Roughly 90 percent of all EU jobs will require some ICT skills in the near future, yet 39 percent of EU workers have little or no ICT skills as of 2014, according to the European Commission. In the U.S., the digital skills gap between what’s needed of employees and what’s available in the market comes at an estimated cost of $1 trillion per year in lost productivity, according to estimates from Entrepreneur.com. ICT-based employment is growing 7 times faster than overall employment in the EU, too.
The situation is even worse in developing countries, where ICT training is often lacking—especially for girls. While 77 percent of the population in developed countries is online, only 31 percent of people in developing countries have access according to ITU figures for 2013. And globally, women are 16 percent less likely than men to have Internet access.
Looking to help with this problem, Alcatel-Lucent and World Education developed the ConnectEd program, which helps disadvantaged youth achieve better learning outcomes, become better prepared for the world of work, and engage meaningfully in their communities. Between 2011 and 2015, the program provided training to 25,000 young people in Australia, Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia. Roughly 58 percent of those helped were girls, the group with the greatest need.
The ConnectEd program had a huge impact on the lives of the young people they helped. More than 90 percent of program participants passed ConnectEd digital skills training, and more than 95 percent of the in-school youth remained in school. In Indonesia, 21 ConnectEd students even broke the stereotypes against street children and entered university as a direct result of the program.
“In all countries, what comes out most strongly in terms of ConnectEd’s longer-term impact are the effects of having improved confidence,” noted Estelle Day in a recent blog post, the director of the ConnectEd program.
“It sounds such a small thing, but for excluded youth, it seems to be a key to unlocking their potential,” she added. “Disadvantaged youth, more than anything, need someone who believes in them, respects them, who identifies their strengths and helps build on them. And that is where, I believe, ConnectEd and the inputs of Alcatel-Lucent volunteers have had so much power.”
Most community giveback programs make a difference. But when it comes to helping disadvantages youth build ICT training, such programs can make a huge difference in the lives of those it helps. ConnectEd is one such program.
]]>We already know the mercurial growth of the Internet and mobile technology. Cloud and data center traffic will increase by 440 percent by 2017, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent blog post, and video consumption will rise by 720 percent during that time.
What many of us do not know, however, is that the Internet also damages the environment; Gartner recently showed that the Internet creates more than 300 million tons of CO2 a year. So growth of the Internet and mobility is not such a happy picture from a sustainability perspective.
If we are to combat this looming environmental challenge, it will take the work of not just individuals but also businesses committed to sustainable practices. Thankfully, sustainability can be good for companies and not just the environment.
“Organizations that start implementing green solutions are not only helping to reduce the impact of climate change,” noted Nataly Leal, senior communications manager of the Andean region for Alcatel-Lucent in a recent blog post, Internet, a driving force for the responsible development of countries. “Using planet-friendly technologies helps to generate more sustainable business, reduces operating costs, projects a better image of companies and generates a better economy. All these benefits have an impact on business.”
The proper use of technologies can help businesses reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent, according to the Global e-Sustainability Initiative.
“Facing this reality, more technology companies have been working to create new solutions that consume energy in an intelligent way and at the same time be kind to the planet,” Leal noted in her blog post. “Each day these companies launch to market products that meet the major challenges of climate change, seeking help to minimize the impact of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry.”
For instance, Alcatel-Lucent has developed applications such as G.W.A.T.T. to assist operators, service providers and interested parties in understanding the energy consumption and costs associated with communications networks in present and future. These help firms identify the conflictive points of the energy and help show how to improve sustainability practices.
The Internet is a boon for business. But business also needs to make sure that it isn’t a detriment to the environment. In fact, as Alcatel-Lucent has done for many years, being a good steward of the earth’s resources needs to become part of a company’s DNA. Indeed, there is demonstrable proof that being a good steward is also good business.
]]>I crossed the English Channel to spend a few days in Ipswich. Not to explore its beautiful port but to participate in the hackathon organized by BT, hosted by its Innovation Hub in Adastral Park (7th to 9th July).
Hackathons are flourishing these days. These are fast, dynamic, creative
events in which software developers collaborate intensively around ideation and prototyping with specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and on dedicated themes such as mobile apps, internet of things, home automation, connected car, etc.
BT leveraged our Rapport APIs and Rapport Sandbox to run their first hackahon. Rapport is our communications software platform, used by service providers and large enterprises to deliver voice, video and messaging.
The first objective of the hackathon was to educate the BT community about the power of Rapport APIs. The second objective was to demonstrate how BT’s Future Voice (FV) platform, equipped with Alcatel-Lucent Rapport APIs and opened up to keen BT developers, can easily create new value added services to improve the user experience and generate new revenue streams. The third objective was to test the process for BT’s external hackathons.
