We’re delighted to be signing up some excellent ‘stimulus speakers’ for the upcoming Telco 2.0 events in Los Angeles (27-28 October) and London (9-10 November). Here’s a sample:

· Steve McGaw, SVP Corporate Strategy, AT&T
· Georges Penalver, SEVP, Strategy & Development, Orange Group
· Olivier Baujard, Group CTO, Deutsche Telekom
· Albert Hitchcock, Group CIO, Vodafone
· Sean Williams, Managing Director Retail Strategy, BT
· Stephanie Comfort, Chief Strategy Officer, Qwest Communications
· Frank Boulben, CMO, LightSquared
· Von Wright, VP Consumer Marketing, AT&T Mobility
· Joan Fitzgerald, VP TV, Comscore
· Jennifer Byrne, Director, Business Devt, Verizon Wireless
· Stacey Schulman, SVP Ad Sales Research, Turner Entertainment
· Thomas Fellger, CEO, Iconmobile
· Anthony Rose, CTO, Project Canvas

Watch this space for more announcements…

Posted at 3:57 PM | Link to this article |

One of the questions we are most commonly asked by strategists is how Telco 2.0 business models can be deployed in the face of opposition from IT and other management divisions which claim the technology involved in servicing upstream customers will be too expensive, too disruptive and will take too long to implement. At the 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm held in London at the end of April, Infonova’s Andrew Thomson offered up one possible solution in a specially arranged session entitled, ‘Yes we can! Rapid implementation of Telco 2.0 Business Models.’

The session was created to look at moving from Telco 1.0 to 2.0 with minimum disruption to existing services and Andrew Thomson began by saying that upstream customers genuinely wanted to consume, bundle, and re-use telco services and assets. However, typically, telco IT departments struggled to deal with this, and even worse, telco management was loath to invest in changes to the billing platform. His

The Vital Importance of Multi-Tenancy
He introduced details of Infonova’s billing platform, specifically its ability to operate as a multi-tenant platform. Multi-tenancy, he explained, enables telco systems to accept upstream customers as operator-like entities, which could inject their own business rules into the system, use its development APIs, and run their product management independently. The whole system therefore adds up to a modular ‘order-to-cash’ platform that permits the operator to sell to many upstream customers, while the upstream customers themselves get a wide degree of control of their own order to cash cycle.

Telco 1.5 in 10 weeks
He cited cloud computing, logistics services, and a KPN-like multi-MVNO strategy as early use cases and also identified smart grid, e-health, and other utility services as major markets of the future. He argued that the Infonova system could deliver “Telco 1.5 in 10 weeks”, and had the advantage that the deployment of new tenant businesses could be repeated again and again without further software development on the side of the operator. This, he claimed, made the move to Telco 2.0 much more possible in the real world.

A video of Andrew’s presentation at Telco 2.0 is here.

Posted at 1:15 PM | Link to this article |

Developing strategies to optimize mobile broadband profitability is a major theme of Telco 2.0’s research and event agendas for the next 6 months. Competing with Facebook, collaborating with Hollywood, and better M2M strategies are also part of clarifying the roadmap to sustainable telecoms business models.
Below are previews of the agendas for our next two physical events, which complement our virtual event programme:

• 10th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm AMERICAS, 27-28 October, Los Angeles (PDF);
• 11th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm EMEA, 9-10 November, London (PDF).

(Regular readers will know that both events use our ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, and involve 200 invited senior execs from the Telecoms, Media and Technology sector. More information, please contact the Event Director: tom.davies@stlpartners.com or call +44 207 247 5003.)

The EMEA event agenda is here:

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 Agenda Update: Hottest Topics for H2 2010 " »

Posted at 5:11 PM | Link to this article |

This is an open invitation to our readers to join strategy leaders from around the world for Telco 2.0’s first ‘Best Practice Live!’ virtual (online) event being broadcast to 3 timezones on 28-30 June 2010. We’ve collected some of the best Telco 2.0 strategies, case studies and use cases from around the globe. You can register for FREE here.

