Azenby

Author: Bill Best

  • Bill goes to Apps World 2015

    Bill goes to Apps World 2015

    I went along to ExCel for the 7th edition of Apps World to find out what’s hot and what’s not. Apps World claim 10,000 visitors over the two days and 350 exhibitors from across the planet of the Apps.

    A long standing friend of mine and a fellow frequent attendee to Mobile World Congress and its previous incarnations used to call that event the annual bump. He didn’t mean everyone is continually walking into each other – but with 80,000 attendees there is more than a bit of that going on. No, he meant it’s where you continually and regularly bump into so many people you know from the industry. So for me the big difference here is no bumps – what does that tells us about where the MWC crowd are and what’s important to them these days?

    MWC has striven over the last few years to fully represent all seven layers in the classic OSI model as well as the ever burgeoning mobile eco-system. So layer 7, Applications, is well represented at MWC. Here at AppsWorld this is all about layer 7 and only layer 7. As the name implies, this is the Apps show! It does what it says on the tin. Are Apps important to Telco’s and Tier 1 vendors? It would seem not judging by their lack of interest and participation at this show. And isn’t that very strange because Apps is not just where it’s at today – it’s where the money is and where contact with the billions of mobile device users occurs. Without doubt, mobile device user’s moments of truth are though the apps they use.

    So why stacks 1-6 are away doing whatever they need to do today, stack 7 comes out to play and takes centre stage. Much of what goes on at AppsWorld is about sustaining the App eco-system and it’s largely a B2B show but small B to small B in the main. Of the 300 or so exhibitors here this week, how many will be big and even very big B’s in the coming years? Who are the ones likely to get to escape velocity and become a moon-shot? I wish I knew. I am sure there are some who will make it big which does increases my amazement on why so much App activity carries on under the Telco radar. Have they given up getting in on App monetisation?

    Perhaps that’s the case but I note a distinct change of tone coming from MNOs recently and an acceptance of the argument put forward by OTT and App players that they help carriers sell more data and that is good for the carrier. Certainly Vodafone’s recent half-year results seemed to support this. They told us that Data traffic in H1 grew 75% and the desire for Apps drives smartphone adoption meaning that Vodafone now have 29.9 million 4G customers across 19 countries with 9.7 million of them coming in H1 alone! Although these numbers are impressive that still only equates to 20% of their European customer base taking a 4G service. And here is the nub of it all: customers who move to 4G typically buy bigger data packages and see their data consumption double, and average usage per smartphone customer in Europe is up 39% year-on-year. I can hear Silicon Valley saying ‘told you so.’ The real growth is still ahead of us and is it customers’ desire to use apps that will encourage them to take up 4G price plans.

    Let’s get back to what the data generators are up to. Well, Apps for everything is the phrase of the day as you would expect. There really does seem to be an App for everything you want to do and a whole lot more for things we never thought we needed! Innovation and invention is what will make the difference to the winners and the losers and we know that the vast majority of Apps on the market never make any money. So taking some time to get your App proposition right seems a very good thing to do. Our very own Julia Shalet was on hand to give start-ups some vital tips in the Launchpad zone. Julia told us “Don’t build it until you have looked users in the eye and see what their response is. Go validate all the assumptions you have made about how people feel and behave before you go too far”. Sound advice indeed. You can see Julia’s full presentation here:

    Having the great idea is one thing. Getting the App built these days seems pretty straightforward judging by the sheer number of App builders there were promoting their services at the show. The tough part has always been the turning the App into a commercial service. The quality assurance, the de-bugging, the payment method (it’s really nice to get paid!), the customer experience, the analytics, the asset inventory, and anything else that’s needed to make the App a commercial success. It is here I saw a big difference between the show this year and that of a couple of years back when I last attended. The support eco-system is now very strong. An App developer doesn’t have to go it alone and reinvent things that are necessary but don’t add value to the proposition. The plug-ins are now abundant.

    I hope next year I may bump into some of my colleagues from the MNO and Tier 1 vendor world. There really is a lot that they can learn from a day out at Apps World 2016!

    Apps World Next Year

  • Small Earthquake in London

    Business life carried on as normal in London last week and especially for Mobile Operators who are feeling better about life after a few years in the financial doldrums (just blame the crisis) and 4G LTE will get us back on track. Certainly, the global stats seem to suggest its full-steam ahead for LTE:

    • 395 commercial LTE networks today – growing to 460 by end of 2015
    • 500 million LTE subs
    • 2,919 LTE devices on the market from 297 different OEMs
    • 50% of devices are smartphones and 37% support LTE TDD
    • 89% of devices are backward compatible with 3G (98.5% for phones)
    • 200 VoLTE smartphones have been announced

    So with everything looking rosy for MNOs they can focus on the next big thing, the IoT, and what’s there for them to worry about? Well maybe the Wi-Fi Global Congress held in London last week didn’t register on the MNO Richter scale but those paying closer attention may have noticed a small tremor with its epicentre at the Tower Hotel. Not enough of a shock to reach Paddington maybe but perhaps enough to make me think that MNOs need to be paying closer attention to the emerging Wi-Fi progression from free public hot spot utility to serious player in the IoT eco-system.  (I intentionally leave Enterprise use out of this piece for brevity).

    If IoT is the next big driver of revenues in the Telco industry and carriers, integrators and service providers all want to find their position and their slice of the cake in the value chain, then how crucial will wireless be? Are the battle lines being drawn between LTE and 5G, and Wi-Fi? (not to disregard other wireless options in unlicensed spectrum as well).

    The Wi-Fi Global Congress made the case for Wi-Fi last week and much of it was compelling. A few factors which caught my attention were:

    • 85%-90% of IoT and M2M user cases will be short range
    • Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) needs to be ultra-cheap
    • Device support needs to plentiful, generic and non-certified
    • Wi-Fi in lower frequency bands (900MHz) is on the road map
    • Cellular could be a good back haul
    • Let’s assume IPv6 is seamless

    The route to the technology starting grid has some critical lap times that need to be achieved. The wireless industry in particular is establishing some widely emerging fundamentals needed to support the IoT world:

    • Capacity: 1000 fold increase from 7 billion to 7 trillion connections
    • Speed: 50MBps (up to 1Gbps for some applications)
    • Coverage: truly ubiquitous
    • Latency: Zero

    Latency? Yes, Latency. I for one do not want to be in a driverless car whilst the control system is buffering incoming data!

    As the work hungry SDOs begin to put down on paper the requirements for 5G – doubtless cognisant of all of the above – The Wireless Broadband Alliance are plotting the path forward to make sure Wi-Fi supports all the needs of IoT.

