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Huawei DIC Solution197X267MM (EN)(0520 HIGH).pdf 1 2013-5-22 11:34:30
Asian Te lecoms Bus iness and Technolog y l www.te lecomasia .net l May/June 2013
Samsung’s 5G • LTE and beyond • Auction Down Under • A single mobile network
Published By
Inside:
16th Telecom Asia AwardsNTT Com, Telstra and SKT take top honors
Working with the ‘enemy’Strategies for competing against the OTT players
Navigating the rocky path to customer-centricity
Stop,Look andListen
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 1
Subscribe to Asia’s best daily telecom news service: www.telecomasia.net
Contents Volume 24 Number 2 May/Jun 2013
14
3442
18 30
6
cover
14 The arduous journey to customer-centricity Telcos need to listen and be honest about what their
customers need
feATureS
Telecom Asia Awards
18 Asia’s Top Service Providers NTT Com won top honors in the 16th Telecom Asia Awards,
taking home both the Best Asian Telecom Carrier (Best of the
Best) award and Best Cloud-based Service prize. A total of 13
awards were presented to 12 winners at a gala dinner in Kuala
Lumpur in April.
OTT Threat
30 Strategies for competing against the OTT players Collaboration is the most viable long-term solution for most
telcos, because it enhances their brands while enabling them
to attract additional customers
Mobility
34 BYOD needs no business caseAlmost ubiquitous demand for mobile technology outweighs
the need for a measurable business case, but culture will
determine BYOD adoption
COluMNS
Tanner
6 That’s not 5G“5G” isn’t a technology – it’s nothing more than a marketing
gimmick
Poulos Points
42 An NBN model for mobile networksConsider the benefit of having one super-network across
Europe or Asia with no national boundaries
Subscribe to Asia’s best daily telecom news service:
www.telecomasia.net
ContentsVolume 24 Number 2 May/Jun 2013
Managing Director Jonathan Bigelow [email protected]
Group Publisher Gigi Chan [email protected] Sales & Marketing Executive Michelle Tang [email protected]
Group Editor Joseph Waring [email protected] Technology Editor John C. Tanner [email protected] Editor Fiona Chau [email protected]
Art Director Dick Wong [email protected] & Web Manager Pauline Wong [email protected] HR & Admin Manager Janis Lam [email protected]
Accounting Manager Nancy Chung [email protected] Accountant Ivy Chu [email protected] Assistant Cannis Wong [email protected]
Director, Audience Development – R&D Will Ahmad [email protected] Circulation Manager Shipman Kwok [email protected]
Contributors Canberra: Dylan Bushell-Embling London: Michael Carroll Tokyo: Mike Galbraith Bangkok: Don Sambandaraksa
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TELECOM ASIA (ISSN 1681-181x)is circulated to telecommunications carriers (PTTs) and to the communications departments of businesses, industries and others who use and operate commercial and private networks. It is edited for planning, engineering and operational managers responsible for the design, installation, marketing and mainte-nance of public or private telecom systems and networks.
TELECOM ASIA (USPS 019-325) is published ten times yearly by Questex Asia Ltd, 13/F, 88 Hing Fat Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. All copies distributed in PRC are free of charge. Subscription rates: 1 year HK$480 (Hong Kong only) US$86 (within Asia) and US$96 (outside Asia), 2 years HK$840 (Hong Kong only) US$152 (within Asia) and US$168 (outside Asia). Single/Back issue (if available) HK$50 per copy (Hong Kong only) US$9 (within Asia) and US$10 (outside Asia) plus US$5 handling charge per order. Print-ed in Hong Kong. Postage paid in Hong Kong. U.S. Mailing Agent : International Mail Distribution Inc, A Division of Security Delivery Service, 52-09 31st Place, Long Island City, NY 11101-3229. Periodicals postage paid at Long Island City, NY. © 2013 Questex Media Group LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Total circulation: 13,959Qualified Circulation: 12,126 Non-Qualified Circulation: 1,833
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SAleS CONTACTSAsia PacificGigi Chan Group Publisher, Questex Asia Ltd.Tel: +852 2589 1338 fax: +852 2559 7002 e-mail: [email protected]
North America & eMeAZena CoupéTel: +44 1923 852537 fax: +44 1923 839765 email: [email protected]
INDuSTrY ANAlYSIS
8 SingTel launches 150-Mbps lTe, Taiwan pre-pares for lTe auction
10 ISP TPG secures lTe spectrum, VHA withdraws, and Telstra and Optus spend big
11 China Mobile spends heavily on 3G and 4G, spars with Tencent over OTT service
NewS MAP
12 Asian telecoms this month
reGulArS
8 Insight
36 Telecom Career
38 events Calendar
44 Backpage Briefing
ONLINE SECTIONSDaily News Our broad coverage of Asian and global telecom news
www.telecomasia.net/news
CommentaryIn-depth analysis from Telecom Asia’s senior editors and leading telecom research firms, including Ovum, Maravedis, ACG Research and more
www.telecomasia.net/commentary
BloggeryMissives on telecom trends and the wireless future from John Tanner, Tony Poulos, Joseph Waring and Michael Carroll
www.telecomasia.net/blog
BusinessWeek Online Tech coverage from the global business magazine
www.telecomasia.net/bwol
White Papers Vendors hold forth on latest technology concepts
www.telecomasia.net/whitepapers
Events This year’s trade shows and conferences
www.telecomasia.net/events
Telecom Asia China editionIn-depth news analysis, opinion, white papers and case studies for telecom professionals and executives in China
http://cn.telecomasia.net
IndustryViewThe inside view from industry execs
www.telecomasia.net/industryview
Weekly Highlights
Telecom Asia China edition
A recap of the major developments of the previous week
www.telecomasia.net
This twice-a-month newsletter is an essential source for Chinese telecom professionals.
http://cn.telecomasia.net/
4 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
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Small cells have become a proven and vital element in mobile networks, helping operators increase coverage, capacity, and services. Effective small cell networks take advantage of both licensed and unlicensed (Wi-Fi) technology to handle the exponential growth in mobile data traffic. We’ve identified 5 fundamentals that are needed to integrate licensed and unlicensed small cells, and interestingly enough they are not all technology related.
1. Shift Towards a Venue-Centric Value PropositionFirst, integration requires a shift in the dynamic regarding
how small cell operators sell their services to venue owners. Instead of the conventional approach of viewing the venue as a simple opportunity to improve coverage and capacity based on real-estate propositions, operators can leverage small cell analytics to provide invaluable information to venue owners about indoor location, context, footfall flows, crowding, and dwell times – information that can be used to offer new services and generate revenue for both parties.
2. Delivering a Converged ArchitectureThe second fundamental is the need to bring the
licensed and unlicensed networks together into a converged architecture. Carrier-grade SP Wi-Fi architectures can deliver 4G experiences using the 802.11 standards that are embodied in Hotspot 2.0. SP Wi-Fi should be considered as “Trusted non-3GPP Access” enabling tight integration into standardized packet core infrastructure. Delivering an integrated solution enables features such as rich policy and charging, LI integration, parental control and off-line/on-line charging to be applied across the small cell network.
3. Licensed/Unlicensed SynergyIntegration requires meeting the challenge of graceful
handover from the macro network to 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi small cells. Wi-Fi brings features to the architecture that can help facilitate handover operations. SP Wi-Fi network provide precise geo-location of smartphone handsets, even indoors. This location information can be used to enhance the operation of the licensed small cell network, for example
Sponsored by Cisco
The five fundamentals of licensed/unlicensed small cell integration Mark Grayson, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Mobility Technology Group
helping deliver scalable macro-to-small cell handovers capabilities.
4. Enterprise IntegrationOver 80% of mobile data usage occurs indoors, and a
large portion of this usage is in enterprises – from businesses to consumer venues to transportation hubs. Integration needs to address some fundamental issues here. With licensed/unlicensed integration there may be two different network management approaches, with the enterprise maintaining control over the Wi-Fi network and the licensed network controlled by the operator. Enterprise Wi-Fi often delivers traffic separation for guest and internal traffic and enterprises will look to securely extend such capabilities for the licensed small cell network. Service integration also needs to be taken into account – how to offer control per operator, per SSID, per AP, or per user.
5. Heterogeneous Self-Organizing Networks (HetNet SON)
Integrated small cells will increasingly be deployed in super-dense configurations where a single access point is able to receive radio signals from multiple small cell neighbors using multiple radio technologies. In this environment it is critical to manage the linkages between the macro and small cell layers, to enable the effective management of load across macro and small cells and between licensed and unlicensed small cell technologies.
At Cisco, our approach is simple. We believe that building architectures for technology alone is ill-fated. We ground our architectures in the business rationale of our customers, and we drive functionality into a common architecture that meets operators’ technology and revenue needs.
For more information, visit www.cisco.com
TA0513_Cisco_advertorial.indd 2 05/22/2013 2:28 PM
Forget about 4G. That’s old news. The real story is 5G. And it is coming. In just seven years.
So says Samsung, which an-nounced in May that it had developed “the world’s first adaptive array transceiver tech-nology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications” that “sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks.”
What that actually means is this: Samsung has figured out a way to make cellular net-works plausible in the 28-GHz band, and is calling it 5G so that, if everyone adopts Sam-sung’s technology as the next upgrade after LTE-A, Samsung gets to say they invented 5G.
Or something like that. My paraphrasing is based on the fact that
– for me, anyway – the suffix “G” has become increasingly meaningless. LTE isn’t even “4G” if you ask the ITU, which says that “4G” (un-der IMT-Advanced) is LTE-A and Wimax 2.
Yet the term “5G” has already been tossed around to describe both of those technolo-gies, as well as 802.11ac (which is Wi-Fi, not cellular), because everyone accepts that LTE is 4G. Regulators in the UK and the European Union have started making plans for 5G but no one’s sure what it will be yet. In the case of Ofcom, part of their 5G frequency plan in-cludes digital dividend spectrum in the 700-MHz band.
So it’s fair to say that the Samsung “5G” announcement is partly a marketing stunt to link the brand with “5G” and get some nice SEO metrics.
That’s not to say they haven’t achieved something impressive. What they’ve done – potentially, anyway – is found a way to make millimeter-wave work as a RAN access tech-nology.
This is a fairly big deal, because so far, in terms of cellular, millimeter-wave (which sits in the 30-300 GHz spectrum range, so techni-cally Samsung’s technology is somewhere be-tween millimeter-wave and microwave) has been thought of primarily as a backhaul solu-tion, particularly for small cells. But millime-ter-wave just doesn’t have the propagation to
work at the power levels where cellular access technology operates.
Samsung is claiming it solved that prob-lem with its adaptive array transceiver tech-nology, which uses 64 antenna elements, and can transmit cellular data at over 1 Gbps at a distance up to 2 kilometers on the 28-GHz band. It’s the same idea as MIMO but with lots more antennas.
Samsung doesn’t say how it will get around some of the other problems associ-ated with 28-GHz transmissions – like rain fade issues, or line-of-sight requirements (especially if the mobile device is, well, mo-bile). And then of course there’s the question of just how they’re going to cram 64 antenna elements into a Galaxy Note.
Which is presumably why they don’t ex-pect to commercialize their adaptive array transceiver until 2020.
Interference issues againOne obvious benefit of this is that it will
give cellular networks access to all-new fre-quency bands. On the other hand, given LTE’s fragmentation issues, that’s not necessarily good news.
There’s also the fact that the 28-GHz band also sits in the part of the Ka-band being used by satellite operators. Considering how sat-ellite players are pushing regulators hard to keep 3.5-GHz Wimax out of their extended C-band frequencies due to interference prob-lems, I don’t see them sitting still for “5G” encroaching on the Ka-band until it can be demonstrated that interference won’t be a problem.
All told, we’re a long way from knowing if millimeter-wave is the next generation of cel-lular. The way things are shaping up now, the next generation seems likely to be something close to what we’re seeing with hetnets – i.e. bringing access points closer and closer to the user via LTE-A (both FDD and TDD), Wi-Fi and home-networking technologies like Wi-Gig and ZigBee, creating an ubiquitous mesh providing the connectivity you need at that time.
Is that 5G? I don’t know. And I don’t really care. Ignore the hype. “5G” isn’t a technology – it’s a marketing gimmick. Nothing more. TA
John C. Tanner is global technology editor – [email protected]
TANNer l John C. Tanner
There is no such thing as 5G
“5G isn’t a technology – it’s a marketing gimmick. Nothing more”
6 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Broadcast no matter where you are.Thuraya IP
www.thuraya.com
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When you need superior mobility with zero compromise on connectivity, there can only be one choice. Thuraya IP+ is engineered to deliver the fastest streaming speeds for a terminal of its class - allowing you to take advantage of reliable broadband access from locations covered by Thuraya’s unwavering satellite network. Light and compact, Thuraya IP+ is easily deployed to provide satellite broadband access in a matter of seconds, Thuraya IP+ is ideal for mission-critical operations, equipping broadcasters with high speed IP connections to transmit their video feeds back to their studios in the most optimized manner using asymmetric streaming capability.