More than 100 BT developers, architects, usability managers and product managers, competing as 10 teams and supported on-site by experts from Alcatel-Lucent, worked for 3 days with passion, energy and a great deal of creativity. Using our Rapport Sandbox’s rich set of WebRTC client APIs and network APIs, the teams defined, designed and delivered many innovative service concept demos and prototypes! The winning teams built a "Safe Home" service prototype which brings together the Internet Of Things (IoT), and more particularly the home connected objects, with consumer communications.
Many senior BT executives visited the hackathon, including Karl Penaluna, President of 21C Global Networks and Computing Infrastructure at BT. Tim Shaw, BT's Director of Voice & Multimedia said "The Hackathon has been a great success. We have driven a change in our understanding of the potential of communications and have built working prototypes that demonstrate the power of APIs. We will use this understanding to drive the value of our propositions to truly exceed what the customer expects from how they communicate."
Thanks to Liam Connors from BT for the outstanding organization of the event! We are now looking forward BT’s next hackathon for external developers.
From left to right:
G. Duboué (Alcatel-Lucent)
K. Penaluna (BT)
T. Shaw (BT)
R. Baker (Alcatel-Lucent)
M. Duffy (Alcatel-Lucent)
L. Connors (BT)
]]>
From original Alcatel-Lucent Corporate Blog (Feb. 27)
I had the great pleasure today of participating in the 11th meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which was held here in Paris.
The Broadband Commission is a remarkable institution that exemplifies the growing trend of collaboration between multilateral organizations, governments, civil society, and business. The commission follows a process of co-creation, which brings together the different skills and resources of the member institutions - such as financial management, operational skills, on-the-ground knowledge, regulatory or public policies expertise – to develop solutions to some of the world’s most complex, multi-dimensional challenges.
The Commission was established by the ITU and UNESCO in May 2010, with the aim of boosting the importance of broadband on the international policy agenda. This mission is based on a belief that broadband is an essential ingredient of economic and social well-being in every country.
The Commission is made up of a high-powered community including business leaders/CEOs, senior policy-makers and government representatives, international agencies, academia and non-governmental organizations focused on development issues (including Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus). It is co-chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Carlos Slim, in cooperation with vice-chairs Houlin Zhao, Secretary General of the ITU, and Irina Bokova, Secretary General of UNESCO.
One of the central roles of the Commission is to advocate for higher priority to be given to broadband infrastructure in the highest policy circles to ensure that the benefits of broadband infrastructure and services are realized in all countries.
To date, the Commission has had a great impact in terms of raising awareness of the importance of broadband for sustainable development. There is no question in my mind that it has made a big difference in building consensus that broadband is becoming a critical infrastructure, just like water and electricity.
Still, we have so much work to do: more than 4 billion people remain unconnected to the Internet and 90 percent of these individuals are in the developing world. In the 49 least-developed countries, less than 10 percent of the population is connected.
The average cost of fixed broadband at the end of 2013 still represented one quarter of an average citizen’s monthly income across the developing world (as opposed to less than 3 percent in developed nations). Lack of relevant content, and limited digital and language literacy further worsen this divide.
Yet, recent statistics from the Copenhagen Consensus estimates that by increasing mobile penetration levels by a factor of 3 in the developing world, we could provide a return of $17 for each dollar spent.
We have a real and great responsibility to enable broadband to empower marginalized groups and deliver social and economic benefits to all. We must help ensure that every person in our world has access to information, healthcare, education, equality and economic opportunity.
We are at a critical juncture with regard to meeting this responsibility. The next few months are of paramount importance when it comes to ensuring that broadband and information and communications technology (ICT) are more clearly included in United Nations’ the post-2015 development agenda, which will be codified in a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), (which will build upon the existing Millennium Development Goals).
There is not a single one of the 17 SDGs currently under discussion where broadband and ICT could not have a major positive impact. However, the fact that ICT and broadband have not been made more visible in the establishment of the SDGs is a strong indicator that much work still remains to be done.
During the Broadband Commission meeting, this fact was a key topic of discussion, and I know there was agreement amongst participants of the need to convince key-decision makers outside of the ICT industry of the importance of connectivity, and the enormous role it could play in helping to achieve these goals.
Broadband can reduce poverty and inequality, help ensure access to health and education, help to mitigate climate change, promote peace and international cooperation, and ensure sustainable development in the decades to come. Broadband and ICTs are key ingredients in efforts to ensure that no society, and no individual is left behind.
