Fixed wireless access growth: To 20% homes by 2025

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Fixed wireless access growth forecast

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) networks use a wireless “last mile” link for the final connection of a broadband service to homes and businesses, rather than a copper, fibre or coaxial cable into the building. Provided mostly by WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) or mobile network operators (MNOs), these services come in a wide range of speeds, prices and technology architectures.

Some FWA services are just a short “drop” from a nearby pole or fibre-fed hub, while others can work over distances of several kilometres or more in rural and remote areas, sometimes with base station sites backhauled by additional wireless links. WISPs can either be independent specialists, or traditional fixed/cable operators extending reach into areas they cannot economically cover with wired broadband.

There is a fair amount of definitional vagueness about FWA. The most expansive definitions include cheap mobile hotspots (“Mi-Fi” devices) used in homes, or various types of enterprise IoT gateway, both of which could easily be classified in other market segments. Most service providers don’t give separate breakouts of deployments, while regulators and other industry bodies report patchy and largely inconsistent data.

Our view is that FWA is firstly about providing permanent broadband access to a specific location or premises. Primarily, this is for residential wireless access to the Internet and sometimes typical telco-provided services such as IPTV and voice telephony. In a business context, there may be a mix of wireless Internet access and connectivity to corporate networks such as VPNs, again provided to a specific location or building.

A subset of FWA relates to M2M usage, for instance private networks run by utility companies for controlling grid assets in the field. These are typically not Internet-connected at all, and so don’t fit most observers’ general definition of “broadband access”.

Usually, FWA will be marketed as a specific service and package by some sort of network provider, usually including the terminal equipment (“CPE” – customer premise equipment), rather than allowing the user to “bring their own” device. That said, lower-end (especially 4G) offers may be SIM-only deals intended to be used with generic (and unmanaged) portable hotspots.
There are some examples of private network FWA, such as a large caravan or trailer park with wireless access provided from a central point, and perhaps in future municipal or enterprise cellular networks giving fixed access to particular tenant structures on-site – for instance to hangars at an airport.

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FWA today

Today, fixed-wireless access (FWA) is used for perhaps 8-9% of broadband connections globally, although this varies significantly by definition, country and region. There are various use cases (see below), but generally FWA is deployed in areas without good fixed broadband options, or by mobile-only operators trying to add an additional fixed revenue stream, where they have spare capacity.

Fixed wireless internet access fits specific sectors and uses, rather than the overall market

FWA Use Cases

Source: STL Partners

FWA has traditionally been used in sparsely populated rural areas, where the economics of fixed broadband are untenable, especially in developing markets without existing fibre transport to towns and villages, or even copper in residential areas. Such networks have typically used unlicensed frequency bands, as there is limited interference – and little financial justification for expensive spectrum purchases. In most cases, such deployments use proprietary variants of Wi-Fi, or its ill-fated 2010-era sibling WiMAX.

Increasingly however, FWA is being used in more urban settings, and in more developed market scenarios – for example during the phase-out of older xDSL broadband, or in places with limited or no competition between fixed-network providers. Some cellular networks primarily intended for mobile broadband (MBB) have been used for fixed usage as well, especially if spare capacity has been available. 4G has already catalysed rapid growth of FWA in numerous markets, such as South Africa, Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy and the Philippines – and 5G is likely to make a further big difference in coming years. These mostly rely on licensed spectrum, typically the national bands owned by major MNOs. In some cases, specific bands are used for FWA use, rather than sharing with normal mobile broadband. This allows appropriate “dimensioning” of network elements, and clearer cost-accounting for management.

Historically, most FWA has required an external antenna and professional installation on each individual house, although it also gets deployed for multi-dwelling units (MDUs, i.e. apartment blocks) as well as some non-residential premises like shops and schools. More recently, self-installed indoor CPE with varying levels of price and sophistication has helped broaden the market, enabling customers to get terminals at retail stores or delivered direct to their home for immediate use.

Looking forward, the arrival of 5G mass-market equipment and larger swathes of mmWave and new mid-band spectrum – both licensed and unlicensed – is changing the landscape again, with the potential for fibre-rivalling speeds, sometimes at gigabit-grade.

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Table of contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
    • FWA today
    • Universal broadband as a goal
    • What’s changed in recent years?
    • What’s changed because of the pandemic?
  • The FWA market and use cases
    • Niche or mainstream? National or local?
    • Targeting key applications / user groups
  • FWA technology evolution
    • A broad array of options
    • Wi-Fi, WiMAX and close relatives
    • Using a mobile-primary network for FWA
    • 4G and 5G for WISPs
    • Other FWA options
    • Customer premise equipment: indoor or outdoor?
    • Spectrum implications and options
  • The new FWA value chain
    • Can MNOs use FWA to enter the fixed broadband market?
    • Reinventing the WISPs
    • Other value chain participants
    • Is satellite a rival waiting in the wings?
  • Commercial models and packages
    • Typical pricing and packages
    • Example FWA operators and plans
  • STL’s FWA market forecasts
    • Quantitative market sizing and forecast
    • High level market forecast
  • Conclusions
    • What will 5G deliver – and when and where?
  • Index

LPWA: Which way to go for IoT?

Introduction: Why is LPWA important?

The Internet of Things (IoT) space is huge and incredibly diverse. It spans everything from remote-control of commercial drones, to consumer wearables, in-building sensors and smart electricity metering. It has the potential to improve cities’ safety, industrial productivity and enhance human health and welfare. Each area has its own characteristics in terms of connectivity, management, platform and security requirements.

This briefing report focuses on “narrowband”, long-distance IoT connectivity – typically applications which operate at speeds of 1Mbit/s or less, and perhaps only transmit a few kilobytes per day. That contrasts with the high-speed, low-latency connections IoT connections that people reference for wearables like AR headsets, or those streaming real-time telemetry and cloud-access, from complex devices like robots or huge arrays of sensors.

It is frequently said that connectivity represents only a small percentage of the overall revenue and value opportunity around IoT. Yet while that is, objectively, true, it ignores the anchoring and potential “pull-through” on other layers, especially for LPWA and narrowband access, where optimisation for power consumption and coverage is critical for many use-cases. Provision of connectivity to a device or application gives the provider (or owner) a head-start on exploiting the entire solution stack, for example in terms of collection of operational data for machine-learning and analytics.

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Against that backdrop, it is understandable why telcos and their vendors and industry bodies are putting so much attention on IoT-centric networking. That encompasses everything from 5G headline use-cases about ultra-low latency connections, through to the desire to manage smart homes and cities’ infrastructure, or very simple sensors.

It is already clear that no one single technology – or even two or three – can cover everything to do with IoT. There are too many dimensions – between 5 and 10 important ones can be identified (see page 19 of the report) – which leads to a vast set of combinations. No vendor, and no operator, will be able to optimally cover everything, while for any given problem there is likely to be an overlap of “reasonable” solutions.

An important part of the mix, which STL Partners has considered before in 2016 is for low-power, wide-area LPWA connectivity. This is envisaged to connect many of the “billions” of endpoints which are widely anticipated – inexpensive sensors, actuators, personal devices, tags and other gadgets – and especially those spread over large distances (think 100s of metres, up to 10s of kilometres or more).

Typical LPWA / narrowband applications

In particular, LPWA focuses on low-bandwidth products, rather than those needing enough speed for video or rich telemetry to/from the cloud. Most, but not all, LPWA applications are fairly tolerant of delay/latency – temperature sensors or street-lights don’t need millisecond response times – but security may still be very important.

They need to be simple to deploy, inexpensive, energy-efficient, low-maintenance and use radio technology suitable for hard-to-reach locations. Most of the new LPWA networks can connect many end devices via a single base station, usually over a long (1-10km) distance. This brings trade-offs, however: slower data transmission rates and less-frequent updates/messages.

  • New cycle-sharing services, where the bikes don’t need special racks, but have remote-controlled padlocks and can be left/picked-up (and tracked) anywhere in an urban area.
  • Smart electricity/gas meters for homes – which may be in basements, or wherever the pipes/wires enter the building.
  • Asset-tracking, such as attaching beacons to expensive tools on large sites.
  • Smart lighting systems for cities, where lamp-posts can be switched on remotely – but also house sensors (e.g. for weather or traffic) which report back data to a central system.
  • Supply-chain management, such as monitoring of shipments of pharmaceuticals from manufacture to dispensary.

Shared bicycles’ locks have requirements for mobility & long battery life

LPWA applications

Key LPWA technologies & deployments

There are currently four main LPWA technologies that dominate IoT deployments and discussion: SigFox, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and LTE-M (sometimes called LTE Cat-M1). There are also a number of other less-prominent solutions, which can be important for certain niches. Various hybrids and combinations are possible as well – plus many short-range solutions like Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Bluetooth, which are outside the main scope of discussion here.

The main four include two that are endorsed by the mobile industry “establishment”, as they are 3GPP standards that fit into the broader 4G family. In most cases, they are intended to work in dedicated (licensed) spectrum bands, typical for most mobile networks. The cellular LPWA variants include:

LTE-M: This is essentially a de-tuned, cheaper, lower-power version of “normal” LTE. It can also support VoLTE voice communications. It is focused on mid-range speeds of up to 1Mbit/s. An earlier version of LTE designed for M2M was called LTE-Cat1, although it is not in widespread use.

NB-IoT: This is 3GPP’s first attempt at an ultra-low power, long battery-life standard. The NB stands for Narrowband, meaning below 100kbit/s data speeds, and often considerably less than that. This means can fit into quite small slices of spectrum.

EC-GSM: As well LTE-M and NB-IoT, 3GPP is also working on a more-modern version of 2G connectivity, especially suitable for countries or rural regions which do not yet have 4G coverage, yet need an improved version of GPRS M2M, for low-power applications like agriculture. It has had little traction so far.

5G “Massive” MTC: One of the main promised use-cases of 5G networks is for ultra-dense, low- power IoT networks – potentially tens of thousands of nodes per cell, or even more. This is commonly referred to as “massive IoT” or MTC (machine-type communications). While there may be evolution of NB-IoT towards that (e.g. NB-IoT2), the full 5G version is only likely to emerge in 2020 or beyond.

Outside of the “mainstream” cellular-industry IoT connectivity technologies created by 3GPP, there is a wide variety of other options. Some of these have been created by individual vendors which retain core rights to the IPR, while others have been standardised by other IT/networking bodies such as IEEE. Mostly, they work in unlicensed spectrum – which makes them cheaper to deploy (especially in limited areas), but risks interference.

Table of Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: Why is LPWA important?
  • Typical LPWA / narrowband applications
  • Key LPWA technologies & deployment
  • Status and deployments
  • LoRa / LoRaWAN
  • SigFox
  • Strategic considerations
  • Multiple dimensions determine the “best” LPWA for each use
  • LPWA delivery models: Service, private, solution or other?
  • Spectrum considerations
  • IoT developers and ecosystem
  • Hybrid and multiple networks
  • Conclusions and recommendations
  • Vertical solutions?
  • Conclusions

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Autonomous cars: Where’s the money for telcos?

Introduction

Connected cars have been around for about two decades. GM first launched its OnStar in-vehicle communications service in 1996. Although the vast majority of the 1.4 billion cars on the world’s roads still lack embedded cellular connectivity, there is growing demand from drivers for wireless safety and security features, and streamed entertainment and information services. Today, many people simply use their smartphones inside their cars to help them navigate, find local amenities and listen to music.

The falling cost of cellular connectivity and equipment is now making it increasingly cost-effective to equip vehicles with their own cellular modules and antenna to support emergency calls, navigation, vehicle diagnostics and pay-as-you-drive insurance. OnStar, which offers emergency, security, navigation, connections and vehicle manager services across GM’s various vehicle brands, says it now has more than 11 million customers in North America, Europe, China and South America. Moreover, as semi-autonomous cars begin to emerge from the labs, there is growing demand from vehicle manufacturers and technology companies for data on how people drive and the roads they are using. The recent STL Partners report, AI: How telcos can profit from deep learning, describes how companies can use real-world data to teach computers to perform everyday tasks, such as driving a car down a highway.

This report will explore the connected and autonomous vehicle market from telcos’ perspective, focusing on the role they can play in this sector and the business models they should adopt to make the most of the opportunity.

