Key to many of the value-added services opportunities presented by the ‘two-sided’ telecoms business model, the presentations on customer data and privacy were some of the most inspiring and intriguing of those at the Telco 2.0 AMERICA Executive Brainstorm in Orlando in December and the EMEA Brainstorm in London in November. It is also the focus of the Privacy 2.0 Forum in February 2010. Below are videos and analysis of presentations on:

- whether Telcos could be the bankers of the information economy, by Marc Davis, Partner, Invention Arts and former Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Mobile

- the opportunity in the US and globally, and technical solutions for operators to give customers the ability to control and interact with their ‘digital self’, by Cody Bowman, Head of Business Solutions at Telco 2.0 Partners Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN)

- the four steps for operators to unlock the value of customer data, by Paul Magelli, Head of Subscriber Data Management, NSN

Telcos: the bankers of the information economy?

‘Personal data is hot’ said Marc Davis, Partner, Invention Arts, and former Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Mobile. Marc practices ‘invention by design’, identifying technological investment opportunities 5-7 years out and designing IP for them.

He drew the analogy that user data is the “broken currency of the information economy” and is not yet managed or traded like money. He said that the first companies to build the institutions for trading information currency will be ‘big winners’. Could this be a profitable role for telecoms operators?

No shortage of demand

Many commercial and government institutions want to access and use this data, and privacy is an increasing concern for customers. Telcos, along with internet companies and others such as financial services institutions, are contenders in this space. But do they have the right approach to succeed?

Continue reading "Customer Data and Privacy 2.0 - Telco Goldmine?" »

Posted at 11:04 AM | Link to this article

The value of Apps and Appstores was a hotly debated theme at both the Telco 2.0 AMERICA Executive Brainstorm in Orlando in December and the EMEA Brainstorm in London in November. Below are some videos from the events:

- The CEO of Getjar, the ‘World’s second largest Appstore’, presentation on who’s using what apps and why.

- VPs of Strategy from Amdocs Interactive present and discuss a ‘value framework’ and App strategy for telco operators, based on a comparison with the activities of Apple, Nokia and Google.

Who uses what Apps and Why?

Ilja Laures, CEO of Getjar, ‘the world’s second largest Appstore’ (60 million downloads per month), presented details of a recent global analysis into the behaviour of Getjar customers.

Some Highlights

An increasing number of Getjar’s 18-24 years old customers are switching from feature phone to smart phone, although usage and demographics differ quite widely by country.

The dominant reason that people use and shop for Apps is ‘to pass the time’. Shopping for Apps often takes more time than downloading, and ‘discovery’ is an important part of the entertainment. 40% of users download apps several times a week.

For this group of 15 million ‘early adopters’ browsing the phone for 20 minutes before going to sleep is not unusual, and 73% of Getjar app users use mobile internet much more than ‘desktop’ internet.

Continue reading "Appstores: Toys or Tools?" »

Posted at 11:40 AM | Link to this article

Cloud Computing was a popular topic at both the Telco 2.0 AMERICA Executive Brainstorm in December and the EMEA event in November, although the subject came with strong ‘hype alert!’ warnings. Below are videos of some of the stimulus presentations from the events:

- AT&T Business Solutions’ VP Strategy, Joe Weinman, on the role of telcos in Cloud Computing.

- Scott Stevens, VP Worldwide Technology at Juniper Networks, on the challenges of Building the ‘Responsive Cloud Network’ beyond the data centre.

- Joe Hogan, Openet’s CTO, on the dynamic real-time charging and capacity management that operators need to deliver a good cloud experience.

AT&T - the Critical Role of Telcos in Cloud Computing

Joe Weinman, VP, Strategy & Business Development, AT&T, shared his insights on ‘Cloudonomics’ - the economic and business rationale for Cloud Services:

Joe questioned the limited usefulness of the standard definition of the ‘cloud of internet services’ available via a browser, and explored the multiplicity of end products and mediums used to access ‘the cloud’.