Have you ever gotten your hands dirty and really implemented an NFV or SDN application? Six teams from academia and industry in Israel and Europe can answer with a resounding yes! These teams gathered in Haifa at the 4-day 2015 Winter School and Hackathon event, organized by Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand team and Israel’s leading Institute of Technology, Technion. The event offered a full program to get acquainted with the fundamental concepts behind cloud computing, software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV).
Eighty participants gained a clear understanding of enabling technologies, NFV and SDN challenges and barriers, and how to overcome the obstacles of implementing virtualized network functions in the cloud.
The program started with two days of in-depth technical lectures covering the principles of the cloud, server and network virtualization, OpenStack, and high performance packet processing for NFV among other topics. Following this, participants had the opportunity to get hands-on experience with CloudBand, an advanced NFV platform, learn how NFV changes operator roles and responsibilities, and how operational processes can be automated to reduce operational expenditure. One of the use cases shown was the automated deployment of an NFV application in a distributed NFV infrastructure.
After acquiring a solid foundation in the first three days, six teams took up the challenge to develop a real NFV solution. The task was to virtualize the DHCP function of a residential gateway. Virtualizing customer premises equipment, such as residential gateways, and moving some of their complex functions into the cloud has been identified as a promising strategy to reduce cost and increase service provider ability to quickly deploy new services.
The winner of the challenge was a team headed by Mladen Tomic from the University of Rijeka, Croatia, who implemented a solution that not only delivered the cloud based DHCP service, but was also capable of scaling to adapt to changing service traffic. Mladen said, “I pretty much enjoyed the whole event, from attending lectures on hot and interesting topics, exchanging ideas with other participants and having some great fun both learning and competing in the hackathon.” Congratulations to the winners and to all participants for their highly motivated participation!
The future of NFV will depend on a generation of students and engineers capable of grasping the opportunities and challenges of NFV, and we are convinced they will be the creators of advanced NFV solutions that we cannot imagine today. Anyone can join and create their own applications on a public version of the hackathon. VNF and NFV technology providers can also apply to participate in the CloudBand Ecosystem Program.
It may be almost cliché to say we live in a global economy, but many times when globalization is discussed the focus is on developed and emerging markets and not that often, if at all, on under-developed regions. In fact, in the past few years until the recent drop in oil prices, much of the financial community’s and economic development interests has been focused on the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This leaves out not just most of South America, but the promising rest of Africa which contains a wealth of rare minerals and other natural resources waiting to be literally and figuratively mined.
However, for most of the African continent countries to move from under-developed status, along with toward political stability and having a educated citizenry, infrastructure needs to be in place which it currently is not. This means not just giving the populace access to clean water and energy, but in a digital world ubiquitous and affordable access to businesses and individuals to high-speed broadband communications is now not just a foundation but a pre-condition that is essential for moving ahead.
In this regard it is enlightening, refreshing and significant that Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes recently wrote a corporate blog stressing the company’s interest in working with governments and commercial interests to help accelerate economic development across the continent. This about not just about the Oscar winning movie of several years ago “Out of Africa”, but is also about around, into and across Africa.
Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes: Source Alcatel-Lucent
As Combes notes, “The focus of development and Alcatel-Lucent’s strategy for Africa will continue to be the accelerated development of ultra-broadband access networks in Africa, bringing connectivity to users with technologies including LTE, DSL, GPON, Small Cells and WiFi...In today’s world, innovation has no borders and as a result, African countries cannot remain locked out.”
In the posting, Combes highlights the portfolio of not just technology, but also people and services that Alcatel-Lucent brings to the table. He also notes the experience he and his team have in working with governments and in public/private partnerships to help specific countries and regions with their unique challenges since no one place is the same in terms of it journey into the connected world.
In fact, he cites LTE wireless capabilities that ALU is already deploying in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria. He also points to the fact that managed services are an important part of ALU’s African business as customers ask ALU to not only to build the networks for them, but also to take responsibility for the network operations in places like Nigeria, Ghana and in South Africa.
Combes’ message to Africa was succinct and to the point: “Now is the time to bring this broadband revolution closer to the people. There is a very strong demand for both wireless and fixed ultra-broadband...We are here, committed and delighted to be part of this big project and working with local, regional and international players, we will literally help ‘connect’ the African people.
Not a bad marker to publicly place. Africa for many reasons can be a place of enormous opportunity because of the potential that lies locked up in its people and natural resources, and clearly what really is an essential key to unlocking that potential is next generation communications networks that are universally available and affordable. Into Africa is a place that is going to see a lot more activity in 2015 and beyond.
