Jim Machi
Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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Full Story »A Big News Week for Spectrum Auctions - Germany's 4G Auction
April 15, 2010
The other day, I wrote about India's 3G wireless auction. Turns out Germany has started auctioning off spectrum that will likely be used for LTE-based networks. The bidders include E-Plus, Telefonica O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone. It will be interesting to see how much the government makes from licensing the spectrum but it is likely to be much less than the 3G auctions that occurred in 2000, as times are much different now - the internet bubble had not quite burst yet.
What will be the impact of LTE on the consumer? It's speed of the experience. I have written in the past about LTE being roughly 20 times faster than 3G. With 3G technology improving, assume LTE is roughly 10 times faster than the latest 3G technologies. 10 times faster will certainly improve the data and video utilization in mobile devices and will spur the advance of mobile value added services with these devices. We will see more and different kinds of video applications, and we will see more video usage.
What will be the impact of LTE on the consumer? It's speed of the experience. I have written in the past about LTE being roughly 20 times faster than 3G. With 3G technology improving, assume LTE is roughly 10 times faster than the latest 3G technologies. 10 times faster will certainly improve the data and video utilization in mobile devices and will spur the advance of mobile value added services with these devices. We will see more and different kinds of video applications, and we will see more video usage.
India's 3G Auction Finally Started
April 12, 2010
India is one of the largest mobile subscriber markets in the world, and on April 9th, bidding for the 3G slots started. Two slots are already been awarded to the government agencies MTNL and BSNL, with essentially 3 other slots available. Obviously, the emergence of 3G networks in India, which would be set to start on September 1st for these bidders, means infrastructure spending also has to follow to install the 3G networks. So there is a lot at stake here with regards to the bids and pricing as the winners will need to monetize their win over time. It will be interesting to see how they go about this, but obviously data and multimedia/video traffic and applications will be key parts. With huge subscriber growth per month in India, the 3G networks also will play a key role in simply having bandwidth available for subscriber growth. So the 2G networks will play a key role for some time, likely for the lower ARPU customer base. However, I'm also sure other kinds of business models will emerge in India.
In terms of this auction, it seems to me that the government sets the price, and bidders either OK it or reject it. And based on that, the price goes up or down. If you go to http://dot.gov.in you will see the state sponsored website. If you click on the "auction update" button, you will see a daily report for the different regions.
Above that, you'll see something called "Spectrum Auction" and then if you click on that, it takes you to some interesting information, such as the list of bidders. The bidders include Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Idea Cellar, Reliance Telecom, S Tel, Tata Teleservices Videocon and Vodafone.
In terms of this auction, it seems to me that the government sets the price, and bidders either OK it or reject it. And based on that, the price goes up or down. If you go to http://dot.gov.in you will see the state sponsored website. If you click on the "auction update" button, you will see a daily report for the different regions.
Above that, you'll see something called "Spectrum Auction" and then if you click on that, it takes you to some interesting information, such as the list of bidders. The bidders include Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Idea Cellar, Reliance Telecom, S Tel, Tata Teleservices Videocon and Vodafone.
The Rise of the Machines
April 8, 2010
This is my last blog about CTIA, at least for now. Outside of all the 3G/4G network noise and whose network is faster (I wonder when we will see 5G hype) and Android phones, the show had a good business rhythm.
Since Shaun White was on display at one side of the show floor and I didn't want to get caught up in that, I went to the other side of the show floor. And lo and behold I ran in the M2M (Machine to Machine) area. Given the Terminators are the ultimate in M2M communication, I thought they should have had a life-size Terminator there to counter Shaun!
Well, most of that part of the floor was more about asset tracking. I'm sure to those people it is uber interesting - even the pill container (like an aspirin container) tracker. And even dog tracking. Units on dogs talking to a unit tracker someplace so you can find Fido. The ultimate in machine to machine. But I also saw a company called WindTrac that had some cool M2M technology. Interestingly enough, they were not in this area but some other part of the show floor. They had a bullet-proof vest with a tracker on it - so if the vest was hit and the wearer went down, someone would know his/her location. Very cool. I don't know if they were going to sell any at CTIA, but they did say they go to law enforcement type tradeshows and sell them there. Good for them. I'm looking forward to seeing more and more M2M applications in the years to come.