INDuSTrY ANAlYSIS
LTE and beyond
L TE advances have been coming thick and fast, with SingTel pushing its LTE network to 150 Mbps, Taiwan setting the base price for its 4G auction and Samsung laying some of the groundwork
for “5G”.SingTel in May launched Singapore’s first 150-
Mbps dual-band LTE plan. The service is initially available for dongles and modems only but will be expanded to smartphones and tablets once devices are commercially available.
SingTel is promising typical downlink speeds of between 5-40 Mbps. These speeds are available outdoors, and in selected indoor locations.
Weeks earlier, SingTel announced it had achieved city-wide mobile coverage with its LTE network. The company also plans to commence an upgrade to LTE Advanced from September.
Taiwan, meanwhile, set the stage for its inevi-table transition from Wimax to LTE, outlining its 4G licensing plan and opening applications for the auction. The National Communication Commission will allocate 270 MHz of spectrum in the 700-, 900- and 1800-MHz bands. The auction will have a base price of NT$35.9 billion ($1.2 billion).
Interested parties will have until July 1 to apply to participate in the auction and bidding will start in September.
Major operators including Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone and Taiwan Cellular have already expressed interest in the bid while Wimax operators such as G1 and VeeTime are also reportedly also considering participating.
It may still be early days for LTE and earlier for LTE Advanced, but some companies are already looking to the next evolution. Samsung in May claimed an early “5G” breakthrough, using millime-ter-wave Ka bands.
Using a transceiver with an array of 64 antenna elements, Samsung said it was able to transmit over 1 Gbps of data at distances of up to 2 km over 28-GHz spectrum. This could mark a step toward overcoming the distance limitations of super-high-frequency radio waves.
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is also seeking to help lay the early groundwork for 5G. In March the operator announced it had completed an experiment during which it sent the world’s first 10 Gbps uplink packet transmission. TA
– Dylan Bushell-Embling
STATSNAP
While Joyn has been slow to gain traction and faces fierce competition from OTT messaging services, Strategy Analytics forecasts that the service can gain nearly 300 million users by 2017.
But to increase Joyn’s chances of meeting this target, operators will need to ensure the service can be discovered easily, is easy to access and use and is priced competitively against rival messaging options.
To date, only nine operators in four countries have launched Joyn services, including each of South Korea’s cellcos.
Launches are expected to continue to be fragmented over the next 12 months, because the decision to offer Joyn is dependent on deployment plans for LTE, as well as the relative effect of competition from OTT players on core telecom revenues in their markets.
Another current barrier to Joyn adoption and discoverability is its lack of integration into handsets. But Spain’s Movistar, Vodafone and Orange recently announced that Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony and Nokia will provide native sup-port for their current Joyn services, which is a boost for all operators using or planning to deploy Joyn.
Strategy Analytics VP David Kerr advised mobile operators to get on board with Joyn ASAP.
“We recommend operators rapidly launch Joyn services across multiple countries in order to provide a ubiquitous and evolved communication service with reach and reliability on a par with SMS,” he said.
“Companies such as Interop, Mavenir Systems, NewPace, Jibe Mobile and Vodafone provide hosted platforms to enable operators to launch Joyn ser-vices rapidly and at a lower cost, without deploying IMS into the network.”
Joyn can secure nearly 300m users by ‘17
Joyn services in operation
Source: Strategy Analytics
8 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Country Operator Launch Date Device support
Germany T-Mobile Mar 2012 Android 2.3+ and iOS appsS Korea SK Telecom Dec 2012 Android 2.3 app iOS app slated early 2013 appS Korea KT Freetel Dec 2012 Android 2.3 app iOS app slated early 2013S Korea LG U+ Dec 2012 Android 2.3 iOS slated early 2013Spain Orange Nov 2012 Android v2.2+ and iOS Samsung Galaxy SIII LG Optimus L9, One S HTC, Nokia Lumia 920 Sony Xperia ZSpain Movistar Nov 2012 As AboveSpain Vodafone Nov 2012 As AboveUSA MetroPCS Oct 2012 Android v2.2+Germany Vodafone Aug 2012 Android v2.2+ and iOS
INDuSTrY ANAlYSIS
INSIGHT ONe MONTH’S TeleCOM reSeArCH
>> Indian online video usage surgingIndians are consuming online video at twice the rate they were two years ago, with views reaching 3.7 billion per month. Growth is being driven by both a sizeable increase in the number of people consuming online video, and an upswing in average videos watched per viewer, comScore said. The total online video audience has grown 74% since March 2011 to 54 million viewers. Average videos consumed per watcher has meanwhile increased 18%, while time spent viewing videos has grown 28%. The average viewer watched 68.7 videos online in March 2013, for a total viewing time of 431.5 minutes. Google sites – chiefly YouTube – have the highest market share, with 31.5 million unique viewers and 2.1 billion views in March, followed by Facebook with 18.6 million viewers and 150.5 million views. Rapid growth in the market is presenting an opportunity for Indian marketers and media companies.
comScore Video Metrixwww.comscore.com
>> Pay-TV firms vs OTT playersPay-TV operators can stave off the dire threat posed by OTT services by challenging rivals at their own game with multiscreen offerings, IHS asserts. While European cable operators have lost 1.4 million households between 2007 and 2012, they have gained 17.8 million more revenue-generating units (RGUs) over this time. Pay-TV operators have so far been responding to competition from OTT video providers – and replacing lost television subscriptions – by offering services based on the triple-play of television, internet and telephony. But to stay above water and continue increasing RGUs, they will have to start expanding into new services such as mobile telephony, outdoor Wi-Fi access and – critically – the same level of multi-screen access provided by their OTT rivals. The latter will require pay-TV operators to take the next step and invest in their own CDNs.
IHS Screen Digest TV intelligent servicewww.screendigest.com/
Australia getting fourth MNO
A ustralia concluded a major digital dividend spectrum auction in May. The auc-tion process brought two surprises – new challenger
TPG won two blocks of spectrum, and Vodafone Hutchison Australia pulled out of the race.
Regulator ACMA raised nearly A$2 billion ($1.96 billion) from the auction of spectrum in the 700-MHz and 2.5-GHz bands.
Fast-growing fixed-line ISP TPG Tele-com participated in the auction, spending A$13.5 million for 2x10 MHz of 2.5-GHz spectrum. The company currently offers mobile services as a MVNO on SingTel’s Optus network.
TPG plans to use its new spectrum to progressively roll out an LTE network in heavy usage areas, while continuing to offer services over the Optus network in areas the network does not yet cover.
Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) had applied to take place in the auction, but withdrew before bidding commenced.
Ovum senior analyst Nicole McCor-mick said McCormick said Vodafone’s withdrawal indicates that it plans to rely on its existing 1800-MHz spectrum hold-ings for its LTE network. But she added this could be a risky move. “We think it would have been a sensible long-term spectrum insurance policy for Vodafone to have picked up 2.5-GHz spectrum for data traffic management purposes in the metro areas.”
The company is still struggling to win back the confidence of Australian con-sumers after a string of complaints and outages on its Vodafone-branded mobile networks.
McCormick said Vodafone will have to act to stay competitive against incumbent Telstra and will probably seek closer col-laboration with Optus. If Vodafone does fail, she sees TPG as a likely buyer.
The A$13.5 million TPG bid is a pittance compared to the A$1.3 billion Telstra will pay for 2x10 MHz of 700-MHz spectrum and 2x20 MHz in the 2.5-GHz band.
Telstra CEO David Thodey said the spectrum “will be used to enhance our network to help support extraordinary demand growth for mobile services and data.”
Telstra launched LTE services in May 2011 and plans to start rolling out LTE Advanced this year.
Credit ratings agency Moody’s consid-ers the investment to be credit negative, but noted that it won’t be enough to im-mediately impact Telstra’s A2 rating, and is a long-term positive from an operating profile perspective.
Optus meanwhile paid A$649.1 million for 2x10 MHz of 700-MHz and 2x20 MHz of 2.5-GHz. Optus has already started adapting its existing LTE network to support the new spectrum once it becomes available.
The operator in May also started im-plementing TD-LTE to augment its FDD LTE network, starting with a trial deploy-ment in Canberra. TA
– Dylan Bushell-Embling
10 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 11
China Mobile acts on state audit
C hina Mobile hasn’t let a state audit and a tussle with OTT messaging provider WeChat distract it from spending heavily on attracting new 3G
subscribers and setting the stage for a 4G launch.
The operator took steps last month to bolster its internal management and accounting standards, after a review by the National Audit Office identified weak-nesses in its earlier procedures. The audit of China Mobile’s 2011 result identified alleged problems, including inflated sales and inadequate supervision at the com-pany’s overseas business units.
The report also cited the fact that three of China Mobile’s six major foreign investments since 2005 have been unprof-itable, generating accumulated losses of 32 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) over the last few years.
Following the review, China Mobile put out a statement indicating it had recti-fied nearly all the weaknesses identified in the report, “except for a particular matter that has not yet been executed pending
approval by regulatory authorities.”The statement adds that “the relevant
responsible persons have been dealt with in a serious manner.” China Mobile will not have to restate any financial results as a result of the audit.
On the results front, China Mobile in April reported a mere 3% increase in Q1 profit to 27.9 billion yuan ($4.51 billion), as heavy spending on rollouts and handset subsidies softened a 5.7% increase in revenue.
Despite its effect on the bottom line, China Mobile is showing no signs of slow-ing down on spending to increase its 3G customer base and lay the groundwork for 4G. On the contrary, the operator has increased its capex budget by as much as 49% to up to 190.2 billion yuan ($30.6 billion), with just over half to be spent on TD-LTE rollouts. The company has also allocated 27 billion yuan to spend on handset subsidies over the year.
The operator’s aggressive spending is showing signs of paying off. The company signed up 26.4 million new 3G customers in Q1 – up from 12.3 million in Q4 – to
bring its total 3G subscriber base to 144.4 million.
China Mobile, meanwhile, has spent the last few months embroiled in a public battle with Tencent over OTT messaging service WeChat. Reports first circulated in February indicating that China’s MNOs had demanded compensation for Tencent over the strain the wildly popular service places on network resources.
In mid-April the head of China’s telecom ministry made headlines when he asserted that the MNOs’ demands are reasonable, fuelling speculation that the ministry could intervene.
But at the end of the month, the MIIT revealed it had no intention of getting involved in the debate and would instead let the market sort it out.
Weeks later Tencent announced that it had found “preliminary solutions” to the disagreement in consultation with opera-tors. Chairman Ma Huateng expressed a desire for OTT players and telecom operators to work together for mutual benefit. TA
– Dylan Bushell-Embling
>> Cellcos can profit from social messagingMobile operators despairing over losing SMS revenue to OTT messaging providers should take heart by the fact that social messaging can be monetized. A survey of consumers in multiple markets conducted by Ovum shows that 31% had decreased their SMS usage due to using social messaging services. Operators were particularly hard-hit in markets such as Australia and China. But consumers in markets including the US and Germany indicated they had increased their use of SMS. Ovum consumer analyst Neha Dharia said this disparity shows that “services with stronger operator relationships can even grow SMS traffic, creating opportunities for operators and OTT players to bridge the gap between online and offline users through paid SMS.” But operators need to identify social messaging services that will promote the use of SMS, and will also need dynamic, multifaceted business models to turn the rise of social messaging into a revenue-generating opportunity.
Making money from social messagingwww.ovum.com
>> Ericsson widens packet core leadEricsson cemented its lead in the mobile packet core infrastructure market in Q4, lifting its market share to 29%. ABI Research estimates that Ericsson, NSN and Cisco collectively capture over 55% of the total market. The mobile packet data core market is projected to reach $2 billion by 2014, driven by burgeoning demand for 3G and 4G mobile broadband services. But while Ericsson’s lead in the market appears unassailable, changing market dynamics driven by the mobile broadband boom are likely to tighten up the race. Vendors will be aggressively rolling out NFV/SDN equipment, which represents an opportunity for new vendors to enter the race and for existing players to challenge the incumbents. ABI expects the mobile packet core market to continue growing through to 2016, as the availability of low-cost smartphones will help sustain demand for mobile broadband infrastructure.
Mobile packet core research servicewww.abiresearch.com
asian telecoms this month
BeijingChina Mobile revamps its internal management and ac-counting standards, after a state audit identifies problems including inflated sales and inadequate supervision at some overseas business units.