]]>InnoTrans might have been and gone for another two years but Alcatel-Lucent’s highlights from the world’s largest railway exhibition live on in three videos which are now available to view at any time online.
Hall 4.1 was entirely dedicated to Train Control and Communications for railway networks and Alcatel-Lucent’s expertise in this critical field was shown in four key demonstrations: Converged IP/MPLS Network for Railways, Agile Optical Network for Railways, Long Term Evolution (LTE) ground-to-train communications, and Cloud Connected Passenger. A short overview of all of these solutions and their specific applications is now available to view here.
As the video shows, Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE Ground-to-Train solutions will be deployed in the Grand Paris project’s Telecom System for Future Urban Transport (Systuf). This new communications system is based on LTE, and to demonstrate the capabilities of LTE at InnoTrans, Alcatel-Lucent set up a live LTE network which hosted multiple mission-critical and non mission-critical applications. This included on-board CCTV, emergency communications, live driver view footage feeds, platform video feeds, train location services, and Tetra/PMR voice.
This live LTE network was also the foundation of Alcatel-Lucent’s Cloud Connection demonstration, which offered a vision of what the passenger train of the future might look like. The next generation of on-board infotainment services which leverage ultra-broadband connectivity were shown in a multimedia table. As the video shows, the table incorporates on board IPTV, video on-demand services, and online shopping, while passengers can use the service to book a table in the train restaurant, or check to see whether the toilet is occupied.
Perhaps the highlight exhibit for Alcatel-Lucent’s was the world-premiere presentation of its Converged IP/MPLS Network for Railways. The demonstration showed how Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/MPLS service routers and switches can build a single converged communications network infrastructure that supports all railways services and applications including signalling, as well as provide a smooth migration of existing legacy systems like analogue CCTV and GSM-R base stations to the new network. A brief overview is available in the first video, but for a detailed demonstration of IP/MPLS and its capabilities click here.
An in-depth look at Alcatel-Lucent’s agile optical networks for railways is also available in the overview and a third video. This technology is intended to counter cyber security threats to mission-critical applications, with Alcatel-Lucent’s latest solutions, Wavelength Tracker, and the 1830 Phototonic Service Switch (PSS), which constantly monitors optical losses and detects any intrusions, on display. PSS can also be fitted with the AES-256 layer 1 encryption module to preserve the integrity of the network, providing network operators with added peace of mind that their networks are protected from even the most sophisticated security threats.
With over 130,000 visitors from more than 100 countries in attendance, the 10th anniversary edition of InnoTrans was the largest exhibition yet. It was also a big success for Alcatel-Lucent. We hope you enjoy our round up of the highlights from our exhibit.
]]>“Alcatel-Lucent in Action” is the story of one year of action to transform our company and position it for innovation and growth.
In June 2013, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled The Shift Plan: a 3-year repositioning and transformation strategy that refocused the company on IP networks, ultra-broadband access and cloud technologies — areas in which Alcatel-Lucent has extensive expertise and innovation strengths. Since then, Alcatel-Lucent has concentrated all of its energy on the execution of The Shift Plan.
This month, we went live with a dynamic online annual review — Alcatel-Lucent in Action — which tells the story of those first 12 months, taking you behind the scenes of our innovation company determined to secure a strong future for itself at the forefront of the network industry. It charts our progress from 4 perspectives: corporate strategy, market demand, technological innovation and employee engagement.
With perspective from our people — including CEO Michel Combes — video essays on our innovation culture, key facts and statistics from the year and more, it paints a vivid picture of our drive to transform and deliver greater value to our customers and partners through innovation of our networks.
Accessible from any device (PC, laptop, tablets, smart phones), its streamlined design and ease of use will allow you (we hope) to quickly grasp the essence of The Shift Plan and how the company has become the master of its own destiny again.
I joined Alcatel-Lucent about 100 days ago and it has been a pleasure to contribute to shape this annual review which is not only our way of communicating what has been achieved, but also what we stand for, and what we want to build.
I welcome your feedback. Please participate in our 1 min survey and we will donate 1 Euro to Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, dedicated to helping youth innovate in the digital economy.
]]>Recently in Munich, Alcatel-Lucent ran a 12 hour Hackathon that pitted the industry’s best and brightest developers against each other. The mission: build the most original, compelling and marketable app using New Conversation APIs.
New Conversation APIs make the rich functionality of IP Communications simple to mash up into applications. By enabling developers to easily integrated voice, video, data and contact information into any app, service providers can innovate faster – providing entirely new communications experiences to end users from any screen, device and network. They enable operators to explore new opportunities for enhancing retail services and to pursue new wholesale markets through application partners (web, verticals, M2P, M2M…).
