Category: Point of View

Usually, keynote speeches are a disappointment. But not today, Thursday 5th September. At the GSMA’s Mobile 360 Series in Brussels, the keynote speech delivered in the morning by Franco Bernabé was a scorcher. Mr Bernabé is the Chairman of the GSMA and Chairman and CEO of the Telecom Italia Group.

With Neelie Kroes herself, one of several Vice-Presidents of the European Commission, sitting barely 2 metres from him, he delivered a clear and articulate broadside to the esteemed commissioner. His message was that the balance between (i) finding the next Eurocent reduction in a retail or wholesale price-point and (ii) creating the right conditions for necessary investment in European mobile infrastructure was fundamentally flawed. And those flaws could be traced directly to the 2 news stories from earlier this week when Europe’s size on the mobile world stage declined markedly. First on Monday 2nd Sept, Vodafone cashed in its chips in Verizon and walked away from the US table; and then on Tuesday, Microsoft swallowed Nokia’s handset business. How the tables have turned! As recently as the mid-2000s, the US and possibly the rest of the world were all followers to Europe in mobile technology. But no more, as this week’s events underline.

How was Commissioner Kroes going to respond, we all wondered, for she was next up to speak. Would she bristle? Would she fight? Her opening words made it clear that even she was not sure what line to take for she said she was tempted to put her speech away and give a different one entirely. But she did not – a few short remarks, and then it was on with her prepared speech as if Mr Bernabé had said nothing. Her speech, however, included a passage on the importance of investing in 5G: We were leaders in 3G, we missed 4G, now let’s focus on 5G, she told the room.

“The elephant!” I thought. “She must acknowledge the elephant! It is not only clearly in the room but it has just thrown its trunk high in the air and trumpeted so loudly that it will have been heard across Europe.”

But Commissioner Kroes finished her speech, sat briefly and then slipped out quietly as if nothing had happened.

And for the rest of the day, no one else mentioned the elephant either. Many worthy speakers gave many impassioned presentations on many aspects of connected cities, or smart cities as they were also called. In all of them, there was unquestionably a role for mobile technology to play if the dream was to be realised. But the issue of the underlying conditions for inward investment being wrong…. It was never mentioned.

Never, that is, till the final keynote session at the end of the day. And that, my friends, was yet another scorcher.

What a day; an outstanding start and a blistering end. Shame about the middle – bit hard to stay awake sometimes.

So what happened in the final session?

It began tamely enough with Anne Bouverot, the Director-General of the GSMA, making a few non-controversial closing remarks. But then she was joined on the stage by Jon Fredrik Baksaas, the CEO and President of Telenor together with Christian Salbaing, the Deputy Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Europe. One of Commissioner Kroes trusted lieutenants, Anthony Whelan was due to be there as well, but some excuse about Brussels traffic was given and a vague hope that he would arrive before the end of the session.

With the EU Commission’s seat on the panel empty, Mr Barksaas quietly and with great authority did again exactly what Mr Bernabé had done in the morning: he pointed out the elephant. His message was clear: what I took from it was that however worthy everything talked about today may be, none of it was likely to happen if the conditions for investment did not improve. The focus, he said, is too much on pricing and not enough on the conditions to create the necessary return on investment. He drew the comparison between Europe and the US, saying that if Europe’s ratio of “capital investment to sales revenue” had been 15% as was typical in the US instead of the 8% it had been, then the situation in which Europe now finds itself, having gone from leader to laggard, would be very different.

His theme was then picked up by Mr Salbaing who made the point that it was not good enough to wait for 5G and just concede on 4G. As he said, “G’s” come around about once every 10 years so the next one is not likely to be here before 2022/23. That was too long to wait. Remedial action was required now.

And then along came Mr Whelan. His taxi had taken a wrong turn he said. Personally, I was expecting nothing. He had not heard the day’s events. He had not been present at either of the crucial keynote sessions. I was ready for platitudes and generalities to see out the last 20 minutes before I had to dash off for to catch the Eurostar back to London.

How wrong can you be!

Mr Whelan didn’t just acknowledge the existence of the elephant. He stared it in the eye and commanded it to be quiet. This was no mere Brussels flunky sent out to fill the last 20 minutes of an industry talking shop. This was a serious piece of controlled aggression handled masterfully by the unassuming Mr Whelan. Without flinching, he stood toe-to-toe with both Mr Salbaing and Mr Barksaas and traded arguments.