In his presentation, he describes 38 ‘hard-nosed reasons’ for clients to use cloud services, and explored several use cases including flexibility to deal with peaks in demand. (This is described more fully in his Telco 2.0 interview here).

Here he argues that the critical role of telcos in cloud services is the delivery of the service via secure and capable network. He also argues that his company, at least, has a unique set of assets to deliver these services and has made significant investments to monetise the opportunity, emphasising the importance of optical transport to guarantee quality.

Continue reading "Cloud Computing: AT&T, Juniper and Openet on the Telco Opportunity" »

Posted at 9:22 PM | Link to this article

Telecoms innovation strategy was a big theme at the Telco 2.0 AMERICA Executive Brainstorm in Orlando in December. Below are some video interviews from the event:

- Sprint’s VP Corporate Strategy on reaching “Silicon Valley speed” innovation.
- Verizon Wireless’s Open Development Initiative (ODI), on accelerating the network’s ability to connect external devices.
- Ericsson’s vision for 2020.

Sprint - ‘Breaking Big Bell Dogma’

Russ McGuire, VP, Corporate Strategy, Sprint, says that changing innovation from ‘carrier speed’ to ‘Silicon Valley speed’ needs Telcos to break “Big Bell Dogma” by embracing open innovation processes.

Interview Summary:

A key challenge for telcos is to participate without slowing down innovation, which is as much a cultural as a technological challenge for telcos.

In terms of the big picture, Sprint sees the traditional one-sided model remaining essential in the near term (as indeed do we at Telco 2.0), but also an increasing role played by ‘two-sided’ business models to enable 3rd parties to create value for their customers via telecoms capabilities and/or the telecoms channel.

Russ describes a business model he calls ‘the carrier inside’: a wholesale provider entirely within other businesses’ propositions. He also suggests near term opportunities in voice such as supporting ‘at risk’ mothers-to-be with a push to talk phone directly connected to medical advisors.

Continue reading "Innovation Strategy: Sprint, Verizon ODI, and Ericsson's 2020 vision" »

Posted at 2:50 PM | Link to this article

[Ed: Help Telco 2.0 improve our service to you - take a brief survey.]

Media vs P2P vs Telcos: The Internet’s Civil War

At the 8th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in Orlando last week, Eric Klinker, CEO of Bittorrent.com, had some fascinating things to say about technical solutions to the interlocking intellectual property and bandwidth issues we’re constantly debating around online video. (He also remarked that the whole debate about P2P, piracy, and intellectual property had begun to remind him of the US Civil War - by 1863, it was clear that the South could never win, but the war went on anyway, and the majority of the casualties died pointlessly between then and 1865.)

He said that both the telecoms and media industries hated BitTorrent, but that this was in part a reflection of their own mutual distrust. BitTorrent was a very small company being ground between these two huge interest blocks. Despite that, it’s still global - the only country where there are no BitTorrent applications running is North Korea - BitTorrent.com has 66% of the market, and the monthly peak throughput of the BitTorrent network is 4 terabits per second.

Congestion, not Traffic, Drives Cost

ISPs tend to be concerned about BitTorrent because they see it as a bandwidth hog. Klinker pointed out that he had himself been an ISP engineer and that he therefore understood their concerns. He remarked that traffic was not, in fact, a driver of cost - congestion was.

Continue reading "BitTorrent's uTP: The Art of Getting Out Of The Way" »

Posted at 9:25 AM | Link to this article

Telco 2.0 is delighted to be working with GroupM, the parent company to WPP’s media agencies, with billings of $60billion.

Rupert Day, their COO, will be a panellist on the ‘Media 2.0’ session at our EMEA event next. We’ll be running an intimate workshop on ‘what’s wrong with mobile marketing and how to fix it’ with his colleagues from Joule and Mediacom on the morning of day three of the event. And we’re delighted to welcome Peter Tortorici, CEO of GroupM Entertainment Worldwide, to join the keynote speakers at Telco 2.0 AMERICA on 9-10 December in Orlando.