As STL Partners described in the report, The IoT ecosystem and four leading operators’ strategies, telcos are looking to provide more than just connectivity as they strive to monetise the Internet of Things. They are increasingly bundling connectivity with value-added services, such as security, authentication, billing, systems integration and data analytics. However, in the connected vehicle market, specialist technology companies, systems integrators and Internet players are also looking to provide many of the services being targeted by telcos.

Moreover, it is not yet clear to what extent the vehicles of the future will rely on cellular connectivity, rather than short-range wireless systems. Therefore, this report spends some time discussing different connectivity technologies that will enable connected and autonomous vehicles, before estimating the incremental revenues telcos may be able to earn and making some high-level recommendations on how to maximise this opportunity.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • The role of cellular connectivity
  • High level recommendations
  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • The evolution of connected cars
  • How to connect cars to cellular networks
  • What are the opportunities for telcos?
  • How much cellular connectivity do vehicles need?
  • Takeaways
  • The size of the opportunity
  • How much can telcos charge for in-vehicle connectivity?
  • How will vehicles use cellular connectivity?
  • Telco connected car case studies
  • Vodafone – far-sighted strategy
  • AT&T – building an enabling ecosystem
  • Orange – exploring new possibilities with network slicing
  • SoftBank – developing self-driving buses
  • Conclusions and Recommendations
  • High level recommendations
  • STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game 

 

  • Figure 1: Incremental annual revenue estimates by service
  • Figure 2: Autonomous vehicles will change how we use cars
  • Figure 3: Vehicles can harness connectivity in many different ways
  • Figure 4: V2X may require large numbers of simultaneous connections
  • Figure 5: Annual sales of connected vehicles are rising rapidly
  • Figure 6: Mobile connectivity in cars will grow quickly
  • Figure 7: Estimates of what telcos can charge for connected car services
  • Figure 8: Potential use cases for in-vehicle cellular connectivity
  • Figure 9: Connectivity complexity profile criteria
  • Figure 10: Infotainment connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 11: In-vehicle infotainment services estimates
  • Figure 12: Real-time information connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 13: Real-time information services estimates
  • Figure 14: The connectivity complexity profile for deep learning data
  • Figure 15: Collecting deep learning data services estimates
  • Figure 16: Insurance and rental services’ connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 17: Pay-as-you-drive insurance and rental services estimates
  • Figure 18: Automated emergency calls’ connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 19: Automated emergency calls estimates
  • Figure 20: Remote monitoring and control connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 21: Remote monitoring and control of vehicle services estimates
  • Figure 22: Fleet management connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 23: Fleet management services estimates
  • Figure 24: Vehicle diagnostics connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 25: Vehicle diagnostics and maintenance services estimates
  • Figure 26: Inter-vehicle coordination connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 27: Inter-vehicle coordination revenue estimates
  • Figure 28: Traffic management connectivity complexity profile
  • Figure 29: Traffic management revenue estimates
  • Figure 30: Vodafone Automotive is aiming to be global
  • Figure 31: Forecasts for incremental annual revenue increase by service

5G: The spectrum game is changing – but how to play?

Introduction

Why does spectrum matter?

Radio spectrum is a key “raw material” for mobile networks, together with evolution of the transmission technology itself, and the availability of suitable cell-site locations. The more spectrum is made available for telcos, the more capacity there is overall for current and future mobile networks. The ability to provide good coverage is also determined largely by spectrum allocations.

Within the industry, we are accustomed to costly auction processes, as telcos battle for tranches of frequencies to add capacity, or support new generations of technology. In contrast, despite the huge costs to telcos for different spectrum allocation, most people have very little awareness of what bands their phones support, other than perhaps that it can use ‘mobile/cellular’ and WiFi.

Most people, even in the telecoms industry, don’t grasp the significance of particular numbers of MHz or GHz involved (Hz = number of cycles per second, measured in millions or billions). And that is just the tip of the jargon and acronym iceberg – a full discussion of mobile RAN (radio access network) technology involves different sorts of modulation, multiple antennas, propagation metrics, path loss (in decibels, dB) and so forth.

Yet as 5G pulls into view, it is critical to understand the process by which new frequencies will be released by governments, or old ones re-used by the mobile industry. To deliver the much-promised peak speeds and enhanced coverage of 5G, big chunks of frequencies are needed. Yet spectrum has many other uses besides public mobile networks, and battles will be fierce about any reallocations of incumbent users’ rights. The broadcast industry (especially TV), satellite operators, government departments (notably defence), scientific research communities and many other constituencies are involved here. In addition, there are growing demands for more bandwidth for unlicensed usage (as used for WiFi, Bluetooth and other low-power IoT networks such as SigFox).

Multiple big industries – usually referred to by the mobile community as “verticals” – are flexing their own muscles as well. Energy, transport, Internet, manufacturing, public safety and other sectors all see the benefits of wireless connectivity – but don’t necessarily want to involve mobile operators, nor subscribe to their preferred specifications and standards. Many have huge budgets, a deep legacy of systems-building and are hiring mobile specialists.

Lastly, parts of the technology industry are advocates of more nuanced approaches to spectrum management. Rather than dedicate bands to single companies, across whole countries or regions, they would rather develop mechanisms for sharing spectrum – either on a geographic basis, or by allowing some form of “peaceful coexistence” where different users’ radios behave nicely together, instead of creating interference. In theory, this could improve the efficient use of spectrum – but adds complexity, and perhaps introduces so much extra competition than willingness to invest suffers.

Which bands are made available for 5G, on what timescales, in what type of “chunks”, and the authorisation / licensing schemes involved, all define the potential opportunity for operators in 5G – as well as the risks of disruption, and (for some) how large the window is to fully-monetise 4G investments.

The whole area is a minefield to understand – it brings together the hardest parts of wireless technology to grasp, along with impenetrable legal processes, and labyrinthine politics at national and international levels. And ideally, it is possible to somehow to layer on consideration of end-user needs, and economic/social outputs as well.

Who are the stakeholders for spectrum?

At first sight, it might seem that spectrum allocations for mobile networks ought to be a comparatively simple affair, with governments deciding on tranches of frequencies and an appropriate auction process. MNOs can bid for their desired bands, and then deploy networks (and, perhaps, gripe about the costs afterwards).

The reality is much more complex. A later section describes some of the international bureaucracy involved in defining appropriate bands, which can then be doled out by governments (assuming they don’t decide to act unilaterally). But even before that, it is important to consider which organisations want to get involved in the decision process – and their motivations, whether for 5G or other issues that are closer to their own priorities, which intersect with it.

Governments have a broad set of drivers and priorities to reconcile – technological evolution of the economy as a whole, the desire for a competitive telecoms industry, exports, auction receipts – and the protection of other spectrum user groups such as defence, transport and public safety. Different branches of government and the public administration have differing views, and there may sometimes be tussles between the executive branch and various regulators.

Much the same is true at regional levels, especially in Europe, where there are often disagreements between European Commission, European Parliament, the regulators’ groups and 28 different EU nations’ parliaments (plus another 23 non-EU nations).

Even within the telecoms industry there are differences of opinion – some operators see 5G as an urgent strategic priority, that can help differentiation and reduce costs of existing infrastructure deployments. Others are still in the process of rolling out 4G networks and want to ensure that those investments continue to have relevance. There are variations in how much credence is assigned to the projections of IoT growth – and even there, whether there needs to be breathing room for 4G cellular types such as NB-IoT, which is yet to be deployed despite its putative replacement being discussed already.

The net result is many rounds of research, debate, consultation, disagreement and (eventually) compromise. Yet in many ways, 5G is different from 3G and 4G, especially because many new sectors are directly involved in helping define the use-cases and requirements. In many ways, telecoms is now “too important to be left to the telcos”, and many other voices will therefore need to be heard.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Why does spectrum matter?
  • Who are the stakeholders for spectrum?
  • Spectrum vs. business models
  • Does 5G need spectrum harmonisation as much as 4G?
  • Spectrum authorisation types & processes
  • Licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum
  • Why is ITU involved, and what is IMT spectrum?
  • Key bands for 5G
  • Overview
  • 5G Phase 1: just more of the same?
  • mmWave beckons – the high bands >6GHz
  • Conclusions

 

  • Figure 1 – 5G spectrum has multiple stakeholders with differing priorities
  • Figure 2 – Multi-band support has improved hugely since early 4G phones
  • Figure 3 – A potential 5G deployment & standardisation timeline
  • Figure 4 – ITU timeline for 5G spectrum harmonisation, 2014-2020
  • Figure 5 – High mmWave frequencies (e.g. 28GHz) don’t go through solid walls
  • Figure 6 – mmWave brings new technology and design challenges

eSIM: How Much Should Operators Worry?

What is eSIM? Or RSP?

There is a lot of confusion around what eSIM actually means. While the “e” is often just assumed to stand for “embedded”, this is only half the story – and one which various people in the industry are trying to change.

In theory the term “eSIM” refers only to the functionality of “remote provisioning”; that is, the ability to download an operator profile to an in-market SIM (and also potentially switch between profiles or delete them). This contrasts with the traditional methods of pre-provisioning specific, fixed profiles into SIMs during manufacture. Most SIMs today have a particular operator’s identity and encryption credentials set at the factory. This is true of both the familiar removable SIM cards used in mobile phones, and the “soldered-in” form used in some M2M devices.

In other words, the original “e” was a poor choice – it was intended to stand for “enhanced”, “electronic” or just imply “new and online” like eCommerce or eGovernment. In fact, the first use in 2011 was for eUICC – the snappier term eSIM only emerged a couple of years later. UICCs (Universal Integrated Circuit Cards) are the smart-card chips themselves, that are used both in SIMs and other applications, for example, bank, transport and access-security cards. Embedded, solderable SIMs have existed for certain M2M uses since 2010.

In an attempt to separate out the “form factor” (removable vs. embedded) aspect from the capability (remote vs. factory provisioned), the term RSP sometimes gets used, standing for Remote SIM Provisioning. This is the title of GSMA’s current standard. But unsurprisingly, the nicer term eSIM is hard to dislodge in observers’ consciousness, so it is likely to stick around. Most now think of eSIMs as having both the remote-provisioning function and an embedded non-removable form-factor. In theory, we might even get remote-provisioning for removable SIMs (the 2014 Apple SIM was a non-standard version of this).

Figure 1: What does eSIM actually mean?

What does esim mean

Source: Disruptive Analysis

This picture is further muddied by different sets of GSMA standards for M2M and consumer use-cases at present, where the latter involves some way for the end-user to choose which profiles to download and when to activate them – for example, linking a new cellular tablet to an existing data-plan. This is different to a connected car or an industrial M2M use-case, where the manufacturer designs in the connectivity, and perhaps needs to manage whole “fleets” of eSIMs together. The GSMA M2M version of the standards were first released in 2013, and the first consumer specifications were only released in 2016. Both are being enhanced over time, and there are intentions to develop a converged M2M/consumer specification, probably in H2 2017.

eSims vs Soft-SIM / vSims

This is another area of confusion – some people confuse eSIMs with the concept of a “soft-SIM” (also called virtual SIMs/vSIMs). These have been discussed for years as a possible option for replacing physical SIM chips entirely, whether remotely provisioned, removable/soldered or not. They use purely software-based security credentials and certificates, which could be based in the “secure zone” of some mobile processors.

However, the mobile industry has strongly pushed-back on the Soft-SIM concept and standardisation, for both security reasons and also (implicit) commercial concerns. Despite this we are aware of at least two Asian handset vendors that have recently started using virtual SIMs for roaming applications.

For now, soft-SIMs appear to be far from the standards agenda, although there is definitely renewed interest. They also require a secondary market in “profiles”, which is at a very early stage and not receiving much industry attention at the moment. STL thinks that there is a possibility that we could see a future standardised version of soft-SIMs and the associated value-chain and controls, but it will take a lot of convincing for the telco industry (and especially GSMA) to push for it. It might get another nudge from Apple (which indirectly catalysed the whole eSIM movement with a 2010 patent), but as discussed later that seems improbable in the short term.

Multi-IMSI: How does multi-IMSI work?