    So will battle-lines be drawn, or will peace break out and cellular and Wi-Fi protagonists work together? Some say spectrum may hold the key. Can unlicensed spectrum support the needs and demand of the future? Is this why cellular carriers in the US have just broken all the records in the spectrum auctions earlier in the year? Can Wi-Fi overcome its security doubts? Battery life is another concern. Do these aspects point to an advantage for cellular and macro coverage plays? Perhaps but it’s not all plain sailing either. Is 5G coming to the party too late? Will it be over specified? How important will mobility be? Are device costs too high? Is 5G too complex a technology for what will be largely simple user cases and transactions?

    What are the wider implications? If there are indeed going to be 7 trillion connections, then (data) storage is also going to be a big factor and if the preferred method is cloud storage then transport mechanisms will be crucial to shift large volumes of data around the eco system. System Integrators will also be big players, especially where IoT is being used to increase enterprise efficiency. It is obviously a very different model than today’s voice and data bundles for Service Providers to start to understand.

    I think we can summarise by saying that we have more questions than answers at the moment but I also wonder if we learnt last week that the Wi-Fi lobby is ahead of the cellular family at the moment, albeit in the early stages of what will be a marathon race. And if the WBA congress last week didn’t quite make the earth move, it did send a shudder and should have sent a wake-up call to MNOs. IoT may well provide the next major shift in revenues but this time round the competition is energetic, strong and able.

  • Bill’s Bests from MWC 2015

    This year’s theme sounded a bit like the innovation is going on somewhere ‘over there’ and we are on the edge of it looking in. Anyhow, the show gets bigger and bigger and this year saw 93,000 attendees. And it felt like it.

    2,100 companies were exhibiting. How many of them can any one person get round in four days? This was the 10th year in Barcelona and it’s beginning to feel the strain of so many people descending on the city. It was also the 20th edition of the Global Mobile Awards

    The cycle of life (in the Telco Universe)

    The general mood amongst analysts, journalists and scribblers was that Europe’s big telecom operators are back to rude health, and few CEOs here were disagreeing with that. Of course every good news story has to have its downside so they were also concluded that this was in fact bad news for their upstart rivals.

    Looking at the reasoning behind the upturn gives different outcomes: 4G is delivering (on lower costs and improved customer experience); the regulatory mood is moving on to encourage forward investment in 5G and Fibre and away from MTR caps and Roaming charges; consolidation is being viewed positively by investors, and – for incumbents – the ability to charge more for access to their infrastructure. It’s the latter that has the new breed crying foul.

    I think the unrelenting message that the Tier 1 Telcos have been directing at Bruxelles finally got home. “We aren’t the bad guys, we pay Corporation taxes, we pay employment taxes, we gather VAT, we contribute to national GDP, we are a vital part of national infrastructure, stop picking on us and go figure out how to make the internet providers play by your rules.’

    Timotheus Hoettges, Deutsche Telekom Group CEO, said Facebook was a communication service, yet not regulated as one. He then argued there was a “clash of business models” between network operators and internet firms, and that network players were left holding the short straw.

    “We are an asset-heavy industry, where everything is interoperable and open,” pointing out that interoperability even extended to “closed networks”, such as Google and Facebook. He wanted to remind regulators that internet giants were asset light and could offer services for free. “How can you compete with a voice, SMS or video service which costs nothing?”

    More M&A and Convergence on the way

    Reuters also gave a briefing saying that bankers and industry executives predict more mergers and acquisitions in Europe, perhaps eventually across borders. Incumbents won’t have a clear playing field either it seems. The likes of Altice, Hutchison and Iliad, were better placed to buy assets because they had billionaire founders behind them with big ambitions and were unafraid to load up on debt. The evidence being recent deals in Portugal, Britain and Switzerland respectively.

    As if to emphasise this point Cisco boss John Chambers said half of today’s service providers will be “irrelevant” within a decade. He expected sweeping changes in the operator landscape, with 50 per cent of today’s service providers becoming irrelevant in ten years’ time as they fail to adapt in a fast-moving digital world.
    The traditional incumbents won’t have it all their own way of course. Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao led the ‘worried majority’. “Some operators can use their networks as a fortress, we cannot afford to have re-monopolisation in Europe.”

    One thing is for sure, the landscape is going to be forever changing and sometimes very rapidly in our industry.

    Quad Play

    There are two schools of thought on this. Two extremes in fact. One says quad players will rule and content is king, the other says access quality and pricing is what the customer wants. One thing is for sure, the battle grounds are being drawn and the Tier 1 Telcos must certainly see quad as the way to protect themselves from upstarts and to lock in customers. I think considerations around Quad play are already shaping the M&A and consolidation environment and that will continue.

    Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Tim Hoettges said; “It is the convergence that makes the incumbents fly.”

    The major vendors are leaning this way; they are good at seeing what way the wind is blowing from those that sign the biggest cheques. Much of their talk this year was on how to support the Quad play for Telcos.

    5G

    Inevitably, before 4G is anything like a universal reality, in developed markets let alone elsewhere, 5G is being hyped up. One could hear stories about it being here by 2018. This before the ITU, or anyone else for that matter, have even defined what it is! Of course faster, bigger and better access for sure but 5G has to be a lot more than that. I am left asking ‘exactly what is 5G?’ Helpfully, the Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance published a paper saying a lot more work is required and its years away from standardisation. Don’t confuse ‘pre 5G’ with the real thing. OK, that’s clear then.

    TDD and 3500MHz gets serious traction

    After many years of pondering, TDD is starting to make real headway and not just in China. In Japan and Korea, ambitious plans to use the unpaired spectrum were now well underway and 3500MHz spectrum seems to have been the catalyst. Will this spread from Asia?

    China on the march

    There was a very notable increased presence (again) from China at MWC. I wonder if this show won’t be in Shanghai in 5 years’ time.

    This year’s Buzz

    There were three candidates for the hype prize this year. NFV is everywhere, in every hall, in every PR, in the Cloud, in the core, and in your face. This is looking like a crowded space now. Coupled with SON most of the time, it was hard to get away from it. Similarly, IoT was with you wherever you went. Maybe this is what is meant by IoT! We shouldn’t forget Wearables as well I suppose. I wish we could, but we can’t!