As well as the Telco 2.0 analysts, leading industry speakers include:

• Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson
• Olivier Baujard, Group CTO, Deutsche Telekom
• Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, CEO, Dialog Group
• Sally Davis, CEO, BT Wholesale
• Prof. Sandy Pentland, Human Dynamics Lab, MIT
• JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist, BT Group
• William Hoffman, Associate Director, World Economic Forum
• Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO, Telus
• Joe Weinman, VP Strategy, AT&T Business Solutions
• Cenk Serdar, VP International Payments, Vodafone Group
• Roberto Saracco, Director Future Centre, Telecom Italia
• Marie Austenna, VP Strategy, Telenor Objects
• Chris Hitchens, VP Business Transformation, Oracle
• Armin Hessler, Head of Enterprise IT Strategy, Vodafone Group
• Rolf Assev, Chief Strategy Officer, Opera Software
• Marc Davis, Co-Founder, Invention Arts

Telco 2.0 ‘Best Practice Live!’ is part of a programme to curate and communicate a knowledge bank of the best case studies, use cases and strategies from across the globe, in key ‘Telco 2.0’ areas: Corporate Growth Strategy; Mobile Broadband Economics; Customer Experience & Service Innovation; Machine-to-Machine; Consumer Data/Identity Services; Voice & Messaging; Apps & AppStores; Mobile Advertising & Marketing; Online Video Distribution & Entertainment Services; Mobile Money; Cloud Computing.

It will be repeated quarterly with new content and the virtual exhibition will be udpated with the leading ‘Telco 2.0’ vendors. More information below:

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!' - New case studies, use cases and strategies FREE online" »

Posted at 3:50 PM | Link to this article |

This is a summary of the first half of the Enterprise 2.0 - New Opportunities in Wholesale and Enterprise Services session at the 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm

Executive Summary

The M2M session produced a buzz at the 9th Executive Brainstorm, held in London on the 28-29th of April. This was partly down to the excellent quality of the speakers and the subsequent panel discussion. However, there was also a strong belief that M2M’s time is finally coming and a determination to learn the lessons from the past and from elsewhere, more specifically, from the Internet.

The panellists (Phil Laidler, Telco 2.0 Director of Consulting; Ken Figueredo, Principal, Ventura; Marie Austenaa, VP Strategy & Products, Telenor Objects; Jonas Nordstrom, Head, M2M Business Development, Ericsson; Alan Beveridge, Director, Sales and Business Development, Jasper Wireless; Kevin Johnson, Director, Embedded Systems, Intel; David McNierney, VP, SAP) all demonstrated a clear understanding of the importance of M2M achieving future growth through facilitating innovation and of the challenges this line of business presents - notably extreme customer diversity, a mismatch between traditional product development processes and many markets, and certain key technical issues, such as power consumption and remote device management.

There was consensus on the need for horizontal platforms (albeit different visions of the how the ecosystems might work in practice) , a two-sided platform business model, and engagement with external innovators. Telenor presented an impressive new venture launched under a year ago - Telenor Objects - an M2M platform implemented as open-source software.

What we saw was not so much the Industry rethinking M2M, as the industry getting on with redoing M2M. Visionary concepts perhaps, but very practical steps too. Heady stuff indeed.

Continue reading "Enterprise 2.0 Session: Machine-to-machine - opening for business" »

Posted at 12:49 PM | Link to this article |

We’re delighted to report a superb list of participants for the 1st Hollywood-Telco industry-to-industry Executive Brainstorm, taking place on 5 May in Santa Monica (described before here) - see below. It’s an exclusive intensive brainstorm to look at new, global commercial models for collaboration between these industries.

There’s now an understanding from the major film, tv, advertising and gaming companies that they need help in protecting, distributing and monetising their product and that the telecoms industry has assets that could help them with this. In return, the telecoms industry is seeing that there’s an opportunity to open up a new ‘upstream’ market for them, rather than merely re-selling content.

It’s not often you get such a group from across the whole value chain in a room in such a way for such an important topic. There are a few places left, email us for details on costs and availability.