Commissioner Kroes department was preparing a major legislative initiative that was unlikely to be popular with the mobile industry. But the policy would be balanced, reflecting the right balance between the legitimate interests of the mobile investors and the interests of the EU citizens. There was a sweet spot, he said, where unit costs go down and operators will actually be able to increase their revenues, ARPUs and profits by reducing the unit prices they charge.

As for the elephant itself – specifically, data roaming rates – Mr Whelan likened this to crack cocaine. You don’t get off it in a day, he said. But there is no doubt that you have to get off it. It is dangerous for the industry as a whole. And if you are going to have to get off it, there is no doubt that it is better to get off it yourself rather than be forced off it by someone else.

All in all, a very interesting day – one that I am very pleased I stayed to the end of or I would have missed the fiery last session.

Whatever comes out in the Green paper, it certainly looks like it is going to cause fireworks to fly. And on this topic, Mr Salbaing had the last word. Good regulation is very important he said. But worryingly, this green paper feels like it is being rushed out because next year we are due to have a new EU Parliament and a new EU Commissioner. It is in no one’s interests to be held to ransom by the date of the next EU elections in April 2014. Have the courage, he said, if the regulation is being rushed and is not properly thought through, to stand back and say: it is too important that we get this right. Do not rush it out because of the April 2014 date.

July and August are important months for mobile operators – at least they are in the northern hemisphere. Important, not because people spend that time buying new mobile phones and the like, because they don’t. Instead they do something far more interesting: they go on holiday. And when they go on holiday, they take their mobiles with them.

As a result, the warm, smug glow of success permeates the quiet boardrooms of almost every mobile operator as ARPUs soar while the lazy summer months pass.
Consumers in Europe though have every reason to be mystified by what is going on. In the world of roaming, they really do not know whether they are living through the best of times or the worst of times.

On the optimistic side, they have been bombarded over recent weeks with messages telling them that the cost of roaming has been dramatically reduced by the benevolence of their service providers. They may even have seen similar announcements from one or other of the telecoms regulators, either at home or in Brussels, trumpeting the latest consumer benefit from the latest regulatory intervention.

But consumers are not fools – and they have long memories. On the negative side they have seen it all before: messages announcing price reductions have arrived in previous summers, followed by large unwelcome phone bills that land on their doorsteps some months later as the summer comes to an end. “You’re not going to fool me again this year,” they think. So in their thousands, they turn off data roaming, they buy local SIM cards, they scout around for free WiFi or any combination of these and other cost-saving techniques.

Which is it then: the best of times or the worst of times? After all, the Lions did humble the Wallabies, a Brit has won Wimbledon, the Tour de France is again claimed by the UK and England are currently dominating the Ashes – surely all things are possible. Perhaps this really is a good time to go roaming?

1st July 2013 saw the latest reduction of roaming charges across Europe. These reductions, forced onto operators by regulators, are part of a series of annual price reductions that have been going on for some years. Regulated retail data prices fell on 1st July 2013 by 40% per MB from €0.25 to €0.15. At the same time there have been more modest falls in the prices for inbound and outbound voice calls and for text messages. These price reductions are clearly good news, but consumers are right to be wary: the reductions are not really significant in the overall scheme of things. Using a phone abroad may cost less than it did last year, but it still costs a lot more than it does at home so the message remains the same: consumers who do not want a big bill when they get home should keep a tight and canny rein both on how and how much they use their mobile abroad.

1st of July 2014, however, may be a different story – but again consumers should not hope for too much. From that date more fundamental changes to the roaming regime are due to take effect. Specifically, citizens in the EEA (i.e. the 27 EU countries plus 3 other countries) will no longer have to get roaming services from the same operator that provides their domestic service. Instead, they will be able to get roaming services from an ARP (Alternative Roaming Provider) or by way of LBO (Local Break Out). Fundamentally, both ARPs and LBO are an attempt by regulators to break the monopoly that mobile service providers currently enjoy and open up the market to competitive forces. The question is though: will either ARPs or LBOs have the desired impact of driving down the market price for roaming to the same level as at home?

