Communications

Off to LA for IT Expo and Communications Developer Conference

I'll be at Internet Telephony Expo West in Los Angeles beginning late morning tomorrow.  I have a few meetings scheduled tomorrow afternoon and two presentations later in the show.  NMS also has a booth on the show floor where I should be when I'm not otherwise engaged.

At 9am on Wednesday, I'm giving a Wireless Tutorial (3G, 4G and beyond).  Caution:  it's nearly two hours and goes into mobile communications in some depth!

Then on Thursday at 1pm, I'm on a panel, Exploring Next-Generation Video Standards, with Jeff Van Dyke (of Dialogic, and formerly of Snowshore).

So far those are my only commitments, but there many people I hope to catch up with.  If you want to meet, send me an email (rbt at NMSS dot com) or call my mobile (617-285-0433).

PS:  Next week I'll be at AstriCon in Phoenix (actually Glendale, AZ), Tuesday-Thursday, if by chance you'll be in Phoenix.

Webinar tomorrow on mobile value-added services

I'll be presenting a webinar entitled "Trends in Mobile Value-Added Services" through TMCnet.com tomorrow Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 11:00am EDT (i.e. GMT-4).

Two-thirds of the presentation addresses global trends and the remainder touches on four specific services where NMS Communications has specific (and sometimes extensive) experience, i.e.

• Voice SMS
• Ringback Tones
• Mobile TV
• Video SMS

There's a blurb from the TMCnet marketing group here and you can register for the webinar here.

Please join me tomorrow.

Zippy interviews me on Mobile TV

Zippy (actually Richard Grigonis) got my views on Mobile TV for a series on TMCnet. 

I'm negative on broadcasting :-) but very positive on mobile video on demand and on the profusion of other video-related things that people are finding to do with their mobile handsets.

My EU & Asian colleagues' actual residential broadband arrangements

I spent much of this week in meetings with colleagues from Asia and Europe.  During breaks and social time, I ran an informal poll of their residential Internet Access arrangements.  Everyone I polled was either a sales manager or a sales engineer for NMS Communications and thus in the business of selling voice and video development platforms to people in the telecom industry, i.e. this is a fairly high tech bunch.

Why the survey?

There's plenty of country-by-country data on broadband Internet access, for example from the OECD, but speeds and prices vary and there is little information on exactly how many people have which speed. I did find this table in the OECD list,

but it provides the average of advertised broadband services in each country without regard to how many people use each service. On this basis, a service like HKBN's 1 Gbps Home Service would distort already excellent numbers (for Hong Kong, if Hong Kong were an OECD country).  So what do real people actually sign up for and what does it cost them?

The results of my informal poll

Complete data is in a file attached at the bottom of this post.

Japan leads with 100 Mbps symmetric service routinely available for ~US$23 per month.  I've run into this before with others in our Tokyo office going as far back as 2004.  What was new (to me) in this survey was 100 Mbps service in a detached house, not just in an urban apartment building.  As a side note, while it's a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection, typical speeds realized were claimed to be more like 65 Mbps.  I don't know how much of this is due to Ethernet overhead, measurement limitations, TCP parameters? or congestion.

Korea came in second as my colleague from Korea happens to have 50 Mbps VDSL service.  This costs him ~$20 per month.

Regardless of where people were, most people knew the download speed but were unsure of their upload speed.

Hong Kong was interesting.  100 Mbps service is routinely available, but most of my colleagues use ADSL service at speeds between 6 Mbps and 10 Mbps and monthly costs of US$23 to US$26.  One of our folks in Hong Kong is being driven, by his children, to upgrade to 100 Mbps symmetric, but it's quite a bit more expensive than Japan at 600 HK$ or about US$77 per month.

Next best were 20 Mbps services in the US and France.  Mine is Verizon FiOS 20/5 Mbps in the Boston suburbs for ~$55 per month.  The French connection was 20/1 Mbps ADSL from Orange at a detached house fairly far out of Paris.

A lot of people have DSL at various speeds from a low of 512Kbps in both a detached house in Delhi, India and an apartment in Paris, to 1 Mbps in Beijing, China to 2 Mbps near Tel Aviv, Israel to 4 & 8 Mbps near London.  The full detail is in this file:

Download Residential_BB_Survey_Jan_2007.xls

 

LiveWire Mobile — new brand for well established business

This morning, NMS Communications launched LiveWire Mobile as a new brand for our mobile applications business.  I'm leery of re-branding exercises but this was long overdue as our mobile applications business is substantially different and independent of our traditional developer focused business.  Now LiveWire Mobile is operating as a distinct division of NMS with this new logo:

LiveWire Mobile focuses on mobile personalization services, including our well established ringback tones business.  That makes LiveWire Mobile a market leader from inception, as our ringback tone service is deployed with over 30 operators around the world.  The most recently new operator announcement also came today — it's Virgin Mobile USA.

Mobile Personalization

Mobile personalization services hit some years ago with ringtones and wall papers.  Many think of ringtones as a content business, and yes, there is a content sale in many cases.  But whether it's ringtones or ringback tones, the key motivation is the human desire to personalize our possessions and our environment. 