It should also be noted that multi-IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) SIMs are yet another category here. Already used in various niches, these allow a single operator profile to be associated with multiple phone numbers – for example in different geographies. Combined with licences in different countries or multiple MVNO arrangements, this allows various clever business models, but anchored in one central operator’s system. Multi-local operators such as Truphone exploit this, as does Google in its Fi service which blends T-Mobile US and Sprint networks together. It is theoretically possible to blend multi-IMSI functionality with eSIM remote-provisioning.

eSIMs use cases and what do stakeholders hope to gain

  • There are two sets of use-cases and related stakeholder groups for eSIMs:
  • Devices that already use cellular radios & SIMs today; This group can be sub-divided into:
    • Mobile phones
    • M2M uses (e.g. connected cars and industrial modules)
    • Connected devices such as tablets, PC dongles and portable WiFi hotspots.
  • Devices that do not have cellular connectivity currently; this covers a huge potential range of IoT
    devices.
  • Broadly speaking, it is hoped that eSIM will improve the return on investment and/or efficiency of existing cellular devices and services, or help justify and enable the inclusion of cellular connections in new ones. Replacing existing SIMs is (theoretically) made easier by scrutinising existing channels and business processes and improving them – while new markets (again theoretically) offer win-win scenarios where there is no threat of disruption to existing business models.

The two different stakeholders want to receive different benefits from eSIMs. Mobile operators want:

  • Lower costs for procuring and distributing SIMs.
  • Increased revenue from adding more cellular devices and related services, which can be done incrementally with an eSIM, e.g. IoT connectivity and management.
  • Better functionality and security compared to competing non-cellular technologies.
  • Limited risk of disintermediation, increased churn or OEMs acting as gatekeepers.

And device manufacturers want:

  • To reduce their “bill of material” (BoM) costs and number of design compromises compared to existing removable SIMs
  • To sell more phones and other connected devices
  • To provide better user experience, especially compared to competing OEMs / ecosystems
  • To create additional revenue streams related to service connectivityTo upgrade existing embedded (but non-programmable) soldered SIMs for M2M

The truth, however, is more complex than that – there needs to be clear proof that eSIM improves existing devices’ costs or associated revenues, without introducing extra complexity or risk. And new device categories need to justify the addition of the (expensive, power-consuming) radio itself, as well as choosing SIM vs. eSIM for authentication. In both cases, the needs and benefits for cellular operators and device OEMs (plus their users and channels) must coincide.

There are also many other constituencies involved here: niche service providers of many types, network equipment and software suppliers, IoT specialists, chipset companies, enterprises and their technology suppliers, industry associations, SIM suppliers and so forth. In each case there are both incumbents, and smaller innovators/disruptors trying to find a viable commercial position.

This brings in many “ifs” and “buts” that need to be addressed.

Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: What is eSIM? Or RSP?
  • Not a Soft-SIM, or multi-IMSI
  • What do stakeholders hope to gain?
  • A million practical problems So where does eSIM make sense?
  • Phones or just IoT?
  • Forecasts for eSIM
  • Conclusion 

 

  • Figure 1: What does eSIM actually mean?
  • Figure 2: eSIM standardisation & industry initiatives timeline
  • Figure 3: eSIM shipment forecasts, by device category, 2016-2021

The IoT ecosystem and four leading operators’ strategies

The IoT ecosystem

The term IoT is used to describe a broad and diverse ecosystem that includes a wide range of different connectivity types and use-cases. Therefore, it is not helpful to discuss the IoT ecosystem as a whole, and to understand IoT better it is necessary to break it down into horizontal layers and vertical segments.

Figure 1: A simplified map of the IoT ecosystem

Source: STL Partners


The five horizontal layers in the figure above are essential elements common to all IoT use-cases, regardless of vertical segment, and comprise:

  1. Sensors or controllers (embedded in connected devices, the “things” in the Internet of Things)
  2. A gateway device to aggregate and transmit data back and forth via the data network.
  3. A communications network to send data.
  4. Software for analysing and translating data.
  5. The end application service.

Perhaps surprisingly we have not included ‘IoT platforms’ as a horizontal layer in its own right.  IoT platforms are designed to organise, analyse, and (in some cases) act upon the data from connected devices. Because there can be differences in platform capabilities from vendor to vendor, a platform horizontal layer has not been included in this analysis. Depending on the platform, it will be designed to deliver any combination of horizontal layers 3, 4, and 5.

Level 5 – the end application service – is where material differences exist between vertical segments. Because IoT is a young market new use-cases are still emerging and existing use-cases are still evolving. The IoT ecosystem is not static and will continue to change, grow, and develop, and could look quite different in the next ten years. However, several distinct IoT vertical markets – sometimes described as ecosystems in their own right – are already emerging. These include:

  1. Smart and connected cities.
  2. Connected vehicles.
  3. Industrial IoT (including smart manufacturing).
  4. Smart home.
  5. Smart healthcare.
  6. Smart agriculture.

Within each of these six verticals there are several use-cases, and each vertical is developing and evolving new ones all the time. Figure 2 shows examples of use-cases either currently in use or under development in each vertical.

Figure 2: IoT vertical markets and use cases

Source: STL Partners

The complexity and technical requirements of each use-case varies widely. For example, the requirements of a smart thermostat compared to those of an autonomous vehicle are distinctly different. The next section of this report will provide an overview of the different technologies enabling IoT, followed by a section providing analysis of the technological requirements of several use-cases to illustrate how the IoT ecosystem will be enabled by not just one, but several different connectivity technologies.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
  • The IoT ecosystem
  • Six key technologies enabling IoT
  • 1. Cloud computing
  • 2. Low-power wide-area technologies
  • 3. Big data analytics
  • 4. Network function virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN)
  • 5. 5G
  • 6. Edge computing
  • Will one connectivity technology be dominant?
  • Use-case one: Smart metering
  • Use-case two: Autonomous driving
  • Use-case three: Smart thermostat
  • Use-case four: Smart home security system
  • How will IoT use-cases evolve?
  • Telcos’ role in the IoT ecosystem
  • The IoT value chain
  • AT&T: the ambitious ecosystem orchestrator
  • Vodafone: a ‘connectivity plus’ approach
  • SK Telecom: connectivity via multiple technologies
  • Deutsche Telekom AG: the open platform integrator
  • Adapting for evolution

 

  • Figure 1: A simplified map of the IoT ecosystem
  • Figure 2: IoT vertical markets and use-cases
  • Figure 3: The role of ‘network slicing’ in IoT
  • Figure 4: The role of Edge Computing in IoT
  • Figure 5: Complexity profile criteria ratings
  • Figure 6: Smart metering complexity profile
  • Figure 7: Autonomous driving complexity profile
  • Figure 8: Smart thermostat complexity profile
  • Figure 9: Smart home security system complexity profile
  • Figure 10: IoT use-case evolution
  • Figure 11: Telco’s original role in the IoT ecosystem
  • Figure 11: Telco’s current role in the IoT ecosystem

5G: How Will It Play Out?

Introduction: Different visions of 5G

The ‘idealists’ and the ‘pragmatists’

In the last 18 months, several different visions of 5G have emerged.

One is the vision espoused by the major R&D collaborations, academics, standardisation groups, the European Union, and some operators. This is the one with the flying robots, self-driving cars, and fully automated factories whose internal networks are provided entirely by ultra-low latency critical communications profiles within the cellular network. The simplest way to describe its aims would be to say that they intend to create a genuinely universal mobile telecommunications system serving everything from 8K streaming video for football crowds, through basic (defined as 50Mbps) fixed-wireless coverage for low-ARPU developing markets, to low-rate and ultra-low power but massive-scale M2M, with the same radio waveform, backed by a single universal virtualised core network “sliced” between use-cases. This slide, from Samsung’s Raj Gawera, sums it up – 5G is meant to maximise all eight factors labelled on the vertices of the chart.

Figure 1: 5G, the vision: one radio for everything

Source: Samsung, 3G & 4G Wireless Blog

Most of its backers – the idealist group – are in no hurry, targeting 2020 at the earliest for the standard to be complete, and deployment to begin sometime after that. There are some recent signs of increasing urgency – and certainly various early demonstrations – although that is perhaps a response to the sense of movement elsewhere in the industry.

The other vision is the one backed in 3GPP (the main standards body for 5G) by an alliance of semiconductor companies – including Intel, Samsung, ARM, Qualcomm, and Mediatek – but also Nokia Networks and some carriers, notably Verizon Wireless. This vision is much more radio-centric, being focused on the so-called 5G New Radio (NR) element of the project, and centred on delivering ultra-high capacity mobile broadband. It differs significantly from the idealists’ on timing – the pragmatist group wants to have real deployments by 2018 or even earlier, and is willing (even keen) to take an IETF-like approach where the standards process ratifies the results of “rough consensus and running code”.

Carriers’ interests fall between the two poles. In general, operators’ contributions to the process focus on the three Cs – capacity, cost, and carbon dioxide – but they also usually have a special interest of their own. This might be network virtualisation and slicing for converged operators with significant cloud and enterprise interests, low-latency or massive-scale M2M for operators with major industrial customers, or low-cost mobile broadband for operators with emerging market opcos.

The summer and especially September 2016’s CTIA Mobility conference also pointed towards some players in the middle – AT&T is juggling its focus on its ECOMP NFV mega-project, with worries that Verizon will force its hand on 5G the same way it did with 4G. It would be in the idealist group if it could align 5G radio deployment and NFV perfectly, but it is probably aware of the gulf widening rather than narrowing between the two. Ericsson is pushing for 5G incrementalism (and minimising the risk of carriers switching vendors at a later date) with its “Plug-In” strategy for specific bits of functionality.

Dino Flores of Qualcomm, the chairman of 3GPP RAN (RAN = radio access network) has chosen to compromise by taking forward the core enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) elements for what is now being called “Phase 1”, but also cherry-picking two of the future use cases – “massive” M2M, and “critical” communications. These last two differ in that the first is optimised for scalability and power saving, and the second is optimised for quality-of-service control (or PPP for Priority, Precedence, and Pre-emption in 3GPP terminology), reliable delivery, and very low latency. As the low-cost use case is essentially eMBB in low-band spectrum, with a less dense network and a high degree of automation, this choice covers carriers’ expressed needs rather well, at least in principle. In practice, the three have very different levels of commercial urgency.

Implicitly, of course, the other, more futuristic use cases (such as self-driving cars) have been relegated to “Phase 2”. As Phase 2 is expected to be delivered after 2020, or in other words, on the original timetable, this means that Phase 1 has indeed accelerated significantly. Delays in some of the more futuristic applications may not be a major worry to many people – self-driving cars probably have more regulatory obstacles than technical ones, while Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communications seems to be less of a priority for the automotive industry than many assert. A recent survey by Ericsson[1] suggested that better mapping and navigation is more important than “platooning” vehicles (grouping them together on the highway in platoons, which increases the capacity of the highway) as a driver of next-gen mobile capabilities.

3GPP’s current timeline foresees issuing the Technical Report (TR) detailing the requirements for the New Radio standard at the RAN (Radio Access Network) 73 meeting next month, and finalising a Non-Standalone version of the New Radio standard at either RAN 78 in December 2017, with the complete NR specification being frozen by the TSG (Technical Specifications Group) 80 meeting in June 2018, in time to be included in 3GPP Release 14. (In itself this is a significant hurry-up – the original plan was for 5G to wait for R15.) This spec would include all three major use cases, support for both <6GHz and millimetre wave spectrum, and both Non-Standalone and Standalone.

Importantly, if both Non-Standalone and the features common to it and Standalone standards are ready by the end of 2017, we will be very close to a product that could be deployed in a ‘pragmatist’ scenario even ahead of the standards process. This seems to be what VZW, Nokia, Ericsson, and others are hoping for – especially for fixed-5G. The December 2017 meeting is an especially important juncture as it will be a joint meeting of both TSG and RAN. AT&T has also called for a speeding-up of standardisation[2].

The problem, however, is that it may be difficult to reconcile the technical requirements of all three in one new radio, especially as the new radio must also be extensible to deal with the many different use cases of Phase 2, and must work both with the 4G core network as “anchor” in Non-Standalone and with the new 5G core when that arrives, in Standalone.

Also, radio development is forging ahead of both core development and spectrum policy. Phase 1 5G is focused on the bands below 6GHz, but radio vendors have been demonstrating systems working in the 15, 28, 60, and 73GHz bands – for instance Samsung and T-Mobile working on 28GHz[3]. The US FCC especially has moved very rapidly to make this spectrum available, while the 3GPP work item for millimetre wave isn’t meant to report before 2017 – and with harmonisation and allocation only scheduled for discussion at ITU’s 2019 World Radio Congress.