First, ARPs. It had been hoped that ARPs would do for roaming prices what MVNOs did for domestic prices. Evidence on the ground however, suggests that there are going to be few businesses, if any, that will set themselves up to be ARPs. If this is right, then clearly something has gone awry in the regulatory framework. In this context the finger looks to be pointing at 2 things: first, ARPs have not been given any rights to steer traffic onto any particular foreign network which leaves them at the mercy of whatever steering decisions the DSP (Domestic Service Provider) may choose to apply for its own purposes; and second the price at which the ARPs are able to buy roaming services for onward resale to consumers is too high for the ARP to be able to establish a viable business.

Second, LBOs. Here the news is better and it does look that LBOs will reach market and will have an impact. LBO’s can be thought of as the mobile equivalent of someone buying a WiFi package when they land in a holiday destination, but instead of buying access to WiFi, the consumer uses his or her credit card to buy access to one or other of the mobile networks in the vicinity. In theory, it may be the identical access on the identical network that the consumer would get via his or her DSP, but it is likely that the price will be dramatically lower, so much lower that it should be about the same price that the consumer would pay when using the mobile back home.

Make no mistake, the goal that the regulators are driving towards is one in which the citizens of Europe can roam freely across the member states with no appreciable roaming premium at all. Given that we Europeans are so used to losing our shirt and much else besides if we even look at our mobiles while on holiday, this may seem to be an unattainable goal. But it is not. In the US it happens already: US subscribers can roam across state boundaries without premiums, irrespective of whether or not they stay on the home network or roam onto another network. True, our American cousins pay more per month for their mobile service, but that sense of having been massively over-charged for a short call or a quick data session is something that they no longer experience. And if it can happen across the United States of America, it can happen across the Member States of Europe. There is no technology barrier here: it is a purely a pricing issue. In Europe, we are simply so conditioned to paying excessive roaming charges that we struggle to conceive of a world where they do not exist.

In all this though, one must not ignore the plight of the operators – because they are in a difficult situation. Whilst having to pay for new spectrum licenses, for LTE roll-out, for refreshes of old technologies and fund expensive new smartphones for customers, the operators are absorbing unprecedented pressure on their revenues. The pressure is from both regulators and market forces – both driving revenues down. Many think that the situation is unsustainable and that something will have to give because increased investment levels in the face of declining revenue is a toxic mix. But regardless of how difficult the plight, this roaming issue is entirely of the operators own making. It was they who chose to exploit roaming by way of super profits, totally disassociating the prices charged from the costs of supply. And it is that particular chicken that is now coming home to roost. One way or another the combined regulatory forces of Europe are going to drive excess profit levels out of roaming.

The correction is coming – it is only a question of how long it will take. July 2014 will be a significant milestone on that journey, but it seems likely that European roamers will continue to be exploited for 1-3 years beyond that point. It is unlikely to be the advent of ARPs that causes the correction. Certainly the annual roaming price reductions are not going to do anything other than reduce slightly the level of excess pricing. LBOs will have some impact but it will be limited. Perhaps it will be the latest initiative announced by Neelie Kroes that will bring down the curtain on this sorry chapter of excess pricing. One thing however is clear: it is not a question of “if”, merely of “when”.

Curiously, mobile operators will be better off in many ways once the correction has occurred. Until that has happened, their customers will continue to behave in a sophisticated way and will swap SIMs, bearers, apps and networks in order to avoid being exploited. In such a situation, true customer loyalty is impossible to build and at the same time, opportunities are created for new entrants to claim a valuable slice of the overall value chain. But once the price distortions have been eradicated, the operators can rebuild some of the loyalty and trust that they seem to be destroying with wilful abandon at present and can fight off the new entrants.

Meanwhile, what is a consumer to do? Well for me, it has to be a SIM card from a foreign operator when I go on holiday. The best package of data that my operator offers to me is £35 for 200 MB which is 17.5p/MB. Contrast that with the deal I can get in Germany on a SIM-only, Pay-as-you-go package – 3GB for €20 meaning the price is 0.67 Eurocents per MB. That is roughly 1/30 of the rate my operator offers. An alternative way of looking at it is that by swapping SIMs, €20 will get me a decent sized data bundle that would cost me £525 if I had got the same allowance from my home operator at its best rate. For me therefore, the decision is an easy one.

Many issues and questions do arise from the above, some of which are listed below. At Azenby we can help and would welcome the opportunity to discuss them further.
1. How ready are the European networks going to be for the new regime by the deadline of July 2014?
2. Is there any way that Non-European operators find a way to benefit from the changes going on in the European theatre?
3. What should a European operator do and what should it be aware of in relation to ARPs, LBO etc?
4. How do the changes in European roaming make things better or worse for OTT players?
5. Should a European operator embrace LBO services or not? And if so, what is the best way to do so?
6. What are the opportunities and risks for a potential ARP entrant?