Confirmed Participants currently include:
Carlson Choi, VP Interactive Marketing, Activision; Dave Bailey, CEO, Aura Group; Curtis Beck, CEO, Bandito Bros; Carl Bressler, CEO, Basecamp; Huan Lee, VP, Break Media; Christian Briggs, CEO, Briggs Media; Mark Wilson-Dunn, Global Marketing Director, BT Media & Broadcast; Chris Rooke, EVP, CBS; Vickey Callen, VP Broadband Development, Century Link; Rick Karo, CEO, ComFlix; Todd, Barrish, VP, DBG; Chris Gunn, VP Branded Entertainment, Demand Media; Bill Jeffries, VP, Demand Media; Thomas Rambold, CEO, Dess; Thomas Curran, CTO, Group Products & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom; Albert Cheng, EVP Digital Media, Disney; Ron Geller, VP, Dolby; Jordan Hoffner, President Digital, Electus; Joerg Bachmaier, SVP/GM Americas, Endemol Worldwide; Jerry Kowal, SVP Digital Media, Endemol USA; Alan Edgett, Senior Director Advertising, Experian; Peter Levinsohn, President New Media & Digital Distribution, Fox Filmed Entertainment; Olivier Delfosse, Director Digital, Fremantle; Christian Grober, VP Fremantle; David Justin, CEO America, Global Cast (France Telecom); Steve Bradbury, VP, GOTV Networks; Peter Tortorici, CEO, GroupM Entertainment; Jonathan Aubry, Senior Director Branded Entertainment, Here Media; Thomas Fellger, CEO, IconMobile; Dave Martin, SVP Digital, Ignited; Frank Johnson, Independent Consultant; Rajan Samtani, Independent Consultant; Dave Goodrich, SVP Digital, IPG (Inter Public Group); Lori Schwartz, SVP, IPG (Inter Public Group); John Ferro EVP Distribution Lionsgate; Curt Marvis, President Digital, Lionsgate; Michael Karp, Independent Consultant; Krishnan Rajagopalan, VP, MPAA; Lee Coleman, SVP Business Devt, MTV; Stacey Negata, VP Strategy & Operations Digital Entertainment, NBC Universal; Jens Horstmann, VP, NCR; Eric Rodli, VP, Panavision; Chris Carey, EVP Worldwide Technology Strategy, Paramount; Ajay Dugar, Executive Director Digital Entertainment, Paramount; Barbary Brunner, CMO, PriceGrabber; Dave Hutchison, VP, Program Partners; Ken Papagan, President, Rentrak; Charlie Koones, CEO, Rockmore Media; Jeremy Butteriss, Senior Director, Broadband Entertainment, Rogers Communications; Kelly Perdew, CEO, Rotohog; Will Wynperle, Director, Shamrock; Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia; Michael Paull, EVP, Sony Music; Mitch Singer, CTO Sony Pictures Entertainment & President the DECE; Keith McMahon, Senior Analyst, Telco 2.0 Initiative; Simon Torrance, CEO, Telco 2.0 Initiative (event facilitator); Roberto Saracco, Director Future Center, Telecom Italia; Yotam Ben-Ami, Director Strategic Partnerships, Telefonica; Dino Corazza, Director IPTV, Telus; Don Buckley, EVP, Terry Hines & Associates; Jeff Maynard, SVP Post Production, The Weinstein Company; Scott Holmes, CEO, United Future.

Awaiting final delegation details from:

AT&T, BT, Cisco, Disney, MGM, MTV, Orange Group, Showtime, Sprint, TeliaSonera, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group, Warner Bros, and others…

Many thanks to our associates Mark Kapczynski and Thomas Rambold in helping us put this together… We’ll report back after the event.

Posted at 7:12 AM | Link to this article |

Our good friends at the The Emerging Communications Conference & Awards (eComm) are running the world’s first commercial event on ‘Augmented Reality’ on 21st April in San Francisco. This is probably the best place to go to get the inside track on this important new technology…

The rest of eComm (19-20 April) is also very strong and highly stimulating, as always. It focuses on What’s Next in Telecom, Mobile & Internet Communications. Registration and agenda details here.

eComm’s thinking is very complementary to Telco 2.0’s. If you can’t get to San Francisco our upcoming events are listed here.

Posted at 1:32 PM | Link to this article |

Telco2.0 has teamed up with Bercut, for a Telco2.0 Executive Summit in St Petersburg, Russia, on the 15th April. At this exclusive event, C-level attendees will have the opportunity to review and debate the latest thinking on 2-sided business models, including new Telco2.0 use cases on text-based local mobile search and ad-funded mobile information services.

Posted at 5:10 PM | Link to this article |

As our readers may be aware, Telco 2.0 is investing heavily in virtual events this year, to help disseminate understanding of business model innovation and share examples of best practice across the globe more quickly and in an engaging way. This complements our physical event activity. It’s a wonderful way of communicating and interacting with a mass audience, and great for generating new sales leads.