Since Shaun White was on display at one side of the show floor and I didn't want to get caught up in that, I went to the other side of the show floor. And lo and behold I ran in the M2M (Machine to Machine) area. Given the Terminators are the ultimate in M2M communication, I thought they should have had a life-size Terminator there to counter Shaun!
Well, most of that part of the floor was more about asset tracking. I'm sure to those people it is uber interesting - even the pill container (like an aspirin container) tracker. And even dog tracking. Units on dogs talking to a unit tracker someplace so you can find Fido. The ultimate in machine to machine. But I also saw a company called WindTrac that had some cool M2M technology. Interestingly enough, they were not in this area but some other part of the show floor. They had a bullet-proof vest with a tracker on it - so if the vest was hit and the wearer went down, someone would know his/her location. Very cool. I don't know if they were going to sell any at CTIA, but they did say they go to law enforcement type tradeshows and sell them there. Good for them. I'm looking forward to seeing more and more M2M applications in the years to come.
Do Safe Driving and Vegas Go Together?
April 6, 2010
Luckily, yes, given the abundance of taxis out here. But even beyond that, the wireless industry is taking steps to ensure people don't text and drive, and Vegas was at the forefront of this during CTIA a couple of weeks ago. CTIA sponsored a "Safe Driving Pavilion" and since I figure I can always learn something, I went over there to check it out. While there were many little booths, I deduced two different types of schemes to keep drivers from texting and driving.
One type of scheme tries to decide if the texter is a driver or passenger by applying some kind of "rules." For instance, if there are a short number of characters and if the car is moving, it's probably a driver who's doing the texting. If so, the software refuses to send the text if it thinks you are texting and driving. Not exactly a hard science here! But if some company figures out the right kind of rules/formula that works pretty accurately, there might be a winner. I wonder if this will end up being just as dangerous as texting when cell phones start to fly out of car windows due to frustration. But seriously, this is a good initiative.
Another type of scheme understands you will text, but enables you to do it in a driver-friendly fashion. It uses speech-to-text and text-to-speech software to enable texting by speaking and vice-versa. This scheme is a "hands free assistant." Talking cars, at least high-end cars, are fairly commonplace so maybe this will work. I talked to a company called DIAL2DO. Using cloud computing, they have 25 phone numbers around the world that can do speech recognition. In order to do this, you would just call the number and any texts you receive as well as texts you want to send are converted to spoken word. Interesting, but if you have to call the number, will it all take too long? Will people have patience?
Anyway, good initiatives and I'm glad I took the walk over there.
One type of scheme tries to decide if the texter is a driver or passenger by applying some kind of "rules." For instance, if there are a short number of characters and if the car is moving, it's probably a driver who's doing the texting. If so, the software refuses to send the text if it thinks you are texting and driving. Not exactly a hard science here! But if some company figures out the right kind of rules/formula that works pretty accurately, there might be a winner. I wonder if this will end up being just as dangerous as texting when cell phones start to fly out of car windows due to frustration. But seriously, this is a good initiative.
Another type of scheme understands you will text, but enables you to do it in a driver-friendly fashion. It uses speech-to-text and text-to-speech software to enable texting by speaking and vice-versa. This scheme is a "hands free assistant." Talking cars, at least high-end cars, are fairly commonplace so maybe this will work. I talked to a company called DIAL2DO. Using cloud computing, they have 25 phone numbers around the world that can do speech recognition. In order to do this, you would just call the number and any texts you receive as well as texts you want to send are converted to spoken word. Interesting, but if you have to call the number, will it all take too long? Will people have patience?
Anyway, good initiatives and I'm glad I took the walk over there.
5G is Here!!