For the Hackathon, Alcatel-Lucent provided on-site the virtualized, commercial grade IP communication platform and APIs access through its WebRTC Border Controller, Converged Telephony and Rich Communication Servers. But the real stars were the developers, whom powered by pizza, beer and caffeine, brought the adrenalin, ingenuity and drama.
The Hackathon did not disappoint. The developers delivered highly original, compelling and marketable apps that run on IP communication serving as the foundation for today’s LTE network and VoLTE services. A panel of global telecom industry analysts, developers and operators had the tough task of choosing a winner.
Ultimately, judges named PhoneDeck the winner. Its developers used New Conversation APIs and WebRTC technologies to deliver an app enabling the seamless mobile integration into CRM Salesforce. The app significantly improved the work experience of sales representatives through a screen-pop displaying relevant information about the customer calling on the mobile; call whispering providing information from a previously scanned customer business card stored on the CRM; click to call back on the sales representative’s browser; mobile, multi-device call handover; and mobile call reporting.
Hackathon finalists included:
Such competitions ultimately benefit end users like you and me. It provides a path to creating a world where communications is more dynamic and compelling – one that connects all contacts and communications in the online and real worlds to make the act of communicating simpler and more meaningful.
]]>Innovation takes many forms. But when it comes to the art of disruption, often it comes from quarters least expected. The breakthroughs that change the world are not something that can be forced or fully anticipated.
The foundation can be laid for disruptive innovation, however, as world-renowned research outfit Bell Labs well knows. Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, has been behind breakthroughs in innovation for generations.
Part of laying the foundation in 2014 means developing setting up hotbeds of local innovation and making sure that the ideas that come out of these hotbeds are able to quickly connect with agile developers than can start playing with the innovations to bring them to market, as Bell Labs articulated in a recent blog on disruptive innovation.
The company just announced plans to open a Bell Labs office in Tel Aviv, co-located with the Alcatel-Lucent CloudBand business developing cloud and NFV (network functions virtualization) solutions. The facility, led by famous Israeli computer scientist and academic Danny Raz, will be a critical “listening post” for telecommunications innovation.
“You have to embrace new ideas and allow disruption, at the same time as restructuring and refocusing,” noted Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes during the keynote speech at the Israeli technology conference where he announced the new research office, MIXiii 2014. “You need to create the space to re-grow and allow some degree of risk taking.”
Combes said that the idea behind the Israeli site is to start modestly but not be afraid of disruptive new ideas and be quick to invest or kill ideas.
Central to that is the relationship between developers and entrepreneurs.
“What is great is to be able to have researchers working closely to agile developers and entrepreneurs,” he said in the speech. “That’s a unique combination only a big company like us can do – and is what we are doing today in Israel, and around the world with the opening of ‘creative’ rooms and more than 250 university partnerships.”
He also announced the Bell Labs Prize, an annual competition dedicated to the pursuit of truly disruptive solutions to solve the problems in ICT and networks that really matter. Prize winners will take home cash awards worth as much as $100,000 along with the chance to develop their ideas further at Bell Labs.
Innovation takes many forms, and Bell Labs wants to make sure it is at the forefront of the next disruptive innovations no matter how they get their start.
]]>With adequate bandwidth and network speeds now a cornerstone of life for both businesses and consumers, optical transport is increasingly becoming a key solution for network operators.
The market for optical network equipment is expected to reach $15 billion by 2018, according to research firm, Dell’Oro. Optical transport of the 100G variety is expected to make up 80 percent of that demand.
Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) also recently released a report predicting that the market for 400G will hit $528 million by 2019, and the market for supporting optical components and silicon devices will reach $195 million that year.
Clearly, optical networking matters. It is easy to see why when looking at the recent achievements of Alcatel-Lucent’s agile optical networking technologies.
Alcatel-Lucent has achieved real-world speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second (Tb/s) with spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz) over a 410km stretch of live fiber in field trials with BT in the U.K.
Making it possible was the flexible grid infrastructure used by Alcatel-Lucent, along with its 400G Photonic Service Engine (PSE) technology on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch. It help achieved a 42.5 percent improvement in spectral efficiency, according to the company.
Türk Telekom in Turkey also has been showing the advantages of packet optical transport. The company recently broke the Guinness World Record for data transmission rate, reaching 8 Tb/s over a single fiber cable in a commercial network. They broke the record using 100G optical technology between Ankara and Istanbul.
From France to Russia, leading service providers also are moving toward optical network innovations by the company.
