Those who follow Telco 2.0 (and come to our events) will know that we’ve been working with the World Economic Forum (WEF) on their ‘Re-thinking Personal Data’ project for the last two years, which is about how ‘personal data’ can be turned into a new class of economic asset. Here is a recent video we made recently to explain the opportunities in this space, with some more useful links below. We’ve also just published another video, Big Data: How Personal Clouds and ‘VRM’ will revolutionise Customer Relationships, by Doc Searls over on our research portal.

Continue reading "Big Data, Personal Data & Privacy: The Telco Opportunity" »

Posted at 2:27 PM | Link to this article

As a warm up to our EMEA Brainstorm in London next week here’s a link to a video of Telco 2.0’s CEO, Simon Torrance presenting at the ITU World event in Geneva last week on ‘Personal Data as a new class of Social and Economic Asset’ on a panel of ‘futurists’ looking at the Future of the Networked Society. Simon’s presentation is about 11 minutes into the session and there are charts accompanying the video.

The graphic below was created by artists at the show, trying to summarise the key themes.

Posted at 2:53 PM | Link to this article

We’re proud to announce details of our first invitation only APAC Executive Brainstorm in Singapore, in December 2011. Copied below is a press release from our partners, CSG International.

Kuala Lumpur - July 2011 - CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a global provider of software- and services-based business support solutions that help clients generate revenue and maximize customer relationships, today announced the company has partnered with STL Partners, founders of the Telco 2.0 Initiative and Digital Entertainment 2.0 Initiative, to bring the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm Series to the Asia Pacific region for the very first time.

Combining the success of the CSG’s (formerly Intec) APAC Executive Forum with the ‘executive brainstorming format’ that has become the hallmark of STL Partners events, the newly formed New Digital Economics & CSG APAC Executive Forum 2011 event will focus on the Telecommunications, Media and Technology sectors. This invitation only event will take place in Singapore at the end of 2011. To learn more please visit: newdigitaleconomics.com/events.

“The merged New Digital Economics & CSG APAC Exec Forum 2011 will give attendees the opportunity to not only hear about strategic content that matters to their business, particularly strategies that accelerate new growth opportunities, but the event will also allow attendees to brainstorm new approaches and ideas with their peers. Our unique collaboration with STL Partners ensures our audience of invitation only executives can walk away with actionable content to help accelerate business opportunities,” said Ian Watterson, Vice President and Managing Director (Asia Pacific) of CSG International. “By bringing together thought leaders from the telecommunications, media and technology sectors this event is sure to serve as a launch pad for the industry.”

“We’re delighted to be working with CSG International on this important event in this vibrant market region. Our Telco 2.0 research is proving increasingly popular in the APAC and we’re being asked more and more to help local operators embed its principles into their strategic planning. We’d been planning to launch our events programme in the region and so when CSG suggested we partner with their well-established and respected Exec Forum it made complete sense”, said Simon Torrance, CEO, STL Partners.

The two day event focuses on new growth opportunities and business model innovation and uses STL Partners unique ‘Mindshare’ interactive format. This combines cutting edge market analysis, case studies and use cases, round table discussions and interactive voting technology. It includes an Innovators Showcase to bring to life some of the concepts under discussion. CSG International will also host select thought leadership, operator, partner and analysts sessions. Telecom Asia is a key strategic partner to the event.

About CSG International

CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a market-leading business support solutions and services company serving the majority of the top 100 global communications service providers, including leaders in fixed, mobile and next-generation networks such as AT&T, Comcast, DISH Network, France Telecom, MasterCard, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Time Warner Cable, Vodafone, Vivo and Verizon. With over 25 years of experience and expertise in voice, video, data and content services, CSG International offers a broad portfolio of licensed and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based products and solutions that help clients compete more effectively, improve business operations and deliver a more impactful customer experience across a variety of touch points. For more information, visit our website at www.csgi.com.

About STL Partners

STL Partners is an international analyst and consulting firm focused on business model innovation at the intersection of the Telecoms, Media and Technology sectors. Based out of London, it manages the influential ‘Telco 2.0 Initiative’ which publishes research, and runs senior management events under the ‘New Digital Economics’ brand. Its clients are most of the major players in the market, and it collaborates with the World Economic Forum on macro industry issues.

Posted at 9:11 AM | Link to this article

Our free global online event is on, this afternoon at 3pm UK time/4pm CET/10am EST. Do join us for great presentations and interactive chat with a stellar line-up of speakers from around the industry including the following…

• Anne Bouverot - EVP Mobile Services, France Telecom Orange
• Carlos Domingo - CEO, Telefonica I&D
• Jose Valles - Director, BlueVia
• Anthony Rose - Co-Founder & CTO, tBone TV
• Chris Barraclough - Chief Strategist, Telco 2.0 Initiative
• Peter Kerchoff - VP Content & Media Partnering, Deutsche Telekom
• Valérie Layan - VP Wireless Solutions & Marketing EMEA, Alcatel-Lucent
• Simon Orme - Strategy Director Content Services, BT Wholesale

We’ll be covering Mobile Broadband, Cloud, Mobile Apps and Digital Entertainment - all 2.0 of course.

