STL Partners - business model innovation in the TMT sector

Voice and Messaging 2.0

Publication Date: April 2008

Contents

Executive Summary

Introduction

Part 1 - Understanding user needs

  • The value proposition of voice
  • Telephony as a feature, not a service
  • Value shifts to presence, availability, location and status data
  • Talk may be cheap, but time is not
  • The inversion of the telephony business model
  • The value proposition of SMS

Part 2 - Market dynamics

  • Market dynamics
  • Market review
  • Growth will require effort
  • The end of pricing plans as the focus of competition
  • Voice: a business in itself, or just an enabler?
  • The rise of non-carrier communications
  • Magnitude of change
  • Timing of change

Part 3 - How non-carrier communications spread

  • Price only as the initial motivator
  • A fragmented, regional and local picture
  • Case study: Skype
  • Lessons from Skype's growth

Part 4 - How operators gain and lose control

  • Modelling the industry pinch points
  • Decline in mobile operator control
  • Landline: ripe for a Telephony 2.0 approach

Part 5 - Competing in a low-cost world

  • Fighting on price: today's winners and losers
  • Operator low-cost strategy
  • Case study: Iliad
  • Case study: Truphone
  • Case study: PhoneGnome
  • Arbitrage players
  • Marketing strategies
  • Up-sell and cross-sell core services
  • Cost reduction
  • Group communications and conversations
  • Multiple handsets
  • Breaking apart the bundle

Part 6 - Future corporate strategy

  • Flight or fight?
  • Case study: 3UK
  • Where to focus investment
  • Telcos as integrators and distributors

Part 7 - Finding new markets

  • ‘Blue ocean’ strategies
  • A sample telco ‘blue ocean’ strategy
  • Designing and building the offer
  • Differentiators in the ‘blue ocean’ strategy
  • ‘Blue ocean’ checklist
  • Case study: Tesco Mobile

Part 8- A theory of communication systems

  • The user’s goals – information, collaboration and gossip
  • The role of context
  • Presence: misunderstood, but valuable
  • Understanding presence

Part 9 - A framework for product innovation

  • Modelling user needs
  • Example
  • Improving the experience
  • Improving the user experience
  • Why telephony will not follow the web

Part 10 - Product strategy

  • Core telephony
  • Case study: Verizon iobi
  • Product’s success limited by the carrier’s lack of strategic vision
  • Instant messaging and SMS
  • Types of non-operator IM network
  • Measuring IM networks
  • Mobile operator IM strategy
  • Operator opportunities
  • Voice messaging
  • Fixed-mobile convergence
  • Review of the fixed-mobile convergence opportunity
  • Survey results
  • Video telephony
  • User need and social context are everything
  • Summary

Part 11 - Long-term issues

  • Communications-enabled business processes
  • An emerging discipline to solve real business problems
  • The missing element: personalisation
  • The prize – unregulated termination fees
  • Case study: VoiceSage - a CEBP specialist
  • Integrating the web and telephony
  • Three levels of integration
  • Telco APIs have unique advantages
  • Telephony is absorbed by the web
  • Pointers to the future: Jaxtr and Jaduka

Part 12 - Action plan

  • All operators
  • Product planning and management
  • Sales and marketing
  • Network
  • Strategic planning and business development
  • Fixed operators
  • Mobile operators
  • Fixed-mobile converged operators
  • Equipment and software vendors
  • Internet players

Appendices

  • Carrier points of control

Directory

  • Introduction
  • Vendor list and product scores
  • Vendor and product descriptions
  • Other vendors and services

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Updated 14 May 2008