Nokia appoints a new GM for its China business, as it seeks to reverse its declining sales in the key mobile market.
NSN sets up a global delivery center in China to help do-mestic and international operators manage their TD-LTE networks.
A consortium led by Citic Capital Holdings arranges to buy Chinese telecom billing and software company AsiaInfo-Linkage for $890m.
BangkokRegulator NBTC gets to work on new regulation aimed at ensuring service continuity for the 18m 2G customers on networks operating under concessions due to expire in September.
12 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Hong kongCSL, PCCW-HKT, Hutchison and SmarTone jointly object to OFCA’s plans to delay the release of a report on the expected impact of a proposal to carve up a third of their 3G spectrum holdings upon license renewal.
SingaporeSingTel launches the city’s first 150-Mbps LTE mobile broadband plan, with the intention of extending the service to smartphone and tablets once devices are available.
SingTel reports a 12% decline in net profit for FY13, and a 33% drop for the fourth quarter, due to lower revenue and costs associated with the divestment of its Pakistani subsidiary.
DelHiBharti Airtel records a 47% slump in annual profit, blaming wider losses in Africa and domestic regulatory troubles, and reveals plans to buy out the rest of its Bangladeshi unit.
Vodafone India takes the telecom minis-try to court in a battle over the renewal of three of its spectrum licenses, due to expire in 2014.
Reliance Commu-nications hikes its prepaid voice race by 30%, in the latest sign of sorely needed price rationalization in India’s wireless market.
The Qatar Foundation purchases a 5% stake in Bharti Airtel for $1.26b.
ManilaGlobe’s first-quarter profit falls 76% year-on-year, as the operator continues to spend heavily on customer acquisitions and its net-work and IT monderniza-tion programs.
The government passes new regulation prohibit-ing cable theft or unlawful cable TV and internet tapping.
PLDT posts an 8% drop in Q1 profit, blaming forex losses and the impact of ac-counting standard changes.
jakartaIndependent tower opera-tor SUPR reveals plans to spend around $155m to build or acquire up to 1,000 new towers this year.
DC operator PT DCI opens a new facility in West Java, in partnership with Equinix.
movements
SeoulResearch firm IHS warns that a second Korean war would devastate the global smart device supply chain, causing severe short-ages to display and flash memory volumes.
SK Telecom lifts its Q1 profit 15.2%, thanks to LTE revenue gains and strong performance at chipmaking subsidiary SK Hynix.
z Speculation that the EU will launch a probe into subsidies offered to Chinese telecom vendors intensifies, as the EU’s trade commissioner names Huawei and ZTE directly for the first time. ZTE downplays the reports and again denies receiving illegal subsidies.
z A consortium of operators – including Telekom Malaysia, Dialog Axiata and Reliance Jio Infocomm – commission a new 8,000 km subsea cable system linking Asia with the Middle East.
z Samsung asserts an early “5G” breakthrough, after achieving transmission speeds of more than 1 Gbps over 2 km using the 28-GHz band.
z Ericsson, Huawei and NSN team up to form the OSSii, a new initiative aimed at improving interoperability between OSS systems.
z Finnish start-up Jolla teases the first device that will run on Sailfish OS, the open-source platform spun out of the ashes of Nokia and Intel’s MeeGo.
z A poll of Apple investors show that nearly two in three have lost faith in the firm’s ability to innovate to stay competitive against Samsung.
z Android and iOS continue to dominate the mobile OS market, accounting for 92% of shipments in Q1, but IDC asserts that WP8 and BlackBerry sales figures show demand for a third platform is emerging.
z A study by GreenTouch estimates that net energy consumption in global communication networks can be reduced up to 90% by 2020 using current and emerging technology.
z Dell’Oro projects that spending on LTE rollouts will boost mobile RAN spending in 2013, despite slower growth in overall operator capex.
z Ericsson reveals plans to shut down its cable manufacturing operations, citing profitability issues, as well as a transition in demand from copper to fiber and in cable production to Asia.
z Cisco reports a 14.5% surge in profit for its fiscal Q3, as well as its ninth straight quarter of record revenue.
z Nokia opens its Asha platform up to app develops as part of its bid for control of the sub-$100 smartphone market.
z NSN publishes a survey claiming that four in ten mobile subscribers are ready to churn, and only 24% are completely loyal to their current provider.
z Write-downs in Italy and Spain push Vodafone’s full-year profit down 90% to just $1b. CEO Vittorio Colao insists he will not rush into a sale of the operator’s minority stake in JV Verizon Wireless.
z Ericsson head of networks Johan Wibergh warns that competition among vendors for Chinese 4G rollout deals could further squeeze industry margins at a tight-belted time for telecom vendors.
z NTT Com’s Russian subsidiary launches data center services through an IXcellerate DC in Moscow.
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 13
taiwanChunghwa Telecom’s US subsidiary partners with cloud DC provider CoreSite to expand its presence across North America.
tokyoNTT Com reveals its FY13 net profit grew 12%, despite a slight decline in group op-erating revenues. NTT DoCoMo meanwhile shakes up its manage-ment team.
Softbank tells share-holders of US-based Sprint that its $20.1b bid for 70% of the company would result in over $3b in annual synergies by 2017, and is a bet-ter offer than Dish Network’s unsolicited $25.5b bid.
In a bid to resolve the stand-off, Softbank subsequently agrees to let Sprint share its books with Dish, to allow the latter to conduct due diligence on its conditional offer.
SyDneyRegulator ACMA raises around $2b in an auction of 700-MHz and 2.5-GHz “digital dividend” spectrum. MVNO TPG buys LTE spectrum, but VHA surprisingly sits out of the auction.
Optus launches TD-LTE services, starting with a pilot trial in Can-berra, to complement its existing FDD LTE network.
aucklanDTelecom NZ contracts Ruckus Wireless to help it turn some of its 3,000 payphones into Wi-Fi hotspots.
InMobi estimates that Apple’s share of the NZ mobile market fell for the first time in Q1, as the company ceded ground to Samsung.
COVerSTOrY
14 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Telco need to transform their business processes to be driven by customer needs not network requirements
By Caroline Gabriel
The long road to being customer centric
In a study of mobile operators by management consultancy Ac-centure, quality of customer ex-perience emerged as the biggest challenge for 75% of top telco ex-
ecutives while over 90% said they need-ed new tools to understand customers better. The customer driven operator is emerging but has many hurdles to overcome before the old-style carriers – focused on minutes, megabytes and network efficiency – are consigned to history.
A study of mobile operator sen-ior executives by Maravedis-Rethink’s MOSA (Mobile Operator Strategy Anal-ysis) service highlighted similar trends. About 75% of the respondents said they needed to transform their business pro-cesses to be driven by customer needs not network requirements. But only
one-third of those cellcos believe they have achieved that, and only 10% have a full visibility of their subscribers’ pref-erences, experience and usage.
Three main short- to medium-term goals need to be achieved to enable the customer driven telco:• Achieve a single holistic view of
each customer across all their devices, plans and applica-tions
• Relate that customer infor-mation tightly to network in-formation such as the user’s location and quality of con-nection, on a real-time basis
• Establishstrongtwo-waycom-munication with customers to understand their needs and to respond proactively to any problems
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 15
Transparency hasn’t been easy for telcos. From the current Byzantine roaming rates for voice and data to the opaque 2G price wars in the US two decades ago – when Sprint’s 10 cents per minute actually cost more than AT&T’s higher rate (thanks to the activation charge only
mentioned in the fine print) – operators have often thrived on ambiguity. Little surprise then that nearly 40% of mobile subscribers are ready to churn
and just 24% are “completely loyal” to their current provider, according to a survey by Nokia-Siemens Networks. Huawei’s Paul Scanlan recently said in a presentation that studies suggest that 30% of customers will never tell you about their bad service, adding that there is a real gap between the customer’s view of service quality and the service provider’s view.
A vital step to understanding the customer is actually to honestly assess what you provide and how your customers perceive that service.
The Schumpeter column in The Economist last month pointed out what is fairly obvious to people on the outside of huge organizations, “few firms are good at recognizing their own flaws”.
The correspondent noted that Henry Ford was “so allergic to evidence that America was following out of love with the Model T that he dismissed sales statistics as fakes and fired an executive who warned him of disaster”.
Many are asking if Microsoft is facing a similar situation.But what can we expect when some of the world’s top management con-
sultants recommend, as a way to compete against the OTT providers, that mo-bile operators “charge for OTT services or block them altogether”. No wonder telcos have been in denial or dragging their feet.
One of the most poignant examples is the Korean mobile operators’ efforts a year ago to first block and then degrade Kakao when it first launched mobile VoIP. And Korea wasn’t an isolated case. TeliaSonera tried the same thing, only to back away from it six months later, and AT&T is just now finally allowing access to Facetime to all customers.
Until recently, it’s been about milking their cash cows until they dry up while playing lip service about efforts to offer the kind of services users find compelling – usually developed by the OTT and device giants and offered at no cost.
Dean Bubbly from Disruptive Analysis summed it up succinctly last month in a tweet: “Honestly, telecom industry! You’ve made a cumulative trillion dollars in revenues from SMS, and the only R&D and innovation it’s paid for is RCS.”
But many are starting to come around and learn to work with others. Tie-ups with the OTT “enemies” are now fairly common and sure to become more so. Contrast the Korean’s strong-armed tactics to 3HK’s partnership with What-sApp. Instead of picking a fight, 3HK found a way to monetize this usage while giving users an incremental value-added service.
To be fair, good customer service is a moving target. Services change, the platforms to support customers change and customer expectations change. It’s also expensive and complicated, which requires investment and a long-term commitment. TA
– Joseph Waring
Thriving on ambiguity
COVerSTOrY
There is also a cultural issue, as IT and networking teams must work together closely and even converge entirely”
16 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
All this requires investment in new tools and skills, and in creating far tighter ties between data traditionally held in IT systems such as billing and CRM platforms, with real time network information including quality of ser-vice, faults and charging.
Two other major developments are encouraging operators to take a very different approach to their users, and to rethink their business processes. One is that, increasingly, the shift from voice to data is actually a shift to internet ser-vices, and the customer experience has to be measured in terms of web services and identities rather than conventional data rates and apps. The other is that the operator’s own back-end systems are moving away from dedicated hard-ware and even in-house data centers, toward private clouds and software-as-a-service.
Both these huge trends may help
companies become more customer driven, since many are re-evaluating their processes from scratch anyway. But they can also add yet another layer of complexity to a transformation that was already daunting to most telco management teams in terms of the cost, risk and disruption involved. There is also a cultural issue, as IT and network-ing teams – with very different skills and approaches – must work together closely and even converge entirely, while also taking on board the new demands and relationships of the cloud world.
First stepsBeneath the company-wide trans-
formation projects – and the thorny is-sues of migrating from (in many cases) scores of legacy systems while seeking to apply web concepts to the telco mindset – there are simpler, yet still radical, steps which need to be taken.
One is to simplify communications with the customer, from how the value proposition is explained in the first place, to opening easy and friendly chan-nels for feedback, complaints or discus-sion. The Dilbert cartoon famously talked about “confusopoly pricing”, designed to make it tough for custom-ers to compare prices between different suppliers. Simplifying the offer is a basic first step to being customer driven – but without sacrificing the business model. In reality, operators need far more com-plex pricing strategies to maximize rev-enue and profit from 4G – many tiers of charging, prices related to location and application, and so on. The important thing is that this complexity is hidden from the subscriber, and the best way to do that is to personalize the offer so that the individual customer only sees one simply explained plan, tailored to his or her needs, rather than the whole array of options.
Personalization is the cornerstone of becoming a customer driven telco. Unlike many suppliers in other indus-tries, operators have a wealth of data on how their subscribers behave and what their preferences are, so person-alization should be relatively achievable – provided they can harness all that in-formation, which is often held in many different locations with no real integra-tion. Breaking down these data siloes is
Operators’ top challenges in 4G business model
Source: Maravedis-Rethink
0
5
10
15
20
25
% o
f ope
rato
rs
30
Deliveringdata volumes
Generatingprofit from
4G
Competingwith OTT
Addingnon-consumer
services
All roundquality of
experience
26%24%
20%
17%
13%12%
22%21%
17%
28%
Many telcos feel that the customer is fickle and is never satisfied, always looking for a better deal. But Amrish Kacker, a partner at Analysys Mason, reminds us that there are many types of custom-
ers and thus many types of experiences. For example, there are prepaid, postpaid, short-term, long-term, high-spending, low-spending and enterprises customers to name just a few.
During a panel discussion on “Understanding & Delight-ing Customers” at Telecom Asia’s Telco Strategies conference in April, he said there’s a downside to focusing too much on optimizing the “average experience” since with such a wide range of customers, there really isn’t one.
