Telcos Practice "Strategic Indifference"

People who like the idea of rapid service and applications innovation typically are frustrated by the glacial speed at which network services operators move. In fact, the thought often arises that "pipes" companies, especially those dealing with actual "first mile" connections to actual users, are incapable of understanding threats to their business models.

Well, they do move slowly, compared with anything in the software world. There is no Moore's Law at work with construction, trenching, installing drop wires and network interfaces. Which explains the attractiveness of wireless alternatives.

That said, it also is true that incumbents do practice "strategic indifference." That is to say, they will seemingly ignore a threat such as VoIP, just as they seemingly ignored the advent of broadband access, in the form of Digital Subscriber Line and cable modem services.

You might not remember, but North American carriers were slow to understand mobility as well. As awareness grew, carriers simply bought the whole wireless industry.

The point is that the indifference is quite planned. If an innovation will harm current revenues, it makes business sense to plan to lose some market share and revenue rather than embrace the trend fully and lose even more money. Up to a point, incumbents will let attackers take share, on purpose.

If the innovation reaches a tipping point, where there are strategic drivers, incumbents simply pile on in a massive way. That's why the VoIP activity on the part of North American incumbents is so different from that of European carriers. In Europe, VoIP is past the tipping point, and incumbents must play. That point hasn't yet been reached in North America.

When the tipping point is reached, they'll move, and aggressively. But this is a matter of maximizing total revenue. If revenue is maximized by delaying VoIP, that's what carriers will do. If revenue is maximizing by making POTS more attractive, that's what they'll do.

Such carrier behavior is not "dumb." It is planned. In fact, other industries have been "dumb."

In fact, the music industry seems not to have understood the threat or the changes posed by digital media.

You can be quite sure the video industry has learned from that experience and is anything but complacent. No serious video executive takes user-generated content lightly. Everybody is taking steps to participate in a broader media landscape, though nobody yet knows how the business models will play out.

Of course, that also means nobody is going to sneak up on video incumbents. They know exactly where to look for opportunities and threats, and are doing so. IP video will not be a replay of VoIP, in terms of executive denial, simply because tipping points might be somewhat clearer, and because change in the video software space will not entail the massive capital spending carriers must yet contend with in migrating to a broadband, all-IP future.

Video contestants will move faster than you might think.

Mobile Web More Like TV?

WhatsOpen.com offers a Web application that shows users nearby stores and operating hours. That's the sort of thing that a mobile advertising strategy can build off of. It also suggests something else about the nature of mobile Web services optimized for handhelds.

To wit, given the greater difficulty of interacting with the device, compared to a PC, maybe large portions of the experience need to be more like linear TV, as heretical as that may seem. Push useful data to me. Not all the time because that kills battery performance. But sense when it is likely I am looking at the screen. Show me something interesting.

Combine Real Simple Syndication with streaming. Maybe not streaming video, maybe streaming text. Adjust the feed based on my location. People talk about the difference between a lean-back experience and a lean-forward experience. Maybe we need to work on a stand-up experience: screen-based information and entertainment adapted for a user that is standing up and moving.

What Android Must Do

"I think for the Google platform to really be a game-changer it's going to have to offer more than just an open-source operating system for a mobile phone," says Kay Johansson, MobiTV CEO. "It will have to create mobile Internet devices that happen to make phone calls."

If Google ever does decide to bid for 700 MHz spectrum, with or without other partners, the network will be shaped by that same requirement. In fact, Google might have an opportunity to consider a different approach to what a mobile network looks like. Such a network theoretically might provide broadband coverage anyplace people are walking, spottier coverage in other places. That was the original thinking behind the "Personal Communications Service" (PCS) spectrum that instead wound up being deployed as 2-GHz cellular instead.

That might wind up being what happens again. Today, it is the troubled muni Wi-Fi approach that most resembles the old PCS idea. The Fon, T-Mobile Hotspot or Boingo hotspot approach offers less coverage than the original PCS concept called for.

In fact, the only reason one would logically want to build a new network on anything other than macrocells, incorporating Wi-Fi in some way, is that it might be possible to get a network up and running faster than if a traditional macrocell approach is used. One already would begin with fairly ubiquitous coverage in homes and offices and a reasonable hotspot overlay. Macrocell coverage probably still would be needed for outdoor coverage.

Still, an ad-driven business model ultimately could be quite do-able if one generally assumed in-home and at-office coverage, with fairly dense coverage in downtown cores and shopping malls, augmented by lighter coverage other places. There are some drawbacks, especially when the device is used in phone mode, since coverage would tend to be the reverse of what they now encounter. That is to say, indoor coverage would be better than outdoor coverage.

