An SMS message! Who’s it from?
TELCO. (They can be anonymous for now.) Apparently they think I might be travelling to Europe, and therefore that I might want to know about their new roaming rates. Fair enough - that would be some of the contextual messaging stuff the people at Acision/ex-LogicaCMG Telco Products are always talking about, no?
Well, it would if I actually was travelling to Europe. Given that TELCO knows my phone has been in the same cell, near my home address, all day, you’d think they would have thought of this - strikes me that the trainload of phones zooming along the Channel Tunnel Rail Link every 30 minutes or so must show up quite impressively in TELCO’s switching centre as a lot of the same devices sending CC SETUP messages very quickly indeed.
They’re probably more likely to be heavy mobile users than the general population, too. Similarly, Heathrow Airport is full of people who certainly are travelling to Europe, as well as picocells deployed in the sprawling terminals..there’s surely an opportunity here to put some of the talk about advertising that “users will value” into effect, by targeting devices that have just turned up in those cells.
Today’s our “first blogiversary”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/06/welcome_to_the_telco_20_blog.html, so we thought we’d celebrate by pulling out a few of our gems from the last twelve months that you might have missed.
p=. !http://www.telco2.net/blog/images/birthday.jpg!
*Business models*
We’re proud of our consulting client work on designing new business models, but for obvious reasons you don’t get to read about that on the blog. Still, we’ve tried to share a bit about our methodology, such as “defining a process”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/05/the_telco_20_methodology_proce_2.html for business model design, and examples of how to go about “business model innovation”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/05/the_telco_20_methodology_busin.html.
We’ve also done some hypothetical case studies: designing a “blue ocean strategy” for an operator to “serve the urban poor”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/12/a_blue_ocean_strategy_for_tele.html, and building a “Telco 2.0 compliant MVNO”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/09/post_1.html.
We also look at some more theoretical concerns, such as how “networks of compatibility”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/11/post_3.html arise.
*Communications over content*
We made an “early foray”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/06/connectivity_it_aint_what_you.html into the opportunities for telcos to develop smarter personal communications services rather than being obsessed over media content sales. Continuing on this theme we’ve talked about how the “telephony experience can be improved”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/04/vonages_woes_and_better_teleph.html, as well as “rethinking the phone book”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/07/phone_book_20.html, and “the prospect of the personalised telephony experience”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/11/death_of_the_phone_company.html.
On the business side, rather than the product and user experience, we’ve covered “the real sources of value in SMS”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/02/sources_of_value_in_messaging.html, “our voice and messaging survey results”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/voice_messaging_survey_first_i.html, and “future business model for telephony”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/are_telcos_communications_comp.html
*Advertising*
Our Telco 2.0 market study on the “role of the network operator in advertising”:http://www.stlpartners.com/telco2-adfunded/index.php is a wealth of unique information on a hot growth area, but you’ll get a lot of the key ideas by reading our blog posts. You might want to start with an “introduction”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/telcos_in_advertising_value_ch_1.html to the key issues. We’ve published summaries of our “first”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/10/telco_20_event_adfunded_breako.html and “second”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/04/telco_20_event_advertising_wor_1.html advertising workshops at the last two Telco 2.0 events, as well as extracts from the “executive summary of the report”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/telco_20_report_exec_summary_t.html.
Delving into more detail, you can avoid doing any real work for the rest of today by learning about:
* Prospects on the “future for mobile advertising networks”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/mobile_ad_networks_are_a_stopg.html.
* “The need for scale”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/02/the_fragmented_world_of_online.html.
* “Dos and don’ts for operators”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/02/telco_strategies_for_success_i_1.html.
* “The value”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/advertising_opportunities_do_t.html of operator assets to advertisers.
*Platforms and partners*
Telcos desperately need to open up their services to partners and allow in a little fresh innovation. Taking a business perspective first, we jointly reviewed with Keith McMahon the “weaknesses of the Internet businesses”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/11/ten_things_to_hate_about_the_i.html, as well as the “nature of adjacent businesses”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/09/profiting_from_adjacent_busine.html enabled by platform, pipe and “identity”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/telcos_as_digital_identity_ena.html assets.
If you build a platform, remember to address “commercial”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/09/product_diversification.html needs as well as technical application integration. Finally, a strong strategy is nothing without “good execution and a great user experience”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/05/open_platforms_apis_are_not_en.html.
*Marketing and pricing*
When we’re not designing new business model and products our attention veers towards the sale of what’s already on the truck. So in that light, we’ve pondered what do “telco brands really stand for”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/12/what_do_telco_brands_stand_for.html, how to “price for abundance rather that scarcity”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/12/valuebased_pricing_vs_abundanc.html, and “how you might rethink Friends and Family”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/10/friends_and_family_20.html pricing plans.
*Business model map*
On of the highlights of our past year was the publication of our map of how valuable bits might be moved between users in different ways in the future. You might like to start with this “overview”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/06/the_telco_20_methodology.html before going into more depth with parts “one”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/02/our_telco_20_world_map_introdu.html, “two”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/the_telco_20_business_model_ma.html, “three”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/the_telco_20_business_model_ma_1.html and “four”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/03/the_telco_20_business_model_ma_2.html of the essay that describes what we now call the Data Transport Systems Map. We’ll be doing more research on this over the summer — follow the overview link for details.
*Networks*
Being telecom, we can’t ignore the networks themselves and network technology, so why not burden your browser with a few more tabs and windows:
* The “next generation of mobile networks”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/whats_the_business_vision_for.html.
* “Paris Metro Pricing”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/rethinking_qos_paris_metro_pri.html as an alternative form of quality of service.
* What you’d do if you were to build “PSTN 2.0”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/07/should_we_build_pstn_20.html.
*Industry comment*
Finally, we’ve picked on a few well-known names to write about, with a “retrospective of 3GSM”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/02/3gsm_2007_is_year_of_the_busin.html, “Microsoft’s telecom products”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2007/01/deconstructing_microsofts_telc.html, and “BT’s Telco 2.0 strategy”:http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/08/bt_as_telco_20_poster_child.html.
_If you’d like to meet the Telco 2.0 team in person, why not come to our next “Executive Brainstorm”:http://www.telco2.net/event/october2007/index.php in London on 16-18 October?_
We’ll be looking at the differences between things that succeed and then go obsolete, and the ones that hit the trees at the edge of the airfield. MMS, this means you. There’s also going to be peering, interconnection, and the pressing question of whether telecoms is going to be a for-profit activity in 2017, rather than a huge cost centre like a corporate IT department, a government agency, or Haiti with routers. And if it is still profitable, where it will be making money.
Remember, the Map says by then we’ll see “other” passing broadband, steamphone, and NGN added together. DTS is intended to answer the question of what the other will be. It’s traditional to say that the future might be X, Y, or “something we can’t imagine yet”; but it’s also trivial. It’s abundantly clear that the traditional telco model won’t be “it”, but there are also good reasons to imagine that classic ISPs are not “the future” (so many are morphing into sizable telcolike entities, after all). So what will the synthesis be?