And from a customer care perspective, the differences in customer behavior can be equally diverse. The new generation of tech savvy consumers can “self help” and consequently are having fewer problems, said Leong Chee Sung, COO of YTL Digital and VP of retail sales and customer care for YES.
The evolution of the customer has had a major impact on how YTL has designed its customer care systems. The company doesn’t offer 24-hour customer support via a call center. Leong said 70% of interactions are done online.
He argues that a transformation of mindset is necessary for an organization to be truly customer focused, but the steps to get there are evolutionary.
While understanding customer stats (via Big Data) is im-portant, most everyone agrees that analysis is not enough. Na-shad Emir, chief program and customer experience officer at Celcom Axiata, said during the same panel that improving the experience is a long journey. “Customer experience is not a program. It’s permanent function build on a foundation.” TA
– Joseph Waring
a top three technology issue for more than two-thirds of mobile operators, Maravedis-Rethink found, and the key driver is to merge network and data center information to achieve not just a single view of the customer, but one with so much detail that a compelling personalized offer could be drawn up.
For instance, some opera-tors are offering different levels of charging according to appli-cation – the system might iden-tify Facebook as a subscriber’s favorite service, and provide a value-added service or a certain amount of free access time; or for a compulsive Netflix viewer, a small premium (or one-off fee) might guarantee a certain level of quality of service when that app was in use.
Customer moves center stage
Another area where opera-tors need to provide far more options to the user, but in a far simpler way, is customer support. In the days when tel-ephoning the call center was the only option, the interface between subscriber and carrier was nevertheless, in general, complicated, slow and frustrat-ing. A customer driven telco thinks about the convenience of the subscriber, which means providing several ways for them to interact, but with the overall experience fully integrated. In-formation and records should be unified whether the cus-tomer is contacting via phone, website, email or in-store today, and many operators are saving money while raising customer satisfaction by investing in self-service platforms.
The chart indicates how op-erators’ concerns are changing when it comes to dealing with
customers. Looking back just to 2011, mobile carriers were still mainly concerned with deliv-ering a reliable data service to keep users happy, and then with internal challenges such as driv-ing profit from that data. While the threat of over-the-top rivals was very clear, only 13% had placed overall quality of expe-rience – rather than individual aspects like coverage or reli-ability – at the heart of their de-fense strategy. By 2017, howev-er, the carrier executives believe all that will have changed. They have a high level of confidence that they will have addressed challenges of data capacity – with techniques like Wi-Fi of-fload and LTE-Advanced – and think the need to differentiate with a rich, holistic yet simple customer experience will have moved to center stage. It will be the key challenge for 28% of those interviewed by 2017, up from 13%.
Such developments indi-cate how telcos will be shifting their investment and R&D away from network technology itself and toward the software and services that will give them a clear, unified view of each cus-tomer; relate that in a granular, real-time way to the network; and allow them to react instant-ly, whether with a new promo-tion, or to fix a problem.
The road is a tough one, but at least most telcos now recog-nize that they have not been customer-driven in the past, whatever their marketing mate-rial suggested – and that if they do not become so, they will lose out to other carriers and, even more probably, to OTT provid-ers. TA
Caroline Gabriel is research director at Maravedis-Rethink
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 17
Which customer experience?
Celebrating Asia’s Best
18 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Partner Sponsor
Gold sponsors
Congratulations to all winners
Best Asian Telecom Carrier
NTT Communications
Telecom CEO of the Year
David Thodey, Telstra
Best Mobile Carrier
SK Telecom
Best Broadband Carrier
Telekom Malaysia
Best Emerging Markets Carrier
XL Axiata
Best Managed Services Provider
BT Global Services
Best International Wholesale Carrier
Pacnet
Best Data Center Services Provider
Equinix
Best Community Telecom Project
Smart – NOAH Mobile
Most Innovative Telecom Project
Globe’s My Super Plan
Best Cloud-Based Service
NTT Communications
Most Innovative Partnership Strategy
3 Hong Kong and WhatsApp
Most Advanced Approach to CEM
CSL
J apan’s NTT Communications won top honors in the 16th Tel-ecom Asia Awards, taking home both the Best Asian Telecom Car-
rier (Best of the Best) award and Best Cloud-based Service prize. The com-pany was nominated in four categories by the panel of 24 judges.
A total of 13 awards were presented to 12 winners at a gala dinner in Kuala Lumpur on April 18.
Telstra CEO David Thodey was vot-ed Telecom CEO of the Year for creating innovation in a large-market incum-bent and for what one judge said “being the turnaround king”.
South Korea’s SK Telekom picked
NTT Com, Telstra and SKT win Asia’s top prizes
The Winners’ ListBest Asian Telecom Carrier
KTNTT CommunicationsSingTelSK TelecomSoftbankStarHubTelstra
Telecom CEO of the Year
David Thodey, TelstraShazalli Ramly, Celcom AxiataErnest Cu, Globe TelecomKevin Taylor, BT Global ServicesMasayoshi Son, SoftbankWing K. Lee, YTL
Best Mobile Carrier
Celcom AxiataLGU+SK TelecomSmarToneSoftbank MobileYTL Communications
Best Broadband Carrier
Globe BroadbandPCCWStarHubSingTelTelekom Malaysia
20 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Best Emerging Markets Carrier
AxiataSmartXL Axiata3 Indonesia
Best Managed Services Provider
AT&TBT Global ServicesPacnetSingTel
Best International Wholesale Carrier
AT&THutchison Global CommunicationsNTT CommunicationsPacnetPCCW GlobalTata Communications
Best Data Center Services Provider
EquinixNTT CommunicationsPacnetSavvisTelstra Global
Best Community Telecom Project
Globe Telecom – Globe Bridging CommunitiesDiGi Telecommunications – “Deep Green” handset recycling campaignSmart – NOAH MobileTelenor Pakistan – easypaisa Khushaal
Most Innovation Telecom Project
NTT DoCoMo – translation serviceSingTel Innov8Globe’s My Super PlanKakaoTalkTelkomsel’s Digital Lifestyle Strategy
Best Cloud-Based Service
BT Global ServicesNTT CommunicationsOrange Business ServicesSingTelTelstra Global
Most Innovation Partnership Strategy
3 Hong Kong and WhatsAppAstro-Maxis – content partnershipKorean mobile carriers partnering to launch ‘Joyn’ (RCS based) communications app for smartphonesKDDI-NHN Japan partnership to launch NHN’s LINE social messaging appSingTel- Gree – First gaming partnership
Most Advanced Approach to CEM
CSLDialog AxiataSingTelTelkomselTelstra
up the Best Mobile Carrier award for the second year running while Telekom Malaysia also was named Best Broad-band Carrier for second time. XL Ax-iata claimed the Best Emerging Markets Carrier award for demonstrating sus-tainable business models and growth in a very competitive market.
Philippines mobile operators won the two project-based awards: Smart Communications’ NOAH Mobile was recognized at the Best Community Tel-ecom Project while Globe Telecom’s My Super Plan was the Most Innovation Telecom Project.
Three new categories were added this year. Hong Kong’s 3 won the Most
Innovative Partnership Strategy award for its partnership with WhatsApp, CSL was recognized for having the Most Ad-vanced Approach to CEM and Equinix was voted Best Data Center Services Provider.
BT Global Services and Pacnet also were repeat winners in the Best Man-aged Services Provider and Best Inter-national Wholesale Carrier categories respectfully.
Now in its 16th year, the awards are the region’s longest-running and most prestigious telecom industry awards. They reward innovative and outstand-ing performance by Asian service pro-viders and industry executives. TA
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 21
End-to-end starts in the cloudNTT Communications is an end-to-end player by any definition of the term – delivering eve-rything needed to build and operate cloud plat-
forms, not just servers and applications, but true cloud environments tailored to each customer.
Takeshi Kazami, president and CEO of NTT Singapore, says the company understands that providing server ca-pacity and applications is not enough. “That is why we offer network configu-rations and capacity with true flexibil-ity for inter- and intra-data center use. NTT Com leverages its consulting and technical expertise as a telecom opera-tor to combine current systems with cloud services while migrating resourc-es to the cloud without impacting the customer’s business.”
Its new carrier-class “Enterprise Cloud” (IaaS) in Japan and Hong Kong incorporates what it claims is the world’s first OpenFlow virtualiza-tion technology to connect data centers seamlessly worldwide, enabling them to function like one. Software-defined networks (SDNs) built on this platform now provide high flexibility, capacity and configurability in eight countries (six in Asia Pacific). The company is helping to push SDN with represen-
tation on the board of the Open Net-working Foundation.
For cloud migration, Kazami says NTT Com offers both a standardized migration menu and advanced solu-tions via specialized migration consult-ing team.
He says It has placed a particularly strong emphasis on security and lever-ages security-information event-man-agement technologies to enhance risk detection and analysis using automatic correlation analysis and risk-level eval-uation.
NTT Secure Platform Laboratories’ technologies detect attacks through long-term log monitoring, and a black-list generation engine efficiently iden-tifies malicious sites. In addition, the managed security service (MSS) pro-vided by NTT Com’s Global Risk Op-eration Center offers added value with a team of security experts protecting the security and safety of customers’ infor-mation networks 24/7/365, also cover-ing enterprise cloud, on-premise and hybrid environments.
The company has 145 data cent-
Best Asian Telecom CarrierNTT CommunicationsLast year’s winner: SingTel
Best Cloud-Based ServiceNTT CommunicationsLast year’s winner: Verizon Enterprise Solutions
Business segments: Network services (data network, IP network), cloud services, data center services, security management, unified communication services
Shareholders: NTT Holding
Chairman & CEO: Akira Arima
Key stats (FY ending March 31): Total operating revenues of 1,213.2 billion yen ($12.26 billion), down 3.3%; operating income of 110.6 billion yen ($1.11 billion), up 13%; 16,500 staff
Judges’ comment“This regional player offers strong cloud infrastructure services with an extensive footprint across Asia. It has 145 data centers worldwide and the global network to fully support user-based apps in the cloud. Its new carrier-class Enterprise Cloud in Japan and Hong Kong incorporates the world’s first OpenFlow virtualization technology.”
Judges’ comment“The winner of this Best-of-the-Best category had a strong showing in the three other categories it was nominated in – winning one and ranking No. 2 in the others. NTT Com reportedly has the greatest total contract value in Asia Pacific for international services for MNCs. It continues to expand its APAC capabilities through investment, capital tie-ups and organic growth.”
ers covering 170,000 square meters. Its Asian data centers are connected to self-owned submarine cables, such as the Asia Submarine-cable Express, which offers connections among major cities in Asia and the lowest latencies available between Singapore-Japan and Asia-US (via the PC-1 submarine cable).
NTT Com also operates data cent-ers in Asia’s emerging markets, includ-ing Hanoi, Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila and major cities in China. It opened its Hong Kong financial data center and Tokyo No. 6 data center this year. TA
22 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
From dinosaur to innovatorThe past few years have been hectic for Australia’s incumbent, having fo-cused on organizational change and stressing sim-plification, savings and
service in 2009 and 2010. But the compa-ny’s most important initiatives have been all about customer services.
With David Thodey at the helm, Telstra negotiated the NBN agreement, maintained its network leadership in the mobile market and branched out into growth businesses of media, network ap-plications and services, and Asia.
In 2011 and 2012, Thodey says Telstra’s focus was on cultural change – emphasis-ing the need to put the customer at the center of everything they do. In 2013 and beyond, the company is focusing on em-bedding that organizational and cultural change in turning customers into cam-
paigners. He says Telstra is asking staff to treat customers how they would like to be treated themselves. Apparently, the people are responding and results are encourag-ing – employee engagement is reportedly up, customer satisfaction is up and com-plaints are down, and customer numbers for mobiles keep climbing.
Thodey says Telstra has a unique op-portunity after investing in networks and systems, simplifying its business, and fo-cusing on the customer. The company has regained momentum in the market and has – through the NBN deal – found more regulatory certainty and greater strategic flexibility, he says.
“We have spent the past four years building a new company from the inside out that is all about service,” explains Th-odey. “We want to change the way people talk about Telstra and turn our customers into our advocates.” TA
Telecom CEO of the YearTelstra’s David ThodeyLast year’s winner: Smart’s Napoleon Nazareno
Business segments: Fixed line, mobile voice and data, broadband, cloud
Chairman / CEO: Catherine Livingstone / David Thodey
Key stats: Net profit after tax of A$3.4 billion ($3.5 billion), up 5.4% (FY12); added 1.6 million new domestic mobile customers, increased bundled customer numbers by more than 30%
Judges’ comment“Telstra’s CEO is responsible for one of the biggest turnaround stories in 2012, transforming his company from an incumbent dinosaur in a challenging regulatory environment into a customer-centric market innovator, particularly on the mobile broadband front. Under Thodey’s leadership, revenues are up and the company stock was outperforming the local market index by 35%.”