Posted at 1:01 PM | Link to this article

Minu’trade is a Brazilian startup that specialises in new ways of generating customer loyalty, responding to a market which saw a simultaneous boom in GSM and credit card penetration. Air Miles and other existing loyalty schemes weren’t relevant to the great majority of the new middle class customer base. So they invented their own, mobile-centric version.

Read about it here (pdf). Minu’trade will be presenting at tomorrow’s New Digital Economics EMEA Event in London.

Posted at 6:09 PM | Link to this article

We’re in Palo Alto preparing for tomorrow’s New Digital Economics 2.0 Brainstorm, so this week’s news review is somewhat abridged and themed on some of the major issues we’re covering. There’s also a seasonal round-up of some the better ‘April Fools’ spoofs we picked up on last week.

As the brouhaha about the AT&T-T-Mobile merger builds up, the UK’s open-access infrastructure provider crashes and takes out half-a-dozen smaller ISPs, Skype’s central infrastructure goes down, Vodafone appeases the shareholders by selling its SFR stake, we’ll be analysing key opportunities for industry growth at the 12th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm on the first day of our New Digital Economics event.

In our new Mobile Apps 2.0 session, we’ll be covering issues like the fight for control of Android’s future development, whether Windows Phone 7 really can take over Symbian’s market share, or whether that says more about analysts’ methodology or lack of it than it does about the market for mobile phones. We’ll wonder why the Symbian source repository just re-appeared and how anyone can expect to get away with suing all the app stores at once and what Google is up to joining the NFC Forum. And are they really making money from Android, or is it more of an anti-Apple virus?

As one of the US’s biggest online marketing companies leaks millions of records, we’ll be exploring the emerging ecosystem of Personal Data 2.0 with experts from the OpenID Foundation and the World Economic Forum.

In the Digital Entertainment 2.0 track, we’ll be covering the digital locker in detail as Amazon blows the issue wide open with its Cloud Drive product. We’ll discuss how Google and Facebook are competing and the lessons of MySpace’s decline

As Amazon Web Services creates more independent availability zones and blurs the definition of cloud computing by offering dedicated EC2 machines, we’ll also be covering the strategy implications of the cloud in depth.

And we might even have a laugh - here’s some fare from the April 1 news feeds: GMail Paper, the anticipatory web, Amazon $NAME, the Smurfs’ intellectual property lawsuit against Skype, hackers changing all the passwords that weren’t already “password” to “password”, and the definitive guide to London’s tech start-ups.

And finally, we’re glad to report that the stray sheep has been safely removed from the Telco 2.0 office.

Posted at 5:17 PM | Link to this article

The World Economic Forum’s new report on Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class is now available for download (PDF, 7.2MB). STL Partners/Telco 2.0 were one of a small group of organisations asked to contribute, along with MIT Media Lab, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Bain & Co, and frog design. A previous description of our work on it is here.

As a result at Mobile World Congress last month we were kindly invited to join the WEF’s ‘Global Agenda Council’ meeting at the Arts Hotel to discuss the Personal Data project in the context of their mHealth and mFinance initiatives. The other attendees at this meeting were the CEO’s from Bharti, Qualcomm, Juniper, Hutchison Whampoa, Alcatel-Lucent APAC, Saudi Telecom, Cisco Europe, Microsoft Europe; Hamadoun Toure from the ITU; Telefonica Group’s COO, EVP’s from AT&T, Telenor and Huawei, and representatives from The World Bank, the GSMA and the United Nations Foundation.

The good news is that the Personal Data topic that Telco 2.0 has been promoting for some time now is now starting to get the prominence it deserves.

Our upcoming ‘Personal Data 2.0’ Exec Brainstorms in Palo Alto (7 April) and London (13 May) will be used to drive the WEF thinking as well as deliver some tangible shorter term outputs to direct telcos’ strategies in this area.

Posted at 4:09 PM | Link to this article

The Mobile Apps 2.0 Agenda, designed for those at the cutting edge of developing, distributing and marketing apps, covers: Best-App Store Strategies and Business Models; Marketing, Merchandising and Monetising apps; and Future Mobile Industry Requirements; Connected TV’s; and Out Appling Apple.

Mobile Apps 2.0 is a dedicated stream at our New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorms in Palo Alto - April 5-6, London - May 11-12, Singapore - 22-23 June 2011), and a key focus for Telco 2.0’s Research Programme.

Here is the Mobile Apps 2.0 agenda in detail, covering our key hypotheses and questions for industry strategists, marketing, commercial and technical leaders developing or assessing strategies in the Mobile App ecosystem, and including details of the Mobile App 2.0 Executive Brainstorm sessions and planned research outputs in the Telco 2.0 Apps and Appstores research stream.