In this blog, I thought I would try and look at the app developer community from the mobile operator perspective and bring out some thoughts, I gave a richer version of this as a lecture at The Mobile Academy in London, hosted by Mobile Monday London and UCL. It seemed to be appreciated and so here are some extracted points.

1. Think Scale

Firstly, think about the mobile operators, they are enormous companies but have you ever thought about the scale of them. For instance their networks cost billions literally to build and to fund, in the UK they spent more than 20 billion pounds on spectrum for their 3G networks, money which they have never got back in reality.

They have huge customer bases, have you ever done the maths to realise that with churn at 1.5 to 2% per month, then a big operator with 20,000,000+ customers like EE for instance can easily lose 4,000,000 customer a year and has to replace them just to stand still in terms of market share, and it costs several hundred pounds to acquire each customer.

So a company of this scale is not likely to be the most easy to talk to, certainly as a small developer, so my first thought is, make sure your apps use pretty well supported functions, if you rely on some new obscure network function that is only supported on one network its very unlikely that you can influence the deployment of the feature across all networks, so make sure you know the enablers you are using are widely available.

2. Think Climate

The other aspect of the mobile operators that is quite interesting and maybe not as apparent outside of their world is the climate that they are operating in. They have always been very competitive with each other for market share in particular. However they now feel that the regulatory framework is constraining their ability to earn the money they need to re-invest in the networks, for instance the constant erosion of the money that they receive for terminating calls. Similarly they feel it is almost immoral that they invest billions in networks, and then the over the top (OTT) players can exploit these networks at almost no cost and take their voice and messaging revenues. I guess it feels like a slightly one sided playing field. That’s why the price plans are changing from individual minute and message charging to large bundles and data charging.

3. Think Bandwidth

It’s worth looking at the technology that the mobile networks are built from as it can seriously impact the performance of applications.  Around 20 years ago the GSM system was specified and built mainly around Europe, it then spread worldwide. It came with no inherent data capability until the arrival of GPRS which is still in service today and is the most ubiquitous mobile data bearer that is available. It has a very limited throughput typically only 9kbits/s in many cases, and it can normally be usurped if a voice customer needs the channel for a call. Then there followed 3G and more lately 4G generations of technology. These all improve the data throughput into the Mbits/s range practically with 3G and its variants up to 10s of Mbits per second with 4G. Of course, all of these systems are shared and will slow down when more users access the same data bearer and it is shared between them. So be aware that in theory your app may have to work or at least do something sensible when it is on a data bearer ranging from 9kbites/s up to 25Mbits/s!!

4. Think Latency

There is another aspect to performance that is often ignored against the headline data rate, and that is latency. Again, this has improved significantly over the various generations of the mobile data bearers. Latency is really key to performance and on long latency systems like GPRS, the ping time can be several hundred milliseconds, compared to a few 10s of milliseconds on 4G. So if you can build a ‘non chatty’ app it will perform faster than one which uses multiple serial requests for data.

5. Think Roaming

It’s worth mentioning roaming in this context for two reasons, firstly it’s expensive today but getting cheaper so your app may have to evolve to acknowledge this. Secondly, even if the home network has rock solid 4G that goes like a rocket, when you roam you can end up on anything from GPRS at 9kbits/s upwards, so you really do need to think about how this manifests itself as a user experience, especially when roaming around Europe for instance is very affordable and customers use data as if they were at home.

6. Think SMS

SMS is interesting for a couple of aspects, firstly it’s a really easy way to monetise applications because the charging models are very mature (there are loads of aggregators around that will let you send and receive SMS), and flexible, and secondly it is ubiquitous. SMS is a strange product, it’s 20 years old, and has never been enhanced, where else can you see a 20 year old product where the owners of the product have not tried to enhance or replace it – a really strange behaviour by the operators that left the door wide open for OTT players like WhatsApp and iMessage.

One last thing with SMS, you need to be aware that in some areas of the world it is prone to attack by spoofing, faking, DOS and premium scams.