    Devices

    Of course Apple kept away, arrogant as ever. Still, everyone else was here and the trend for launching devices at the show continued: Samsung unveiled its latest flagship devices, with its Galaxy S6 joined by the Galaxy S6 edge – a smartphone with a curved display on both sides. HTC debuted its latest flagship device, One M9. Alcatel launched the new OneTouch and says it aims to become a top 3 handset player. For clarity the Alcatel phone is not made by Alcatel but by Chinese manufacturer TCL, so maybe it does stand a chance of that number 3 spot. Microsoft announced a couple of new Lumias, the Lumia 640) and the (much) larger 640 XL – armed with Snapdragon 400 processors, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of on board storage. Both with the new Windows 10 OS. Will that make us rush out and buy one? BlackBerry launched their new smartphone called Leap. Ominously, nothing new from Sony accept a pledge to stay in mobile. Tough times ahead for them I fear.

    Device OS

    Nothing is shaping the mobile market quite like the device OS so it’s worth a good look at what is going on here. Is there life beyond iOS and Android? Would that be good or bad for the industry? A lot of mixed views on this. I rather hope that one or both of Ubuntu or Firefox can get some market penetration and start to give some competition to the duopoly we have today. I might be a bit unfair on Windows when I call it a duopoly but I am not (sadly) being unfair on BB OS 10.

    Of course no new OS can enter the market without the cooperation of the device OEMs and what manufacturer is going to put a brand new OS on their device with no proven eco-system? Samsung see Tizen as their alternative so are they going to embrace another OS? Unlikely, and this then only leaves the next tier of device manufacturers and for them to go ‘left field’’ on an OS would be brave.

    So it’s left to the wannabes to find a new manufacturer with no market share and nothing to lose to play with or to build their own device. So Ubuntu have now launched the BQ Aquaris E4.5 device. It is a rather nifty sub £130 smartphone that actually is very clever and very cool. Made in Spain it runs on the Ubuntu, open source, Linux based OS. It has no App store of course but what it has done is really neat. Instead of Apps it uses ‘Scopes’ which are user defined home screens dedicated to one topic — for instance music, video or news — that pull together content from various sources. For example, instead of having a YouTube app for watching online videos and a separate app for watching the videos saved on your phone, the video scope pulls them all together in one place. Each service on that aggregated home page — like YouTube or Vimeo — can then build its own branded scope, which is more like a traditional app. The phone and OS deserve serious consideration. The phone will only be on sale in Europe. Ubuntu has done deals with GiffGaff in the UK, Three in Sweden, Amena in Spain and Portugal Telecom to offer SIM bundles when customers buy the phone. It’s unlocked, so you can use it on any network supported by the phone. The other thing going in its favour is that the OS is totally compatible with your PC as well as well as your mobile.

    And then there is Jolla and they have set themselves the rather ambitious target of forming the third mobile ecosystem after Android and Apple iOS, ousting Windows Phone from the top three. “We expect to be the third,” said Marc Dillon, co-founder and COO of the company, which is in the process of rolling out the second generation of the Sailfish OS and the first Jolla Tablet. Jolla believes it will be able to achieve its targets with Sailfish 2.0 because the OS offers something different from what Dillon described as the monopolistic tendencies of the two dominant players.

    Dillon was particularly critical of what he described as the anti-competitive practices of Google, also noting that Android was designed to capture data from users and profit from it.

    Not to forget Mozilla, they have lined up with leading operators KDDI, LG U+, Telefonica and Verizon Wireless on what it’s billing as a new category of Firefox OS phones, with a planned launch date of 2016.

    Maybe we are seeing the first signs of a shift away from the iOS Android duopoly but a quick reality check is in order. The wannabes have their work cut out: Android and iOS accounted for 96.3 per cent of all smartphone shipments in 2014, with Android’s share at over 80 per cent. Windows Phone accounted for a relatively small share of 2.7 per cent. It’s a very big mountain to climb for the new entrants.

     I did my last Global Mobile awards

    Yes, this time really is the last. I have been involved in these awards since 2002 and chairing the judge’s panel since 2005. It’s come a long way in that time. This year we had 40 categories, 800 entrants and nearly 250 judges. I created the CTO panel and this year we had 23 CTOs on board to pick the ‘best-in-show’ technology.

    This year it was the turn of John Cleese to be seen with me and have the pleasure if sharing a stage with the good and mighty from the mobile world.

    There were two new big awards this year. Connected Women – Leaders in Industry. The award went to an operator, Ooredoo, for growing the female digital economy in Myanmar. The other was the Young Mobile Innovator of the Year. The winner in the end was Ted Nash (Tapdaq) from the UK.

    One last thought which struck home given my long marriage with this industry was that BBC Click’s entire MWC report for 2105 was filmed on mobile phones. How far the industry has come!

  • Azenby advises Sky on entry in to UK mobile market

    Azenby has been working with Sky to help launch its new mobile offer in 2016. Azenby has contributed strategic, commercial, technical and engineering expertise which will help Sky deliver a range of exciting new services to its customers.

  • The new breed of MVNOs and why they are good news for MNOs

    A look at the rise of Content and Universal Service Suppliers (CUSS) and what this means to the mobile world as we know it today.

    A CUSTOMER DRIVEN CHANGE CONFRONTS US
    An analysis of the telecom market today tells us that what most people want to do on their mobile is view content, that they will pay for some it, that they want it conveniently delivered wherever they are (at home, at the office and while they are out and about) and that they want to view it on all their terminals and devices. They expect to be able to make a voice call and send a message as well but these are now taken for granted and the expectation is that they should be just thrown in as part of the allowances.

    Quote 1
    Every so often an industry undergoes dramatic and fundamental change which uproots established norms and rules, creating the conditions for new growth to occur. The opportunity is often exploited by a new entrant or an established player from an adjacent sector. Sometimes the catalyst for change is driven by regulators, sometimes by market disrupters using new technology and sometimes because the way of doing business has been reinvented by a new entrant with new products. The last 20 years has seen significant disruption to Financial, Transport, Retail and Manufacturing.

    Telecommunications has been going through its own disruption but perhaps we have only seen the tremors so far and the real shocks are yet to come. What people want to do on their device is the catalyst for disruptive change about to sweep through the telecom industry.

    MOBILE AS A DISRUPTER
    The mobile industry itself was a beneficiary of industry change partly driven by regulatory intervention, new technology and new products and services. The advent of the “new mobile industry” saw a rapid decline in the fortunes of established wireline operators who were saved from almost terminal decline by the advent of ADSL technology which they branded as ‘broadband’. This in itself was driven by the biggest market disrupter of all – the internet. It was people’s desire to access the internet which drove ADSL demand rather than anything particularly clever that the wireline service providers were doing. Although largely unnoticed at the time, we were witnessing the beginning of customer needs and requirements being influenced by the content they wanted to access rather than the method of accessing that content. For the first time, the access medium was becoming just a matter of convenience where only the cost of access mattered to the end user. This wasn’t just consumer led. In the enterprise world, the desire to access email (content) gave birth to Blackberry and business users even carrying around a second device.