Here’s Peter’s biog:

One of the television industry’s most respected executives and involved with some of television’s biggest hit series, Peter Tortorici has served as president of two broadcast networks, taken one of them to “number one”, developed top-rated shows and created new business ventures for some of Hollywood’s most prolific studios and production companies.

Continue reading "GroupM execs at Telco 2.0" »

Posted at 8:28 PM | Link to this article

Telecom TV preview of upcoming Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm:

Posted at 7:50 PM | Link to this article

Below is a new ‘leaked’ iPhone commercial* that demonstrates the potential value of the subscriber data that runs through telco networks. You’ll notice that there are a few privacy issues, though…

At the upcoming Telco 2.0 ‘Executive Brainstorms’ (EMEA, 4-5 Nov, London and
AMERICA, 9-10 Dec, Orlando ) we’ll be debating in detail the topic of ‘Customer Data 2.0’, and sharing some quite amazing real-life examples of what you can do with customer data (within the boundaries of privacy) with those working at the bleeding edge.

• Thanks to our friend Gerd Leonhard for finding the ad…

Posted at 8:00 AM | Link to this article

As most readers will know we have our 7th and 8th Telco 2.0 ‘Executive Brainstorms’ coming up, both focused on new business models at the intersection of the telecom, media and tech sectors:
• EMEA: 7th Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm, 4-5 November, London
• AMERICA: 8th Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm, 9-10 December, Orlando
Both events comprise two days of very intensive, facilitated, interactive exploration of new strategic growth opportunities, for up to 250 invited senior execs. They are based on new business model research from the Telco 2.0 team and, this time, new ‘Use Cases’, as well as best practice case studies. Agenda:

Strategy & Finance 2.0 - Business Model Innovation & Shareholder Value; Customer Data 2.0 - Leveraging telcos’ most valuable asset ; Consumer Services 2.0 - Engaging with the ‘digital generation’ ; Mobile Money 2.0 - Strategies for Mature Markets ; Digital Advertising 2.0 - Services for ‘customer-centric marketing’ ; Mobile Broadband 2.0 - Dealing with capacity and coverage challenges ; Voice & Messaging 2.0 - Communications-Enabled Business Processes ; Video 2.0 - Digital Distribution in a ‘Pirate World’ ; M2M 2.0 - Mobile healthcare and Smart Grids ; Cloud Computing 2.0 - Telco Opportunities in Consumer and SME Markets ; APIs 2.0 - Models for monetisation.

Stimulus speakers: As well as the Telco 2.0 analysts, there will be c. 50 presenters and panellists per event, currently being specially briefed to stimulate the brainstorming with new insights, data, use cases and case studies.

Early-bird discounts expire 30 Sept…www.telco2.net/event

Posted at 5:04 PM | Link to this article

Telco 2.0 is delighted to announce that Nathan Richardson, Executive Producer for EVE Online at CCP Games, will be speaking at November’s EMEA Telco 2.0 event, to help us understand the ‘digital generation’.

EVE Online is one of the world’s biggest massively-multiplayer virtual worlds, a community which incorporates as many as 300,000 subscribers and 45,000 others on free trial accounts. Within its world, players organise themselves in alliances, guilds, and commercial corporations and compete to dominate the trade of the Universe, whilst of course looking out for space pirates, or perhaps dabbling in piracy themselves.

The game is implemented…

Continue reading "EVE Online comes to Telco 2.0" »

Posted at 1:09 PM | Link to this article

A lot of people are suffering travel bans, or just happen to be too busy at this moment to make it to the South of France on 6-7 May. We’ve therefore put together a ‘Distance Participation’ package for those who would like to keep at the cutting edge of business model innovation and access all the input and output from the brainstorm…but just can’t be there in person. The package covers:
* Access to all brainstorming output and post event report (60 odd pages)
* Access to the stimulus presentations
* Access to videos of the presentations
* A complimentary copy of a new Telco 2.0™ Research Report (value £1450)

It’s proving rather popular! Details here.