The upshot is that the March 2017 TSG 75 meeting is a critical decision point. Among much else it will have to confirm the future timeline and make a decision on whether or not the Non-Standalone (sometimes abbreviated to NSA) version of the New Radio will be ready by TSG/RAN 78 in December. The following 3GPP graphic summarises the timeline.


[1] https://www.ericsson.com/se/news/2039614

[2] http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/at-t-s-keathley-5g-standards-should-be-released-2017-not-2018

[3] http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/t-mobile-samsung-plan-5g-trials-using-pre-commercial-systems-at-28-ghz

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: Different visions of 5G
  • One Network to Rule Them All: Can it Happen?
  • Network slicing: a nice theory, but work needed…
  • Difficulty versus Urgency: understanding opportunities and blockers for 5G
  • Business drivers of the timeline: both artificial and real
  • Internet-Agility Driving Progress
  • How big is the mission critical IoT opportunity?
  • Conclusions

 

  • Figure 1: 5G, the vision: one radio for everything
  • Figure 2: The New Radio standardisation timeline, as of June 2016
  • Figure 3: An example frame structure, showing the cost of critical comms
  • Figure 4: LTE RAN protocols desperately need simplicity
  • Figure 5: Moving the Internet/RAN boundary may be problematic, but the ultra-low latency targets demand it
  • Figure 6: Easy versus urgent
  • Figure 7: A summary of key opportunities and barriers in 5G

MWC 2016 Overview: 5G, the Cloud, and the Internet of Things

This 8 page Telco 2.0 report gives an overview of MWC 2016 and what we took away from it, including…

  • Executive Summary
  • 5G: The Pace Picks Up
  • Networks are Software
  • The Internet of Many Fewer Things Than Expected is Here
  • Conclusion

Members of the Executive Briefing Service can also access the following additional MWC 2016 reports:

Digital Partnering: Success Factors and AT&T Drive Case Study

Introduction

As communications services providers continue their push to develop and monetise digital services, partnering is proving a critical element of strategy, and a key enabler for telco agility. While some telco-digital player partnerships have been successful in achieving their objectives, many have languished, and failed to deliver value to one or both parties within the partnership.

In this report, we examine the different types of digital services partnerships that operators are engaged in; discuss the key success factors for the various partnering approaches and strategies; and look more deeply at a successful partnership strategy: AT&T’s Drive connected car initiative, which is an example of a broad vertical-focused partnership ecosystem. Our follow-on report will provide a case study of TeliaSonera’s successful digital music partnership with Spotify, an example of a single-focus collaboration for digital services.

Telcos are increasingly recognising the importance of partnerships for achieving their potential as true digital services companies. Partnering between telcos and third parties to deliver new services or target new markets is, of course, not a new phenomenon. Two things are new, however: the focus on partnering as a core competency of the telco organisation, and the increasing complexity of telco partnership ecosystems, as digital services, enabling technologies and service delivery value chains continue to evolve. An agile approach to building and managing complex partnerships is one of the key elements of becoming a Telco 2.0 organisation.

Figure 1: The Telco 2.0 Agility Framework

Source: STL Partners

Partnering is being defined as a telco ‘core competence’

A number of operators have now enshrined the objective of successful partnering in their corporate strategy. Deutsche Telekom, for example, has made partnering one of its ‘four pillars’. The clearly-stated objective in DTAG’s case is to attract (and learn from) companies that have adopted the agile, rapid-response, high-energy approach found in Silicon Valley and other global tech hubs such as Israel. DTAG hopes to offer these partners, access to its customers and channels across the twelve DTAG European markets, as well as the ability to leverage DTAG’s network and corporate resources:

“The list of companies we have been working with for many years is long. But how we cooperate, that has changed. We are more open and faster. We focus on our core competence – our best net – and add specific offers of the partners. Take for example the eReader tolino: We not only provide the eReader, but also the technical platform on which Bertelsmann, Hugendubel, Thalia and Libri are able to distribute their eBooks. Together with the German book trade, we established the tolino as a model of success in the eReader market.

In the area Smart Home, we work together with Miele, Samsung, EON and EnBw, amongst others. We have started the system platform QIVICON, which our product DT Smart Home is based on. Together with our partners, we develop the vision of a connected house.”

Thomas Kiesling, Former Chief Product and Innovation Officer, Deutsche Telekom AG1

Partnering and partnerships are becoming more complex

The DTAG example highlights our second point about new aspects of partnering. The increasing complexity of digital services partnerships, and the growing trend for larger partnership ecosystems with many partners participating from different levels of the value chain, requires telcos to take a different and more flexible approach.

A potential digital services partner will usually want to build global scale and so is likely to have several telco partners. Digital services partners will in many cases move at very different speeds from telcos in terms of decision-making and processes, and are likely to use a variety of distribution channels, some of which will bypass, or compete with, the telco partner (particularly for OTT B2C content services such as Spotify). For both B2B and B2C partnerships, business models and revenue sharing arrangements are likely to be fluid and to involve multiple parties.

B2B (and B2B2C) services are increasingly being supported by more extensive and complex partnership ecosystems, rather than single partnerships. Telcos may lead the development of such ecosystems – as AT&T does in the case of Drive – or simply participate. The growth of wider ecosystem partnering relationships has been especially prevalent in the development of M2M/IoT propositions. These may require a variety of platforms, applications, devices and integration elements, as well as a high level of openness in terms of open-source and accessible platforms, APIs, analytics etc.

These trends present challenges for traditional telco approaches to partnering, which have favoured exclusive relationships and ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ approaches to building joint revenue streams. Many telcos have set up digital or innovation arms with the goal of developing new digital propositions together with third parties in a more flexible manner. However, for such propositions to succeed, they need clear buy-in from one or more of the main divisions of the telco. In the case of AT&T, the successful partnering effort we profile here was ultimately rolled back into a main division of the operator, rather than continuing to sit within an innovation division.

Based on our observations from AT&T’s success and the partnership case study we cover in our follow-up report (TeliaSonera’s long-term relationship with Spotify), we have identified a set of key success factors, and major barriers, for effective digital services partnerships between operators and third parties (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Key success factors and barriers for successful digital services partnering

Source: STL Partners

While it isn’t the case that all of the key success factors above must be present in successful operator partnering initiatives, our analysis suggests that several external and internal ones should be present in any digital services partnership.

In the next section, we discuss drivers for digital services partnering, approaches operators have used in partnering, key success factors and barriers; and evaluate the approach that AT&T has taken to partnering with the connected car.

Motivations for partnering in digital services

There are several compelling reasons for telcos to partner when exploring and growing digital services opportunities. The most important of these drivers are shown below in Figure 3. Each driver supports a set of higher-level objectives for telcos, comprising revenue growth, revenue retention, branding and positioning, and organisation transformation and/or agility.

Figure 3: Major drivers for telco digital services partnering initiatives

Source: STL Partners

Drivers linked to the objectives of revenue growth and retention may appear to be most compelling to telcos, given their obvious short-term impact; but those linked to transformation/agility and branding/positioning have been at the forefront of the AT&T partnership initiative we profile here as well as the TeliaSonera-Spotify partnership we profile in our follow-on report. The most successful partnerships support several telco objectives: part of their success is thus attributable to the support they engender from across the telco organisation.

As discussed in the following sections, beyond clearly defining the objectives of the partnership, and the assets that both parties bring to the table, there are a number of other soft elements that contribute to (or hinder) the success of telco digital services partnerships. The existence of clear market demand for the partnership’s products and services is also a key, though sometimes overlooked, element of success.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Partnering is being defined as a telco ‘core competence’
  • Partnering and partnerships are becoming more complex
  • Motivations for partnering in digital services
  • 4 digital services partnership approaches
  • Single-focus collaboration is easiest to manage and has best track record but impact is likely to be limited
  • Broader vertical focus requires greater commitment and has a greater market and implementation risk but can yield big benefits
  • General strategic partnerships appear to have had limited success
  • Key success factors for digital services partnerships
  • External/Market-Driven (demand-side) factors
  • Internal / organisation (supply-side) factors
  • Challenges to successful digital services partnering
  • External (demand side) challenges
  • Internal (supply-side) challenges
  • AT&T’s Drive Connected Car Ecosystem – A B2B2C Vertical Area Partnership
  • Background and context for the partnership
  • AT&T’s Drive Ecosystem
  • Key objectives and fit with the operator’s digital services strategy
  • Partnership approach and evolution
  • Organisation structure and framework for the partnership
  • Evidence of success
  • Key success factors and challenges
  • Barriers to successful partnering: challenges for Sprint and Verizon’s connected car initiatives

 

  • Figure 1: The Telco 2.0 Agility Framework
  • Figure 2: Key success factors and barriers for successful digital services partnering
  • Figure 3: Major drivers for telco digital services partnering initiatives
  • Figure 4: Telco Digital Services Partnership Models
  • Figure 5: US Connected Car Shipments, 2014-2020
  • Figure 6: AT&T Drive: Key End User Applications
  • Figure 7: AT&T Drive Studio, 2015
  • Figure 8: Drivers and objectives for AT&T’s connected car partnerships
  • Figure 9: AT&T Drive Platform Core Functionality and Applications
  • Figure 10: Opel OnStar Service Features, 2016
  • Figure 11: AT&T Drive Partnerships, Dec. 2015
  • Figure 12: AT&T connected car net adds are accelerating
  • Figure 13: Key Success Factors for AT&T Drive Partnerships (GM)

Huawei’s choice: 5G visionary, price warrior or customer champion?

Introduction: Huawei H1s

Huawei’s H1 2015 results caused something of a stir, as they seemed to promise a new cycle of rapid growth at the No.2 infrastructure vendor. The headline figure was that revenue for H1 was up 30% year-on-year, somewhat surprising as LTE infrastructure spending was thought to have passed the peak in much of the world. In context, Huawei’s revenue has grown at a 16% CAGR since 2010, while its operating profits have grown at 2%, implying very significant erosion of margins as the infrastructure business commoditises. Operating margins were in the region of 17-18% in 2010, before falling to 10-12% in 2012-2014.

Figure 1 – If Huawei’s H2 delivers as promised, it may have broken out of the commoditisation trap… for now

Source: STL Partners, Huawei press releases 

Our estimate, in Figure 1, uses the averages for the last 4 years to show two estimates for the full-year numbers. If the first, ‘2015E’, is delivered, this would take Huawei’s profitability back to the levels of 2010 and nearly double its operating profit. The second estimate ‘Alternate 2015E’, assumes a similar performance to last year’s, in which the second half of the year disappoints in terms of profitability. In this case, full-year margin would be closer to 12% rather than 18% and all the growth would be coming from volume. The H1 announcement promises margins for 2015 of 18%, which would therefore mean a very successful year indeed if they were delivered in H2. For the last few years, Huawei’s H2 revenue has been rather higher than H1, on average by about 10% for 2011-2014. You might expect this in a growing business, but profitability is much more erratic.

For reference, Figure 2 shows that the relationship between H1 and H2 profitability has varied significantly from year to year. While in 2012 and 2013 Huawei’s operating profits in H2 were higher than in H1, in 2011 and 2014, its H2 operating profits were much less than in H1. 2015E shows the scenario needed to deliver the 18% annual margin target; Alternate 2015E shows a scenario where H2 is relatively weak, in line with last year.

Figure 2 – Huawei’s H1 and H2 Profits have varied significantly year on year

Source: STL Partners, Huawei press releases 

Huawei’s annual report hints at some reasons for the weak H2 2014, notably poor sales in North America, stockbuilding ahead of major Chinese investment (inventory rose sharply through 2014), and the launch of the Honor low-cost device brand. However, although North American wireless investment was in fact low at the time, it’s never been a core market for Huawei, and Chinese carriers were spending heavily. It is plausible that adding a lot of very cheap devices would weigh on the company’s profitability. As we will see, though, there are reasons to think Huawei might not have got full value from strong carrier spending in this timeframe.

In any event, to hit Huawei’s ambitious 2015 target, it will need a great H2 2015 to follow from its strong H1. It hasn’t performed this particular ‘double’ for the last four years, so it will certainly be an achievement to do it in 2015. And if it does, how is the market looking for 2016 and beyond?

Where are we in the infrastructure cycle?