    Mobile was protected from this phenomenon to a certain extent because it was able to levy a premium in its pricing for the convenience of mobility. It also had managed the device distribution very well in most markets so that the customer saw their mobile service provider as the place to get the latest device – often heavily subsidised in exchange for longer term contracts. The handset device itself, being far superior to anything being offered by the wireline operators, meant it became the phone of choice for making calls for many people, even when the desk phone was at hand. Even something as simple as the mobile phone book was responsible for calls being originated on the mobile device rather than on the desk top phone or the home phone. Mobile also offered the advantage of the ‘one number’ meaning users could be reached anywhere, anytime on their mobile phone. The big switch-over from fixed to mobile was well underway. A new generation were emerging who saw no need at all for having a phone tied to the home. The mobile device met all of their needs.

    Mobile phone service providers also faced local competition from other licensed mobile operators – something that the traditional wireline carriers had been immune to for many years and consequently struggled with when new players arrived on their block. The competition kept the market fresh, leading to innovation unheard of in the old fixed world such as per minute billing, voice mail, international roaming, pre-payment, simple text messaging, free local calls and so on. Mobile was on the charge and the wireline carriers struggled to compete. The industry change was well and truly underway.

    MOBILE DATA ARRIVES BUT WHERE ARE THE SERVICES?
    The mobile phone industry saw the need to include the internet into the user offering. Although some early examples of doing this using GPRS (2.5G) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) were over hyped and underwhelmed the customer, the need to have internet access on the mobile device was now paramount in almost everything the mobile industry was doing. In a way WAP typified the Telco mentality and approach to services – this was a protocol which was marketed as a service! The need to get ever faster data access on mobile was the prime driver in all the standards work being undertaken in the newly formed 3GPP and was instrumental in the advent of W-CDMA as the chosen bearer for the new third generation for services. But here the first struggle began. What exactly were 3G services?

    Quote 2

    Where was the new revenue opportunity coming from? Where was the ROI for the necessary but huge investments being made in the new technology and the spectrum licenses?

    The drive for faster and better (and cheaper) access for mobile customers also made adoption of IP essential and was duly introduced into the standards work for the next generation of technology – no matter that MNOs had not yet figured out the new revenue models for 3G!

    IT WAS IP THAT CHANGED THINGS
    Mobile was to learn the same lesson that the wireline operators learnt. IP opens the door and lets in all sorts of new players and they bring with them fresh ideas and concepts that have universal appeal. They focus on the service and the product, not the technology and Telcos have always struggled with this. With the advent of IP mobile networks and smart sophisticated devices, the internet players were quick to see mobile as a very new and important access medium for their own services. The established internet players were already providing services that users wanted, so accessing them on the mobile device seemed a natural next step. The beauty for the internet service providers was that – just in the case of wireline internet – the customer paid for the access. Mobile network operators were now being caught in the same trap that had ensnared the wireline operators. Access was important for the customer – but not valued.

    The intrusion into the MNOs cosy world by the so called OTT players came as a shock. IP messaging services such as WhatsApp were killing SMS revenues and now voice apps such as Skype, Vonage and Viber threaten voice revenues. Increasingly the MNO is selling data only – in reality, access to other people’s services. Not a great position to be in. If we add to that the advent of ‘free’ WiFi hot spots and wireless routers in the home, users were becoming savvy in finding the cheapest access or even free access.

    TRULY, MNOs ARE AT A CROSSROADS
    Mobile Operators can see the changing dynamics in the market place. We believe that they have five viable options open to them:

    1. Engage in active network sharing deals to improve market position and business performance through substantial reductions in operating costs
    2. Consolidation of MNOs in each market
    3. Changing the business model to become a very efficient mobile carrier and ditch all the thrills
    4. Diversify and buy wireline business to lessen dependency on mobile revenues and expand the services portfolio – in particular, include more relevant enterprise services
    5. Find a way to become part of the new value chain and not be the ‘dumb pipe’. This means buying the sort of content that customers will pay for or forming allegiances with content owners

    In our view, content is king and content is the ‘killer App’. So nothing new here then but we wonder if the MNOs have seen this reality? In the UK market, we have seen all five of the above strategies playing out. T-Mobile and Hutchinson 3 completed a 3G RAN share and created a new JV to own and operate the infrastructure, MBNL Ltd. Telefonica 02 UK and Vodafone responded by forming Cornerstone to create greater network efficiencies. T-Mobile and Orange then consolidated to form EE reducing the number of MNO competitors from five to four. Vodafone have bought the Cable & Wireless fixed line business (and continue to buy other wireline companies around Europe).

    Quote 3Vodafone have also struck deals to include Sky Sports, Spotify and Netflix in their 4G red deals, demonstrating that 4G alone doesn’t appeal to customers – it’s what you do with it that matters.

    CONSIDER OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UK MARKET
    BT, who got out of mobile when they sold their mobile arm 11 years ago, entered the recent 4G spectrum auctions in the UK with serious intent and paid £186.5m for new mobile spectrum. Before and after this, BT has spent £2bn on buying up sporting TV rights including £738m on a small part of the Premier League Football rights, £152m for rights to Aviva Premiership Rugby, and more significantly, out-bid the long standing holder of UEFA Champions League rights, BSkyB, forking out a whopping £897m. On top of this BT has also bought rights for tennis and BT also announced a distribution deal with the Eurosport channels, which will bring tennis, cycling and snooker coverage to its customers. Compare this to the spend on spectrum and one can see that BT is putting a much higher value on content than on access. They see that content matters.

    Quote4Liberty Global, the US Company that owns Time Warner and Viacom and is already a significant cable, broadband and MVNO player in Europe, bought Virgin Media for £15bn. BSkyB agreed a £211m takeover deal for broadband firm Easynet and followed that up by buying BE from 02 for £200m and then The Cloud to create 23,000 WiFi hot spots.

    This means the leading Broadband providers in the UK are:

    1. BT (PlusNet) 7,385,000
    2. Sky Broadband (BSkyB, O2, BE Broadband) 5,247,000
    3. Virgin Media 4,524,200
    4. TalkTalk (AOL, Tiscali, Pipex) 4,206,000
    5. EE (Orange and T-Mobile) 775,000
    Source ISP Review http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

    CONTENT IS SHAPING THE MARKET DYNAMICS
    Significantly, the four major Broadband providers are all ‘wireline’, all with content and three of the four are existing mobile service providers through MVNO relationships. All of this tells us that the telecoms market, both wireless and wireline, is reforming quickly and that content, along with the means of distribution, are the two fundamental planks of the emerging strategies.