Moving beyond LTE and KoreaSK Telecom continues to build on its market po-sition and was the first South Korean operator to launch LTE service that now covers 99% of the
nation’s population.The company has been a pioneer
in the commercialization of many LTE network technologies, including multi-carrier, LTE femtocell and nationwide VoLTE. Building on these initiatives, it now is focusing on LTE-Advanced tech-nologies and has conducted field tests and plans to launch LTE-Advanced ser-vice in September.
Another initiative is to create new growth engines by combining ICT with other industries such as healthcare and media, and is actively promoting them through close collaboration with various partners.
“SK Telecom is continually upgrading its network quality through technologies such as LTE femtocells and multi-carrier to accommodate increasing data traffic,” said Youn Jong-pil, head of SK Telecom’s Convergence Tech Lab.
SK Telecom is also offering various multimedia services such as live baseball broadcasts and mobile IPTV service to maximize the data experience of custom-ers. The company has developed price plans and customer-oriented programs such as “LTE Sharable Data” plans and “LTE Data Gift Program”.
In addition, the carrier is focusing on developing Internet of Things (IoT) business models to enhance the user ex-perience in data services. “To this end, the company is actively creating a total IoT platform while developing sophisticated technologies including in-door position-ing technology,” said Youn. TA
Best Mobile CarrierSK TelecomLast year’s winner: SK Telecom
Business segments: B2C (mobile voice/data, content platform services, converged internet services), B2B (enterprise, telematics, payments)
Chairman & CEO: Ha Sung-min
Key stats: Revenue of 16.3 trillion won ($15 billion), up 2.3% (FY12); net income of 1.1 trillion won ($1 billion), down 29.5%; 26.9 million total subscribers
Judges’ comment“SK Telecom impressed the judges not only with its successful LTE rollout, but also its innovation on the VAS front. Its creation of an innovative digital unit has helped it develop new growth drivers and realize synergies in big data, digital content and commerce, both inside and outside its home base of South Korea.”
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 23
Fast rollout, adoption blitz keep TM on topTelekom Malaysia keeps the award after having declared 2012 as its year of customer experience, promising to dazzle cus-tomers with its triple-
play package. TM now has more than 540,000 customers signed up for its triple-play offerings, which translates to a 38% take-up rate.
Last year, TM surpassed the com-mitment set out in the public-private partnership agreement with the govern-ment under the high-speed broadband project. The operator completed the network and services roll out on time,
within cost and with the workforce mo-tivated and intact. The project was rec-ognized around the world as one of the fastest and most cost effective, given the scope.
TM introduced various broadband packages, dubbed UniFi, which sur-passed global benchmarks in terms of take up compared to similar service rollouts. HyppTV for Business, an op-tion for its UniFi BIZ package, broke the sports content barrier with the in-troduction of HyppSports HD and Fox Football channels.
“TM empowers businesses with seamless solutions and services, cutting
Best Broadband CarrierTelekom MalaysiaLast year’s winner: Telekom Malaysia
Business segments: Broadband, data, fixed-line
Chairman / CEO: Halim Shafie / Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa
Key stats: 4.36 million fixed-line customers, 1.37 million HSBB premises, 2.07 million broadband customers; over 27,000 employees; revenue of $3.31 billion (9.99 billion ringgit), up 9% (FY12)
Judges’ comment“TM is now a leading regional example of the transformation of an incumbent PTT. The carrier won in this category for the second year in a row for recording one of the fastest rollout and adoption schedules for high-speed broadband and keeping fixed broadband a relevant driving force alongside mobile.”
across connectivity, ICT infrastructure, value-added services and business pro-cess outsourcing services so enterprises can focus on their core businesses,” said TM CEO Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa. “Whether for entertainment, informa-tion or communications, we help cus-tomers connect, communicate and col-laborate.” TA
Riding the data surgeLast year XL outper-formed the Indonesian market in terms of rev-enue, mainly on 50% year-on-year growth in the data business fol-
lowed by a 16% jump in SMS. This gave XL a much stronger foundation, with further investments made to enhance the data infrastructure for better service quality.
With such strong take up and a huge upside for data in the country, XL ac-celerated efforts related to 3G network construction, expanding its investment 168% to support data services develop-ment. Various other efforts were also made, such as increasing the capacity of backhaul, core and backbone, to ensure the quality of the end-to-end network infrastructure.
The company is now building up
for future business development with digital services, including content and applications, mobile finance, mobile advertising, machine to machine and cloud computing. While its digital services are still in incubation on the introductory stage, XL CEO Hasnul Suhaimi believes they will become the future business for Indonesia’s telecom industry.
“The year 2012 was a year of contin-uing investment, transition and trans-formation for XL,” said Suhaimi. “To lead the transformation to data, we are focusing on shifting to data, enhancing service quality, intensifying programs to increase customer retention, and strengthening brand positioning.”
He added that with the strong de-mand for data in Indonesia, data servic-es offer the best opportunity to become a major revenue generator for XL. TA
Best Emerging Markets CarrierXL AxiataLast year’s winner: Smart Communications
Shareholders: Axiata Group Berhad through Axiata Investments
Business segments: Mobile voice and data
Chairman & CEO: Hasnul Suhaimi
Key stats (2012): 45.8 million total subscriptions; revenue of 21.3 trillion rupiah ($2.2 billion), up 15%; profit of $285 million
Judges’ comment“XL has developed sustainable business models and posted steady growth in a very competitive market. The company is a leader in offering innovative products and campaigns and various business transformations have seen it improve on multiple fronts.”
Consolidating the base while widening reachPacnet, which continues to expand its internation-al reach, started deploying an optical mesh network with 100-Gbps technol-ogy and integrated OTN
switching across its subsea cable network EAC-C2C, which saw a capacity upgrade of over 940 Gbps. In addition, EAC Pa-cific had a capacity upgrade of more than 300 Gbps.
The company also expanded its net-work reach in Europe by establishing its
peering presence at LINX and AMS-IX internet exchanges, and expanded its 10G IPT service to 13 cities across 10 coun-tries in Asia Pacific.
Through PBS (China), Pacnet re-newed its domestic IP-VPN license in China until 2017, as well as expanded the reach of its IP-VPN license to 23 prov-inces and municipalities. The new license enables PBS to deliver IP-VPN services to four municipalities and 19 provinces in mainland China.
“Ownership of Asia Pacific’s most extensive, high-capacity submarine cable systems with over 46,000 km of fiber and connectivity to 16 cities – including its facilities in Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney – gives Pacnet unparalleled reach to major business centers throughout the region, including Japan, China and India as well as the US,” said John Garrett, pres-ident of carrier services at Pacnet.
Best International Wholesale CarrierPacnetLast year’s winner: Pacnet
Business segments: Wholesale capacity services, data center and managed services, content delivery network solutions, enterprise technology solutions
Chairman & CEO: Carl Grivner
Key stats: Largest investor at 40% in the $300-million Unity cable system; deployed nine managed CDN PoPs in APAC and expanded CDN reach with access to a total of 42 PoPs worldwide through partners in Europe and the US
Judges’ comment“Pacnet gets high marks not only for the investment and innovation for its cutting-edge regional network, but its equally innovative service strategy that incorporates capacity, IP transit, data centers and content delivery into service packages that blur the lines between wholesale and retail.”
Garrett added that combined with services for managed data, private line, hosting, co-location and content delivery, such assets have helped Pacnet service large businesses worldwide, including many of the Fortune 1000. TA
The winning habitBT Global Services, which has held on to this prize for the fourth year in a row, just wrapping up its three-year “Prosperity” pro-gram in Asia Pacific. The
program’s aim was to double the region’s business by supporting the growing num-ber of global multinational organizations expanding into the region, as well as sup-porting local multinationals going global.
One of its goads was to simplify its or-ganizational structure to make its vertical and geographical “go-to-market” model more effective. The company recently opened a global shared service facility in Malaysia, which is focused on innovation and development of ICT solutions as well as contract and project management and customer support.
A year ago it also opened a global de-velopment center in India to further en-
hance its ability to design and deliver ser-vices to customers.
“The company is well on the way to becoming the networked IT service provider for global multinationals,” said Kevin Taylor, president of BT Asia, Middle East and Africa.
Taylor said that BT has launched new offerings in Asia Pacific that emphasized tightly aligned vertical solutions such as its e-health practice, “Retail in a Box” which helps retailers quickly expand into China, and BT Trace – a portfolio of supply-chain management solutions.
“The company has expanded its pres-ence in Asia Pacific and in Latin America and recently embarked on a series of ini-tiatives in Turkey, the Middle East and Af-rica by adding new people on the ground, further strengthening its infrastructure and investing in portfolio availability,” he added. TA
Best Managed Services ProviderBT Global ServicesLast year’s winner: BT Global Services
Business segments: Networked IT services
CEO: Luis Alvarez
Key stats: Global revenue of £5.2 billion ($6.7 billion), down 10% (nine months to December 2012); narrowed net loss to £52 million (a 44% improvement)
Judges’ comment“BT Global Services has effectively expanded its footprint and capabilities in the region. By reinforcing its vertical capabilities and strengthening its presence in many countries, it simplified its structure to make its “go-to-market” model more effective. This has led to strong growth in revenue and an increasing ability to win customers in multiple markets.”
24 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 25
Smart-govt partnering on a rollSmart keeps this award for the second year straight, hinting at productive part-nership projects with gov-ernment entities.
Knowing that the Philippines ranks fourth of 190 countries as most vulnerable to extreme weather events, according to the 2013 Global Cli-mate Risk Index, Smart developed an app that allows mobile users to download real-time weather information from the
Department of Science and Technology’s website.
The app – NOAH (Nationwide Op-erational Assessment of Hazards) Mobile – gives the Philippines’ 100 million mo-bile users easy access to critical weather forecasts such as typhoon tracking and location-based rainfall predictions. The service enables local disaster risk reduc-tion officers to check weather forecast in their respective locations, allowing them to monitor potential danger, warn people and take the necessary actions to ensure community safety.
The service of course is dependent on widespread and high-speed access. Smart last year finished “super-charging” its net-work under parent company PLDT’s $1.6 billion network transformation program. In August it launched the first commer-cially available LTE service in the Philip-pines, and one of the first in Asia. Two
Best Community Telecom ProjectSmart’s NOAH MobileLast year’s winner: Smart’s SHINE
Business segments: Mobile voice and data, m-payments
President & CEO: Napoleon Nazareno
Key stats: reported income of 30.3 billion pesos ($740 million), up 19% yoy (FY12); 54.2 million mobile subscribers, up 13%
Judges’ comment“Smart’s app for downloading weather information is easy to use and provides convenient access to real-time updates. It is very useful for a country such as the Philippines that faces typhoons and other natural disasters constantly, making it a good disaster mitigation app for the country.”
months later Smart linked all its Metro Manila cell sites via fiber-optic cables and completed linking its cell sites nationwide with those of sister company Sun Cellular.
“Smart has pursued an internet-for-all advocacy by launching a wide array of mobile internet-capable devices, and ser-vice offerings that make it affordable for Filipinos to use mobile data,” said Ramon Isberto, head of public affairs at Smart.
The company launched its Flexisurf broadband plans – with several plans priced at between $7 and $15 a month. TA
Investing in APACEquinix has invested $160 million in new data cent-ers in Asia, where it now has 18 facilities covering more than one million square feet. It runs data
centers in Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney, and has a part-nership deal in Jakarta with DCI.
Globally it operates 97 data centers in 16 countries covering seven million
square feet. Last year it acquired Hong Kong-based Asia Tone for $230.5 million, giving it an additional six data centers and a disaster recovery center. Almost 20% of its workforce is now based in Asia.
The company bills itself as the leading global interconnection platform, provid-ing a carrier-neutral offering with access to global carriers, regional players and ISPs.
“We have relationships with 900 NSPs – the major advantage of this is a 15-30% cost reduction for customers by being able to use the right players in each market. This also brings down the speed of data transmission,” says Andrew Rigoli, VP of corporate development at Equinix.
“Our key differentiator is having in-ventory at the right place at right time. We also give companies room to expand, with quick deployment,” he says.