As Huawei is still primarily an infrastructure vendor, its business is closely coupled to operators’ CAPEX plans. In theory, these plans are meant to be cyclical, driven by the ever present urge to upgrade technology and build out networks. The theory goes that on one hand, technology drivers (new standards, higher-quality displays and camera sensors) and user behaviour (the secular growth in data traffic) drive operators to invest. On the other, financial imperatives (to derive as much margin from depreciating assets as possible) encourage operators to resist spending and sweat the assets.

Sometimes, the technology drivers get the upper hand; sometimes, the financial constraints. Therefore, the operator tends to “flip” between a high-investment and a low-investment state. Because operators compete, this behaviour may become synchronised within markets, causing large geographies to exhibit an infrastructure spending cycle.

In practice, there are other drivers that mitigate against the cyclical forces. There are ‘bottlenecks’ in integration and in scaling resources up and down, and generally, businesses prefer to keep expenditures as flat as possible to reduce variations and resulting ‘surprises’ for their shareholders. In general though, there is some ongoing variation in levels of capex investment in every market, as we examine in the following sections.

North America: operators take a breather before 5G

In North America, the tipping-point from sweating the assets to investment seems to have been reached roughly in 2011-2012, when the major carriers began a cycle of heavy investment in LTE infrastructure. This investment peaked in 2014. Recently, AT&T informed its shareholders to expect significantly lower CAPEX over the next few years, and in fact the actual numbers so far this year are substantially lower than the guidance of around 14-15% of revenue. Excluding the Mexican acquisitions, CAPEX/Revenue has been running around 13% since Q3 2014. From Q2 2013 to the end of Q2 2014, AT&T spent on average $5.7bn a quarter with the vendors. Since then, the average is $4.4bn, so AT&T has reduced its quarterly CAPEX by 21%.

Figure 3 – AT&T’s LTE investment cycle looks over.

Source: STL Partners, Huawei press releases

During 2013, AT&T, Sprint, and VZW were all in a higher spending phase, as Figure 3 shows. Since then, AT&T and Sprint have backed off considerably. However, despite its problems, Sprint does seem to be starting another round of investment, and VZW has started to invest again, while T-Mobile is rising gradually. We can therefore say that the investment pause in North America is overhyped, but does exist – compare the first half of 2013, when AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were all near the top of the cycle while VZW was dead on the average.

Figure 4 – The investment cycle in North America.

Source: STL Partners

The pattern is somewhat clearer in terms of CAPEX as a percentage of revenue, shown in Figure 5. In late 2012 and most of 2013, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were all near the top of their historic ranges for CAPEX as a percentage of their revenue. Now, only Sprint is really pushing hard.

Figure 5 – Spot the outlier. Sprint is the only US MNO still investing heavily

Source: STL Partners, company filings

If there is cyclicality it is most visible here in Sprint’s numbers, and the cycle is actually pretty short – the peak-to-trough time seems to be about a year, so the whole cycle takes about two years to run. That suggests that if there is a more general cyclical uptick, it should be around H1 2016, and the one after that nicely on time for early 5G implementations in 2018.

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: Huawei H1s
  • Where are we in the infrastructure cycle?
  • North America: operators take a breather before 5G
  • Europe: are we seeing a return to growth?
  • China: full steam ahead under “special action mobilisation”
  • The infrastructure market is changing
  • Commoditisation on a historic scale
  • And Huawei is no longer the price leader
  • The China Mobile supercontract: a highly political event
  • Conclusion: don’t expect a surge in infrastructure profitability
  • Huawei’s 5G Strategy and the Standards Process
  • Huawei’s approach to 5G
  • What do operators want from 5G?
  • In search of consensus: 3GPP leans towards an simpler “early 5G” solution
  • Conclusions
  • STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game

 

  • Figure 1: In Q2, the Euro-5 out-invested Chinese operators for the first time
  • Figure 2: If Huawei’s H2 delivers as promised, it may have broken out of the commoditisation trap for now
  • Figure 3: Huawei’s H1 and H2 Profits have varied significantly year on year
  • Figure 4: AT&T’s LTE investment cycle looks over.
  • Figure 5: The investment cycle in North America.
  • Figure 6: Spot the outlier. Sprint is the only US MNO still investing heavily
  • Figure 7: 3 of the Euro-5 carriers are beginning to invest again
  • Figure 8: European investment levels are not as far behind as you might think
  • Figure 9: Chinese CAPEX/Revenue levels have been 10 percent higher than US or European ones – but this may be changing
  • Figure 10: Chinese infrastructure spending was taking a breather too, until Xi’s intervention
  • Figure 11: Chinese MNOs are investing heavily
  • Figure 12: LTE deployments have grown 100x while prices have fallen even more
  • Figure 13: As usual, Huawei is very much committed to a single radio solution
  • Figure 14: Huawei wants most 5G features in R15 by H2 2018
  • Figure 15: Huawei only supports priority for MBB very weakly and emphasises R16 and beyond
  • Figure 16: Chinese operators, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, and academic researchers disagree with Huawei
  • Figure 17: Orange’s view of 5G: distinctly practical
  • Figure 18: Telefonica is really quite sceptical about much of the 5G technology base
  • Figure 19: Qualcomm sees R15 as a bolt-on new radio in an LTE het-net
  • Figure 20: 3GPP RAN chairman Dino Flores says “yes” to prioritisation
  • Figure 21: Working as a group, the operators were slightly more ambitious
  • Figure 22: The vendors are very broadband-focused
  • Figure 23: Vodafone and Huawei

Telstra: Battling Disruption and Growing Enterprise Cloud & ICT

Introduction

A Quick Background on the Australian Market

Australia’s incumbent telco is experiencing the same disruptive forces as others, just not necessarily in the same way. Political upheaval around the National Broadband Network (NBN) project is one example. Others are the special challenges of operating in the outback, in pursuit of their universal service obligation, and in the Asian enterprise market, at the same time. Telstra’s area of operations include both some of the sparsest and some of the densest territories on earth.

Australian customers are typically as digitally-literate as those in western Europe or North America, and as likely to use big-name global Web services, while they live at the opposite end of the longest submarine cable runs in the world from those services. For many years, Telstra had something of a head start, and the cloud and data centre ecosystem was relatively undeveloped in Australia, until Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace deployed in the space of a few months presenting a first major challenge. Yet Telstra is coping.

Telstra: doing pretty well

Between H2 2009 and H2 2014 – half-yearly reporting for H1 2015 is yet to land – top-line revenue grew 1% annually, and pre-tax profits 3%. As that suggests, margins have held up, but they have only held up. – Net margin was 16% in 2014, while EBITDA margin was 43% in 2009 and 41% in 2014, having gone as low as 37% in H2 2010. This may sound lacklustre, but it is worth pointing that Verizon typically achieves EBITDA margins in this range from its wireless operation alone, excluding the commoditised and capital-intensive landline business. Company-wide EBITDA margins in the 40s are a sound performance for a heavily regulated incumbent. Figure 1 shows sales, EBITDA and net margins, and VZW’s last three halves for comparison.

Figure 1: Telstra continues to achieve group-wide EBITDA margins like VZW’s

Source: STL Partners, Telstra filings

Looking at Telstra’s major operating segments, we see a familiar pattern. Fixed voice is sliding, while the mobile business has taken over as the core business. Fixed data is growing slowly, as is the global carrier operation, while enterprise fixed is declining slowly as the traditional voice element and older TDM services shrink. On the other hand, “Network Applications & Services” – Telstra’s strategic services group capturing new-wave enterprise products and the cloud – is growing strongly, and we believe that success in Unified Communications and Microsoft Office 365 underpins that growth in particular. A one-off decrease since 2009 is that CSL New World, a mobile network operator in Hong Kong, was sold at the end of 2014.

Figure 2: Mobile and cloud lead the way

Source: STL Partners, Telstra filings

Telstra is growing some new Telco 2.0 revenue streams

Another way of looking at this is to consider the segments in terms of their size, and growth. In Figure 2, we plot these together and also isolate the ‘Telco 2.0’ elements of Telstra from the rest. We include the enterprise IP access, Network Applications & Services, Pay-TV, IPTV, and M2M revenue lines in Telco 2.0 here, following the Telco 2.0 Transformation Index categorisations.

Figure 3: Telco 2.0 is a growing force within Telstra

Source: STL Partners, Telstra filings

The surge of mobile and the decline of fixed voice are evident. So is the decline of the non-Telco 2.0 media businesses – essentially directories. This stands out even more so in the context of the media business unit.

Figure 4: Telstra’s media businesses, though promising, aren’t enough to replace the directories line of business

Source: STL Partners, Telstra filings

“Content” here refers to “classified and advertising”, aka the directory and White Pages business. The Telco 2.0 businesses, by contrast, are both the strongest growth area and a very significant segment in terms of revenue – the second biggest after mobile, bigger even than fixed voice, as we can see in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Telco 2.0 businesses overtook fixed voice in H2 2014

Source: STL Partners, Telstra filings

To reiterate what is in the Telco 2.0 box, we identified 5 sources of Telco 2.0 revenue at Telstra – pay-TV, IPTV, M2M, business IP access, and the cloud-focused Network Applications & Services (NA&S) sub-segment. Their performance is shown in Figure 6. NA&S is both the biggest and by far the fastest growing.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • A quick background on the Australian Market
  • Telstra: doing pretty well
  • Telstra is growing some new Telco 2.0 revenue streams
  • Cloud and Enterprise ICT are key parts of Telstra’s story
  • Mobile is getting more competitive
  • Understanding Australia’s Cloud Market
  • Australia is a relatively advanced market
  • Although it has some unique distinguishing features
  • The Australian Cloud Price Disruption Target
  • The Healthcare Investments: A Big Ask
  • Conclusions and Recommendations

 

  • Figure 1: Telstra continues to achieve group-wide EBITDA margins like VZW’s
  • Figure 2: Mobile and cloud lead the way
  • Figure 3: Telco 2.0 is a growing force within Telstra
  • Figure 4: Telstra’s media businesses, though promising, aren’t enough to replace the directories line of business
  • Figure 5: Telco 2.0 businesses overtook fixed voice in H2 2014
  • Figure 6: Cloud is the key element in Telstra’s Telco 2.0 strategy
  • Figure 7: NA&S is by far the strongest enterprise business at Telstra
  • Figure 8: Enterprise fixed is under real competitive pressure
  • Figure 9: Telstra Mobile subscriber KPIs
  • Figure 10: Telstra Mobile is strong all round, but M2M ARPU is a problem, just as it is for everyone
  • Figure 11: Australia is a high-penetration digital market
  • Figure 12: Australia is a long way from most places, and links to the Asia Pacific Cable Network (APCN) could still be better
  • Figure 13: The key Asia Pacific Cable Network (APCN) cables
  • Figure 14: Telstra expects rapid growth in intra-Asian trade in cloud services
  • Figure 15: How much?
  • Figure 16: A relationship, but a weak one – don’t count on data sovereignty

The European Telecoms market in 2020, Report 2: 4 scenarios and 7 predictions

Introduction

The second report in The European Telecoms market in 2020, this document uses the framework introduced in Report 1 to develop four discrete scenarios for the European telecoms market in 2020.  Although this report can be read on its own, STL Partners suggests that more value will be derived from reading Report 1 first.

The role of this report

Strategists (and investors) are finding it very difficult to understand the many and varied forces affecting the telecoms industry (Report 1), and predict the structure of, and returns from, the European telecoms market in 2020 (the focus of this Report 2).  This, in turn, makes it challenging to determine how operators should seek to compete in the future (the focus of a STL Partners report in July, Four strategic pathways to Telco 2.0).

In summary, The European Telecoms market in 2020 reports therefore seek to:

  • Identify the key forces of change in Europe and provide a useful means of classifying them within a simple and logical 2×2 framework (Report 1);
  • Help readers refine their thoughts on how Europe might develop by outlining four alternative ‘futures’ that are both sufficiently different from each other to be meaningful and internally consistent enough to be realistic (Report 2);
  • Provide a ‘prediction’ for the future European telecoms market based on our own insights plus two ‘wisdom of crowds’ votes conducted at a recent STL Partners event for senior managers from European telcos (Report 2).

