Future of communications

I’ve come across a presentation and a qualitative research study exploring the future of communications in a high speed broadband/networked economy context.

Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist based in Switzerland, gave a presentation on the future of content and telecommunications. Gerd anticipates the emergence of a new ecosystem where content and applications creators, search engines, web portals, social networks and telecommunications collaboration will determine a new balance of power. What is driving that?  The web has removed barriers to content copying and distribution. New forms of IP-based communication  – like email, IM, chat, text messaging, social networks – are substituting for voice, particularly traditional voice over the public-switched telecommunications network. Growth (in terms of use and revenues) is coming from creating added value around content, not from content. The wheels are falling off traditional business models based on centralised networks and centralised distribution of content.

Getting attention (via platforms, applications and location) is increasingly about taking user context into account. For the advertising industry, this means display ads are the past and engagement, involvement & interactivity are the future. It’s about pulling attention to ads rather than pushing ads out broadcast-style. Getting attention means developing trust. The new ecosystem is a convergent system based on collaboration between all of the industry players in the value-chain. The beneficiaries of trust are those than can collaborate.

Accenture (a management consulting and technology services company) released research on the future of the telecommunications industry earlier this month. My source and a link to the research results are here. Views expressed in the study are consistent with taking a more collaborative approach, although there are some interesting twists. Accenture postulates that companies are likely to “find themselves collaborating and partnering one day and competing against each other the next”.

According to the Accenture study, many telecommunications executives still assume they will retain control through “intelligent networks” (i.e middleware like IMS). To quote a telco exec “We will be delivering and controlling a great deal of multimedia…” (i.e. in response to declining revenues from voice services, telcos want to control content). Contrast that with an IT executive view noted in the Accenture paper: “I don’t think the carriers are on top of IP transformation”. And then there is the IT view, that nodes on the network will be communicating with each other quite nicely without the need for middleware. Accenture concluded that “the stifling effect of legacy business models and cultures is another obstacle to be addressed by the carriers” (page 2). I think that is right. In fact it was five years ago now that telecommunications culture was identified as a barrier to change.

Public Sphere in Australia

Tomorrow, 7 May, will see the launch of Public Sphere in Australia on the topic of High Bandwidth. Organised by Senator Kate Lundy, the workshop/online discussion and interaction will centre on the use of high bandwidth and not the issues around National Broadband Network (NBN)  implementation. The workshop involves short 10 minutes talks from invited speakers which will be streamed live online.

Australian netizens are encouraged to participate through the Public Sphere website or by making reference to the online interaction in blog postings, tweets (Twitter) and the like. All feedback will be summarised and put into briefing papers for distribution to relevant channels in government. 

The event marks an important milestone in Government 2.0 initiatives and has the potential to showcase the capacity of Web 2.0 as an effective and cost-efficient means to interact with stakeholders. I don’t know of anyone planning to attend the workshop at the Australian National University, but I’ll be keeping an eye on proceedings online.

Skype now has the largest share of international voice traffic

According to research firm TeleGeography, Skype now has the largest share of international voice traffic. Skype’s cross-border international traffic grew by 41% over 2008 to 33 billion minutes. Not bad for a company that launched just 5 years ago.

This result squares with my expectations in that the global economic meltdown will drive higher use of low-cost communications services. Other contributing factors are likely to include take-up of broadband internet connections, including mobile connectivity over smart–phones, notebooks and netbooks.

Customer service tweets

I’m writing this post as a customer of Telstra’s ISP Bigpond. I had a problem with the speed of my ADSL2+ connection – the option that was supposed to provide a download speed of up to 20 Mbps. Problem was that speedtest results ranged in the order of 850 Kbps to 1.2 Mbps. Something was seriously wrong.

So I decided to phone Bigpond’s technical assistance for help. Yes I know, I hear you and share your shudder. This meant taking on Bigpond’s ‘computer man’… I did so with steely resolve. The saga (for that is what the 90 minute phone call became) went like this (using the third person).

Paul’s phone call was answered by computer man. Paul and computer man went through a protracted options exploring/no resolution session. Paul realised that during his session with computer man that he could tweet about the experience in real time (@conem).

Computer man asked, would I like to speak to a consultant?  Yes, Paul said…although he did need to say this more than once.

So Paul went into a queue and finally…technical support person ran an online test with me and confirmed that my internet connection was slow…but, I would need to discuss the problem with someone in Billing.

So into another queue. Half an hour had gone by before a person in Billing picked-up my call. Billing person said something like “Oh, but there should be nothing wrong with your internet speed, everything looks fine from our end”. It just did not seem to matter that the technical person has said that Billing would help Paul: Billing said “we can’t help – go back to technical help and ask for a supervisor”. So back into another queue Paul did go.