7. Think M2M / The Internet of Things

M2M is a fascinating part of the industry. It does appear that after a long and painful birth it really is growing now. You have to think differently about some M2M apps, for instance if it is a mass app with millions of terminals then all of the economics around terminal repair, and network loading are very different from those for a smartphone with human owner. Similarly the security aspects are different and have to be thought about very carefully, I have seen one project in particular where misuse of a SIM security feature caused mass failure in operation and wrote off all the savings that the project was supposed to deliver. So one thing to watch for is often M2M applications are about cost saving and so tend to run on tight margins, margins which it is easy to destroy with very simple mistakes. On the plus side there is a healthy ecosystem for M2M enablers developing, and over time it probably is the biggest growth opportunity in the industry.

8. Think Voice

Lastly I have to mention LTE and voice. This is actually a comedy of errors by the operators. On 2G and 3G the voice and messaging services were completely embedded into the radio system including specialised channel coding for their support. This means an OTT app will struggle in terms of performance using a 2G or 3G data bearer compared to the embedded service. Along comes 4G and for some reason that none of the operators can explain other than ‘we forgot’, voice is an add on layered on top of a QOS assured 4G pipe. So bizarrely the operators have no more of an advantage with voice than any other player, eg. Skype, Vonage, Viber and in fact since the operators have almost no experience of OTT  mobile VoIP they have played the best cards for one of their key services straight to the OTT industry.  Actually this probably means that the industry will change substantially in a way that will be quite unexpected …  but that’s an issue for another blog I think !!

After a two year absence, CTIA returned to Las Vegas – to the Sands Exhibition centre, a much smaller venue. In a way Vegas seems the ideal location for a wireless industry convention these days – should an MNO gamble on LTE, IMS and RCS or stick. I discovered (purely by being an observer at the gambling tables of course!) that sticking is just not a winning option.

I would have to say up front that the calibre of exhibitors this year was very disappointing. If CTIA sees its main competition as Mobile World Congress, then it is losing out badly in comparison. I couldn’t get round all the halls and see all the exhibitors at MWC this year – at CTIA I did the hall in half a day. Perhaps the calendar scheduling doesn’t help. It is too close to CES and MWC so it’s no surprise to see it shift to September for next year and combine with MobileCon (the mobile IT facing event). CTIA say it will create a ‘super’ wireless industry show. I won’t be holding my breath. CTIA still thinks the wireless industry in confined within the US borders. It lacks an international vision, agenda and speaker line up.

Maybe this was evident when one takes a look at who is here – and more crucially, who was not. None of the Tier 1s were to be seen in a way that would persuade the visitor that they were talking this convention seriously. None! The mobile ‘newbies’ like Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, MS, et al, all of whom had noticeable presence at MWC earlier in the year, were also absent here. Handset vendors? HTC yes (a sign of desperation maybe?) but Samsung, LG, Apple, Sony, RIM, Motorola, forget it. Dip into Tier 2 vendors; Acision, Mavinir, Comverse, Amdocs, and again no one anywhere to be seen.
The show seems to have adopted a policy of running a number of partner events specialising in a number of niches such as Co Location, small cell summit, M2M and the world of tablets. Perhaps this is how CTIA sees its future but for me it relegates into the minor league of conferences.

The exhibition hall was about the size of one of the new large halls at the new MWC venue and that’s it. It takes about one hour to walk it all. Compare that with MWCs 8 monster halls over 1.2km and you begin to get an idea on the difference in scale now between the two events. So who was exhibiting in the hall? There was a large retail area with vendors selling accessories such as cases, headsets, chargers etc. There were a lot of component suppliers but I can’t quite see what they achieve from being at the show and a lot of second SIM offerings and device distributors.

So in terms of the exhibition, nothing worthwhile at all. The keynote speaker line up is also pretty much second division stuff. So is it all worthwhile? Well, not if one hasn’t arranged a lot of meetings and the real value for the likes of Azenby is in who we can we meet there that it would be hard to get to at any other time or location.

There wasn’t too much in the way of notable announcements at the show. I think CES and MWC steal the lion’s share of major announcements and most of the device manufacturers now put on their own shoes for product launches.

Qualcomm said that mobile networks will need to carry 1,000 times more data in less than 10 years’ time and that only wide deployment of small cells could support this. (Might also need some more spectrum I think!) There will be 25 billion wireless connected devices and we will need eMBMS to offload data (where it gets off loaded to, they didn’t say).