    People will pay for the content they want to watch but the content owner needs to have the full range of delivery capabilities to get the content to as many customers, in as many places, at all times and on all devices. This is where the battle is now being fought and how this plays out in the next few years will shape the future telecoms market for the next decade.

    THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING FROM MVNOs
    We are now seeing the ‘third wave’ of MVNO players. The first wave saw MVNOs positioning themselves as price leaders – they have mostly fallen by the wayside. The second wave were better at targeting segments, using their brand and/or channel distribution. Some of these have been successful, particularly those with excellent execution. The second wave of MVNOs have been able to get enough traction in the market place to force MNOs to start to view them differently. They realise that if an MVNO can sign up five million customers then the MNO better make sure that those customers are on their network! The second wave of MVNO still focus on voice and messaging as prime services. They do include data in their bundles buts its access only. The success of the larger second wave of MVNOs has also triggered a different approach from MNOs. They now see having a smaller number of large MVNOs as being strategically much better than the previous situation of a large number of small MVNOs. Consequently a ‘clear-out’ of small MVNOs began.

    THE THIRD WAVE OF MVNOs
    The next wave of MVNOs are content carriers. They bring a new dimension to the market place. They bring valuable content. Looking at this new wave of MVNOs gives us valuable insight into how the market will change in the coming years.

    Liberty, in buying Virgin Media, gains access to wireline and mobile methods of distribution (Virgin Mobile being a long standing MVNO in the UK). BT, already with substantial wireline and fibre distribution, has obtained 4G spectrum and changed its MVNO host from Vodafone to EE. BT is gearing up for re-entry into mobile but it will look totally different to the BT that exited the market 11 years ago. It will look to consolidate the enterprise space with a complete package of communication solutions for corporates through to SMEs but also attack the domestic and consumer market by leading with rich content. Sport to begin with, but it’s unlikely to end there. The early significant increase in BT Broadband customers off the back of the free BT sport promotion is testimony to the strength of this strategy.

    Sky have been active in pushing Sky Go out to their customers beyond the DTH (Direct to Home) channel and more and more, Sky customers access Sky content from their tablets and smartphones. So far, Sky have left it to their customers to figure out their own access but obviously The Cloud was part of the process of making it easier to access Sky content and – significantly – a lot cheaper than using up the data allowance on the mobile tariff plan. And therein lies the dilemma for the MNO; rich content gobbles up data resources. An HD feature film can easily consume 5GB of data. That’s most people’s monthly allowance gone in one viewing! The stresses on the MNO’s network resources – even with LTE, new spectrum and small cells, is going to be severe. The jury is still out on whether LTE can deliver the rich content and other data services at the right economics in a data hungry market. This in itself is another driver for mobile network operators to seek the economies of scale that network sharing brings.

    ALL ROADS LEAD TO CONTENT
    An analysis of the all of this tells us that people want content: Entertainment falls into content needs; people will pay for some it; they want it conveniently delivered wherever they are (at home, at the office and while they are out and about) and they want to view it on all their terminals and devices.

    Mobility is clearly part of this requirement but it is inconceivable that the MNOs of today can continue to charge for data at the rates we see in the market currently. 4G/LTE as a premium is a part dream. Customers expect that new technology means lower prices, not higher. There is little room for manoeuvre on price reductions given the high cost base of delivering data, even with network sharing and other radical solutions. Clearly the MNO needs to be part of the end-to-end content value delivery chain and that means finding a new commercial strategy which makes them relevant to the content owners. They have to be offering their mobile networks to the content owners but the conventional wholesale and MVO models just won’t wash any more. What worked (kind of) for voice and text just doesn’t do it in the new world of content driven business models.

    Quote5

    THE NEW EMERGING MODEL
    There is no longer sufficient perceived value in voice and text services to sustain MVNOs and beyond voice and messaging, their locker is empty. MNOs need to embrace a totally new philosophy and create new commercial frameworks for the new breed of MVNOs (and let’s stop calling them MVNOs now) or face a long slow decline. It’s unlikely that we will see mobile services delivered by service providers which look and feel anything like todays MNOs. The MNOs that adapt and adopt one of the strategies outlined above can succeed and prosper but with different looking business models (and probably lower margins) than have been used to in their commercial lives so far.

    So what will the landscape look like in the new world? Some of it we can see today: Messaging will continue to be dominated by the host of new providers, WhatsApp, Kakao, Snapchat, Facebook, iMessage, and more than likely a host of new messaging service providers as well. Most messaging Apps will be add-ons contained within bigger new media services where convenience and simplicity will be fundamental. Others will be differentiated in some way with some form of highly original user case or user segment. All will be free.

    Voice will follow this same route and even when VoLTE arrives and gains traction it will look much the same as the other VoIP Apps that beat them to market, such as Skype, Viber and Vonage. There will be a plethora of others as well, many embedded in Apps. And of course many of the IP Messaging Apps will have evolved to include voice as well. The pricing model will be very similar to the way OTT players have operated so far; free at point of use for the customer – for the vast majority of voice calls that they make. One can only help but feel that MNOs own voice offering, be it VoLTE or 3G/2G, will need to be free or included in all-you-can-eat tariff plans. We don’t hold up much hope for RCS making any difference to this changing-of-the guard. It’s too little, too late.

    CONTENT CALLS THE TUNE
    It is undoubtedly those who own and control content that will shape the new paradigm. As I said earlier, mobile networks are an important part of getting the content to the end user. However, as we learnt in the original structuring of the internet world, the carrier is a convenience to the content owner and as far as the content owner is concerned, the access provider needs to scratch a living in providing the access alone. One can discuss just how long this model is sustainable. Building and operating access networks, be they fibre or wireless, is an expensive occupation and the revenues need to come from somewhere to justify the continued investment in the carrier infrastructure. But this argument is not new and so far has had little impact on how the cake is divided up between content owner and content deliverer. From time to time we hear stories – or are these threats? – from Google and other internet kings that they will build their own super highway or launch balloons to provide direct access. One suspects that a deep look into the costs of these scare them away from taking the next steps. We can’t get away from the fact that providing access is capital intensive and expensive to operate.

    WHERE DO ACCESS PROVIDERS FIT INTO THE NEW WORLD?
    Access providers need to find the way of adding value in the delivery chain beyond being a dumb pipe. For example, if a customer wants to watch premium content on their mobile device and will pay £5 for this, could the carrier be paid a small percentage of this to deliver the film using Quality of Service guarantees to maximise the user experience? It’s obvious to us that universal access must not be allowed to get in the way of inevitable market drivers. Could content owners pay carriers to deliver ‘mobisodes’ to devices or perhaps to download films and other content overnight when networks are underutilised?

