

LTE sets the framework for carriers to improve the Return on Investment (ROI) from networks tuned for high-speed, low-latency applications and services. Existing network technologies, although capable of providing similar speeds to introductory LTE, fail to deliver the lower cost per Gbps demanded by carriers in order to improve the ROI, as richer, data-hungry services are integrated more and more into our every day lives

TuMe or not TuMe?

I’ve been using WhatsApp for more than a year now, and I like it. I use it a lot for sending picture messages to family abroad, where its a big improvement on expensive (and unreliable) MMS. I’ve also recommended it to friends. But recently it has stopped working until I agree to install an new update. This latest update is going to give it permissions to read additional profile and contact info from my phone. While I understand it makes sense for a messaging app to need access to my contact data, I’m always a bit nervous giving more of my personal data away to a company I don’t know very well.

I also installed Telefonica’s new messaging app TuMe recently, to see what it is like, but I haven’t used it a whole lot yet – mainly because only two other people I know are using it. (I’d say about half my regular contacts use WhatsApp).

The new iPhone5 has arrived – what impact will it have on your network?

5 years after the first iPhone was introduced and re-defined (or arguably properly defined for the first time) our understanding of what a smartphone can actually do, comes the iPhone 5. And with Apple reporting over 2 million pre-orders for the new device within the first 24 hours of its debut, it is shaping up to be yet another record breaking product release for the World’s most valuable technology company. While the new iPhone is 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4 and boasts greater speed and performance than its predecessors, its impact on the mobile data network has yet to be fully grasped. Operators around the world will need to have their eye on a whole set of network performance metrics that go beyond the key consumer selling points hitting the headlines today. In particular, they will need to pay special attention to metrics like the following:

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google….Who’s next? Part 2

Multi-national Communication Service Provider’s (CSP’s) are learning much from their new competitors – the ‘Gang of Four’ – about tools and ideas to redefine business. These include a combination of – the creation of platforms, the building of ecosystems, embracing developers & providing developer tools, the economics of the long tail, leveraging the power of data & the cloud, fleet-of-foot innovation culture and so on.

But how do top-tier CSP’s even begin to adapt these lessons to their own setting when perceived disadvantages of being ‘behind the curve’ stand in their way?

A novel approach is put forward here to explore Gerschenkron’s take on answering this question. Five ‘perceived disadvantages’ are covered and to each a ‘Gang of Four’ lesson is applied to reveal a possible ‘behind the curve advantage’.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google….Who’s next? Part 1

Phil Simon’s new book is entitled ‘The Age of Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have Redefined Business’.

Simon’s thesis is that this ‘Gang of Four’ went from creating single products, to creating ecosystems (referred to as partners, developers, users, customers and communities). And that these ecosystems are built upon a platform of integrated features.

Cutting through the buzz words let’s take Google as an example. In 1998 Google was ‘just’ a search engine. But as it added integrated features such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Voice, Google Play, Google +, Youtube and so on it became a platform – and this platform continues to evolve (for example, the recently launched Google Now app). Today Google is a $38bn (2011 annual return) business model.  ‘Gang of Four’ business models are ‘predicated on an ecosystem of collaboration, externally driven innovation, emerging technologies and rapid innovation’.

There’s more to LTE than just a bigger pipe

As the pace of LTE deployments gather pace, it seems more and more operators are turning to network sharing in an effort to slash network costs.  Recent reports from Ovum suggest that over 50% of all future LTE deployments will involve some sort of network sharing, resulting in savings up to 25% of network costs.  This isn’t surprising when we weigh up the huge cost of investment to support LTE against a backdrop of constantly falling margins.  Eduardo Duato, CTO of Orange Spain recently came out and said that given the tough economic conditions facing the industry, operators have no choice but share the burden of building out LTE networks.

Reducing Customer Experience to a Number

There is a lot of interest right now in getting better measures of customer experience.

A lot of the focus is on reducing customer experience to a single number, which has a well-defined and well-understood meaning, because experience is so subjective, and can be measured in many different ways. One of the main reasons for this is to have a measure of experience which can be compared both within and across operators or even across industries, so that you can see how you’re doing compared to your peers. The idea of a single number is attractive because of its simplicity, but reducing something as complex as experience to a single number is never easy, and not always possible.

LTE: Learning from the mistakes of the past

Last month, I presented at the LTE Summit in Barcelona on how operators can weather the signalling storm brewing up across data networks today, caused by the growing use of ‘bursty’ smartphone apps. (For more on bursty apps please see our whitepaper located here.) The purpose of the presentation was to highlight the lessons operators could take from their current network problems and apply them to their LTE rollouts.

Moving CEM beyond a buzzword

If we are to believe some recent news stories and reports, Customer Experience Management (CEM) is becoming more of a marketing buzzword with little substance and causing much confusion as to what it actually means. While it’s true that the term encompasses many facets and touches on different functions, I don’t think we can overestimate the potential value it can bring to network operators, particularly as they struggle to manage the growing complexities that exist in the new world of mobile broadband services.

Mobile Insights – the key to a changing industry

Reading Strategy Analytics latest report that shows Samsung snatching Nokia’s mobile phone crown, you get a sense of how much can change in such a short space of time. While the reasons for Nokia’s downfall have been well documented and debated, it is clear that the growth in smartphone usage and the rise of Android and iOS have had a huge impact on the company’s financial woes.  Just compare Nokia’s latest results with that of Apple to get a grasp how this has played out with the latter reaping the success of a tightly integrated device and application platform.

Big Data: Horizontal Technologies vs. Vertical Business Issues

At a lot of the recent events I’ve attended and in many recent conversations with operators, Big Data seems to be a very prevalent theme. Indeed we use our own Big Data technology in our own products. One thing that strikes me over and over though is that these conversations focus on the technology itself rather than the problems that it helps to solve. It seems that there is a lot to be learnt from data warehouse implementations in deciding on how to use Big Data.

Mobile Network Operators: the missing piece of the “iOffice” pie

Everywhere I turn lately there is a tablet or someone weighing up the option to replace their laptop or netbook with the latest and greatest iPad. The phenomenal growth of tablets, especially iPads, is on the way to overtake laptops and netbooks as the device of choice for most applications. Tablets seem to provide a new way of cutting through technology barriers to get to what you want quickly and they are intuitive and fun to use.

OTT Applications – Operators missing the party?

When I came home one evening with my new iPhone a couple of years ago, it disappeared almost immediately. It reappeared about an hour later with Angry Birds, Zombies and Facebook installed on it. I am more of a Trip Advisor, TripIt and Google Maps person myself. I have an app that tells me that! I had a Nokia phone and now I have a personal assistant toy that happens to make phone calls. This is becoming the norm for most folks nowadays too.

Supporting half a billion new smartphone users

So it’s that time of year as we all get ready for another Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While for many of us, this annual “pilgrimage” brings up images of choking crowds, crunched schedules (and yes, sore feet!), it’s also a good time get a view of the latest trends and technologies that will shape our lives in the year ahead.