Four European telecoms market scenarios for 2020

The second report in The European Telecoms market in 2020, this document uses the framework introduced in Report 1 to develop four discrete scenarios for the European telecoms market in 2020.  Although this report can be read on its own, STL Partners suggests that more value will be derived from reading Report 1 first.

Overview

STL Partners has identified the following scenarios for the European market in 2020:

  1. Back to the Future. This scenario is likely to be the result of a structurally attractive telecoms market and one where operators focus on infrastructure-led ‘piping’ ambition and skills.
  2. Consolidated Utility. This might be the result of the same ‘piping’ ambition in a structurally unattractive market.
  3. Digital Renaissance. A utopian world resulting from new digital ambitions and skills developed by operators coupled with an attractive market.
  4. Telco Trainwreck. As the name suggests, a disaster stemming from lofty digital ambitions being pursued in the face of an unattractive telco market.

The four scenarios are shown on the framework in Figure 1 and are discussed in detail below.

Figure 1: Four European telecoms market scenarios for 2020

Source: STL Partners/Telco 2.0

How each scenario is described

In addition to a short overview, each scenario will be examined by exploring 8 key characteristics which seek to reflect the combined impact of the internal and external forces laid out in the previous section:

  1. Market Structure. The absolute and relative size and overall number of operators in national markets and across the wider EU region.
  2. Operator service pricing and profits. The price levels and profit performance of telecoms operators (and the overall industry) and the underlying direction (stable, moving up, moving down).
  3. The role of content in operators’ service portfolios. The importance of IPTV, games and applications within operators’ consumer offering and the importance of content, software and applications within operators’ enterprise portfolio.
  4. The degree to which operators can offer differentiated services. How able operators are to offer differentiated network services to end users and, most importantly, upstream service providers based on such things as network QoS, guaranteed maximum latency, speed, etc.
  5. The relationships between operators and NEP/IT players. Whether NEP and IT players continue to predominantly sell their services to and through operators (to other enterprises) or whether they become ‘Under the Floor’ competitors offering network services directly to enterprises.
  6. Where service innovation occurs – in the network/via the operator vs at the edge/via OTT players. The extent to which services continue to be created ‘at the edge’ – with little input from the network – or are ‘network-reliant’ or, even, integrated directly into the network. The former clearly suggests continued dominance by OTT players and the latter a swing towards operators and the telecoms industry.
  7. The attitude of the capital markets (and the availability of capital). The willingness of investors to have their capital reinvested for growth by telecoms operators as opposed to returned to them in the form of dividends. Prospects of sustained growth from operators will lead to the former whereas profit stasis or contraction will result in higher yields.
  8. Key industry statistics. Comparison between 2020 and 2015 for revenue and employees – tangible numbers that demonstrate how the industry has changed.

The European macro-economy – a key assumption

The health and structure of all industries in Europe is dependent, to a large degree, on the European macro-economy. Grexit or Brexit, for example, would have a material impact on growth throughout Europe over the next five years.  Our assumption in these scenarios is that Europe experiences a stable period of low-growth and that the economic positions of the stretched Southern European markets, particularly Italy and Spain, improves steadily.  If the European economic position deteriorates then opportunities for telecoms growth of any sort is likely to disappear.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • The role of this report
  • Four European telecoms market scenarios for 2020
  • Overview
  • How each scenario is described
  • The European macro-economy – a key assumption
  • Back to the Future
  • Consolidated Utility
  • Digital Renaissance
  • Telco Trainwreck
  • Risk and returns in the scenarios
  • Making predictions
  • Wisdom of crowds: 2 approaches
  • Approach 1: Aggregating individual forces – ‘Sum-of-the-parts’
  • Approach 2: Picking a scenario
  • STL Partners’ prediction for the European telecoms market in 2020
  • STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game

 

  • Figure 1: Four European telecoms market scenarios for 2020
  • Figure 2: Back to the Future – key characteristics
  • Figure 3: Consolidated Utility – key characteristics
  • Figure 4: Digital Renaissance – key characteristics
  • Figure 5: Telco Trainwreck – key characteristics
  • Figure 6: Risk and returns in the four scenarios
  • Figure 7: Europe’s future based on aggregating individual forces – ‘Sum-of-the-parts’
  • Figure 8: Europe’s future – results of the two approaches compared

The European Telecoms market in 2020, Report 1: Evaluating 10 forces of change

Introduction

Telecoms – the times they are a changin’

The global telecoms market is experiencing change at an unprecedented pace.  As recently as 2012 , few would have predicted that consumer voice and messaging would be effectively ‘given away’ with data packages in 2015.  Yet today, the shift towards data as the ‘valuable’ part of the mobile bundle has been made in many European markets and, although many operators still allocate a large proportion of revenue to voice and messaging, the value proposition is clearly now ‘data-led’.

Europe, in particular, is facing great uncertainty

While returns on investment have steadily reduced in European telecoms, the market has remained structurally fragmented with a large number of disparate players – fixed-only; mobile-only; converged; wholesalers; enterprise-only; content-oriented players (cablecos); and so forth. Operators generally have continued to make steady economic returns for investors and have been considered ‘defensive stocks’ by the capital markets owing to an ability to generate strong dividend yields and withstand economic down-turns (although Telefonica’s woes in Spain will attest to the limitations of the telco business model to recession).

But the forces of change in Europe are growing and, as a company’s ‘Safe Harbor’ statement would put it, ‘past performance does not guarantee future results’. Strategists are puzzling over what the European telecoms industry might look like in 2020 (and how might that affect their own company) given the broad range of forces being exerted on it in 2015.

STL Partners believes there are 12 questions that need to be considered when considering what the European telecoms market might look like in 2020:

  1. How will regulation of national markets and the wider European Union progress?
  2. How will government policies and the new EC Digital Directive impact telecoms?
  3. How will competition among traditional telecoms players develop?
  4. How strong will new competitors be and how will they compete with operators?
  5. What is the revenue and margin outlook for telecoms core services?
  6. Will new technologies such as NFV, SDN, and eSIM, have a positive or negative effect on operators?
  7. How will the capital markets’ attitude towards telecoms operators change and how much capital will be available for investment by operators?
  8. How will the attitudes and behaviours of customers – consumer and enterprise – evolve and what bearing might this have on operators’ business models?
  9. How will the vision and aspirations of telecoms senior managers play out – will digital services become a greater focus or will the ‘data pipe’ model prevail? How important will content be for operators? What will be the relative importance of fixed vs mobile, consumer vs enterprise?
  10. Will telcos be able to develop the skills, assets and partnerships required to pursue a services strategy successfully or will capabilities fall short of aspirations?
  11. What M&A strategy will telco management pursue to support their strategies: buying other telcos vs buying into adjacent industries? Focus on existing countries only vs moves into other countries or even a pan-European play?
  12. How effective will the industry be in reducing its cost base – capex and opex – relative to the new competitors such as the internet players in consumer services and IT players in enterprise services?

Providing clear answers to each of these 12 questions and their combined effect on the industry is extremely challenging because:

  • Some forces are, to some extent at least, controllable by operators whereas other forces are largely outside their control;
  • Although some forces are reasonably well-established, many others are new and/or changing rapidly;
  • Establishing the interplay between forces and the ‘net effect’ of them together is complicated because some tend to create a domino effect (e.g. greater competition tends to result in lower revenues and margins which, in turn, means less capital being available for investment in networks and services) whereas other forces can negate each other (e.g. the margin impact of lower core service revenues could be – at least partially – offset by a lower cost base achieved through NFV).

The role of this report

In essence, strategists (and investors) are finding it very difficult to understand the many and varied forces affecting the telecoms industry (this report) and predict the structure of and returns from the European telecoms market in 2020 (Report 2). This, in turn, makes it challenging to determine how operators should seek to compete in the future (the focus of a STL Partners report in July, Four strategic pathways to Telco 2.0).

In summary, the European Telecoms market in 2020 reports therefore seek to:

  • Identify the key forces of change in Europe and provide a useful means of classifying them within a simple and logical 2×2 framework (this report);
  • Help readers refine their thoughts on how Europe might develop by outlining four alternative ‘futures’ that are both sufficiently different from each other to be meaningful and internally consistent enough to be realistic (Report 2);
  • Provide a ‘prediction’ for the future European telecoms market based on the responses of two ‘wisdom of crowds’ votes conducted at a recent STL Partners event for senior managers from European telcos plus our STL Partners’ own viewpoint (Report 2).
  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Telecoms – the times they are a changin’
  • Europe, in particular, is facing great uncertainty
  • The role of this report
  • Understanding and classifying the forces of change
  • External (market) forces
  • Internal (telco) forces
  • Summary: The impact of internal and external forces over the next 5 years
  • STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game

 

  • Figure 1: O2’s SIM-only pay monthly tariffs – many with unlimited voice and messaging bundled in
  • Figure 2: A framework for classifying telco market forces: internal and external
  • Figure 3: Telefonica dividend yield vs Spanish 10-year bond yield
  • Figure 4: Customer attitudes to European telecoms brands – 2003 vs 2015
  • Figure 5: Summarising the key skills, partnerships, assets and culture needed to realise ambitions
  • Figure 6: SMS Price vs. penetration of Top OTT messaging apps in 2012
  • Figure 7: Summary of how internal and external forces could develop in the next 5 years

The Internet of Things: Impact on M2M, where it’s going, and what to do about it?

Introduction

From RFID in the supply chain to M2M today

The ‘Internet of Things’ first appeared as a marketing term in 1999 when it was applied to improved supply-chain strategies, leveraging the then hot-topics of RFID and the Internet.

Industrial engineers planned to use miniaturised, RFID tags to track many different types of asset, especially relatively low cost ones. However, their dependency on accessible RFID readers constrained their zonal range. This also constrained many such applications to the enterprise sector and within a well-defined geographic footprint.

Modern versions of RFID labelling have expanded the addressable market through barcode and digital watermarking approaches, for example, while mobile has largely removed the zonal constraint. In fact, mobile’s economies of scale have ushered in a relatively low-cost technology building block in the form of radio modules with local processing capability. These modules allow machines and sensors to be monitored and remotely managed over mobile networks. This is essentially the M2M market today.

M2M remained a specialist, enterprise sector application for a long time. It relied on niche, systems integration and hardware development companies, often delivering one-off or small-scale deployments. For many years, growth in the M2M market did not meet expectations for faster adoption, and this is visible in analyst forecasts which repeatedly time-shifted the adoption forecast curve. Figure 1 below, for example, illustrates successive M2M forecasts for the 2005-08 period (before M2M began to take off) as analysts tried to forecast when M2M module shipment volumes would breach the 100m units/year hurdle:

Figure 1: Historical analyst forecasts of annual M2M module shipment volumes

Source: STL Partners, More With Mobile

Although the potential of remote connectivity was recognised, it did not become a high-volume market until the GSMA brought about an alignment of interests, across mobile operators, chip- and module-vendors, and enterprise users by targeting mobile applications in adjacent markets.

The GSMA’s original Embedded Mobile market development campaign made the case that connecting devices and sensors to (Internet) applications would drive significant new use cases and sources of value. However, in order to supply economically viable connected devices, the cost of embedding connectivity had to drop. This meant:

  • Educating the market about new opportunities in order to stimulate latent demand
  • Streamlining design practices to eliminate many layers of implementation costs
  • Promoting adoption in high-volume markets such as automotive, consumer health and smart utilities, for example, to drive economies of scale in the same manner that led to the mass-adoption of mobile phones

The late 2000’s proved to be a turning point for M2M, with the market now achieving scale (c. 189m connections globally as of January 2014) and growing at an impressive rate (c. 40% per annum). 

From M2M to the Internet of Things?

Over the past 5 years, companies such as Cisco, Ericsson and Huawei have begun promoting radically different market visions to those of ‘traditional M2M’. These include the ‘Internet of Everything’ (that’s Cisco), a ‘Networked Society’ with 50 billion cellular devices (that’s Ericsson), and a ‘Cellular IoT’ with 100 billion devices (that’s Huawei).

Figure 2: Ericsson’s Promise: 50 billion connected ‘things’ by 2020

Source: Ericsson

Ericsson’s calculation builds on the idea that there will be 3 billion “middle class consumers”, each with 10 M2M devices, plus personal smartphones, industrial, and enterprise devices. In promoting such visions, the different market evangelists have shifted market terminology away from M2M and towards the Internet of Things (‘IoT’).