    Some of these options and perhaps others may come to bear and the carrier will see its place in the new value chain. The crucial point is that this will be determined by what the content owners want to do and not what the MNO wants to offer. This is the realty behind an inevitable restructuring of wholesale and MVNO commercial deals.

    Quote6

    THE SERVICE PROVIDERS OF THE FUTURE
    This then brings us to the crux of the matter. The need to redefine the relationship and commercial model between those who want to offer services and products to mobile users and the access providers who will deliver them. The days of the MVNO as we understand them today are numbered. They rely on re-selling (albeit through re-branding) voice and messaging to conventional mobile customers but as voice and messaging trends towards being free, so the revenue stream dries up. The new ‘MVNO’ emerges and they are the content holders with the rights to the distribution for the only product the customer will pay for directly – content. We highlighted three of the potential new Service Providers in the UK market previously. Call them quad players or as we like to call them Content and Universal Service Suppliers (CUSS). They will be calling the shots and bundling (today’s) mobile services into their portfolio. This is an inevitable and unavoidable outcome. This will not be done through today’s conventional MVNO commercial models. New commercial constructs are required which reflect the fact the mobile carrier is no longer irreplaceable. The content kings have marginalised them and they will need to play by the new rules set by them.

    CONTENT AND UNIVERSAL SERVICE SUPPLIERS (CUSS) 
    The new CUSS provides conventional communication needs for the vast majority of users. With Sky I buy content and get broadband for free. With BT, I buy BT sport and get broadband for free. The end result is the same in both cases. The customer hook is the content. Voice and messaging become commodities bundled into the core offerings of the package but the big difference being that the content players have the ability to still make charges for voice calls and messaging services even they may still appear to be a bolt-on or an add-in in pricing terms. Will MNOs be able to compete for what has traditionally been their core services? Not using the conventional way they do business today. They either need to follow BT into buying content, do the sort of deals we see Vodafone striking, or adjust to life as an efficient carrier and rescale their businesses to be profitable on the sort of margins that are the lot of Utilities.

    MNOs WILL NEED TO ADAPT
    CUSS players are set to reshape the market going forward. Not all today’s MNOs see this yet but the ones that react and adapt first will be best positioned to still be left standing when it all shakes out. There are many advantages awaiting MNOs in this new model. The revenues from direct retail alone will not give the sort of returns necessary to allow ongoing investment in LTE, LTE+, 5G, 6G and it goes on and on because advances in access technologies will always be happening.

    Allowing the new CUSS access to their networks is a good way to sell many more units of use, to expand greatly the number of addressable customers as well as the range of content and other services that customers are prepared to pay for. Re-establishing an upward cycle in revenues has to be the goal for today’s MNOs and CUSSs are a way to make that happen, not a competitive force to be discouraged.

  • Charles gets at OBE!

    The new year has started wonderfully for us at Azenby, with one of our very own, Charles Brookson, being awarded an OBE in the New Year honours list. Hearty congratulations to Charles from us all for this richly deserved recognition of a life-time’s dedication to making modern day telecommunications as safe and secure for users as possible.

    Those of you who know Charles (isn’t that everyone in the GSM world?) will know he is a very modest chap and he won’t ‘blow-his-own-trumpet’, so we will do it for him!

    Last year marked his 40th year in telecoms and he has certainly seen many changes. In the early days all the experts in the UK met in one very small room and nowadays there are thousands of busy security people. Yes, things have come a long way since Charles chaired his first GSM Security Group in 1987.

    He recently stood down as Chair of the GSM security group after 25 years continuous service. But no fear! He is chairing a new Standards Group called TC CYBER, a new ETSI committee to standardise Cyber Security in Europe.Photo 15-04-2013 05 45 15 PM

    To mark his 40th year, Charles is taking a well-earned sabbatical for the next few months, however, before he “powered off”, he sent us some interesting fodder that we wanted to share:

    In December he chaired a Panel on the Internet of Things in Doha, Qatar. This was at Telecom World, once a large exhibition based in Geneva and now an event that moves around the world offering a series of panels on the latest topics plus a large exhibition. He nominated the topic for his panel “The Internet of Things: Will it be our Panacea or Fuel our Paranoia?” Very typical of Charles this.

    “Internet of Things”, like “Cyber Security” has become a very difficult term to define – it has become an umbrella term for many different ideas, concepts, platforms and solutions. The panellists discussed issues such as privacy, Cybercrime and Cybersecurity and the hacking of devices. The majority of questions from the floor were around privacy and security.

    There was a great deal of discussion around minimising the risks, by being able to turn off some functions which are not required: After all, does playing a game necessarily require your precise geographical position? The conclusion of the session was that while we see some brilliant innovation in IoT, we must do the detail to make sure that the security risks are minimised.

    In December, Charles addressed the Security Standardisation Research Programme held at the Royal Holloway in London. He took the audience back to the GSM – the Public Key standards that he had been involved with creating – and he pointed out that at the time no one ever expected the impact of these Standards. How well they have stood the test of time and have been used by millions of customers all around the world. He also touched upon the political, business and legal issues around Standards creation. Is there too much fragmentation in security work? Not enough collaboration going on when it seems to be needed more than ever?

    Charles is very committed to encouraging new blood to create the next generation of security standards. The well-publicised cyber-attacks on Sony were a sobering reminder to us all that we are one-step behind the hackers and agents involved in industrial espionage, not to mention those seeking out the vast amount of private data about us that is held in servers. Keeping one-step ahead is proving to be a massive challenge for the industry and now more than ever we need to focus carefully on how we keep our telecom world secure. The new TC CYBER ETSI group certainly has its work cut out and we look forward to its output with Charles at the helm.

    Perhaps we need to recognise that we may never be able to stop illegal intrusion into our networks and systems. It’s time to rethink how we store and use data. Security is much more than prevention alone – it’s about thinking how big does “Big Data” need to be and the debate needs to move towards making hacking a futile exercise rather than thinking we can ever eliminate it.

  • Bill’s Best Awards!

    20 years is a long time. It’s certainly a long time in the short history of Mobile but that’s how many years the GSMA sponsored Global Mobile Awards have been running. The next edition of the awards, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next March will be the 20th running of this programme. From humble beginnings it is now firmly established as the premier programme for the mobile industry with the most coveted and prestigious awards.