It segments its customer base into four key categories: network & cloud, fi-nancial services, content & digital media,
Best Data Center Services ProviderEquinixLast year’s winner: new category
CEO & President: Stephen Smith
Key stats: Revenue (2012) $1.8 billion (up 21% yoy), APAC revenue $302 million (up 40% yoy); ebitda $895.7 million (up 24% yoy), APAC ebitda $145.7 million (up 48% yoy); 800+ APAC customers; 500+ APAC employees
Judges’ comment“Equinix has an extensive regional presence, world-class infrastructure, and delivers consistent service levels and quality with its carrier-neutral platform and global interconnection capability. It has been one of the most active in its class in the Asia-Pacific region, through both investment in new sites and acquisitions.”
and enterprise. With 75 exchanges and trading platforms, Rigoli says Equinix is a leader with financial service providers. “We want to be as close to the trading partners as possible for better pricing for transactions.”
He expects the emerging ecosystem will be cloud based. “We’ve seen some major cloud firms (storage, CRM, SaaS, IaaS...) coming into our sites for a multi-tiered cloud strategy. Customers want to be closer to those companies and get a cross connect to that infrastructure.” TA
26 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Winning clients with custom contractsAs industry players got rooted deeper in buz-zwords such as customer experience, personaliza-tion and differentiation, operators tried out various
campaigns to keep subscribers engaged. One tack – which this year’s winner took – is making available a sort of self-service scheme for customers that allowed both
operator and customer to create service packages and achieve greater personaliza-tion.
As a result, Globe Telecom in the Phil-ippines saw the performance of its post-paid segment driving growth of its mo-bile business last year. Strong demand for Globe’s fully-customizable postpaid plans enabled the company to stake claim as the biggest and most consistently-growing postpaid brand in the country.
Globe pushed customization to the next level by unveiling its My Super Plan, a next-generation postpaid plan that gives subscribers the flexibility to choose their contract periods.
Martha Sazon, head of Globe’s post-paid business, said the operator has been driving total transformation for the past three years, anchoring every move on strong customer-focus and innovation to enrich the customer experience.
Most Innovative Telecom ProjectGlobe Telecom’s My Super PlanLast year’s winner: KDDI’s A-Fund
Business segments: Mobile voice and data services
President and CEO: Ernest Cu
Key stats (2012): Revenues of 22.8 billion pesos ($557 million), up 24%; postpaid 1.7 million subscriber base, up 19%
Judges’ comment“This year’s winner is a very innovative service that gives the customers freedom to create and customize the mobile postpaid plan that fits their preference and lifestyle, and its implementation has had a big impact in the local market.”
“To ensure long-term competitiveness in a market envisioned to be largely built on data traffic, Globe is embarking on a massive $790 million network moderniza-tion and IT transformation program, the company’s largest infrastructure commit-ment to date,” said Sazon.
Sazon explained that the IT trans-formation is aimed at re-engineering Globe’s IT systems to enhance its abil-ity to roll out products to the market faster and respond to customer needs and preferences with more relevance and urgency.
“Since the deployment of these initi-atives, the company is on track to deliver its promise of superior customer experi-ence,” she added. TA
Removing barriers thru partnerships3 Hong Kong struck part-nerships last year with WhatsApp and Fixmo as well as Vodafone through contacts with the Conex-us Mobile Alliance – all
meant to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.
The team-up with WhatsApp enabled 3HK to launch the WhatsApp Roaming Pass, which it describes as a world’s first. This offering leverages the company’s partnership with operators worldwide. For a fixed daily charge, customers could send unlimited messages and photos us-
ing WhatsApp.Daniel Chung Yiu Man, 3HK CTO
for mobile, said one of 3HK’s strategies is continual modernization of the network to deliver higher-speed performance. “We also strive to increase network ca-pacity by re-farming existing spectrum and deploying new spectrum in the near future,” said Chung.
He added that by understanding the needs of customers and global industry trends, 3HK continues to introduce ex-clusive applications and services, such as 3 Super Safe and WhatsApp Roaming Pass, “which enable users to reap the larg-
Most Innovative Partnership Strategy3 Hong Kong & WhatsAppLast year’s winner: new category
Business segments: 4G, 3G mobile telecommunications, GSM dual-band and Wi-Fi services (TBC)
CEO: Peter Wong
Key stats: Consolidated turnover of HK15.5 billion ($2 billion), up 16% (FY12); profit of $158 million, up 20%; 3.78 million total mobile subscribers, up 8%
Judges’ comment“With so much talk in the industry about the impact of OTT messaging on telecom revenues, this partnership illustrated clearly that OTT also represents an opportunity for operators to monetize a popular messaging app by providing it to customers as an incremental value-added service. 3 Hong Kong and WhatsApp earned this award for signing the region’s inaugural OTT messaging-operator partnership.”
est benefits offered by smart devices and advanced networks.”
3 Super Safe, developed in collabo-ration with Fixmo, is a multi-functional mobile security application that offers anti-theft, anti-virus and data protection.
Chung said that 3HK removed the barrier for customers by launching vari-ous content services in which data usage is included in the package to provide cus-tomers with hassle-free data service. TA
28 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Judging the Awards
Leading by exampleCSL has taken a differ-ent approach to getting close to the customer – its “Voice of Customer” pro-gram emphasizes leader-ship by example by having
executives involved in frontline initiatives.The company’s entire leadership team
is required to regularly listen to customer calls and work as frontline agents at its call center and retail stores. Aside from helping to drive a more customer-centric mindset from top to frontline, this exercise brings a fresh angle and understanding to the needs of internal and external customers.
CSL has also rolled out the NPS (net promoter score) system dubbed “Yan Hei”
as the company captures both monthly strategic and daily operational metrics across its multiple customer support channels. The data enables the company to create feedback loops, take suggestions from customers and prioritize these into action plans.
In addition, the operator has under-gone a core system replacement for its customer service and sales support. This major upgrade enables more flexible ser-vice plans, linking accounts more easily and provides proactive advice based on real-time user data.
“Operating a multi-freestanding brand strategy makes CSL unique in the Hong Kong,” said CSL CEO Phil Mottram.
Most Advanced Approach to CEMCSLLast year’s winner: new category
Business segments: mobile operator
Chairman & CEO: Phil Mottram
Key stats (2012): Revenue of HK$6.89 billion ($887 million), up 10%; 1,700 employees
Judges’ comment“Offering multiple tiers, CSL created a branded customer experience for the premium segment that exceeds customer expectations. Powered by the knowledge of its customers, this operator is able to delight customers during their one-to-one interactions across all touch points.”
He is referring to 1010, one2free, New World Mobility and several ethnic brands that target designated customer segments.He added that content platforms, which support multi-device lifestyles and deliver localized content that complements global platforms, drive differentiation for CSL.
Its Customer Service App has also been developed to enable customers to manage their data usage and value-added services.
“We are now able to proactively design service plans and packages, catering for device and usage behavior changes,” said Mottram. TA
The Telecom Asia Awards selection is made by an independent panel of industry experts, who cast votes on the basis of innovation, financial performance, technology, market leadership and corporate governance.
The judging is conducted over two rounds, and the methodology varies slightly between segments. In the first round, the 24 judges nominate their best performers in each of 13 categories – except In-ternational Wholesale and Managed Services, where the candidates are asked to submit nominations.
In the second round, the judges cast their votes on the shortlist of finalists, which is determined by Telecom Asia editors based on all the nominations from both the judging panel and self-nominations in a number of categories.
The nomination process started in early January and voting was finalized in March. TA
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Convergence is a global mar-ketplace dynamic that is blur-ring the lines between com-petitors and collaborators. In telecom, communications
service providers (CSPs) are increasingly competing against non-traditional com-petitors like device manufacturers, ser-vice and content providers, and retailers that are all on the same quest: to own the consumer by owning the customer expe-rience.
To achieve this goal, they use the ac-cess provided by the CSPs. Simultaneous-ly, these new competitors are challenging CSPs in their core businesses. Most CSPs have realized that status quo is not an op-tion, and they typically can either choose to compete against the OTT providers or partner with them to develop the best solutions for consumers. If they choose to compete, their options are to prevent OTT services by blocking their transmis-sion through their network, reduce OTT services’ attractiveness by taking pricing actions or compete head to head by offer-ing similar products.
To add complexity to the matter, in most situations, these actions are not mutually exclusive. For example, Goog-le and Apple are both partners of CSPs for smartphones and apps, as well as competitors to CSPs, which is contrib-
uting to the decline of mobile voice and SMS.
Core under attackThe shift is clear: in maturing mar-
kets, CSPs’ voice and SMS APRU is decreasing while data ARPU is rising. Operators have to manage this shift in revenue, but ultimately most of this rev-enue will disappear in the near future.
CSPs are also being challenged in the area of access. For example, in the US Google is now providing fiber ser-vices to some select consumers, and has asked the FCC for permission to run an experimental wireless network in the 2.5-GHz spectrum. Similarly, Apple’s next big move has been rumored to be providing wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers via an ar-rangement with a mobile virtual net-work operator, which could be a global play, potentially impacting CSPs’ very profitable revenue stream for roaming. Voice revenue, meanwhile, is expected to decline worldwide at 2% CAGR between 2012 and 2017.
The competition on SMS comes from native applications such as Black-berry Messenger and Apple’s iMessage, and from innovative applications. For example, worldwide, WhatsApp Messen-ger has reported to be transacting more
Working with the ‘enemy’Collaboration is the most viable long-term solution for most telcos, because it enhances their brands while enabling them to attract additional customers
By Geoffroy Descamps, Accenture
than ten billion messages per day. In Chi-na WeChat doubled is user base to 200 million in six months. In South Korea 90% of subscribers use KakaoTalk every day. And in Japan LINE, a cross-platform communication service and application, offered for free by Naver, from NHN Ja-pan, has 60 million users and adds five million every three weeks. In addition, new players such as Facebook, Microsoft Lync, Google Talk and Salesforce.com’s Chatter.com are also trying to get their share of the messaging traffic.
As a result, SMS traffic is declining in most developed and maturing coun-tries. In fact, some CSPs are experienc-ing as much of a 20% to 30% year-on-year decline in number of outgoing SMS messages. In fact, Ovum noted that OTT messaging cost operators an estimated $13.9 billion, or 9% of message revenue in 2001. ABI Research reported that min-utes of usage of voice-per-user in the first quarter of 2012 declined 5.3% in North America, 0.6% in Asia Pacific and 0.4% in Western Europe.
On the voice side, the revenue ero-sion is less important, because it comes from erosion of international minutes. For example, with 600 to 700 million reported accounts, Skype is the largest telecom operator in the world. Analysys Mason found that 20% of smartphone
OTT THreAT
30 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
users were active mobile VoIP users, and some smartphone users are beginning to use VoIP apps as their primary voice service. Approximately 20% of VoIP us-ers (or 4% of smartphone users overall) used mobile VoIP more than traditional voice services, and 5% of VoIP users do not use traditional voice at all. Even though the numbers are still relatively small, CSPs are in danger of becoming the secondary, rather than the primary, voice service provider.
Considering that OTT services are here to stay, CSPs should develop the ap-propriate strategy to address this reality. They should start with the end goal in mind, whether it is to gain incremental revenue in specific customer segments, disrupt the market, or gather informa-tion on their customers, and chose the response mode that will allow them to best achieve their objectives. They should also be mindful that what’s right for one market may not be the best approach in another. For example, a solution for a prepaid heavy operator in a maturing market will not work for a player with a global footprint. Once a CSP determines an end goal and a preferred course of ac-tion – whether it’s prevention, pricing actions, head to head competition, part-nering with non-traditional competitors or several combinations of these – each
path of action carries with it unique pros and cons, as well as specific guidelines.
Our suggested options to compete against the OTT providers are:
1. Charge for OTT services or block them altogether
In some countries, for example Ko-rea, regulators permitted CSPs to block or charge extra for mobile VoIP, after Kakao, a popular Korean OTT, launched mVoIP services. While possible in Korea, this is not an option for most countries, where the principle of net neutrality is promoted by local government bodies, and net neutrality goes directly against the CSPs’ ability to charge for different types of traffic.
Nevertheless, OTT services may see one of their competitive advantages di-minished. Indeed, many governments are increasing their scrutiny of VoIP services and adding requirements that used to apply only to traditional CSPs. For example, last year, the FCC in the US mandated that VoIP providers will be re-quired to report service outages. The Ca-nadian Radio-Television and Telecom-munications Commission has placed VoIP/911 burden on VoIP providers. It may be only a matter of time before the European Commission mandates lawful interceptions for VoIP providers.
This being said, even when the regu-latory environment allows for it, CSPs will be under a lot of pressure if they were to start charging for OTT services. TeliaSonera publicly stated in March 2012 that the company “will start to charge for mobile VoIP” but changed its strategy six months later due to negative reactions and pressure from consumers. Instead, TeliaSonera implemented pric-ing schemes, and raised data caps and charges.