Our flagship virtual event is Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live! which is broadcast to three timezones on 28-30 June this year. We are also running a Smart Grids Virtual Event next week, part of the UN-supported Sustainability Virtual Summit. Both are free to view.

Below is a useful ‘telepresence-enabled’ virtual roundtable discussion with pioneers in this field describing how virtual events work and their benefits (Bruno Castejon and G2 Events are Telco 2.0’s exclusive partners for our virtual event programme):

More here

Posted at 10:12 AM | Link to this article |

We’re delighted to announce a very special brainstorm we’re running with senior execs from the major Film and TV studios in Santa Monica, California, and co-located with the excellent Digital Hollywood event. Details of the invitees and the aims are below (see also this PDF). The brainstorm is ‘invitation-only’, but if you’d like to apply to participate, please email us here.

[Ed - For those based in Europe, we are running a slightly less-exclusive ‘Digital Entertainment 2.0’ Summit on 29th April in London, as part of the 9th Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm. We will be sharing new ‘use cases’ there too.]

The 1st International ‘Digital Entertainment 2.0’ Executive Brainstorm - New Telecoms-Enabled Business Models for a Multi-Screen, HD/3D, Mobile World - 5th May 2010, Shutters Hotel, Santa Monica, California, 8.30am-5pm.

Based around a set of new ‘use cases’, the aim of the brainstorm is to define a set of strategic opportunities for the entertainment industry to grow its business worldwide by leveraging telco assets in new ways. Specifically, how to…

• Protect intellectual property
• Engage directly with billions of consumers via the mobile channel
• Increase the methods of monetisation for Film, TV and Gaming content

For Telcos, the aim is to define more creative ways to serve the global entertainment industry:

Continue reading "Hollywood/Telco 2.0 Brainstorm, 5th May, Santa Monica, California" »

Posted at 12:32 PM | Link to this article |

We introduced last month a new service from Telco 2.0: Best Practice Live! the first carefully curated, online, video based, interactive knowledge bank of cutting-edge ‘Telco 2.0’ services, business models and solutions.

This a very powerful marketing tool for companies who want to read 000’s of prospective customers worldwide in a very engaging way.

To help you understand the potential of this new service we have organised a free web-based demo on 23rd March 1.30pm GMT. If you’d like to take part please contact Tim Cook, tim.cook@stlpartners.com, to get your login details, or if you’d like a private demo.

Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live! will run on the 28-30 June 2010 with live broadcasts of case studies to three geographic regions (Americas, EMEA, APAC), as well as being available for six months afterwards online. Sponsors can contribute case studies, testimonials, data sheets and more in multiple formats that (includes video, powerpoint, PDF, more). Every time a download is made of your materials you get a report back of who and when, as well as getting access to the entire attendee list. This is measurable, trackable marketing at its best.

The sponsorship prospectus of Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live! is also now available upon request for interested parties - please contact Tim Cook, tim.cook@stlpartners.com.

Posted at 5:40 PM | Link to this article |

We are delighted to give our readers a preview here of Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live!

This is a new service from the Telco 2.0 Initiative (and partners), created in response to requests from our community. Telco 2.0 ‘Best Practice Live!’ provides what will be the first carefully curated, online, video-based, interactive knowledge bank of cutting-edge ‘Telco 2.0’ services, business models and solutions from around the world.

It opens on 28-30 June 2010 with live online broadcasts of case studies to three geographic regions, each incorporating interactive discussions and panels, and supported by a major online exhibition. All materials are available afterwards ‘on-demand’ and then updated every six months via a new live broadcast and exhibition.

Below are details of the objectives, rationale, participants and agenda. If you would like more details of how to get involved, please email us. A website will be available next week too.

Continue reading "Introducing Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!'" »

Posted at 11:31 AM | Link to this article |

If you’re interested in opportunities in Smart Grids, do log in to this global virtual event on 30th March to 1st April at this link. It’s free.

Details and agenda below:

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 Smart Grids Virtual Event: 30 March - 1 April" »

Posted at 11:00 AM | Link to this article |

The next Telco 2.0 EMEA Executive Brainstorm will take place on 28th-29th April at the Grange Hotel in London, with a pre workshop on ‘Core Telco 2.0 concepts’ on the afternoon of the 27th. Below is a detailed preview of the agenda for our readers. If you would like to book a place, please email us. Early-bird and alumni discounts are available now.