    I have had the privilege of actint as the honorary chair of the judge’s panel for the last 8 years and have been involved in the awards since 2002. I have seen them grow and develop in to what they are today. The data supports my claim that these are THE mobile awards: Last year we saw over 700 entries from 57 countries around the world, our 35 different categories were reviewed by our 175 judges from 5 continents. Nearly 1000 people attended the awards ceremony, hosted by James Corden. He christened these awards the GloMos – it just might catch on! Winners came from Korea, US, UK, Japan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Israel, India, Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, Norway, Taiwan, Finland, UAE, Spain, Lebanon, and Botswana. Yes, this is truly the most far reaching and prestigious international awards programme for the wireless industry.

    celebs

    One of the features of the GloMos over the years has been the line-up of awards presenters who have all added a bit of sparkle and no shortage of humour to the awards ceremony.
    It’s very hard to pick a favourite but Stephen Fry showed he had a passion for all things technological and was probably the only industry outsider to turn up at MWC with more SIM cards in his pocket than any delegate. He was also outrageously funny.

    To me the real indicator of how important an awards programme really is comes from looking at just who has won awards over the years. I think the GMA has a fantastic record in spotting trends and success stories for the future but people say to me “that was an obvious winner, wasn’t it?” Of course looking back that may be so but at the time many of these were either unheard of, unproven or still in a fledgling state. Here are my personal favourites:

    1996: Chairman’s Award – Stephen Temple, DTI, UK – Author of the GSM Memorandum of Understanding
    We all owe Stephen a big debt!

    1997 Best GSM Service – Telecom Italia (Italy) for the successful introduction of the TIM prepay card.
    This really was the world’s first mass market pre-pay service.

    2005 – Best Infrastructure or Network Solution – Vanu, Inc. USA for Vanu Software Radio Base Station.
    This really was the major breakthrough in Software Defined networks.

    2007 Best Radio Access Product or Service – ip.access- femto3G.
    The beginning of small cells as a serious deployment option for carriers.

    2007 GSMA Chairman’s Award – Dr Mo Ibrahim, Chairman, Celtel.
    I think Mo is truly one of the truly great thinkers and innovators in our industry (and he used to be my boss so I have to say that!)

    2008 Best Mobile Money Service – Safaricom & Vodafone Group for M-PESA.
    The defacto Mobile Money service.

    2009 Best Mobile Music or Video Service – BBC for iPlayer on Mobile.
    Very Innovative and has stood the test of time.

    2010 Best Mobile Music Service – Deezer.
    Sing-along!

    2011 App of the Year: Rovio for Angry Birds.
    Addiction therapy required!

    2011 Best Mobile Broadband Technology – Ruckus Wireless for Ruckus Mobile Wi-Fi Gateway System.
    Proof that these awards are bold and brave.

    2013 Best Cloud Based Technology for Mobile – Jasper Wireless cloud-based connected devices platform for machine-to-machine (M2M) and consumer electronics.
    IoT started here!

    2013 Judges’ Choice – Best Overall Mobile App – Waze.
    Bought by Google for $1.1bn!

    And proof positive that the device world changes very quickly…

     

    Nokie 2110
    1996 Outstanding GSM Handset – Nokia 2110i

     

    1997: Best Technical Innovation - Nokia 900 Communicator
    1997: Best Technical Innovation – Nokia 900 Communicator

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    2006 Best 3G Handset - Motorola RAZR V3x
    2006 Best 3G Handset – Motorola RAZR V3x
    2006 Best GSM Handset - Nokia 8800
    2006 Best GSM Handset – Nokia 8800

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    So what has been my part in this phenomenal success? I help the GSMA team keep the categories fresh and up to date. Looking back at the changes in categories over the years alone is testimony to how fast our industry changes. My main role though is to help our panel of independent judges from all around the world to complete the judging process (nearly always done over Christmas and the New Year – so quite a task!) and help them with any questions they may have. A small cog in the large wheel of GMA. For me the main benefit is to be able to see and read all the entries. There is not a better way of staying in touch with what’s going on in our industry.

    What’s New for the 2015 awards? Well, 14 New Categories bring the total to a whopping 42! All the hot topics are included, Wearables, Retail, IoT, Vertical convergence, Apps, Cloud etc. Plus a dynamic new award for Young Mobile Innovator of the Year. And there’s the promise of an exciting, cool VIP Awards after Party to celebrate the 20th edition in some style. Should be fun.

    There is still plenty of time to enter the awards if you company thinks it’s sitting on a winner. Just visit the web site and see how easy it is to enter www.globalmobileawards.com.

  • The Mobile Empire – and my (very small) part in its creation

    Mobile services, or Cellular if you prefer, still seem very new, very vibrant, very today. The 1980s – when many of the first generation of commercial mobile networks were being launched – is still in our living memories. Well for most of us it is anyway. To say we have come a long way in a short space of time is an understatement. No industry, no product, no service, no appliance has seen growth and adoption rates to get anywhere near matching that of mobile.

    Today’s key statistics speak for themselves: over 3.5 billion unique mobile customers and a one trillion dollar industry. Not bad for starters and for most industry insiders we are still at the beginning, although perhaps the end of the beginning. A few years back Ericsson told us that they believed there would be 50 billion connections by 2020, which is a mind boggling number! If we buy into this vision of IoT then we are truly still in our mobile infancy.

    Mobile, along with the Web and Internet has changed the telecommunication landscape beyond recognition in the last 30 years. Indeed, between the two, they have revolutionised whole industry sectors and disrupted many more. At both a business and a personal level, so much of what we do today is related to our ability to be always connected and to be connected to the whole world.

    So maybe this is a good time for some reflection. Certainly the Science Museum in London think it is and have opened a stunning new exhibition called “Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World“. Naturally Cellular/Mobile and the Internet/Web figure prominently in this exhibition (for the curious, the other four being The Cable, The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast and The Constellation).

    I was honoured and privileged to be asked by the Science Museum to help them put together the story of early mobile in the UK. Now I will be the first to admit that my part in the creation of mobile was very small and very many others contributed so much more than I, but having lived through this period I was at least on hand to report first hand the events and the background to how cellular got a toe hold and then rapidly established itself as a major competitor to the wireline services of the day. My job, in these early days, was with one of the two licensed operators, Cellnet, to find suitable locations for radio base stations and then build them and install and commission the first generation of equipment. These were analogue TACS (Total Access Communication System) base stations and used – hard to believe today – cavity resonators which needed a set of spanners to tune for each single channel!

    We’ve come a long way for sure. Today’s LTE equipment  – which is many more times the capacity of these early base stations – would fit in a lap top. It’s also fascinating to see some of the mobile phones and devices we have used in the last 30 years. I remember well those that laughed at our original 10 year plan which ended with one million customers and those that said the technology will never work properly or scale to levels needed for a mass communication system. It’s a good job that there were reformers, trend setters and go-getters taking the view that we were on the brink of something new, something big and a real game changers. The early fight for network coverage and for customers is explained in the exhibition and the red corner is well represented as well.