“The growing appetite for bandwidth hungry mobile devices and applications is driving tremendous demand throughout our network and taking this approach provides high-capacity with the flexibility and efficiency to serve our customers today and in the future,” noted Hassan Kabbani in a statement, CEO of Zain KSA in Saudi Arabia, which recently completed testing of ultra-broadband throughout the kingdom through the use of optical transport.
“It’s clear that with the rise in adoption of smartphones and the growing demand for high-bandwidth services in the cloud accessible across both fixed and mobile networks – operators are striving to increase capacity and speed, but they also want to protect their existing investments,” noted Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routing and transport division. He said this is what agile optical networking is all about.
As leaders in Europe debate whether the EU is “back” during the World Economic Forum, the region is increasingly falling behind when it comes to telecommunications, according to Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes.
“There is a real danger,” noted Combes in a recent blog post on Europe’s digital divide (published in the Wall Street Journal, “that Europe is losing ground in the information era.”
That’s because there is an increasing gap between what the latest smartphones can deliver and what Europe’s telecommunications companies can support due to a price war that inhibits infrastructure upgrades.
“Europe is locked in a vicious circle of competition focused exclusively on price, one that forces operators to reduce their investments and destroys their innovation capacity,” noted Combes. “This type of competition is bad news for a digital Europe and its consumers.”
The digital agenda in Europe needs to be reset by the likes of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) and others. Telecommunications investment in the order of between €110 and €170 billion will be needed by 2020 if the region is to keep pace with the rest of the world in terms of cellular infrastructure and innovation. Failure could cost Europe €750 billion in lost GDP growth, and as many as 5.5 million highly-skilled jobs for young qualified European graduates.
“That’s a high price to pay for accepting life in a slow-motion telecoms world,” he noted.
What Europe must do, first and foremost, is move to an all-IP network infrastructure, supported by a virtualized infrastructures based on cloud technology.
Combes also suggested that Europe must invest more in applications and analytics and capabilities such as SDN and NFV.
“Today eight out of the top 10 global Internet platforms are American,” he wrote, and the two others are Chinese. “A new model of international work distribution seems to be taking shape in which the profitable operators are in the U.S. and the American Internet platforms are taking most of the residual value in Europe, while the application development centers are in India and the manufacturing is in China.”
Europe led the way when it came to 3G deployment, but now it is being left behind.
To fix the problem, operators need to end a competition model that is only based on reducing prices in the short term. Spectrum allocation also needs to be reviewed, and shared and efficient policies on net neutrality must be crafted to allow operators to differentiate themselves and revive investment.
“We also need to come back down to earth and stop thinking that the telecom sector can continue with 120 operators in Europe, subject to rules and procedures that change from one country to another,” Combes boldly wrote.
If Europe is not to fall too far behind, its digital agenda must tackle the recent decline in telecommunications. Importantly, as Combes stated, it must do so with a sense of urgency and purpose.
]]>For those who follow the mobile industry closely, you know that mobile service providers (MSPs) are constantly on the watch for tools that will enable them to gain a competitive edge. You are also aware from TMCnet’s coverage of the space mobile device management (MDM) is increasingly be viewed as an invaluable tool for MSPs to get better visibility into what is going on end-to-end with their customers enabling them to provide an enhanced, simpler and more customized customer experience as well as facilitate the roll out of LTE services.
One such capability that increasingly is gaining traction with MSPs around the world is Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive portfolio of Customer Experience Solutions. And, the efforts of the Motive team have not gone unnoticed. In fact, Alcatel-Lucent was recently honored with two industry awards in recognition of the work being done to help service providers forge stronger and more valuable customer relationships:
The Frost & Sullivan Award
The Growth, Innovation & Leadership Awards are presented each year to companies that are “predicted to encourage significant growth in their industries, have identified emerging trends before they became the standard in the marketplace, and have created advanced technologies that will catalyze and transform industries in the near future.”
According to the detailed report, which was prepared by F&S analyst Jeff Cotrupe, Alcatel-Lucent won the award because:
“Alcatel-Lucent’s investment in acquiring Motive has paid off by enabling Alcatel-Lucent to provide the most comprehensive CEM suite in the industry … Alcatel-Lucent has always been strong in networking and operations support systems (OSS), and it has also offered business support systems (BSS), but the company recognized the advantages of a dedicated approach to CEM, as embodied by Motive, and it has now melded Motive and Alcatel-Lucent technologies into the leading CEM offering.”
The report goes on to say that “An operator needing a CEM solution can turn to Alcatel-Lucent and know that its CEM bases are covered under one roof”.