The point is that if the exercise is to build an optimal mobile Web network, one might have different choices. One of the bigger advantages would come from crafting a network that could be built at far-less capital intensity than a typical 3G mobile network. That would fit with the general theme of creating less-expensive handsets and service as well, so ads would produce a healthy revenue model. It's just a thought.

Jajah Launches Ad-Supported Calling

Jajah is launching an in-call advertising platform that turns the inventory of the world's telephone calls into an advertising market place. The idea is to insert messages into the "ringing" stream, which is user dead time, rather than into the conversation stream, which most people will find is intrusive, even if a user is interested in defraying the cost of a call.

"We spend more time on the phone than consuming all other types of media, TV, reading papers and radio included," says Roman Scharf, Jajah co-founder. "Phones haven't been considered as a viable channel yet. We are going to change that."

"In tests over the past months we have identified a method to overlay advertising content on phone calls in a way that users find acceptable," he says.

Whereas in-call advertising would normally interrupt a call and disturb the caller, Jajah simply overlays the messages above the ring tone right before the call starts. "Businesses get guaranteed caller attention, whilst at the same time not alienating the consumer with intrusive messages that break the rhythm of a telephone call," says Scharf.

Think of it as the phone inventory equivalent of Google AdWords, says Daniel Mattes, Jahah co-founder.

The opt-in solution, available soon, will give users who agree to hear ads monthly credit to their accounts.

"In a next step we will allow telecommunications partners to use our platform to monetize their inventory as well", says Trevor Healy, Jajah's CEO.

Small, local companies can target their messages to the local Jajah users.

Jajah also has partnered with Oridian Online Media Solutions, Ltd., the largest privately-owned advertising network, to gain access to a base of business advertisers.

HP Enables Web Services for Mobile Carriers

Illustrating the future direction of mobile and some wired services as well, Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) 2.0 to help wireless service providers take advantage of third party applications. SDP 2.0 allows multiple services to communicate with underlying wireless or wired networks, third-party applications, and Web 2.0-based mashups.

Operators can offer converged services that blend telecom, Web, and IT resources, such as music, video, and business services that personalize content delivery.

"The business problem for operators is that many of the services they deliver today come from third parties," says Peter Dragunas, HP Communications, Media and Entertainment group VP.

Basically, SDP 2.0 takes telecommunications assets and turns them into Web services.

If you think carriers won't be developing most of the revenue-generating new services that are coming, then it is imperative that carrier platforms easily integrate Web services. HP's platform helps them do that. What's important here is the signal about direction.

Symbian Disses Google

Google faces challenges in the mobile device business to be sure. Microsoft and Symbian have made abundantly clear their views on how tough it is to break into the market and how far Google is behind. But perhaps the dismissals are a sign of how great the concern is?

Google's attempt to create a widely-used Linux-based mobile phone operating system is "a bit like the common cold," says John Forsyth, Symbian VP, in an interview with the BBC. "It keeps coming round and then we go back to business."

"About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched," he says.

Symbian's recent financial results show it sold 20.4 million smartphone software licenses in the last quarter of 2007 and since the company was launched nine years ago more than 165 million phones have been shipped using its platform."Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things," Forsyth argues.
"It's costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones."

Forsyth also questioned whether developers would flock to the system. "You have to have a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed," he argues. A phone that can't be sold until next year "is not one that is going to ignite developers," he says.

Nokia, a major driver of Symbian device sales, is more circumspect. "We are always open to discussion and debate on that. We were not ready to make any commitment to it or discuss it at the time," says Simon Ainslie, Nokia UK managing director. "We are having ongoing discussions with Google."

Android Creates Instant Developer Community

One of the big problems a communications service provider faces is how to leverage the creativity of the Web and apps community to drive service innovation which carriers frankly are ill equipped to undertake. Android basically solves that problem. Developers respond to big opportunities and that is what Android now represents: a chance to develop apps for mobile operators representing 40-some-odd percent of the U.S. mobile population, virtually all of China, one of the fastest-growing global markets, plus the two dominant providers in the trendy Japanese market plus Spain, Germany and Italy, just for starters.

That's an instant and massive developer community at a time when every major communications service provider needs such a developer community allied to it. Google may well disrupt. It also is going to help carriers move ahead on the innovation front in a way impossible on their own.

To the extent that most innovations and applications are going to come from the independent developer community--not from the carriers--this is a very big deal indeed.

That isn't to underplay the role played by developers working for Microsoft or Symbian, either. It's just that leveraging the Linux community adds even more intellectual capital, and capital that heretofore hadn't been deployed to enrich mobile Web apps.