Introduction - The Explosive Growth of Apps

The Apple App Store has been a key component in the growth of the ‘mobile internet’ over the last two years. It has provided a single location for iPhone users to download, and developers and brands to distribute, applications and content. Since Apple set the benchmark, other players - device manufacturers (e.g. Nokia on mobile, Acer on the laptop), operators (e.g. Vodafone), industry bodies (e.g. WAC) and independent players (e.g. GetJar) - have all entered the mobile content and the app store market in earnest. Consumption and use of mobile content and mobile apps has continued to grow but, fortunes for individual app stores and different players in the ecosystem, have been mixed. Despite the odd blockbuster (think Angry Birds), few developers make much money from applications that are not developed for a fee (for example for a brand). Similarly, analysts are agreed that none of the independent app stores are making money.

At the same time, there is increasing emphasis on tablets and connected TVs as new sources of growth for applications with strong belief from many that there is a need for an integrated experience between the mobile, the tablet and the TV.

Recent Telco 2.0 Analysis in this area includes:

• BlueVia: Telefonica’s new global developer platform
• Apps & Appstores: Litmus Vs Apple Appstore
• Apple vs. Nokia: strategic lessons from the Smartphone / Appstore Wars
• Vodafone 360 on Android, iTunes: Now Getting it Right?
• Devices 2.0: ‘Beyond Smartphones’ - Innovation Strategies for Operators

Mobile Apps 2.0 Objectives

In the Mobile Apps 2.0 sessions at the H1 2011 Brainstorms, we will be exploring where areas of opportunity for CSPs exist, and how to create value with and from the mobile App ecosystem.

We will also be looking at the interaction between Apps and other elements of the Telco 2.0 agenda, notably developer communities, subscriber data, and Augmented Reality.

In addition, in our Apps and Appstore research programme, we will be analysing and benchmarking the most successful and innovative strategies, particularly among CSPs.

There are three Sessions in the morning of the Mobile Apps 2.0 stream:

• Session 1: Best App Store Strategies & Biz Models;
• Session 2: Marketing, Merchandising & Monetising Apps;
• Session 3: Industry Requirements for future success.

You can register now online by following the links in this article, or alternatively, please contact us on +44 (0) 207 247 5003 or email us at contact@telco2.net.

The rest of this article details the sessions and outlines our planned research outputs.

Continue reading "Mobile Apps 2.0 Agenda: Growing More Profitable and Sustainable Ecosystems" »

Posted at 7:17 AM | Link to this article

Google security expert Eric Sachs’s presentation at the Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live! virtual event throws a lot of light on some key Telco 2.0 issues, notably the ones we encountered in the World Economic Forum project our consultants have recently supported. We’ll be discussing this further at our Personal Data 2.0 event in Palo Alto on the 6th-7th April. This graphic, taken from the WEF project, shows something of the complexity of the issue - it illustrates Facebook’s privacy controls. This is when they’re trying to be less complicated…

Continue reading "Google - we need mobile OAuth and we want better voice" »

Posted at 1:51 PM | Link to this article

Our Best Practice Live! virtual event is due to go…live within an hour. We’re going to have some 30 video presentations from industry experts on the full range of issues Telco 2.0’s covered.
Sign up now - it’s absolutely free

Posted at 8:06 AM | Link to this article

If you read Monday’s Telco 2.0 News Review, you’ll know that the use and abuse of customer data is rapidly getting to be a more and more important and controversial issue. Ideas like “social commerce” and the technology of analysing enormous data sets combine to create both enormous opportunities and potential disasters. Facebook, for example, is trialling an advertising product which mixes advertising into content taken from user status updates and reinjects it on their friends’ pages as ads. Is this a great idea or an unusually egregious form of spam?

Telco 2.0 has been one of the analyst firms working on the World Economic Forum’s Rethinking Personal Data project for this year’s WEF meeting. We also recently issued a Analyst’s Note on the Personal Data Economy. We’re going to be discussing the issue and sharing some of the conclusions at our Best Practice Live! virtual event on Wednesday and Thursday this week - it’s free to register and join, and you can also find more in our Personal Data research stream.

Here’s a video interview with our CEO, Simon Torrance, about the WEF project:

Continue reading "WEF, AT&T, Google, Harvard: Personal Data 'hotting up'" »

Posted at 2:18 PM | Link to this article

Our readers, members, and clients have asked us to facilitate deeper collaboration around new business models with other industries who increasingly rely on telecoms infrastructure.

So this year we’ve launched ‘New Digital Economics’, a new programme of research, supported by executive brainstorms and developer forums run for the AMERICAS, (5-7 April 2011, Palo Alto, California), EMEA (10-12 May, London) and APAC (22-23 June, Singapore).

Each event looks at new growth opportunities at the intersection of telecoms, media and technology and incorporates 4 other events: Telco 2.0, Digital Entertainment 2.0, Mobile Apps 2.0 and Personal Data 2.0. Each event also includes a 200+ person developer forum and showcase, run in partnership with AppCircus.

An agenda overview is here. Contact us for more information

Posted at 8:28 AM | Link to this article