Lots of talk amongst MNOs and carriers about the fight back against OTT ‘parasites’ (just as there was at MWC) but not much substance behind all the ranting. Some said MNOs will always be in the value chain because they issue phone numbers – but don’t bank on that being the case forever (I say) – others said we ‘control’ the device market (by that I think they mean that they subsidise it (hardly sustainable!) – and others said we can develop our own, better, OTT Apps. I think it is becoming harder to find an MNO with a grasp of the impending market changes and a coherent forward strategy.
Interestingly OTT players seemed more consolatory towards MNOs. Typical of this was Harri Koponen COO at Rovio who said ‘we see operators as friends and partners. Of course ‘Arri is ex CEO of Telia Sonera so perhaps is not totally representative of the wider OTT market but there was a wider held view that OTT players need to avoid outright hostility from MNOs.

This show is not jammed full of major announcements or much else in the way of breaking news. As I mentioned the exhibition was poor form a new technology perspective. So what’s the value in this show? It seems to me that it is not unlike MWC. It’s all about the networking and the meetings. There were a lot of companies here with private meeting rooms only who didn’t even bother with putting up a stand. A growing trend I feel.

So, can CTIA re-invent itself? After 28 years it has lost its way for sure. I am sure that it still grasps mobile in an international industry and there is more to life than lobbying the FCC on behalf of US carriers. Touch and go whether we return to CTIA next year but it is going to take something special to make us want to return.

Our Charles Brookson, with his 26 years of experience as Head of GSMA Security Group was invited to take part in a panel discussion at Mobile Monday London, which I help to organise.   The topic was “BYOD: A Faustian Pact?” and it was chaired by David Rogers, of Copper Horse (a good friend of Azenby’s).

Joining Charles on the panel were experts from Telefonica, Blackberry and Mubaloo and between them they represented a wide range of views on BYOD, around security, standardisation, usability and functionality.

Charles’ position is clear – “it certainly is a pact with the devil: for all the opportunities of bringing your new, shiny devices come a lot of security risks.”  However, the positive side is also clear (in an ideal world) with cost advantages through increased productivity, flexibility and convenience for staff.

Perhaps the best thing to do is accept that it is happening and try to bring in policies that protect the organisation through employee education – but there are lots of areas that need thinking through:

* How, as an organisation can you make sure that confidential data is not compromised?
* What about the dangers that Bluetooth, the camera and tethering bring?
* Are company policies effective? (think about prohibiting special websites vs configuring firewalls instead)
* The whole basis of the working day is being challenged…is it better to allow employees to work when, where and how the tasks require or switch off the email servers at the end of every working day? What about work/life balance?
* Do people really know the impacts of having certain settings on or off and what the consequences are?  Thus the options of dual SIM, embedded SIM and Soft-Sim solutions are raised – with switchable profiles…

To hear a full recording of what happened, you can listen here at The Fonecast, courtesy of Mark Bridge.

Charles showed me a demo yesterday, where he hovered an NFC device near to his smartphone, which pushed his browser to a webpage – that is how easy it is – imagine that this was a poisoned webpage.  Some of the group gasped when they realised that this could happen to them if they had the setting switched on.  More gasps when he told the audience that Angry Birds on Android reads the last number you have dialled – the information is going to them.  How many people have bluetooth on?  As shown by some of the audience responses – Charles points out that most people are not aware of these sorts of security risks. Are you?

I have just renewed my gas central heating support contract at a higher price even though for the umpteenth year running I had no need to use it. Of course we must have support in place for the fear that it will fail on the one cold night a year that an elderly relative is staying!

We feel that same way about engineering support contracts and having been both sides of the fence – as a customer and vendor, I can put both sides to you:

To the vendor, the cost of support is a certainty; it is baked into the sales and bonus target at the financial year’s outset. It is a very profitable annuity (a Golden Goose) stemming from the past year’s equipment sales efforts, it inevitably will be renewed.

For the operations team, last year’s support cost for key network elements is a foundation stone for their cost budget, (a Sacred Cow), in times of financial stress other items have to be cut first.

This does not have to be the case, all operations teams should target support contracts for continuous cost reduction in real and per network element terms. Are the contracts required? Is the response acceptable? Is the scope of service too broad?

Take a tough stance with your vendors, despite their threats to withdraw support unless the established fees are paid. My experience is that it only takes two calls to get the support action required, one to the support centre, if that fails, the second to their CEO.  In 2013 I implore you not to just renew contracts like I did for the central heating, step back and see what value if any has been delivered, cast aside the traditional “x%” of cost calculations and set an ambitious target for cost reduction and delivery.