April 1, 2010Today is April Fool's Day, and I wanted to write my blog about the wonders of 5G. I was going to describe a 5G installation in Tibet and I was going to describe 100 gigabit/second speeds, how a bazillion gigabyte file downloaded in less than 5 seconds, and wireless backhaul from mountaintop to mountaintop.
The reason I picked Tibet was because when I was in my early 20's I remember reading a classic April Fool's article in Sports Illustrated about Sidd Finch, a pitcher for the New York Mets who could supposedly throw over 125 miles per hour, if not more. I was pysched but soon figured out this was an April Fool's joke! If I remember correctly, the Mets found Finch in Tibet.
The Little Graph That Could
March 30, 2010
On March 9th, Dialogic sponsored a TMC webinar titled, "The Year of HD." If you missed it, you can listen to the archive by going in and registering. During the webinar, the following question was asked: "What Statement about HD Voice do you agree with most?" While everyone on the call didn't vote, more than enough people voted to make this graph valid.
You can see the results in the graph above. I was surprised to see that 22% of voters said that HD Voice was "A feature that I would be willing to pay more for." I think the service providers would be interested in talking anyone who responded with this answer! As readers of my blog know, at some point during each day, I talk utilizing an HD Voice codec and the sound quality is noticeably better. But I still take the position that carriers that are not number 1 or 2 in their markets will take advantage of a feature like HD Voice to put pressure on the incumbents by offering it at the same plan rate as non-HD Voice. It will help these service providers drive subscribers up. So in that way, yes, it's "just another way for service providers to increase revenue" since they'll have more subscribers.
I also agree with the 60% statement saying, "a feature that should be standard by 2011." Maybe not everywhere in the world, but I expect that HD Voice will be deployed in various networks and that it will be a standard RFP reply in that timeframe. Dialogic certainly expects to be selling HD Voice enabled media servers and gateways in 2011.
As a follow-up to this webinar, Dialogic will also be hosting a 2nd HD Voice themed webinar on April 14th. While the first webinar was more of an overview, this upcoming webinar brings video into the HD Voice picture so as to paint a more interesting interactive communications experience. If you are interested, please register for this webinar.
You can see the results in the graph above. I was surprised to see that 22% of voters said that HD Voice was "A feature that I would be willing to pay more for." I think the service providers would be interested in talking anyone who responded with this answer! As readers of my blog know, at some point during each day, I talk utilizing an HD Voice codec and the sound quality is noticeably better. But I still take the position that carriers that are not number 1 or 2 in their markets will take advantage of a feature like HD Voice to put pressure on the incumbents by offering it at the same plan rate as non-HD Voice. It will help these service providers drive subscribers up. So in that way, yes, it's "just another way for service providers to increase revenue" since they'll have more subscribers.
I also agree with the 60% statement saying, "a feature that should be standard by 2011." Maybe not everywhere in the world, but I expect that HD Voice will be deployed in various networks and that it will be a standard RFP reply in that timeframe. Dialogic certainly expects to be selling HD Voice enabled media servers and gateways in 2011.
As a follow-up to this webinar, Dialogic will also be hosting a 2nd HD Voice themed webinar on April 14th. While the first webinar was more of an overview, this upcoming webinar brings video into the HD Voice picture so as to paint a more interesting interactive communications experience. If you are interested, please register for this webinar.
The Old OS Pangs, Only with Mobile Devices Now
March 25, 2010
In yesterday's blog about CTIA, I mentioned that the iPhone hysteria has disappeared. And that got me to thinking about the developers out there. With different Smartphone Operating Systems, what's a Smartphone developer to do? I remember back in my UNIX days when I'd talk to application vendors about porting to UNIX. They'd talk about whether to port to SCO Unix, AT&T Unix, or Solaris and since I was visiting, I'd state the case to port to the UNIX system that I was working for. Then one year I went in and they'd say only one UNIX, and then Windows NT. And then it was soon only Windows NT and maybe Linux. There were too many choices to make, and the developers needed to ride a horse. They saw the power of a standardized OS. That's when I knew it was time to leave and hence started my career at Dialogic.
