Communications

Mobile video-on-demand Yes! Mobile broadcast TV not so hot

I have an article, Going Mobile (TV), that's recently been published by MobileIN, a wireless and mobile information site.  In it I basically argue that major investments in mobile TV broadcast capability are less likely to pay off than investments mobile video-on-demand.

The biggest trend in commercial television viewing is personal video recorders like TiVo.  People want to watch TV content when they want, not when broadcasters schedule it.  The only exception is major sports events (the Superbowl or World Cup matches).  Even the evening news is frequently rescheduled for later in the evening.

The second relevant trend is growth in YouTube and similar web-based video content.  Broadcast TV went from 2-3 channels in the 1950s to hundreds of channels on a typical cable system today.  But consumers are also interested in the long tail of millions of videos that can only be served over the Internet today and, potentially, over the mobile Internet in the future.

Finally, survey's of early adopters of mobile video show music videos, movie trailers, weather, sports action clips, comedy videos, cartoons and amateur video shorts – typically a few minutes long at most – are the most popular content. In addition, it appears 85 percent of mobile video viewers watched viral videos (content sent or pointed out by others) rather than content they found themselves.

All and all, mobile consumers are looking for video -on-demand, not pre-scheduled broadcast TV.

So what's the logic for massive investments in spectrum, followed by even more money in new wireless infrastructure, followed by the need to sell everyone new handsets that can receive the new broadcast mobile TV channels?

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.

The Perfect Phone

Lee Dryburgh initiated a great thread in the Emerging Communications public group entitled What would your perfect phone be? There are 14 messages there at this moment with a lot of good ideas, but my first thought was the term "phone" is too limiting.  Indeed, some of the correspondents' ideas also go far beyond the idea of a telephone.  Here's what I want and fully expect to see, eventually.

The Basics

It's a mobile computing device that, as a platform, is at least as open as today's computers. 

It has unconstrained or "open" mobile connectivity to what today is called the Internet, i.e. it's able to exchange arbitrary information with any other device that's willing to participate.

I like Phil Wolfe's description of the included sensors:

Sensor overload. Movement, location, biometric, barometric, full radio frequency detection including notice when I'm being RFID scanned, Affymetrix-style food safety tests. The more my phone is aware of my condition and my environment, the smarter the apps that follow.

and style.

Wearable. Fashion, baby! I should have more phones than shoes, all doing the same things but with looks and form factors that fit my mood, my social set, my wardrobe, my activity. Form factors I want: pocket watch with fob, lapel pin, ear ring, tattoo, shoe lace, scarf, tie clasp, cuff links, mood ring, brass knuckles.

Identity and Security

This device will be my wallet and keys, so I need an easy way to guarantee it's only available to me.

Coordinating Communications

It's a computer so it can run my communications applications.  But the most important application is not telephony as we've understood it over the past 120 years.  Top priority is managing information about availability and current circumstances -- mine and that of people I want to interact with.  I want more than what's commonly called "rich presence."  I want location, current activities, health, and anything and everything that can be determined from a plethora of available sensors.

Then I want total control over who can follow my circumstances, who they think I am (multiple identities!) and what they see as my current circumstances.  Like Phil Wolfe, I may want to be able to lie about my current circumstances, at least to some people.  As Phil puts it:

When I'm out picking up porn instead of groceries, attending a dissident political meeting, climbing a wall during a combat mission, investigating a crime family, or meeting with my divorce lawyer, very very few people need to know. In fact, I want my phone to have selective memory and occasional amnesia.

Availability and current circumstances are critical to coordinating communications.  This is an issue that traditional telephony has never addressed, but with the advent of instant messaging, texting and Skype, most of my voice calls are preceded by a quick text exchange.  In many cases the text exchange obviates the need for a voice call.

Is there an overlap with social networking?  Absolutely.  Has anyone cracked the code yet?  Hardly. However we are beginning to see attempts to aggregate and filter our profiles, friends and communications across multiple social networking services.  There's a big need, a lot of activity and thus strong reason to expect big progress.

Communicating

Of course I want all options;  text, voice, video, 3D holographic virtual presence.  More importantly, I want the ability to select live two-way communications, broadcasting and asynchronous messaging, some of which may be near real time.  For example, there are occasions when voice is best but a live call is not needed or not practical.  That's why Voice SMS service is so popular (where it's available).

I also want to be able to archive (or not) all communication.  Think "life streaming."

The Digital Life

Finally, I expect my device to facilitate life logging and a digital life as proposed by Gordon Bell and Jim Gremmel.

When?

Obviously we're talking decades for some of this, but most people will have portable webcam capabilities within a few years and hard drive storage has pulled ahead of most people's ability to create or copy content.  Gordon Bell's full vision may be a few years off, but lifeblogging is real today.

What's the monthly cost?

Today we pay for telephone service.  In the future, I'm likely to pay for open mobile Internet connectivity, i.e. a mobile dumb pipe, but only as a fall back to open shared wireless connectivity built from the bottom up via user-to-user wireless connectivity.

I may also choose to pay people to provide other parts of this functionality as services, but everything I've described is based on devices and software which I will be able to own.

 

VideoSMS — Another cool service that avoids the problems of MMS

Video SMS, like Voice SMS, delivers an exciting service that works on any handset and any network.

Meanwhile, Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is mostly languishing.  In the US and much of the world, MMS is used for picture mail but hardly anything else.  There are several problems.  In most markets, there are a dearth of MMS capable (and appropriately configured) handsets, there are interoperability issues between handsets, particularly with video support or the lack thereof, and in some markets there are interoperability issues between service providers.