This year Mobile World Congress saw the 18th running of the Global Mobile Awards. These are the mobile industries very own ‘Oscars’ or we like to think of them as that. Are they the premier mobile industry awards? There are some impressive stats to back up this claim. 37 categories, 600 entries, 150 independent judges, global spread and coveted prize. The prize is indeed coveted. How do I know this? I see – and sometimes hear – the disappointment from those that don’t win! Oh yes, people care about these awards!

Before I go on, you can see my interview all about the awards with Mobile World Live TV here. I had over 100 texts when this went out from people that saw me on the big screens!

It has been my honour and privilege to act as Chair of the judging panel for the last six years. During this time we have evolved the awards to reflect the vast and ever-spreading nature of the mobile industry. This means adding new categories – dropping some along the way – and of course finding new judges. I cannot claim to do this all on my own. The GSMA and their agencies have an impressive team working on the awards for the previous six months to deliver the highly polished programme we saw again this year. But the GSMA is very keen to ensure that these awards are independent of the GSMA itself. Therefore is does not involve itself in the judging or the selection of judges. This insures the independence of the awards and one of my jobs as Chairman of the Judges is to make sure that the awards are conducting with the highest integrity and remain fully independent of any outside influence. The winners are picked by the judges and the judges alone.

Another thing that has happened over the last few years is that the awards ceremony itself has moved from a black tie evening event to a more open house ceremony now held as part of MWC in the main auditorium. I have mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand it is now accessible to far more people but on the other hand the celebration party is very different now!

I mentioned our 150 judges before and let me say a few more words about them. They come from all over the world, from many different industries, from varying backgrounds and they all give up their time to read and study every entry before awarding marks and selecting the winners. I think we can safely say that this is a very impressive selection of judges. One of the great pleasures of chairing the judging panel is having the opportunity to meet so many knowledgeable people.

The awards ceremony itself is always hosted by an international celebrity. This year it was David Walliams, last year Tim Minchin and previously we have been equally richly entertained by Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry, Michael McIntyre and Clive Anderson to name but a few. Hey, this job has to have some perks!

The programme this year was the fullest it has ever been. The Connected Life category brought in many new industry sectors such as Health, Education, Automotive as well as established previous categories such as mobile finance and mobile money. We tried to have a ‘where does it all come together category’ we called Smart Cities. Other recent innovations has been the Best Mobile Device Launched at Mobile world Congress where our judges do some real time judging to hunt down the best new device unveiled at the show.

We have also created a very prestigious CTO panel of judges and this year we asked them to pick the overall best technology in the awards programme. Amongst our star studied CTO line up is Hugh Bradlow from Telstra – Hugh and I had the privilege of presenting the award this year to Samsung.

If you want see a full list of the winners and find out more about the Global Mobile Awards programme, go take a look at globalmobileawards.com. I hope this has sparked your interest in the awards and why not find a category that suits your business and make an entry next year. You never know we might just be meeting on stage next year!

Another Mobile World Congress is over, number thirteen, but not too unlucky for most. We had the new venue, a range of designer tin sheds, but at least there was plenty of space and no rain dodging between buildings, with moving stairways and escalators.

The Cybersecurity presentation was part of the UK Trade and Industry sessions, where I described the work of the Standards Institutions and the various World and European initiatives. I pointed out that although there was general agreement that it was about the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, nobody had yet agreed on how to spell Cybersecurity (or Cyber security or Cyber-security!).

So what did I find that was new? Well, I guess the messages for me was Data (using up all the capacity and stretching the networks), the rise of the Machine to Machine, the Connected City demonstration was well thought out and provoking, and Near Field Communications demonstrations were fun (I also beamed one Business Card, transferred two photos and got in and out quickly without the usual Photo Identity all with NFC). They all have security issues as well – so I will be busy!

The GSMA Android App was really great, a few bugs, but helped find and time talks and stands, let’s hope it stays for next year, it will make the experience almost truly paperless!

So I guess there was really nothing really new, a few more shiny things and some of the more significant announcements being held over: Like the one that the Samsung S4 would be shown at New York next month. Not forgetting the big players, who did not come to the party, but who also held biggest parties off in the City.

As usual, planning paid off – I had good set of meetings, met a lot of people I knew walking around and happily caught up on the gossip!  The usual fixed events happened – parties, whisky tasting and late nights. I gave a talk on Cybersecurity, only used one box of Business Cards, and Sonny Bear got his Silver Card.