Today, ringtones are widespread and revenue growth is slowing.  However, ringback tones are still in the early growth phase, at least in Europe and North America.  Ringback tone penetration is over 55% in Korea, but less than 10% in the US.

Besides the established ringback tones base, LiveWire Mobile has plans for additional network-based message and subscriber-focused personalization services — stay tuned.

UPDATED:  Here's the link to a press release with more info (in PR prose...).

Community goes mobile, when? how?

Some notes from the first after lunch session at Connect 2007 in Madrid yesterday, entitled Community Goes Mobile.  Dave Penny (VP Biz Dev at NMS) moderated, with panelists:

• David Springall, CTO, Yospace
• Stuart O'Brien, Editor, Mobile Entertainment Magazine , Intent Media
• Gerrit-Jan Konijnenberg, CEO, Comsys
• Peter Karney, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, NEC

The first key point is communities don't align with operators.  The lead example in every market is SMS.  Until there was universal connectivity, SMS never took off.  David is particularly vocal that social networks have to span multiple operators to succeed.  This is interesting as Yospace currently runs SeeMeTV for 3 in the UK and Look At Me for O2 in the UK and a similar service for 10 other operators in various countries.

Big discussion of charging models.  If Facebook is free on the Internet, why pay for mobile access.  Conclusion, you'll never get someone to pay per transaction, but you might get someone to pay an Internet access fee, especially a fixed known flat rate fee (like x per day for all day and y max for all month Internet access).

Another interesting point is that mobile operators are doing deals with Internet brands (like Vodafone UK with MySpace) because the Internet brand has more recognition than the mobile brand.

Of course there are no operator representatives on this panel to hold up their end...  :-)

Dean Bubley moderating a panel on mobile users

Interesting tidbits from yesterday's panel at Connect 2007 in Madrid entitled: The User?  It was led by moderator Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis, with panelists:

• Piotr Cofta, Ph.D., Chief Researcher, Security and Trust, BT
• Matt Millar, Director, Mobile and Devices, Adobe Systems
• Pierfranco Rodi, Senior Researcher, Telecom Italia Innovation Laboratories

Dean did a quick survey of the audience which showed most people were carrying 3 or 4 devices, i.e. one or two mobile phones, one PC, a camera and/or a blackberry.  There is no convergence of devices.  People use specific devices for specific purposes.

Piotr (who was the star of this panel) points out the dynamic process of deciding what devices you might use and how it's frequently related to your identity position.  Example:  your CEO just got a Blackberry, so you'd like one also.  Alternately, you are a photographer, you need something more than a camera phone.

Matt says consumers are very smart.  They know what they want and what they like and they are unique, each making different choices between convenience & mobility or content at different price points.

Pierfranco mentions blurring of mobile and PC, also the idea of discovery – point phone at an item and get Internet info about that item.  On another note, in Italy, you can tell pre-paid from post-paid by the number – that makes your number a status symbol.  80% of Italian subscribers are on pre-paid but post-paid can be a status symbol.

Piotr points out many mobile operators know little of their customers because their customers use multiple pre-paid SIM cards.  Some pay higher per-minutes costs to preserve their anonymity, but many just do it to minimize roaming expense.  Pierfranco counters that this depends upon the country.  In Italy, the operator knows the identity of prepaid subscribers.  Also, in Italy prepaid users are not all at the low end – there are more subscribers with 300+ Euro handsets in Italy than anywhere else in Europe.

Piotr describes iPhone as a new walled garden.  Matt is actually using an iPhone and views it as a poor phone but a breakthrough media device and a breakthrough way to access to the real Internet.  Matt lists browsers as the key interface to access diverse information, but we still need multiple UIs.    People choose the user experience to solve specific problems.  Matt uses Google, Yahoo messenger, a TV, a PC and a Mac.  Dean counters that the MS Windows consistency drove the PC's success.  Point by audience member that the fragmentation of the mobile world holds back innovation.

I personally expect Google's Open Handset Alliance to go a long way to solving handset fragmentation, but only over a 5+ year time frame.  But I was in audience and the time was up before I got a chance to chime in.

Mobile application innovation in EU

The second session at Connect 2007 in Madrid is Application Innovation with John Orlando, NMS CMO moderating and panelists:

• Gianluca Ferranti, Director of Marketing, Reitek S.p.A.
• David Springall, CTO, Yospace
• Colm Healy, CEO, XIAM
• Anssi Tauriainen, CEO, Aito Technologies

This panel is slide presentations and covers material that's interesting, but mostly already familiar to me.  So my comments will be brief...  (sorry).

Gianluca's focused on video infotainment which appears to be taking off in Italy.  While he's active in some really cool stuff, today's talk covered market statistics and more conventional applications.