Broadband Multimedia Marketing Association (BMMA) award
The BMMA is a nonprofit organization formed to enhance the business prospects of vendors and service providers in the telco broadband services industry. Member companies include AT&T, BellCanada, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Frontier Communications, Hawaiian Telcom, MTS Allstream, SaskTel, TDS Telecom, TELUS and Windstream.
“Each year, the BMMA recognizes teams and companies that demonstrate innovation or excellence in marketing broadband services,’’ said Ellis Hill, President of ResearchFirst, Inc., the BMMA’s operational firm. “This year’s awards went to two service providers and two vendor companies that best displayed excellence or innovation in broadband product marketing theory, practice or operations.”
In announcing the award, the Motive portfolio of Customer Experience Solutions was recognized because it “addresses the diverse needs of service providers with a comprehensive approach to customer experience transformation.”
As noted above, this is not just about earning industry recognition, it is also about success in the market. Motive is already deployed in the networks of 180 customers, with recent wins with Telefónica Argentina, BT, Belgacom and Verizon Wireless.
The fact of the matter is that consumers want more information about their mobile services, and MSPs want more visibility into their networks so they can be not just reactive but proactive in terms of providing a customer experience that engenders trust and loyalty. Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that improved customer experiences are core to creating differentiated value in a world where discerning customers have access to all of their pricing options.
Studies have consistently shown in fact that in terms of service provider selection the experience really does matter, and Motive is busy helping MSPs up their game to remain viable as competition heats up including from OTTs.
]]>Note: Originally posted in Alcatel-Lucent Analytics Beat blog
Similar to previous iOS updates, over 50% of Apple device users upgraded their device to iOS 7 within 2-3 days of its release, 30% upgrading within the first day. Apple made improvements to their software release process to ensure mobile networks are protected from these techno-hungry iPhone users. Specifically, the notification announcing availability of the new iOS is staggered over a few days to help spread out the signaling load. They also implemented a “no-greater than 100 MB app size” policy which restricts apps over that size from downloading over mobile networks. And Apple’s iOS 7 update came with a mandatory WiFi-based upgrade path.
So, quiet day on mobile networks on September 18th? Not quite – iOS 7 update came with a hidden cost to mobile operators. But, only systems correlating signaling, volume, applications and device data – down to the iOS version – could detect these trends.
In this blog, we report on Apple iOS update trends discovered using the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG on mobile networks worldwide.
Source: 9900 Wireless Network Guardian
General upgrade cycle observations
The upgrade cycle started a few hours prior to the iOS 7 release when applications notified users of to upgrade their app to be IOS 7 compatible. Next, users were notified that iOS itself was available – the small red bubble on the “Settings icon.” Users connected their mobile devices to WiFi to upgrade. During that time, we observed a decrease in per user data volume from the Apple device population over the mobile network. Then, a portion of users soon resumed their mobility and received notification to upgrade their app to synchronize with the upgraded OS. Many opted to download these apps over the mobile network.
Manageable paging day
The notification process starts with locating the device (paging it) and then forwarding the alert. Apple staggered their alerts to iPhone users when iOS7 became available. A number of applications also alerted that a new version of their software was available; the latter is what we term “iTunes” signaling.
The iOS 7 availability notification load was equivalent to adding an extra 12-20% paging over a typical iTunes day. iTunes itself experienced a paging increase of up to 35%. Together, they contributed a 22-49% increase in paging compared to typical daily iTunes rate. Yet, the impact on the overall signaling across the network for these two days was negligible, in great part due to the policies Apple implemented to spread out signaling. It worked.
The cellular downloading loophole & post-iOS application update
Next, we noticed traffic coming from Apple’s servers tasked with providing the iOS 7 upgrade software. Given the mandatory WiFi upgrade, we did not expect any volume over the mobile network from those servers. We were puzzled about this mystery traffic, especially given its volume. In some networks during peak time, iOS 7 upgrade over the cellular network generated as much traffic as all of iTunes could on a typical day! How to explain traffic of this magnitude when none was expected? Combining this OS update traffic with iTunes app upgrade traffic triggered by OS synchronization drove iTunes traffic 1.8 – 3 times above normal baselines. This resulted in a staggering overall network bandwidth increase of 5-10% the day after the release.
Were it not for tagging IP flows with the data received from signaling (IP address, device type, and device OS), that fact would have been relegated to the annals of “Odd and Unexplained Occurrences.” However, we discovered a loophole to the mandatory WiFi upgrade. The MAC or PC used for upgrading Apple devices is allowed to have its internet connection over WiFi or the cellular network. Using a mobile device to provide internet connectivity to a laptop is called tethering and is used to provide connectivity when not in range of a WiFi connection. Tethering is used by 4-12% of users depending on geography, plans and promotions. During the iOS 7 upgrade, we discovered that some users tethered their laptop with Android devices and were able to receive the IOS update over the mobile networks. A loophole that defeated Apple’s WiFi-only upgrade policy.