    The period under review in the exhibition takes us through the creation of GSM, surely the most influential piece of standardisation work ever completed. GSM, from its early European foundations became the dominant global mobile communication system and its huge economy of scale formed the virtuous circle of lower (equipment and device) costs and ever higher customer demand. The mobile world never looked back and when umts – the third generation or 3G arrived – a truly global standard had been established. The rest is history, and being history it is appropriate that the Science Museum celebrate Mobile as one of the six networks that changed our lives.

    I was invited to the preview today ahead of the official opening by Her Majesty the Queen next week. It’s a fascinating and brilliantly put together exhibition. It’s easy to find oneself having spent the whole day there without realising it.

    At Azenby, all my colleagues have been involved in this historic voyage in one way or another. We pride ourselves in saying we have over 300 years’ experience and have ‘been there- done that’ and know mobile inside out. Looking around this exhibition though made me realise there is a lot more to Azenby than just that. We can look back with some pride and say ‘yes, we are amongst the pioneers of mobile’. And today, we still help bring about change, drive through transformation and help the mobile industry as it continues to explore new frontiers.

  • Our Chairman, Emin Gürdenli, is appointed to BT Equality of Access Board

    We are pleased to announce that our Chairman Emin Gürdenli has been appointed as an independent member of BT’s Equality of Access Board (EAB). Emin has commented “I am delighted to be joining the EAB and I look forward to contributing to its success in helping BT maintain compliance with its Undertakings to Ofcom”

    The EAB was created in November 2005, as a result of the Undertakings given by BT to Ofcom in September that year. It monitors, reports and advises on BT’s compliance with the Undertakings. In particular, it oversees the provision of certain products on an equivalent basis and the performance of Openreach against the Undertakings.

    The EAB has been widely recognised as performing a central role in the UK regulatory regime created in 2005, in what is now one of the most competitive telecommunications markets in the world.

    “The appointment of a new member reiterates BT’s continuing commitment to the Undertakings. Emin Gürdenli brings a wealth of experience of the telecommunications industry to the EAB, joining Edward Astle and Stephanie Liston as independent members of the board. I am delighted that he will be adding to the knowledge, ability and experience of the board. ” Phil Hodkinson, chairman of the EAB 

    Further details of the announcement can be seen at http://www.btplc.com/thegroup/ourcompany/theboard/boardcommittees/index.htm

  • Mobile World Congress finds a new role

    Being just one of the 80,000 visitors attending MWC this year reminds me just how much our industry continues to grow. Virginia Rometty (CEO, IBM) said this is an eco-system show not a mobile trade show. She is right; it has been heading this way for a few years now but this year it seemed to have finally made it.

    When Ford Motors turn up and launch the all new EcoSport the week before the Geneva Motor Show, you know something is changing in the way the other industries now look at mobile. Stephen T. Odell, President of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Ford Motor Company said this is a technology show and cars are a connected technology so we chose to launch the car at MWC.

    Of course there were some notable absentees from the gathering although Nokia did return. Google were absent and Apple continue to refrain from engaging. So, apart from those who can’t find their way out of Silicon Valley, there were 1750 exhibitors. Both the number of attendees and the number of exhibitors were new records for the show. MWC and CES are now the two primary industry tech shows. One could argue the only two that matter these days.

    Key Note speakers do draw crowds, journalists and analysts – which is important for the show. Not surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg had a pop star like following and crowds were queuing hours before the doors opened. It was a full house even with him being screened all around the congress village and – I am told – with 35,000 more watching live on the internet. For me he was disappointing, unable to tell us anything interesting and came across as being nervous, tense and hesitant – perhaps he is not so experienced at public speaking. In contrast, the following day Virginia Rometty really did show him how it’s done. A natural, engaging, enthusiastic speaker, with passion and full of belief. She told us about her game plan and her vision and although this didn’t surprise us, she at least was entertaining and passionate about it.

    It has been my privilege to be asked to act as Honorary Chair of the Judging Panel for the GSMA Global Mobile Awards for a few years now. We had 180 Judges this year.
    http://www.mobileworldlive.com/interview-bill-best-awards-chairman
    With nearly 700 entrants this year over 38 categories, these are undoubtedly the industry’s premier award programme. One of the side benefits of being the Chair, apart from meeting so many wonderful judges, is also to meet the star guest compare – this year James Colden (Smithy to Gavin and Stacey fans). It never fails to amaze me how many new jokes about using a mobile phone these guys can come up with.

    This was also the last GSMA gathering with our dear colleague and old friend, Charles Brookson attending as Chair of the Security group. Charles is the last link between the origins of GSM and today so it truly is the passing of an era. This was marked with a ceremony and reported on in show daily. A privilege for Anne Bouverot!

    Charles Presentation

    What was big at the show?

    MWC had no titled theme this year although the strapline was ‘Creating What’s Next’. It was up to us to go figure what we think is coming next but I’m sure we all came away with a different opinion on this. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of noise about Virtualisation, Big Data and the Internet of Things – phrases that can be made to mean just about anything you want them to! Of course Apps are everywhere and not just Applications but Apparatus as well. Despite the concentration of operating software the device world is still looking to have proprietary hardware whether they be wearables, consoles, big screens small screens or Xlets. Maybe we are entering the Apps2.0 era!

    On the low profile side of things I would definitely have to put RCS. Is it forgotten before it even arrives? The desire to make this the ubiquitous rich messaging platform for all the MNO customers to use world-wide seems to be dissipating. Have the MNOs thrown in the towel? I think vendors may think that. Two years ago there were plenty of vendors talking RCS, this year hardly any. Vendors quickly work out what MNOs are asking about and the almost disappearance of RCS from the stands tells me the world is moving on without RCS.

    Device launches returned to MWC this year. The GSMA have had an award for the last few years for the best new device seen at show and to be honest this has been a bit of a damp squib. But this year there was some hot competition. Leading the way, in terms of prestige anyway, was Samsung who launched the new Galaxy 5. We also saw the LG G Pro 2, Sony Xperia Z2 tablet, Samsung Gear Fit, HP Slate7 Voicetab and the Huawei MediaPad X1 unveiled. The winner by the way was the Samsung Gear Fit.

    I think Virginia Rometty had it right when she said this an eco-system show and mobile is now touching more and more industries in more and more different ways. The Connected City shows one bit of this but it’s only when one walks round the whole show that you realise this is now the Mobile Economy Show. And it also is a truly global show. So the mobile economy is global and getting bigger all the time. That has to be good news for all us working in it doesn’t it?