Posted at 6:29 PM | Link to this article

Having updated readers on Nokia’s point of view re ‘openness’ a few week’s ago (“…must fully embrace open-source…”), we had the opportunity to brief and speak with the other stimulus presenters for the Devices 2.0 session at the Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm in a few week’s time.

Yves Maitre, Global SVP of Devices (fixed and mobile) for Orange Group, described the burning question that needs to be debated: “How to be ‘open’ and create ‘value’ [increase profits]?” The borderline between destroying telco value and creating it is very narrow - we need a clearer understanding of options for the industry, he says. He believes that the ability to manage customer privacy and identity is the key to future business models. Building on our recent analysis he will present a short stimulus piece on the role of the device in enabling this, and how the home environment relates to the mobile environment.

Alberto Ciarniello, VP of Service Innovation at Telecom Italia and leader of the OMTP’s BONDI initiative, couldn’t agree more. He’ll be describing, via some new use case scenarios, the potential of BONDI standards to enable cross-platform (Android, MS, Symbian, etc, fixed as well as mobile) opportunities to manage end-user information securely and open up new ‘two-sided’ business model opportunities.

Building on this, Rainer Deutchmann, EVP of Mobile Internet at T-Mobile International, recognises the need to define effective parameters for an ‘open ecosystem’ business model.

Continue reading "Devices 2.0 - Orange, TI, T-Mobile in tune" »

Posted at 9:16 AM | Link to this article

We’re delighted to welcome Marc Davis, Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Connected Life, and ‘social media guru’ to the list of stimulus speakers at the next Telco 2.0 event in Nice on 6-7 May (more about him here). He’s been tempted over from the US by the promise of some high-octane business model brainstorming… and the allure of the Cote d’Azur in Spring.

Marc’s fellow panellists will be: Brian Shepherd, President of Amdocs Interactive, Rainer Deutschmann, EVP Mobile Internet at T-Mobile International, and Telco 2.0 Associate Norman Lewis, who’ll be sharing a new concept for engaging ‘digital natives’ called the Customer Participation Framework’.

In the meantime, Anssi Vanjoki, one of the 25 “most influential people on the web” according to Business Week, and EVP of New Markets at Nokia, will be joining us in the ‘Devices 2.0’ session which follows the one above. On an initial briefing call last week he said he wanted to stimulate a debate on ‘openness’.

His view in summary:

Continue reading "'Social media guru' and 'web leader' to stimulate 6th Telco 2.0 Exec Brainstorm, Nice, 6-7 May" »

Posted at 11:37 AM | Link to this article

The website for the next Telco 2.0 event is now up here. It’s based on output from the November event combined with input from our 2009 research programme (introduced here).

We’re delighted to welcome back Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, to stimulate the debate, along with other specially briefed senior execs. More details on the brainstorming focus to follow…

To cope with demand and maintain quality we’ve implemented an ‘application’ process for participation. This should help to make the brainstorming process even more productive. All previous Telco 2.0 alumni will receive a special invitation to participate in the next week. Event site here.

Posted at 9:18 PM | Link to this article

We’re delighted that the next Telco 2.0 event (our ‘world’ event) will be co-located with the TMForum’s Management World event. As such Telco 2.0 will take place on 6-7 May in Nice (South of France). It will follow a similar format to the November event (with a few new features), but will share a morning plenary with TMForum (2500 people).

Our research agenda for 2009 will inform the design and agenda of the event. In summary, we will be focusing on these areas:

Continue reading "Telco 2.0 World event - 6-7 May, Nice, France" »

Posted at 5:29 PM | Link to this article