So new, simple, inter-operable services have emerged.  The first was Voice SMS, an audio messaging service that has taken off because it actually works with any handset and any network.  I’ve written about Voice SMS several times in the past as it’s a cool service and we supply platforms to many of the vendors in this market.

Today we had our first press release on a new service, Video SMS.  Maxis Communications, the leading operator in Malaysia, has launched their Maxis Video Avatar service in December, based on an application by NGC Systems and platforms from NMS Communications.

Like Voice SMS and unlike MMS, Video SMS is a messaging service that works with any handset.  If both subscribers have 3G handsets, the service leverages the 3G network to deliver an actual video message.  But in the more common case, where one or both of the subscribers are on 2G or 2.5G, the service still works.  Instead of an actual video message, the 2G user generates and/or the 2G recipient receives a voice message with an animated gif image of a lip-sync'd talking avatar.  If the recipient has a voice-only phone the service reverts to Voice SMS, but with a URL where recipient could view the lip sync'd avatar speaking the message if they can get web or WAP access.

From the user's point of view this is a cool new messaging service that serves the same needs as Voice SMS but with an added personalization element — animated avatars.  From the operator's point of view, it's a new revenue source with both message revenue and content revenue, as avatars can be sold just at ringtones and wallpapers are sold.

The key take-aways:

• Easy user interface
• Simple useful service
• Connects with any phone on any network

Smart Communications in the Philippines has also launched this service to their 27M subscribers. As they put it:

Video Avatar is a new P2P 3G video messaging service that combines lip-syncing fun avatars and a 30 second recorded message to create an expressive and memorable video message.

Joost entering world's most advanced P2P TV market, i.e. China

Gang Lu reports rather specific rumors that Joost is going to enter the China market on or around the Chinese New Year (Feb 7th) by partnering with the Chinese portal Tom.com.  That's not surprising as Skype partnered with Tom.com when they entered the Chinese market.  What's different is Skype was innovative everywhere in the world. 

Joost will have to play catch up in China, as the Chinese are the world leaders in P2P TV and P2P streaming media.  Well established Chinese firms like PPLive and PPStream pre-date Joost by nearly two years (see my earlier comments).  And today, in China, the P2P market is clogged with many more players like UUSee, Vakaka and Vatata.

Early entrants like PPLive focused on live TV in 4:3 ratio with simple user controls, perhaps for those familiar with TV but not with TIVO, however this is changing rapidly.  What's more, friends report performance has been excellent, even in early 2005.

Joost has not worked so well within China.  From one friend and from Google translations of Chinese reviews, it appears there are many places in China where the bandwidth requirements of Joost cause performance problems, even while PPLive works well.  Presumably this will be cured by local Joost support within China. In other words, I suspect a lack of local peers within China means, for now, too much Joost content must flow over clogged international links.  A local presence should cure that.

Meanwhile, Gang Lu describes a hybrid system (streaming servers and P2P bandwidth sharing) from Vatata which:

"... supports most of the video formats, including Microsoft, Real, Flash, Apple, MPEG1/2/4, OGG/MKV etc and H.264. Vatata system consists of two sub-system: Vata, the back-end streaming platform and Tata the front-end player. Tata is absolutely fascinating. It supports On Screen Display (OSD) and allows plugins, which means you can run multiple modules (e.g. instant-messenger, channel list, etc) on top of the video screen, which just sounds like what Joost does."

So it's clear Joost is moving into a very advanced market.  It will be interesting to see the resulting cross fertilization.

Emerging Communications Conference 2008

I'll in California quite a bit in March and April, but the highlight is my first week, when I'll be speaking at a new conference, eComm 2008, March 12-14.  While the conference in new, the community is established and fascinating.  eComm 2008 being put together by Lee Dryburgh, who was on the program committee for O'Reilly's eTel conferences.  When O'Reilly cancelled eTel 2008, Lee took the initiative to keep that incredible community alive.  He was soon joined by many others.

Click through the logo at the left for conference info.  Right now there's a board of advisors, an incredible list of speakers with more on the way, a wiki and a Facebook group with 170 friends!

The first thing I look for in a conference is interesting people, then new ideas.  eComm promises an abundance of each.  The focus is next generation personal communications and the schedule is set up for rapid fire delivery inlcuding many 5 minute and 15 minute sessions.  As far as new ideas goes, this will be a fire hose!

*** Correction: 12/21 ***

The conference is being held in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.  This easily beats the typical conference facility, but it means there are only 300 paid admissions available.  Registration has opened, here.  If you register before the end of 2007, the $1495 registration fee is marked down to $1195.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Who will unify my communications?

2 email accts/ 7 email aliases/ 4 IM accts/ SMS/ this blog/ Bloglines (238 feeds)/ BlogRovR (480 feeds)/ LinkedIn/ Facebook/ Myspace/ Twitter/ 23 other "social" networks/ 3 PSTN accts/ 2 mobile accts/ Skype/ FWD/ ... 

...accessed via 3 different PCs and 2 different mobile handsets, at least on most days.

These are not just information flows — most have associated directories of friends, business associates and other acquaintances.

One year ago I wrote:

...  I already run four instant messaging clients on my laptop.  A single client would be nice, but it's not that important.  Once we finally learn how availability should work from an existing player like Skype or from an entirely new overlay network (as Skype was a few years ago), then we can worry about consolidation.

Now I'm not so sure. 

Who will aggregate this flood for me, in some convenient and semantically meaningful way?

Where is the tool that lets me organize my diverse connections?

There's an opportunity here for a new class of solutions...

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...  :-)

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.