Event Objective

To move the Telco 2.0 debate on from the conceptual use cases shared at the 7th (EMEA) and 8th (AMERICAS) Executive Brainstorms to actionable next steps. Through a combination of sessions on trends and specific market opportunities that feature real examples of Telco 2.0 implementations, the audience will hear and participate in debates about how and where to start on the Telco 2.0 roadmap.

In April we will be looking at:

* Day One, 28th April: Telco 2.0 Roadmap - Strategic Issues for 2010-2011 (inc. Attracting Investment, Mobile Broadband Network Economics, M2M, Customer Data/Privacy, ‘Living with Google’)
* Day Two (parallel event 1), 29th April: Digital Entertainment 2.0 - Multi-Platform Distribution (inc. online video, TV 2.0, mobile app stores, devices)
* Day Two (parallel event 2), 29th April: Enterprise 2.0 - New Opportunities in Business Services and Wholesale (inc. Enterprise Voice, Advertising & Marketing, Healthcare, Financial Services, Carrier Services)

We will also run a half day afternoon pre-event workshop on 27th April on core Telco 2.0 principles and business model innovation frameworks for those new to our events, or in need of a refresher.

Participants

The detailed agenda is below:

Continue reading "Agenda Preview - 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm, 28-29 April, London" »

Posted at 12:29 PM | Link to this article |

Following from the success of the Cloud Computing sessions at the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorms, we’d recommend the Fifth Annual Parallels Summit to those looking to deepen their knowledge. It takes place on 22-24 February at the Fountainbleu Miami Beach Resort, Miami Beach, Florida. Parallels are offering free places (worth $3000) - see below.

Making money from, and best practices in, cloud services are the focus of the Summit, which aligns well with Telco 2.0’s agenda.

Please visit the Parallels Summit 2010 web site to learn more here or register now here.

More details on agenda, features and benefits below (from Parallels):

Continue reading "How to Profit from Cloud Computing?" »

Posted at 9:40 AM | Link to this article |

The 1st Privacy 2.0 International Summit that Telco 2.0 is running in collaboration with MIT and Nokia Siemens Networks in Boston next week is looking like being highly productive. It’s a gathering of 60 experts from North America and Europe with the objective of defining a strategic framework for the potential role of the telecoms industry as custodians of consumer data (described in more detail here).

We’re delighted to have the key people from Strategy, Public Policy, IT and Marketing functions representing the following organisations participating in the brainstorm: AT&T, Amex, Bank of America, CenturyLink, Comcast, DARPA, Federal Trade Commission, IBM, Microsoft, NokiaSiemensNetworks, Orange Group, Rogers, Sprint, Telefonica, Telenor, Telus, Verizon Business, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, WPP. They’ll be joined by some specialist innovators in this space, state Information Commissioners and the leading academics from MIT Media Lab, Harvard Berkman Center, and St.Galen and Goethe Universities.

Phil Laidler, Telco 2.0’s Director of Consulting, is currently preparing stimulus material for the event, building on output from the last Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorms. Below he covers some of the key issues on a video panel with TelecomTV broadcast last week called ‘Customer Data - who owns the clickstream?’:

Posted at 5:13 PM | Link to this article |

Is there a growth opportunity for telcos to act as ‘mediators of trust’ in the digital economy? To help consumers manage their ‘digital persona’ in a flexible and secure way, enabling them to benefit from better services while helping merchants and governments reduce costs?

The Telco 2.0 Initiative is delighted to be working with MIT Media Lab and Nokia Siemens Networks on the 1st Privacy 2.0 International Summit on 3-4 February 2010 in Boston, focused on unlocking the value of consumer data.

It’s a private invitation-only roundtable event for 60 representatives from global leadership organizations across telecommunications, technology, healthcare, finance, entertainment, academia and government.

We’ve been delighted by the response - the event is very timely, as effective business models for digital marketing, payments, healthcare and content distribution become even more pressing. We’ll share some of the input and output with readers of this blog over the next few months, and will be running tracks on this topic throughout our public events in 2010.

In the meantime, here is some more context:

Continue reading "1st Privacy 2.0 International Summit - Telcos as 'mediators of trust'?" »

Posted at 11:47 PM | Link to this article |