Yospace has their "SeeMeTV" service running on 12 operators now, but David comments that it's been a struggle compared to launching a service on the Internet.  If you're not familiar with SeeMeTV, it's a service that allows subscribers to upload cameraphone videos via MMS.  Others can browse content that people have uploaded.  It costs 30 pence or more to download a clip.  The original contributor gets money everytime someone watches their clip.  The revenue share is 10%.  The SeeMeTV service bridges 12 operators, so contributors get cash back from users across multiple operators.  Paybacks to contributors are via PayPal, not the operator.  All-in-all, it's a mobile service which could be run over-the-top but, based on David's comments, they only work through operators because operator endorsed (on-deck) is the only viable approach today.  Even so, they don't get customer demographics from the operators, just billing and an on deck position.

Colm from Xiam is focused on mobile advertising.  Xiam's edge is in automated analysis of subscriber demographics so it's possible to target content to users when the price points is 30 cents or 1-2 Euros.  On the Internet, Amazon can show dozens of potential offers, but on the mobile phone there is only space and time to make a very few offers.  Currently they get 3X click through by targeted offers on mobile phones at Orange UK.

Anssi is founder and CEO at Aito is focused on providing customer analytics to mobile operators.  Their software mines the operator's data to figure out the services individual customers use and the constraints and problems they encounter.  The goal is to figure out specific problems that need to be fixed, both technical issues and communication issues.

Interesting, but running over slightly which killed the Q&A which would have been the best part.

...

Connect 2007 Madrid opens with panel on the mobile industry

The session was entirely Q&A (no slides) which resulted in a great discussion – broad ranging and much better than talking heads reading slides!  Luca has already written up his reactions.

I'm writing this after the fact as, at the last minute, I was tagged to participate, filling in for Vincenz Wagner of Jamba who's arrival has been delayed.  The opening session at Connect 2007 in Madrid was entitled "Industry Overview" with Joel Hughes, VP & GM of our Mobile Applications business moderating.  In the end the panelists were:

• Philip Kelley, Director, Mobile TV Standardization, Alcatel-Lucent
• Kari Lahtinen, Business Development Manager, Elisa Corporation
• Peter Karney, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, NEC
• Brough Turner, i.e. yours truly :-)

Since I was participating, I have only a few interesting items (at least interesting to me) that I noted during this discussion:

Philip commented that the predominate use of 3G is to connect PCs to the Internet, i.e. dumb pipe mobile Internet access.  Philip also mentioned Triple Play, which seems old hat to me, as innovative in (parts of) Europe.  I argued that this was marketing innovation (bundling), not really a new service.  We agreed the innovation was in cost and convenience of the services.

Several panelists seem to think that innovation would come by porting Internet applications to the mobile space.  I argued that was currently true, but only because the Internet was open and mobile was still closed.  There are many characteristics of mobile (like mobility and intimacy) that will foster new applications but we don't yet have the open environment that allows zillions of developers to experiment.

At one point, I made a derogatory comment about most VoIP being just digital POTS.  The ensuing discussion brought out the parallel between Skype (which combines voice and IM) with what's happened in mobile telephony, i.e. the combination of voice and SMS to achieve the same objectives.  Either way, people want to determine the actual availability of the person they are about to call and people need a way to communicate when they can't talk.

Watching the leaks about Google's Open Handset Alliance

11:15am EST and the Open Handset Alliance website is (finally) live.

I'm subject to an NDA, so I've just watched the leaks without comment.  The Wall Street Journal carried the first news almost a week in advance, but without any mention of the name Open Handset Alliance.

I began intermittently checking the results of a Google search on the complete phrase "Open Handset Alliance" in anticipation of leaks in advance of the actual announcement.  Up through Friday, there were zero hits.  Likewise on Saturday morning, at least for a web search, but a Google news search returned the first hit.  It was this from CNET News at 6:25pm Pacific time on Friday evening.  From the text, they may have gotten their information from someone in Japan.

By Sunday midday, the conventional Google web search was returning this one article from Friday midnight (Pacific time) which credited the CNET News story from earlier that evening.  However, a Google news search gave the CNET article directly (as the 3rd item) with two more recent articles above it.  This situation remained stable through Sunday evening (eastern US time).  But by Sunday evening, there were 24 blog posts tagged "Open Handset Alliance" on Technorati.  They all traced back to the CNET News or an alternate copy of the same story.  Finally, sometime between 7pm and 9pm Sunday evening, Google must have updated their database as suddenly they were reporting 14,900 hits for the complete phrase "Open Handset Alliance."  By Monday morning this was 31,200.

Sunday also saw a New York Times background article – an in depth article about Andy Rubin (the lead for the OHA software project) that had obviously been set up with cooperation from Google.   As a cooperative venture, this article did not mention the term "Open Handset Alliance."

So across all the noise, it appears there were only two significant leaks:

1. On Tuesday the 30th, the Wall Street Journal said the announcement would come within two weeks and gave quite a few details.  Then on Thursday the 1st, they pinned it down to Monday the 5th.
2. On Friday the 2nd, CNET News broke the name "Open Handset Alliance."

Rather impressive secrecy for an effort involving more than 30 companies.