2. Implement competitive pricing to reduce attractiveness of OTT services
In the context of declining voice and SMS usage, some CSPs are increasing the allowance within their data plans for voice and SMS while reducing quotas for data. In some cases, CSPs are offer-ing unlimited voice and SMS. SingTel changed its entry-level data plan from 12 GB to 2 GB, but increased the num-ber of SMS from 550 to 800. Clearly, this change in direction was made to further monetize the increasing usage of mobile data and incentivize customers to use the traditional SMS application rather than OTT applications such as Whatsapps. Similarly, in the US Verizon’s Share Eve-rything postpaid plans all come with un-limited talk and text.
These pricing actions, combined
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 31
networks and then trying to make sense of it.
Players like Telefónica need to find avenues to collect data to be able to com-pete against other, non-traditional com-petitors that are already well ahead of the game. This strategy remains a potentially high-risk, high-return option.
4. Acquire an OTT playerAn acquisition strategy would cut
development cost and time, and gain in-stant market share, allowing CSPs to ac-quire capabilities, expertise and innova-tions. These acquired OTT services and capabilities can be integrated by CSPs into a range of new or existing product offerings such as in-home video services, or even smart homes, remote security or remote health monitoring.
5. Partner with OTT players Most of the current partnerships
today involve several players aligned around an effort, such as Skype (with Verizon, 3 UK and Telkomsel) and more recently with WhatsApp (with DiGi, and 3 Hong Kong).
In the example of Skype, the mon-etization is a simple licensing revenue model. Skype mobile on Verizon Wireless phones can only be used over the Verizon Wireless network and not over Wi-Fi. Additionally, as Verizon’s plan states, “calls to US numbers will be carried by Verizon Wireless, not Skype, and charged according to your calling plan.” In this case, there is minimal cannibalization.
In the case of 3 Hong Kong, users can enjoy unlimited access to WhatsApp lo-cally, for a monthly fee of HK$8, with no extra data charges incurred. The deal
is also available as part of a roaming pass. Similarly, DiGi has partnered with WhatsApp to offer a package for five consecutive days of unlimited access to WhatsApp Messenger services. With this service, DiGi can gain incremental ARPU at minimal incremental cost, targeting heavy SMS users.
In addition, collaboration can have other positive impact on CSPs. For ex-ample, KDDI in Japan benefited from Skype’s brand power by being able to target younger consumers. More recently Skype went live with direct operator bill-ing with Mach in Russia. With this deal, Mach will take a cut of the Skype credit revenue (which would include mobile and PC/desktop VoIP usage). For Skype, the deal means greater convenience for existing customers and potentially im-proved outreach to new customers
Of all the options, collaboration seems to be the most viable long-term solution because it enhances CSPs brands, while enabling them to provide more holistic services and attract addi-tional customers.
While head-to-head competition is a possibility for large CSPs, it should be assessed in selected areas where they can leverage on their core differentiating as-sets (such as billing, payment and loca-tion services), while considering poten-tially high investments in research and development and marketing to launch the competing services
But regardless of the strategy CSPs choose, it’s clear that OTT services are here to stay, spurred by the disruptive force of convergence, which is generat-ing a tremendous growth opportunity for companies that can out-innovate and out-execute their ever-expanding list of competitors under dramatically new marketplace rules.
What’s less certain is which of the OTT players or CSPs will monetize OTT services in the most effective way. That remains an open question which only time will answer. TA
Geoffroy Descamps is manager, Communications, Media and Technol-ogy strategy, Accenture
with the burden of having to install and open the OTT application, the lack of in-teroperability across OTT platforms and the relatively lower quality of service and potentially lower security level, can ulti-mately reduce the attractiveness of using OTT services. Ultimately, plain old mo-bile telephone service will still exist but CSPs risk being relegated to secondary service providers.
3. Directly compete by developing OTT applications
To counter the threat of OTT ser-vices, some CSPs have decided to create their own applications. To be successful, these applications require mass adop-tions, and CSPs will have to incur devel-opment costs – while the traffic will still remain OTT and not be monetized.
However, some CSPs, such as T-Mo-bile in the US, have been able to build value into this approach. T-Mobile’s Bobsled app can run on any phone, on any carrier and in a little more than a year Bobsled has more than one million users.
Telefónica’s TU Me app allows users to place calls, record and send voice mes-sages, send SMS message, share photos and location information with other TU Me users. This play is less about disrup-tion of the local market and is probably more about getting aggregate informa-tion. In its TU Me privacy policy, Tel-efónica clearly states that it will use data to identify trends and better understand user behavior. This aligns with the strat-egy of the company’s new business unit, Telefónica Digital, and Telefónica Dy-namic Insights, which is an effort to har-ness the huge wave of information that comes out of its many internet-based
32 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
OTT THreAT
While head-to-head competition is a possibility for large CSPs, it should be assessed in selected areas where they can leverage on their core differentiating assets
nologies and bring your own device (BYOD), there is no debate over the business case. Today many CIOs are still questioning the business case of BYOD as there is no immediate dollar return in creating a BYOD environment.
O’Neill implores CIOs to look be-yond the narrow defines of the tradi-tional business case.
Beyond the dollarsFor years IT organizations and ven-
dors have worried about whether users will adopt and accept new technologies that they introduce. Without this ac-ceptance there is no return. “With mo-bility and BYOD, for the first time ever IT leaders should have no concerns over adoption,” said O’Neill. “Everybody wants this so don’t fixate on the busi-ness case.”
IT professionals inherently fear new technology as it creates un-knowns and poses disruption to their carefully manicured IT environment. Anything without
corporate colors or approved by the IT police should immediately be removed from sight is the way traditional IT would deal with any new technology brought in by users.
Today the scenario is far removed from that. “Today businesses want to embrace consumer technology,” said Rory O’Neill, VP of product and chan-nel marketing at BlackBerry. “Business-es want consumer technology as it helps them serve customers better; govern-ments want this as it helps them serve the public better.”
In O’Neill’s eyes and for many busi-nesses that have embraced mobile tech-
Sheer demand for mobile technology outweighs the need for a measurable business case, but culture will determine BYOD adoption By Chee-Sing Chan
MOBIlITY
BYOD: No business case needed
34 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
O’Neill’s points to the simple fact that users are using mobile technology and BYOD should be a clear enough signal that this is a valuable, usable fea-ture and is providing clear benefit.
And it’s hard to argue against that with the added backdrop of research that indicates BYOD is here to stay.
Almost half of all businesses will have adopted a BYOD strategy by 2016, according to a report by Gartner, with devices like the iPad responsible for much of its uptake.
The research by the analyst house quizzed over 2,000 CIOs on how they expect to manage the delivery of devices to staff in the coming year. Thirty-eight percent said they expect employees to provide their own smartphones and tablets, and possibly laptops, within four years.
www.telecomasia.net Telecom Asia May/Jun 2013 35
Doing so will enable numerous ben-efits, the firm claimed: “The benefits of BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs,” said David Willis, a VP at Gartner.
Not for allIt’s also important to note the dif-
ference between adopting mobile tech-nologies and adopting BYOD. Mobile is something all companies will adopt, but BYOD may not be universally adopted yet.
O’Neill noted that BYOD so far has varied levels of adoption around the world. “In some markets BYOD is huge, but interestingly in places like Germany and Japan it really is not a big deal,” he said.
as CIOs across the board name security as their top concern when deploying mobility.
Another player in this space, Good Technology is helping customers put in comprehensive security controls while also supporting a BYOD capability.
According to Jim Watson, VP and corporate general manager at Good Technology Asia Pacific, the best prac-tice is really an integration of security policies, centralized security solutions as well as developing consistent and se-cure enterprise apps.
He advises three key steps when ad-dressing security in a BYOD environ-ment.
First is to proactively define specific BYOD policies and objectives; second is maintain consistent, centralized con-trol; and third is to invest in tools and technology to deliver enterprise apps more consistently, securely and easily across multiple platforms.
“As the business expands to sup-port personal devices and data plans, you must change the way you approach control,” said Watson.
Yet while security is a top concern, it is not significantly holding back adop-tion as a 2012 study by Good showed that BYOD is not being hindered by regulatory compliance or security. The study found that the financial services and healthcare industries continue to be among the most active industries supporting BYOD. In fact, the study also found that larger enterprises are the most active in BYOD with 75% of those supporting BYOD having 2,000 (or more) employees and 46% having 10,000 (or more) employees. TA
For BlackBerry, the focus is on pro-viding the choice for users and compa-nies to adopt the approach that best fits their culture. O’Neill recalled a favorite presentation of his by a CIO – the title was “Culture eats strategy for lunch”.
He added that, “social behavior is what drives technology today, not the other way round.”
BlackBerry has customers that force the browser to be switched off on de-vices from 9 to 6, while others turn off IM or the camera. “Company culture drives these policies and adoption pat-terns and we can’t change that so the approach is to provide choice and flex-ibility,” O’Neill said.
There must always be the right amount of controls and security to en-able wide deployment of this technol-ogy but balance is the critical issue.
This balance is evident in BlackBer-ry’s latest efforts to regain a foothold in the smartphone market with its new BB10 platform and devices. It’s unique proposition is its seamless personal en-vironment and secure work environ-ment within the same device.
Many companies have used a custom sandbox approach to provide users with a separation of work and personal data on BYOD devices, but O’Neill believes that disrupts the user experience and risks creating complexity. “The biggest drive today is for IT vendors to serve the needs of the users not necessarily the needs of IT managers,” he added.
Security still a concern
While this may be true, BlackBerry is still insistent on applying the right levels of security around mobile devices
Larger enterprises are the most ac-tive in BYOD with 75% of those sup-porting BYOD having 2,000 (or more) employees”
Nokia taps China headErik Bertman has
taken over the role of general manager at Nokia China, based in Beijing.
Originally from Sweden, Bertman previously served as the regional lead of Nokia Russia since 2009, where he oversaw sales and marketing. His experience with the company also includes a stint as financial officer in the sub-Saharan Africa region.
Bertman succeeded Gustavo Eichelmann, who left Nokia and returned to the UK for personal reasons.
Polycom hires regional director for SEA
Brad Gray has joined Polycom as regional director for Southeast Asia. He will focus on expanding Polycom’s partner base in the region and strengthening the relationships with service providers, particularly for hosted solutions.
Gray joins Polycom from Juniper Networks, where he worked for over 11 years as a member of the company’s leadership in Asia Pacific.
Good Technology names regional director
Mobile computing solution provider Good Technology has appointed Anthony Tian as regional director for APAC.
Tian will be based in Singapore and initially focus on key markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea.
DoCoMo appoints board execs
NTT DoCoMo has appointed Kiyoshi Tokuhiro, Teruyasu Murakami
and Takashi Nakamura to the company’s board of directors. The company has also named Ichiro Nishino, Kouji Furukawa and Kyoji Murakami as SVPs.
Meanwhile, Kenji Ota and Naoto Shiotsuka will join the board’s audit & supervisory committee.
All the appointments will take effective on June 18.
Rackspace’s APAC chiefRackspace Hosting has appointed
Ajit Melarkode as MD of Rackspace Asia Pacific to drive the company’s cloud business in the region.
Melarkode has 20 years experience in the IT industry, starting as an equities analyst, before investing in IT companies as a fund manager.
NEC selects APAC CEO
NEC Asia Pacific, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corp, has appointed Toshiya Matsuki as CEO.
Matsuki replaces Kiyofumi Kusaka, who has been leading NEC Asia Pacific since June 2008 and has taken up a new role as president of NEC China.
Matsuki has been associate senior VP of NEC Corp since early April. He joined NEC Corp in 1983.
Savvis strengthen Asian operations
Cloud infrastructure and IT solution provider Savvis has appointed Osamu Numata as country manager for Japan, and Tan Teng Cheong as country manager for Singapore and Hong Kong.
Both Numata and Tan will focus on driving adoption of Savvis’ cloud, managed hosting and colocation services across their respective regions in Asia.
StarHub CFOStarHub said Kwek Buck Chye will
retire as the company’s CFO at the end of September. He will be replaced by Nicholas Tan from Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia).
Kwek joined the Singaporean telecom operator in September 2002 as its second CFO.
Tan will assume his new role in July. He is currently the SVP of corporate planning at ST Telemedia.
IDA appoints deputy chair and MD
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has appointed Steve Leonard as executive deputy chairman and Jacqueline Poh as MD.
They replace former IDA CEO Ronnie Tay, who has returned to the administrative service for another posting.
Leonard, who has been serving on the IDA board of directors since 2009, has executive leadership responsibility for IDA as the new deputy chairman, focusing primarily on industry promotion and development.
Poh, who has been seconded from the administrative service to take up this new role, leads the IDA’s policy and regulatory functions – and helps guide the Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) function.