The transition towards IoT has also had consequences beyond terminology. Whereas M2M applications were previously associated with internal-to-business, operational improvements, IoT offers far more external market prospects. In other words, connected devices allow a company to interact with its customers beyond its strict operational boundaries. In addition, standalone products can now deliver one or more connected services: for example, a connected bus can report on its mechanical status, for maintenance purposes, as well as its location to deliver a higher quality, transit service.

Another consequence of the rise of IoT relates to the way that projects are evaluated. In the past, M2M applications tended to be justified on RoI criteria. Nowadays, there is a broader, commercial recognition that IoT opens up new avenues of innovation, efficiency gains and alternative sources of revenue: it was this recognition, for example, that drove Google’s $3.2 billion valuation of Nest (see the Connected Home EB).

In contrast to RFID, the M2M market required companies in different parts of the value chain to share a common vision of a lower cost, higher volume future across many different industry verticals. The mobile industry’s success in scaling the M2M market now needs to adjust for an IoT world. Before examining what these changes imply, let us first review the M2M market today, how M2M service providers have adapted their business models and where this positions them for future IoT opportunities.

M2M Today: Geographies, Verticals and New Business Models

Headline: M2M is now an important growth area for MNOs

The M2M market has now evolved into a high volume and highly competitive business, with leading telecoms operators and other service providers (so-called ‘M2M MVNOs’ e.g. KORE, Wyless) providing millions of cellular (and fixed) M2M connections across numerous verticals and applications.

Specifically, 428 MNOs were offering M2M services across 187 countries by January 2014 – 40% of mobile network operators – and providing 189 million cellular connections. The GSMA estimates the number of global connections to be growing by about 40% per annum. Figure 3 below shows that as of Q4 2013 China Mobile was the largest player by connections (32 million), with AT&T second largest but only half the size.

Figure 3: Selected leading service providers by cellular M2M connections, Q4 2013

 

Source: Various, including GSMA and company accounts, STL Partners, More With Mobile

Unsurprisingly, these millions of connections have also translated into material revenues for service providers. Although MNOs typically do not report M2M revenues (and many do not even report connections), Verizon reported $586m in ‘M2M and telematics’ revenues for 2014, growing 47% year-on-year, during its most recent earnings call. Moreover, analysis from the Telco 2.0 Transformation Index also estimates that Vodafone Group generated $420m in revenues from M2M during its 2013/14 March-March financial year.

However, these numbers need to be put in context: whilst $500m growing 40% YoY is encouraging, this still represents only a small percentage of these telcos’ revenues – c. 0.5% in the case of Vodafone, for example.

Figure 4: Vodafone Group enterprise revenues, implied forecast, FY 2012-18

 

Source: Company accounts, STL Partners, More With Mobile

Figure 4 uses data provided by Vodafone during 2013 on the breakdown of its enterprise line of business and grows these at the rates which Vodafone forecasts the market (within its footprint) to grow over the next five years – 20% YoY revenue growth for M2M, for example. Whilst only indicative, Figure 4 demonstrates that telcos need to sustain high levels of growth over the medium- to long-term and offer complementary, value added services if M2M is to have a significant impact on their headline revenues.

To do this, telcos essentially have three ways to refine or change their business model:

  1. Improve their existing M2M operations: e.g. new organisational structures and processes
  2. Move into new areas of M2M: e.g. expansion along the value chain; new verticals/geographies
  3. Explore the Internet of Things: e.g. new service innovation across verticals and including consumer-intensive segments (e.g. the connected home)

To provide further context, the following section examines where M2M has focused to date (geographically and by vertical). This is followed by an analysis of specific telco activities in 1, 2 and 3.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • From RFID in the supply chain to M2M today
  • From M2M to the Internet of Things?
  • M2M Today: Geographies, Verticals and New Business Models
  • Headline: M2M is now an important growth area for MNOs
  • In-depth: M2M is being driven by specific geographies and verticals
  • New Business Models: Value network innovation and new service offerings
  • The Emerging IoT: Outsiders are raising the opportunity stakes
  • The business models and profitability potentials of M2M and IoT are radically different
  • IoT shifts the focus from devices and connectivity to data and its use in applications
  • New service opportunities drive IoT value chain innovation
  • New entrants recognise the IoT-M2M distinction
  • IoT is not the end-game
  • ‘Digital’ and IoT convergence will drive further innovation and new business models
  • Implications for Operators
  • About STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game
  • About More With Mobile

 

  • Figure 1: Historical analyst forecasts of annual M2M module shipment volumes
  • Figure 2: Ericsson’s Promise: 50 billion connected ‘things’ by 2020
  • Figure 3: Selected leading service providers by cellular M2M connections, Q4 2013
  • Figure 4: Vodafone Group enterprise revenues, implied forecast, FY 2012-18
  • Figure 5: M2M market penetration vs. growth by geographic region
  • Figure 6: Vodafone Group organisational chart highlighting Telco 2.0 activity areas
  • Figure 7: Vodafone’s central M2M unit is structured across five areas
  • Figure 8: The M2M Value Chain
  • Figure 9: ‘New entrant’ investments outstripped those of M2M incumbents in 2014
  • Figure 10: Characterising the difference between M2M and IoT across six domains
  • Figure 11: New business models to enable cross-silo IoT services
  • Figure 12: ‘Digital’ and IoT convergence

 

Connected Car: Key Trends, Players and Battlegrounds

Introduction: Putting the Car in Context

A growing mythology around M2M and the Internet of Things

The ‘Internet of Things’, which is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘machine-to-machine’ communication (M2M), is not a new idea: as a term, it was coined by Kevin Ashton as early as 1999. Although initially focused on industrial applications, such as the use of RFID for tagging items in the supply chain, usage of the term has now evolved to more broadly describe the embedding of sensors, connectivity and (to varying degrees) intelligence into traditionally ‘dumb’ environments. Figure 1 below outlines some of the service areas potentially disrupted, enabled or enhanced by the Internet of Things (IoT):

Figure 1: Selected Internet of Things service areas

Source: STL Partners

To put the IoT in context, one can conceive of the Internet as having experienced three key generations to date. The first generation dates back to the 1970s, which involved ARPANET and the interconnection of various military, government and educational institutions around the United States. The second, beginning in the 1990s, can be thought of as the ‘AOL phase’, with email and web browsing becoming mainstream. Today’s generation is dominated by ‘mobile’ and ‘social’, with the two inextricably linked. The fourth generation will be signified by the arrival of the Internet of Things, in which the majority of internet traffic is generated by ‘things’ rather than humans.

The enormous growth of networks, cheaper connectivity, proliferation of smart devices, more efficient wireless protocols (e.g. ZigBee) and various government incentives/regulations have led many to confidently predict that the fourth generation of the Internet – the Internet of Things – will soon be upon us. Visions include the “Internet of Everything” (Cisco) or a “connected future” with 50 billion connected devices by 2020 (Ericsson). Similarly rapid growth is also forecasted by the MIT Technology Review, as detailed below:

Figure 2: Representative connected devices forecast, 2010-20

Source: MIT Technology Review

This optimism is reflected in broader market excitement, which has been intensified by such headline-grabbing announcements as Google’s $3.2bn acquisition of Nest Labs (discussed in depth in the Connected Home EB) and Apple’s recently announced Watch. Data extracted from Google Trends (Figure 3) shows that the popularity of ‘Internet of Things’ as a search term has increased fivefold since 2012:

Figure 3: The popularity of ‘Internet of Things’ as a search term on Google since 2004

Source: Google Trends

However, the IoT to date has predominantly been a case study in hype vs. reality. Technologists have argued for more than a decade about when the army of connected devices will arrive, as well as what we should be calling this phenomenon, and with this a mythology has grown around the Internet of Things: widespread disruption was promised, but it has not yet materialised. To many consumers the IoT can sound all too far-fetched: do I really need a refrigerator with a web browser?

Yet for every ‘killer app’ that wasn’t we are now seeing inroads being made elsewhere. Smart meters are being deployed in large numbers around the world, wearable technology is rapidly increasing in popularity, and many are hailing the connected car as the ‘next big thing’. Looking at the connected car, for example, 2013 saw a dramatic increase in the amount of VC funding it received:

Figure 4: Connected car VC activity, 2010-13

Source: CB Insights Venture Capital Database

The Internet of Things is potentially an important phenomenon for all, but it is of particular relevance to mobile network operators (MNOs) and network equipment providers. Beyond providing cellular connectivity to many of these devices, the theory is that MNOs can expand across the value chain and generate material and sustainable new revenues as their core business continues to decline (for more, see the ‘M2M 2.0: New Approaches Needed’ Executive Briefing).

Nevertheless, the temptation is always to focus on the grandiose but less well-defined opportunities of the future (e.g. smart grids, smart cities) rather than the less expansive but more easily monetised ones of today. It is easy to forget that MNOs have been active to varying degrees in this space for some time: for example, O2 UK had a surprisingly large business serving fleet operators with the 9.6Kbps Mobitex data network for much of the 2000s. To further substantiate this context, we will address three initial questions:

  1. Is there a difference between M2M and the Internet of Things?
  2. Which geographies are currently seeing the most traction?
  3. Which verticals are currently seeing the most traction?

These are now addressed in turn…

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: Putting the Car in Context
  • A growing mythology around M2M and the Internet of Things
  • The Internet of Things: a vision of what M2M can become
  • M2M today: driven by specific geographies and verticals
  • Background: History and Growth Drivers
  • History: from luxury models to mass market deployment
  • Growth drivers: macroeconomics, regulation, technology and the ‘connected consumer’
  • Ecosystem: Services and Value Chain
  • Service areas: data flows vs. consumer value proposition
  • Value chain: increasingly complex with two key battlegrounds
  • Markets: Key Geographies Today
  • Conclusions

 

  • Figure 1: Selected Internet of Things service areas
  • Figure 2: Representative connected devices forecast, 2010-20
  • Figure 3: The popularity of ‘Internet of Things’ as a search term on Google since 2004
  • Figure 4: Connected car VC activity, 2010-13
  • Figure 5: Candidate differences between M2M and the Internet of Things
  • Figure 6: Selected leading MNOs by M2M connections globally
  • Figure 7: M2M market maturity vs. growth by geographic region
  • Figure 8: Global M2M connections by vertical, 2013-20
  • Figure 9: Global passenger car profit by geography, 2007-12
  • Figure 10: A connected car services framework
  • Figure 11: Ericsson’s vision of the connected car’s integration with the IoT
  • Figure 12: The emerging connected car value chain
  • Figure 13: Different sources of in-car connectivity
  • Figure 14: New passenger car sales vs. consumer electronics spending by market
  • Figure 15: Index of digital content spending (aggregate and per capita), 2013
  • Figure 16: OEM embedded modem shipments by region, 2014-20
  • Figure 17: Telco 2.0™ ‘two-sided’ telecoms business model

The Internet of Things (IoT): What’s Hot, and How?

Summary: ‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT) is one of the big ideas of the moment. But what are the areas in which value is being created now, and what is still technological hype? A summary of the findings of the Digital Things session at the 2013 Silicon Valley Brainstorm. (April 2013)

Building Blocks Urgently Needed for IoT April 2013

  Read in Full (Members only)   To Subscribe click here

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 47 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service here. The Internet of Things will also be explored further at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013, and we also run dedicated IoT Strategy Workshops. Non-members can find out more about subscriptions here or to find out more about any of these services, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm series, the 19th Telco 2.0 event took place at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco on the 19th and 20th of March, 2013. This report covers the Digital Things track on the second day, which was developed in partnership between STL Partners and Beecham Research.

Analysis: What’s Hot in the IoT?

‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT) or ‘The Internet of Everything’ is one of the big ideas of the moment. But how much is technological hype and how much is value-creating reality?

Its close relative and precursor ‘Machine-To-Machine’ (M2M) had until relatively recently evolved as a telco-centric concept. Unlike the personality, publicity and hype driven world of smartphones and the Internet, M2M has been deeply embedded in industry processes, and generally siloed in industry verticals. ‘Industrial M2M’ is not going away: indeed it’s gathering pace and taking on new directions.

But recently the idea of ‘The Internet of Things’ has become something of a meme. It is certainly a hot topic amongst Silicon Valley technologists and investors, and this was reflected in the enthusiasm shown by the participants at our Executive Brainstorm in March 2013.