While relatively few users choose this connectivity method, those who did downloaded a large iOS 7 file of 750 MB minimum. This certainly accounts for the large amount of traffic observed, but can also result in bill shock. To put in perspective, the average 3G user in North America generates 17 MB of data per day.
Conclusion
Apple has clearly improved its mobile savviness by implementing smart policies for software delivery. Barely noticeable signaling increase is great progress. But continued cooperation is greatly needed. These improvements are only possible when service providers have the right data in hand to discover inefficiencies and to understand their causes before initiating optimization discussions with the equipment vendor.
We also noticed a wide variation in overall network traffic and signaling statistics. This phenomenon depends on how heavily invested a service provider is with a particular OS. Device OS homogeneity means that a large percentage of phones will exhibit the same pattern, all concurrently. Another factor is what applications users downloaded to their phones. Not all applications had an update synchronized with the iOS 7 availability. So while trends were similar all over the world, the exact impact varied significantly across service providers.
Over the next few weeks, users will tryout the new iOS 7 features. Our next blog will compare the performance of this latest iOS version with previous ones and determine if usage of new feature drive changes in overall signaling, volume and airtime.
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Our Analytics Beat studies examine a representative cross-section of mobile data customers using the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian and are made possible by the voluntary participation of our customers. Collectively, these customers provide mobile service to millions of subscribers worldwide.
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The rise of big data is causing service providers to ask some big questions: How should we store our data? How long should we keep it? What parts of it are relevant to our business? Most importantly, how do we get value from it? To turn big data into a big deal, service providers need to extract insights that can help them make smart business decisions and improve the customer experience.
The value of big data is all in what useful and actionable information it can provide. I find it exciting to see how service providers use big data analytics to gain new insights and solve complex problems. With this post, I’ll look at some new research by industry analysts and three key opportunities that big data analytics presents to service providers.
Improve the customer experience
Across the industry, big data analytics is viewed as a means for providers to see, understand and improve the customer experience. New reports by European Communications and TM Forum show customer experience improvement as a top-three driver for analytics initiatives. They also show that service providers are looking beyond customer support and thinking about how analytics can help them address the entire customer life cycle across all customer touchpoints.
This is happening because service providers want to become the caretakers of the customer experience. In analytics, they see opportunities to develop new capabilities, solve problems and improve quality of experience (QoE). Service providers know the pressure is on: If they can’t deliver on QoE, customers will turn to someone else. Lost customers mean lost revenue, lower customer lifetime value (CLV) and fewer opportunities to monetize service portfolios.
For me, these reports reaffirmed that service providers need QoE-focused analytics solutions. Providers can benefit from data-driven insights that help them anticipate, understand and react to what’s happening in the network and at every customer touchpoint. These insights can help them prioritize issues and offer proactive support that improves the customer experience while reducing customers’ propensity to churn.
Differentiate with QoE
A recent CEM-focused survey by Alcatel-Lucent and Heavy Reading identified big data analytics as a key differentiator for service providers. In fact, “support for big data” topped a list of critical functions for customer experience-driven differentiation.
Why do service providers see big data as a differentiator? Because it’s getting tougher to differentiate with networks, device portfolios and product offerings. For many service providers, the new priorities are to keep the customers they have, extract more value from them and, if possible, lure customers away from competitors. Insights from big data analytics can help providers deliver a superior QoE, one that satisfies customers, sells more services and earns more customer recommendations.
Achieve operational excellence
Service providers believe that big data analytics can help streamline network and service management process and increase operational efficiency. Providers have spent much of the last decade making operations leaner and reducing costs. Analytics offers opportunities to cut costs through reduced cycle times and faster problem resolution.
Increasing complexity and growing customer expectations keep pushing service costs up. To reverse this trend, service providers need a complete picture of what customers are experiencing at any given moment. This calls for analytics platforms that can visualize real-time customer experience levels, derive personalized customer insights and support proactive customer interactions. These platforms must support applications across multiple lines of business, including network operations, engineering, marketing and customer care.
Turn data into action
Service providers are sitting on a gold mine of data about customers, networks, operations and services. With big data analytics, they can start to use this data proactively and turn it into actions that improve the customer experience, increase customer satisfaction and promote operational excellence. In doing so, they can turn data into the big deal it promises to be.
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