By this time @bigpondteam had picked up @conem’s sour tweets about Bigpond’s service. They asked if there was anything they could help with. Paul replied “look at my tweets”.

Well, the phone call saga went on. When Paul got through to technical support, his request to speak to a supervisor was flatly refused. “Not until I know what the problem is” said the man. ‘Whatever’ thought Paul. Second technical support person proceeded to investigate. After some time he advised that the problem seemed to be that my service was not as it should be that I needed to deal with Activations. Back into another queue. An hour had gone by.

Meanwhile, after more tweets, Paul provided account details to @bigpondteam in response to their offer to look into what was going on.

As to the phone call, eventually – after going to activations and back to technical support – it transpired that Paul’s account not have been activated with ADSL2+ as the location was too far from the exchange. Back on hold, on hold, on hold and then Paul got cut-off! After 90 minutes on the phone: nothing!

What do to? Paul communicated directed with @bigpondteam. After a while a deal was stitched-up, Paul got the ADSL he should have been activated with originally, plus a credit was organised for being charged for a speed that was not being delivered. Paul tweeted his thanks openly to @bigpondteam. It was well-deserved. Social networking online was the winner on the day! Having a conversation with customers online, and having empowered representatives to resolve issues…that is a winning strategy. Paul felt so much better looked after than the phone session.

Of the several people Paul spoke to on the phone call, a couple seemed genuinely intent on meeting my needs…it seemed to be the system that let them down.  ‘Computer man’ was just irritating. But Paul had the last laugh… the 90 minute call to Bigpond was through Paul’s VoIP service provider, PennyTel at eight cents untimed. Quality of service there was fine:)

WiFi hotspots

I’ve been on vacation at Palm Cove in tropical Queensland…one of my beautiful spots. We took just the essentials (which includes our lap top). It was 10 years from our last visit. 10 years ago, we did not know about WiFi. But in 2008, different story.

WiFi hotspot quality and pricing varied considerably. Our accommodation was close to having WiFi in the apartment…but close was not good enough. So we had to go mobile.

At one resort we experienced very patchy performance…for $15 per 1 day of use. Result: money back. The accomodation agency had WiFi on offer…$10 for 40MB, no thanks. We took the local ice-cream/Internet cafe offer of $6.00 for one hour. There were several other resort-based hotspots available to choose from.

Whatever. I would have preferred to roam onto whatever hotspot best suited our location. As a consumer, all I want is access – I don’t care who provides it.

With WiFi connectivity available in many smart phones now, the demand for this form of wireless connectivity must be a factor on the minds of those that run holiday resorts. At least, I hope it is.

Our next vacation will be in October…this time Waikiki. I’ll be comparing WiFi experiences.

Broadband pricing and useage caps

Susan Crawford’s posting on ‘Bit caps, consolidation, and Clearwire’ makes some interesting observations:

• Koreans rate their (nearly 100 Mbps) broadband connections as being ‘ordinary’
• Australians say having fixed caps and overage charges is misery
• The Japanese have discarded metered access in their post unbundled/separated regime
• In the US, carriers are looking at moving away from ‘all you can eat’ access pricing to metered access; but the Sprint/Clearwire natioanl wireless network proposal may provide an alternative

So there are quite distinct broadband pricing strategies and market structures in the above – some shaped by regulation and others not.

Meanwhile, the world watches US wireless policy closely (including operationalising the ‘open access’ specs for ‘C’ band spectrum).

Mobile Internet Type II

Following on from my recent “Mobile Internet’ posting, a message (some would say ’vision’) - that the future is mobile – is one that the wireless industry has been on about for about four or five years now. It’s only recently that there are signs in Australia of the promise coming to fruition. But there are two distinct offerings at play.

3G operators like ‘3′ and Virgin offer mobile broadband dongles (modems) for as little as $20 month for 1GB (upload + download). Just plug the modem into your PC or laptop and away you go – just like fixed network broadband access. There is an article in today’s The Age about the high demand for this form of wireless broadband in preference to fixed-line broadband. What’s more, the networks seem to have plenty of capacity to make these offerings – acting to stimulate demand rather than building more capacity (as the fixed line networks must do) in response to demand.

 

Meanwhile, 3G operators continue to offer mobile phone plans including voice, video/TV and data services…oh, and the mobile Internet.

 

The distinction is that mobile phone plans are run over the GSM cellular ecosystem (i.e. integrating service access, addressing and billing systems). This operating systems enables carriers to charge for every transaction, differentiating based on what the traffic is. It’s that charging capacity that carriers want to take forward to the brave new world of 4G with the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standard. That appears to be the issue of so much concern to Joi Ito.