As a former CTO of a major MNO, I have been going to the MWC for many years.. since its early days at Cannes.. and when it used to be known as the GSM Congress, in fact. It was something one did. Once a year, like pilgrimage, one just went. Your PA booked your flights and hotels for the following year almost as soon as you returned from the congress.

You know what? I’ve always had mixed feelings about it. On the plane back home, on the Thursday afternoon, I used to think, once again, that I didn’t quite get what I wanted out of the trip.

On the one hand, it was and still is great just being there. Without doubt, ‘the’ event of the year for the Mobile industry. One place, one time, where all players come together. An annual celebration of the success of Mobile – let’s not be modest here; Mobile has changed the lives of people – as well as a commercial trade fair where businesses talk to one another under one roof, quickly and efficiently. Well done, GSMA!

On the other hand, one’s schedule was predetermined. Your meetings had been planned. Your Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up by formal meetings with companies and people who you saw quite a few times during the year – people you did or might do business with … people who you saw several times outside of the conference, anyway.

So, you only had the Thursday morning to do something different.. when people are beginning to pack up and get ready to go home! OK, now you can see why I sat on the plane Thursday afternoon having mixed feelings.

For me, it will be different this year. Having stopped full-time, executive working last year, I am going to Barcelona as Chairman of Azenby, a specialist wireless advisory firm based in London and a guest of GSMA.. who have asked me to chair, to moderate a discussion panel on Emerging Network Business Models.

The session is, provocatively, called “Whose Network Is It”. You will know that this was not by accident, if you happen to know me and what I’ve been up to during the last 4-5 years. If you want to find out who is on my discussion panel and what they think about the future of our industry, watch this space. One thing is for sure. This will not be a techy session but a ‘business discussion’. It’s about re-shaping/evolving our industry. It will be a real discussion amongst 4-5 people with ideas, strategies, plans, and indeed, initiatives actually in action.

All in all, it will not be one of my usual trips to Barcelona this year. Watch this space.

I wonder how the new venue will work out?
This year we switch to a new venue in a remote and distant part of Barcelona not connected to the Metro. Not sure who had that idea but I bet he or she travels everywhere by taxi! I, like a lot of people, will be looking to see what Barcelona has done to earn its Mobile World Capital title. We haven’t seen too much evidence to date but it is still early days in the programme. Most people I talk to liked the old Fira once we got used to it. It does have a certain charm and lots of lovely and useful outdoor space to meet and chat with people and to just sit and think and have a quiet moment now and again. The palace on the hill and the fountain and the views across the city will all be missed as we stare at four square walls and compensate ourselves with the fact that we have more space for even more visitors! I’ll go with an open mind though and give it my best shot.

I look forward to being able to talk about the Global Mobile Awards Winners
I will have the pleasure of attending the Global Mobile Awards ceremony, now in their 18th year. I think we can safely say that they are the most prestigious and influential awards in our industry. As honorary Chair of the judging panel it has been my pleasure to oversee the judging process. Given that there are 37 categories this year and well over 150 judges in all, it has been quite a task. Loved every minute though!

Why Chief Technology Officers should come out of hiding!
During my time as a CTO I think I visited the show only once. Some of my team attended but overall probably only about five people from the whole company used to attend the show. I still find today attendance by CTOs to be patchy and most that I meet are there because they are speaking or are on a panel session. I find it interesting to analyse why this should be given that this is a technology show, nearly all the world’s main vendors and manufacturers are there and often announcing new products, and all that is new and bright in our industry is in one place for one week. Maybe it’s because the CTO is a ‘hunted’ animal at these types of show. I remember being stalked by no end of suppliers thrusting their business cards in my direction. I enjoy my current anonymity!
I think another reason is that a CTO can get any vendor to visit them at any time and would expect to be kept up to date on product road maps without having to go to trade show. All of this is true but the CTO does miss out by not coming to MWC. True the CTO can pick up the phone and any supplier will come running but it is what and who the CTO doesn’t know that he is missing out on and MWC is that once-a-year chance to go and discover it – perhaps from a vendor that would never ordinarily get to meet despite having called his or her PA 20 times.

What I am looking forward to
So I think I am all ready to go. Have worked out what I want to focus on – small cells and RAN sharing – have set up a lot of meets already and looking forward to the annual ‘bump’ – those people we only ever seem to bump into at MWC.