But it gets me thinking about today. There are many choices today with Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Linux, Symbian and Blackberry. It seems to me that that's similar to what I described above, and some kind of consolidation will be occurring within 2 years. I don't predict what will happen, only that it seems to need to happen. I'll revisit this as some point in the future.
But it gets me thinking about today. There are many choices today with Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Linux, Symbian and Blackberry. It seems to me that that's similar to what I described above, and some kind of consolidation will be occurring within 2 years. I don't predict what will happen, only that it seems to need to happen. I'll revisit this as some point in the future.
March CTIA Madness and a Mobile Concierge
March 24, 2010
I find myself in the middle of NCAA Basketball March Madness in, of all places, Las Vegas. It turns out I'm leaving before the Sweet Sixteen starts and that's good. If not, I'm sure I'd find myself sitting in one of the betting rooms here, watching the games on TV.
I hear people talk about CTIA as if it's the America's version of Mobile World Congress. It sort of is, but it's not nearly as big in size. The whole ecosystem is here, from app developers to handset accessories to air conditioning for the Cos. One thing that is a bit different, beyond the size, is there is more talk about WiMax here. At Mobile World Congress, I didn't see too much about WiMax - it was as if LTE eclipsed it. But because of Sprint and Clearwire's support, WiMax (4G) has a bigger presence here. In fact, they announced additional market plans here at CTIA.
In between meetings, I had some time to walk the floor a bit. The DoCoMo booth was interesting to me - I saw some very high-def phones, "eye-ball controlled" phone earpieces, and some auto-GPS technology that allows what they call a mobile concierge to let you know what is going on and what you can do - all because of location-based services.
And clearly the iPhone hysteria is gone. A lot has happened in a year. Is the iPhone really unique anymore? Is AT&T the only one offering Smartphone services? No. There are other players such as Android out there now. And you can feel and see that as you walk around here.
I hear people talk about CTIA as if it's the America's version of Mobile World Congress. It sort of is, but it's not nearly as big in size. The whole ecosystem is here, from app developers to handset accessories to air conditioning for the Cos. One thing that is a bit different, beyond the size, is there is more talk about WiMax here. At Mobile World Congress, I didn't see too much about WiMax - it was as if LTE eclipsed it. But because of Sprint and Clearwire's support, WiMax (4G) has a bigger presence here. In fact, they announced additional market plans here at CTIA.
In between meetings, I had some time to walk the floor a bit. The DoCoMo booth was interesting to me - I saw some very high-def phones, "eye-ball controlled" phone earpieces, and some auto-GPS technology that allows what they call a mobile concierge to let you know what is going on and what you can do - all because of location-based services.
And clearly the iPhone hysteria is gone. A lot has happened in a year. Is the iPhone really unique anymore? Is AT&T the only one offering Smartphone services? No. There are other players such as Android out there now. And you can feel and see that as you walk around here.
Taming the Mobile Wild Boar
March 18, 2010
A couple days ago, I wrote about data problems on the mobile network and LTE helping to resolve it. One thing to remember about LTE riding to the rescue is that given the increased bandwidth, and given the increased marketing activities likely to occur once these LTE networks start to be deployed, the marketing hype might actually contribute towards getting more data onto the networks, so perhaps will ultimately not help anything you are experiencing today (say if you are on an iPhone in New York City living amongst many mobile feral hogs in such a close vicinity to each other). Given this thought, what can be done?
Since LTE is faster, and given there will undoubtedly be more and more data on the mobile networks, is simply deploying an LTE network the answer? As per my blog on Tuesday, while it's part of the answer, no, it isn't the entire answer.
Since LTE is faster, and given there will undoubtedly be more and more data on the mobile networks, is simply deploying an LTE network the answer? As per my blog on Tuesday, while it's part of the answer, no, it isn't the entire answer.