 

Virgin’s advertising captures this interplay between the two offerings well in its blurb ”The Internet should be free”. Get their mobile modem for no charge….as long as you purchase the bundling home or mobile phone package.

In summary, there are two ‘mobile Internet’ offerings available – one that may well have content and voice service provision tethered to the network and one that is just another broadband internet access service (but one that is mobile). The broadband internet accesss offer resembles a commoditised utility service. The mobile phone plan offering is consistent  with the more familiar telecommunications offering of any-to-any connectivity for voice, video, messaging and some data.

Australian Institute for Public Policy

A new public policy think tank is being set up by the Australian Federal and Victorian State Governments in partnership with the University of Melbourne. The institute is to be modelled on the Brookings Institute in the United States. Dealing with domestic and international issues, topics are to include energy policy, climate change and Australia’s role in the region.

Andrew Leigh suggests that, in an increasingly crowded think tank space, the institute would be best placed to “…carve out a domestic policy niche, looking at urban policy, crime policy, health policy, schools policy, innovation policy, IT policy, etc.” While not decrying from the view that domestic policy debate on these issues are worthwhile, I note that the Brookings Institute research covers internet policy. As a ‘global network of networks’, and given the rapid rise in social and economic importance of the internet internationally as well as in Australia, I would suggest the AIPP may well have a role there too. The issues transcend domestic, regional and international public policy debate.

A recent policy brief from the Brookings Institure is of interest – Using the Media to Promote Adolescent Well-Being (Donahue, Haskings, and Nightingale). The authors advocate using the media to “…provide positive messages that counteract the negative and potentially damaging messages to which they are so frequently exposed”.

Broadband incentive dilemma

This posting draws together a few threads on the so-called ‘broadband incentive dilemma’: the incentive for network operators to support bandwidth-intensive applications and services of other service providers or users (eg. peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and pod-casting).
 
There are a few sticky issues you see, one of the main ones being the lack of network pricing schemes that efficiently monetise usage of underlying networks. Current pricing arrangements (such as data caps and throttling user traffic) are effectively ways to control network operator costs rather than attempts to reflect efficient pricing (which would encourage application and service innovation as well as high bandwidth broadband access networks).
 
Then there is the issue about replacing revenues from traditional telecommunication services (about 80% of network operator revenues still come from traditional voice and text messaging). As Telco 2.0put it, “..there’s a dramatic explosion of new kinds of voice going on – embedded in games, mobile VoIP, IM clients growing voice capability, web-based click-to-call, extensions to enterprise VoIP systems – and none of them are by default inside the telco”.
 
The response preferred by many network operators is to stick with vertical integration and offer-up ‘value-added services’ such as IPTV. Perhaps…but there seem to be a few uncertainties in developing content services over IP networks. Andrew Odlyzko claims that approach is a reflection of a “deeply ingrained myth: that content is king”. What’s more, Odlyzko observes that “…the most promising avenues for stimulating interest in broadband by users is by promoting social interactivity” (p16).  
 
So reliance on ‘content value-added services’ may not give network operators an incentive to invest in bandwidth-intensive broadband. In fact, it could be said that operators (such as Comcast) have a rational response to block or degrade third-party or P2P traffic  – an action that has furhter stimulated the the so-called network neutrality debate. Blocking or degrading traffic does not square with the principle that the internet should remain open. Instead of encouraging innovation and creativity, current pricing models and traffic management practices may stymie it.
    
Perhaps there is a market-based alternative down the track. That is, network operators might ditch vertical integration and focus on managing the transport and transmission layers. Perhaps there are some potential  ‘value-add’ services here - such as authentication, data security and digital ID management?

Internet TV slow to catch on despite BBC iPlayer – Times Online

Times Online have reported that according to research conducted by Entertainment Media Research (EMR) people still prefer watching scheduled TV over Internet TV. They like to talk about their favorite programs the day after broadcast. The article notes viewers may well shift towards video online with the development of home entertainment systems where content is transferred from PC to TV – and view it on the big screen.

In a related article by Telco 2.0 reported that ISP streaming costs in the UK may have tripled in January 2008, pointing the finger squarly on the BBC’s iPlayer 7-day catch-up service. Their conclusion – the ISP ‘all-you-can-eat’ model is under threat.  The Telco 2.0 article seems to portray a different view from the research reported by EMR i.e. that usage of internet tv is on the up. Telco 2.0 did note that the BBC’s iPlayer is funded by the BBC’s annual license fee, so the businesss model does not need advertising revenue.

In any case, the iPlayer 7-day catch-up model seems like a useful idea to me, and could be seen as a complementary service to broadcast TV (not a substitute) and offer enhanced convenience to BBC viewers.

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