Newtec has new VP for Asia
Newtec has appointed Mario Querner as VP for Asia to lead the Belgium-based satellite communication solution provider’s business activities in the region.
Prior to joining Newtec, Querner worked as head for Southeast Asia at ECI Telecom, based in Singapore. He also worked in a number of other leading telecom infrastructure and media solution providers such as Technicolor (formerly Thomson) and Alcatel-Lucent.
Contacting Telecom Career
Advertising: Gigi Chan Tel: 852 2589 1338 Fax: 852 2559 7002 E-mail: [email protected]
Editorial: Fiona Chau Tel: 852 2589 1333 Fax: 852 2559 7002 E-mail: [email protected]
Steve Leonard
Erik Bertman
Brad Gray
Anthony Tian
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36 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
eVeNTSCAleNDAr
Networking opportunities
across Asia
For full details of the events, visit www.telecomasia.net To list an event, contact Gigi Chan at [email protected]
Date Event Location
Jun 4 – 6 SDN & OpenFlow Asia-Pacific Congress Singapore
June 17 CASBAA Satellite Industry Forum Singapore
June 18 – 21 CommunicAsia 2013 Singapore
June 26 – 28 Mobile Asia Expo Shanghai, China
September 03 – 06 Asian Carriers Conference Philippines
September 11 – 12 Telco Cloud Strategies 2013 Singapore
September 18 – 19 LTE Asia Singapore
September 24 – 28 P&T/ EXPO COMM China 2013 Beijing, China
October 21 – 24 CASBAA Convention Hong Kong SAR, China
October 29 – 31 Capacity Asia 2013 Bangkok, Thailand
November 18 – 21 ITU Telecom World 2013 Bangkok, Thailand
November 20 – 23 Vietnam Telecomp 2013 Vietnam
November 25 – 27 Cloud World Forum Asia Hong Kong SAR, China
November 26 – 27 TM Forum’s Customer Experience Management Summit 2013 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
December 03 - 04 Carrier Ethernet APAC Singapore
38 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
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bile apps. On the other hand, he says businesses must first understand what they and their customers need to be able to build a successful app.
Aliza Knoz, who when she was with Google in the previous year shared her knowledge related to the smartphone, returns to speak at CommunicAsia as managing director of online sales in Asia Pacific at Twitter.
Other speakers include Social Me-dia Hub director of client leadership Marcus Ho, Compuware Asia Pacific regional director for ASEAN Koh Eng Kiong, Opera Software ASA SVP for Asia Fabrizio Caruso, and Bubble Mo-tion CEO Thomas Clayton.
Visitors to this year’s shows – includ-ing the concurrent Enterprise IT2013 and BroadcastAsia2013 – can expect to see the newest technologies, products and developments from cloud comput-ing, over-the-top (OTT), 4G/LTE, mul-ti-platform broadcasting, mobileTV, and more from about 2,000 exhibitors.
According to event organizer SES, CommunicAsia2013 has also attracted global thought-leaders and experts from Amazon Web Services, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Telstra Global and many others. TA
Mobile applications will be the focus of Com-municAsia2013 Sum-mit as the yearly event once again returns to
the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, June 18-21.
This year’s conference will flesh out the implications of the mobile apps boom as market watchers forecast a further proliferation of mobile devices as well as a continued advance of the BYOD trend.
“Visitors will be pleased to know that we have raised the bar this year and put together an unprecedented list of market players and industry think-tanks from around the world to share the latest insights and developments in their respective industries,” said Victor Wong, project director of communica-tion events at Singapore Exhibition Ser-vices (SES).
CommunicAsia2013 will introduce the APPSmart Techzone to keep attend-ees abreast of the latest trends and up-dates in the mobile apps industry. Ex-hibitors such as Ariose Software, NDOT Technologies, Retail Juice and TalkBox will be showcasing their apps developed for a wide range of sectors.
Apps to check out include Retail Juice’s “Sofa Maker” iPad app, which uses augmented reality to showcase so-fas in 3D images, allowing consumers to visualize how a particular sofa set would look in their home. Another is the voice messenger app TalkBox Enter-prise, which allows users from different parts of the world to exchange, share and publish their voice. And then there is NDOT’s multi-merchandising app Uniecommerce, which allows users ac-cess to e-commerce products, deals and auction in a single convenient platform.
A conference track dubbed “Mobile marketing, services and commerce” will gather industry experts from around the world to discuss the latest chal-lenges in the industry, such as how brands can achieve strategic objectives via social media, monetization of online mobile advertising and driving revenue through mobile social networks.
Zhou Wenhan, the acclaimed co-founder of mobile consultancy 2359 Media, will share his views on how to avoid creating a self-destructive mobile app. Zhou believes that there is a gold mine of valuable information such as consumers’ spending habits that busi-nesses can tap into with the use of mo-
Mobile apps front and center
40 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Pre SHOw CommuniCAsiA 2013 • June 18-21 • singApore
The 2nd Annual Telco Cloud Strategies is a two-day
conference from Telecom Asia that brings together telco
operators, industry experts, enterprise end-users and
solution providers to help companies make sense of the
Asia-Pacific cloud landscape with case studies and
expert advice covering multiple aspects of the cloud.
Thought-leadership conference, focusing on:• Change management and transition strategies for telcos• Cloud security and data protection framework• Cloud services for different target groups (SME, Global,
Public Sector)• Service delivery models (SaaS)• Building a cloud business strategy - strategic partnerships,
justifying ROI
Pre-register to attend: www.questexevents.net/telcocloud
Telco Cloud Strategies 2013
Sponsor this event Gigi Chan [email protected] +852 2589 1338
Registration inquiries Will Ahmad [email protected] +852 2589 1312
Speaking opportunities Sutha O’Connell [email protected] +65 6395 4588
Host media partner Media partners Organizer
Co-located with:
DataCenterSummit12-13 Sept 2013 Singapore
From hype to reality - Success stories from the cloud frontier
Telecom Asia’s
11-12 September 2013 Singapore
TelcoCloudStrategies_hsead.indd 1 05/27/2013 2:44 PM
fOruM l David Kennedy , Ovum
Taking the NBN model to mobile
42 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
W hen you spend a lot of time in Europe, it is striking just how different its telecoms market is compared to Asia. Ignore
for the moment the multiple national markets separated mainly by language, the challenges being faced by the digital storm, the intense competition, the rigorous and diverse regu-lation and the ridiculously high cost of spec-trum because these are traits shared by both markets. What seems to be missing in Europe is ambition, willingness to invest in innovation and a sense of urgency.
And by urgency, I mean serious planning to cope with dropping voice revenues, increasing data volumes and the transformation of net-works and business systems. Not all European CSPs fall into my sweeping category – there are some dramatic exceptions like Telefónica, Tel-ecom Portugal and Orange. But for the majority it is business as usual as storm clouds gather.
When I ask why, I keep getting the same response – conservative shareholders and inves-tors. Network operators have, since the days of deregulation and privatization, been highly prof-itable, high turnover businesses with high invest-ment costs required to keep up with technology and volumes. At the first sign of a slow down the investors and markets go into hibernation, and technology and innovation are the first to suffer.
CxOs are finding it more and more diffi-cult to present toned-down, realistic business cases to boards that are accustomed to massive cash flows with guarantees of return. The idea of investing in or acquiring other operators in Europe to shore up declining domestic revenues is not being considered, let alone spreading far a field in search of younger, fast-growing emerg-ing markets.
Those that have had traditional involvement in national carriers in Africa and South America in particular are facing the unusual situation that the children are not only growing up but are now bigger, more profitable and more agile than them. We may even see reverse takeovers in the future – that’s if the European parents are even worth buying.
European regulator Neelie Kroes keeps talk-ing up a single European market by 2015, but you can’t even cross a national border without being hit with big roaming charges. Prices across Europe for broadband, both fixed and mobile, are so disparate you would think the countries
were a million miles apart, not sharing common borders.
Kroes’ idea of investment in infrastructure is that it should all come from the private sector with CSPs leading the way. Those are the very same CSPs that have boards that don’t feel in-clined to spend money. How will that work? Is the solution a European Broadband Network rolled out by the EU? Not likely!
While Asian governments encourage the rollout of broadband access, linking it closely to improvements in GDP, the Europeans bemoan having to invest because they just don’t see a na-tional, let alone Europe-wide, monetary benefit in doing so. The chances of Europe taking that route are as unlikely as Asia agreeing on one net-work. But something will have to give or we may see telecoms businesses start to fail within five to ten years. What happens then? Will governments be forced to nationalize them, like they did with banks in the depression era?
Sustainable model?Are four or five mobile network operators,
two or three fixed-line operators, cable, satellite and fiber networks sustainable in each country in Europe, or Asia for that matter? The whole concept behind any NBN is economies of scale. One ubiquitous wholesale backbone network connected to every premise and any number of retail service providers using it to deliver their services to willing customers that can pick and choose what they want and from whom they want them. That’s where the competition hap-pens.
Why couldn’t the same happen for mobile networks? Just think of the benefit of having one super-network across Europe or Asia with no national boundaries. Only one network to maintain, couldn’t be simpler, right?
Suppliers of network equipment may not be too happy about losing multiple customers and having to work with one monolithic monster. But there would be nothing stopping them from developing millions of edge devices (like phones, routers and set-top boxes) to take advantage of all that bandwidth.
It may be a pipe-dream (no pun intended) for some, and a nightmare for others, yet it is not beyond the realm of possibility at some stage and the success or failure of existing NBNs may be the true guide of what we could expect in the future. TA
POulOSPOINTS l Tony Poulos
Tony is market strategist for the TM Forum and a regular contributor to Telecom Asia
“What seems to be missing in Europe is ambition, willingness to invest in innovation and a sense of urgency”
BACkPAGeBrIefING
Horses found in Virgin Media movies
High price for Tweet
UK cableco Virgin Media issued a heartfelt apology to subscribers for its part in Europe’s recent horse meat scandal.
The operator apologized to customers of its premium TV service for an error that resulted in the wrong films being shown compared to those its subscribers had selected, meaning menus that “promised a rich selection of films starring cows did, in fact, contain films primarily featuring horses.”TA
A politician in the UK literally paid the price for underestimating the power of social networks, after making a charity pledge on Twitter.
Member of Parliament (MP) Fiona McTaggart ended up donating £14,268 ($21,626) to the charity, after pledging £1 for every retweet of her original message.
The MP later admitted she was unprepared for the level of response to what was a spur of the moment post.TA
44 May/Jun 2013 Telecom Asia www.telecomasia.net
Cutting through auto call menu
UK villagers use French networks
A former IT manager has devoted hours to developing the UK’s first directory of automated phone menus, after growing frustrated with the time taken to work through the systems.
Nigel Clarke used Skype to work through the call handling menus of thousands of UK businesses and utility providers, and has now published the details online to help consumers cut to the chase.
Some call center menus offer close to 80 options over several levels, Clarke’s research found. TA
Stolen laptop donatedWe’ve likely all read stories about stolen devices being returned to their owners after
being tracked with clever apps, but its rare the owner gives it away. To a family in Iran.Dom del Torto, a London-based animator, traced his stolen laptop to Tehran using an
application that reported the unit’s location and took pictures using the built-in camera. After posting the pictures online, a family in the city contacted del Torto explaining they bought it in good faith and didn’t realize it was stolen.
He responded by offering them the laptop as an apology for invading their privacy by posting the pictures online. TA
Roaming bill shock is a subject widely documented, but you don’t expect to rack up the charges in your own home.
That’s what’s happening to people living in a village near Dover in the UK, who are so close to France their phones often roam onto the networks of Orange France and SFR.
Dover’s famous White Cliffs make it difficult for residents and visitors to receive UK signals, and residents say the billing problem is getting worse because smartphones don’t always display a welcome message like older handsets, meaning users are unaware they are on the French networks. TA
E-mail: [email protected] • www.amos-spacecom.com
Scheduled for launch in Q3 2013, Spacecom’s AMOS-4 satellite will establish a new orbital position at 65°E, providing a full range of satellite services to Central and Southeast Asia, India, Russia, China and the Middle East.
The AMOS-4 multiple Ku-band and Ka-band transponders will create a powerful platform,enabling a wide range of cross-band, cross-beam connectivity options.
The addition of AMOS-4 to the Spacecom current constellation - AMOS-2 and AMOS-3 satellites co-located at 4°W, and AMOS-5 at 17°E - will enhance the company’s position asa multi-regional satellite operator provider.
Pre-launch Ku-band on AMOS-4 is now available.
E X P E C T m o r E f r o m a m o s - 4CommunicAsiaJune 18-21, 2013Booth # 1V3-01
See us at
amos-4 Is ComING To asIa