Definitions of the IoT vs. M2M are not yet standardised, although some of the common themes that are emerging are that the IoT is frequently cited as:

  • More consumer-oriented than M2M. IoT is often B2B2C, and with the second ‘B’ sometimes meaning ‘Government’;
  • Dependent on cross-application data (data generated by or for one application being repurposed for another);
  • More like the Web – discoverable, ‘mashable’, self-registering… with all the potential hazards associated with the Web;
  • Bringing added value through revenue growth and/or enhanced customer experiences as well as reduced costs.

Some of the wider excitement has also been underpinned by futuristic predictions of 50bn connected devices, an idea which appeals to chip manufacturers, vendors, and telcos alike as they seek new avenues of growth. However, the questions of ‘but what will they be used for, why, and who will pay for it?’ have to date stood their ground, mostly unanswered.

Economic necessity: the mother of innovation

Now, though, a combination of pressing economic necessities, improving economics of delivery, and increasing technical capabilities is forcing these questions up the agenda. In the North American market, the areas that are progressing fastest have clear economic rationales:

  • In US healthcare, which spends 17% of GDP on health and accounts for 47% of the world’s total healthcare spending) there is the urgent need to make healthcare more efficient before it literally bankrupts the economy;
  • In the automotive industry, car makers desperately need new sources of differentiation and revenues (from in-life servicing) to survive, and this is driving widespread innovation;
  • In heavy Industries, it is estimated that a 1% improvement in productivity equals a 20-30% improvement in profitability, so there are clear incentives in what GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt calls the “Industrial Internet” too.

New blocks means new enablers are needed

With new opportunities come new challenges, and one of the biggest new challenges, arising from healthcare applications in particular, is how to manage the complexities of collecting, transmitting, storing and analysing highly personal and personalised health data safely, securely, and legitimately. The safety-critical control systems of the “Industrial Internet” are no less sensitive.

Evidently, effective security and trust networks are urgently required if the IoT’s potential is to be achieved, as the following chart shows.

Building Blocks Urgently Needed for IoT April 2013

In a world where people (and also jet engines) are having their health monitored automatically by numerous connected sensors, a lot of data is being amassed and needs to be monitored and analysed. Hence ‘Big Data’ is also a closely related topic to the IoT.

Hope, spectacle and speculation

There are several other areas that are sometimes included under the banner of the ‘IoT’, for example:

  • Clothing / ‘wearables’ – this covers a rapidly developing set of application areas, enabling technologies and related devices, including as Google Glass, Pebble Watch, Nike Fuel band and Adidas connected shoes.
  • Connected Media. There is a growing field of experimentation into and practice with connected signage that can show different messages and adverts, etc.
  • Experiments connecting virtually anything. Someone, somewhere is experimenting with a connected version of almost every object available. As just one example, in the Silicon Valley session, Centurylink said that they had asked school children to brainstorm what might be connected and why, and examples the students came up with included a connected tooth that senses the amount of sugar eaten. Another example, launched as a final product at CES, is the connected fork.
  • Tracking items. An example was given of the idea that many objects, including say a pothole in the road, could be given an identity and tracked thereafter so the fact that the pothole had been reported, and that work was scheduled, could be reviewed by anyone. Related ideas of the usefulness of being able to track goods of one sort or another, from understanding the road-miles of recycling individual objects through to tracking the whereabouts of virtually any object, have also been discussed.

There may indeed be opportunities in many of these areas, but the pressing economic, practical or social needs are not yet clear.

It is also not clear whether the definition of the ‘Internet of Things’ encompasses all of these ideas – although at present it would seem that anything that can be covered by this idea will be in someone’s world view.

What is clear is that the pace and diversity is increasing, and that new areas will continue to cross over from experiment to trial to mainstream development.

Next steps for STL Partners

We will continue to research and explore the ‘Internet of Things’ at our Executive Brainstorms, with particular emphasis on the areas that are most likely to ‘flip over’ from speculation to application.

We will also look further into the needs and applications of ‘Big Data’ into the field, as well as continuing our involvement in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) work on Trust Networks for personal data.

To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

  • Session 1: Market Evolution towards Internet of Things – Strategies and Business Models
  • Stimulus presentations
  • Voting, feedback, discussions
  • Brainstorm Output: IoT Opportunities
  • Session 2: IOT Platform Requirements
  • Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
  • Stimulus presentations
  • Voting, feedback, and discussions
  • Brainstorm: building blocks for IoT
  • Panel Discussion
  • Session 3: Big Data – Exploiting the New Oil for the New Economy
  • Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
  • Stimulus presentations
  • Voting, feedback, discussions

…and the following figures…

  • Figure 1 – Key considerations in M2M projects
  • Figure 2 – Vendor priorities in M2M/IoT
  • Figure 3 – From “M2M Now” to “Industrial Internet” and “IoT”
  • Figure 4 – The future M2M value chain
  • Figure 5 – Connected device growth forecast
  • Figure 6 – SmartThings.com
  • Figure 7 – M2M 1.0 = “save money”, M2M 2.0 = “make money”
  • Figure 8 – The Gap – What Else is Out There?
  • Figure 9 – Focus areas for M2M initiatives
  • Figure 10 – Focus areas in the M2M value chain
  • Figure 11 – The key questions in IoT
  • Figure 12 – Elements of IoT
  • Figure 13 – The challenges – power, IPv6, and privacy
  • Figure 14 – The US is enormous, but also very unusual
  • Figure 15 – Health – the ultimate channel business
  • Figure 16 – What is the scale of the IoT opportunity?
  • Figure 17 – IoT: what type of business models?
  • Figure 18 – Panasonic’s innovation priorities
  • Figure 19 – Panasonic’s new businesses in the US
  • Figure 20 – “Content mobility” is crucial to the connected car
  • Figure 21 – Cisco – focus on the industrial potential of IoT
  • Figure 22 – How this relates to service providers
  • Figure 23 – Which technical building blocks are most needed?
  • Figure 24 – Which business infrastructure components are most needed?
  • Figure 25 – Why personal data isn’t like oil
  • Figure 26 – A strawman process for personal data
  • Figure 27 – A decentralised architecture for the Internet of My Things
  • Figure 28 – Kynetx: companies can connect through ‘things’

Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service can download the full 47 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. The Internet of Things will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

Produced and facilitated by business innovation firm STL Partners, the 2013 Silicon Valley event overall brought together 150 specially-invited senior executives from across the communications, media, retail, banking and technology sectors, including:

  • Apigee, Arete Research, AT&T,ATG, Bain & Co, Beecham Research, Blend Digital Group, Bloomberg, Blumberg Capital, BMW, Brandforce, Buongiorno, Cablelabs, CenturyLink, Cisco, CITI Group, Concours Ventures, Cordys, Cox Communications, Cox Mobile, CSG International, Cycle Gear, Discovery, DoSomething.Org, Electronic Transactions Association, EMC Corporation, Epic, Ericsson, Experian, Fraun Hofer USA, GE, GI Partners, Group M, GSMA, Hawaiian Telecom, Huge Inc, IBM, ILS Technology, IMI Mobile Europe, Insight Enterprises, Intel, Ketchum Digital, Kore Telematics, Kynetx, MADE Holdings, MAGNA Global, Merchant Advisory Group, Message Systems, Microsoft, Milestone Group, Mimecast, MIT Media Lab, Motorola, MTV, Nagra, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Panasonic, Placecast, Qualcomm, Rainmaker Capital, ReinCloud, Reputation.com, SalesForce, Samsung, SAP, Sasktel, Searls Group, Sesame Communications, SK Telecom Americas, Sprint, Steadfast Financial, STL Partners/Telco 2.0, SystemicLogic Ltd., Telephone & Data Systems, Telus, The Weather Channel, TheFind Inc, T-Mobile USA, Trujillo Group LLC, UnboundID, University of California Davis, US Cellular Corp, USC Entertainment Technology Center, Verizon, Virtustream, Visa, Vodafone, Wavefront, WindRiver, Xtreme Labs.

Around 50 of these executives participated in the ‘Internet of Things’ session.

The Brainstorm used STL’s unique ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, including cutting-edge new research, case studies, use cases and a showcase of innovators, structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting using on-site collaborative technology.

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:
Silicon Valley 2013 Sponsors

Innovation Strategies: Telefonica 2.0 Vs. Vodafone 2.0

Summary: Telefonica and Vodafone are both European-based tier 1 CSPs with substantial revenues, cash flows and subscribers. They have both expanded beyond Europe – Vodafone into Africa and Asia and Telefonica into Latin America. However, their Telco 2.0 strategies are rather different. In this extract from our forthcoming report, A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0, we outline their Telco 2.0 strategies and their benefits and risks. (September 2012, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream.)

Telefonica Strategy 2.0 Chart

  Read in Full (Members only)   To Subscribe click here

Below is an extract from this 14 page Telco 2.0 report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream here. Non-members can subscribe here

This report is itself an edited section taken from our forthcoming strategy report, A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0We will be sharing some of the findings, and exploring them in the market context at Digital Arabia, the Telco 2.0 invitation only Executive Brainstorm taking place in Dubai, 6-7 November, in and Digital Asia in Singapore, 3-5 December, 2012. 

To find out more about any of these services, apply for an invitation to the Brainstorms, and for any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Two Different Telco 2.0 Strategies

‘Full Service Telco 2.0’ Vs. Telco 2.0 ‘Happy Piper’

In our reports the ‘Roadmap to New Telco 2.0 Business Models’ and ‘A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0’, we identify two archetypal Telco 2.0 strategies: ‘Full Service Telco 2.0’; and ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’.

Figure 1 – Porter and Telco 2.0 competitive strategies

Telefonica Vodafone Telco 2.0 Porter diagram Sept 2012

Source: Michael Porter / STL Partners / Telco 2.0

  • Full-Service Telco 2.0’. In this ‘two-sided’ business model, CSPs have two clear customer groups: end-users and other 3rd Party Organisations who interact with end-users (what we call ‘Upstream’ companies – banks, retailers, advertisers, government, utilities, software developers other telcos). CSPs seek to compete with each other and with others, such as the ‘internet players’, by differentiating both in the end-user services (communications, content, etc.) and with the enabling services they provide to other service providers (identity and authentication, customer targeting/marketing services, payments, customer care, and so forth).
  • The ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’. CSPs that pursue this strategy will focus on retail or wholesale connectivity to upstream and/or downstream customers rather than on higher-level (value-added) services. It is worth noting that although simplicity and cost control are key themes of the ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’, there remains scope for revenue growth through providing ‘enhanced connectivity’ options.

Overview: Telefonica 2.0 and Vodafone 2.0

At a top-level, Telefonica is pursuing a ‘Telco 2.0 Service Provider’ strategy whereas Vodafone, although dabbling in Telco 2.0 services, is largely committed to a defensive approach to digital services (protecting voice and messaging) and is aggressively pursuing a ‘Happy Piper’ strategy. We illustrate a qualitative assessment of where the two CSPs sit on the Happy Piper-Service Provider continuum, together with a selection of other CSPs in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Positioning CSPs on the Happy Piper – Service Provider continuum

Telefonica Vodafone Continuum diagram Sept 2012

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

Telefonica: Telco 2.0 Service Provider

Background: Digital Innovator

STL Partners believes that Telefonica is arguably the most advanced operator globally in moving from traditional telecoms (Telco 1.0) to a Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy. This belief was reinforced by the reorganisation in Autumn 2011 in which Matthew Key, the European CEO, was appointed head of a new unit, Telefonica Digital, which has the objective to build the company’s presence and value in the digital world. A press release in September 2011 summarised the objectives of the division as being:

  • To take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the digital world with respect to new products, services and value chains, both in markets where the company operates directly and those in which it has industrial alliances or the potential to operate directly in OTT (over the top) businesses.
  • This unit will be responsible for developing and globally exploiting businesses like, among others, video and entertainment, e-advertising, e-health, financial services, cloud and M2M. It will aim its activity both at the corporate and residential segments. 
  • To actively help the two major geographic regions, Europe and Latin America, take advantage of their distinguishing traits (relationship with and proximity to more than 300 million customers, capillarity, invoicing and distribution capabilities).
  • To attain this goal, the unit will develop top-flight global competencies in the areas of business intelligence, pricing strategies and management of alliances in the digital environment with respect to both hardware (i.e. devices) and software.
  • Generate new growth opportunities by investing in new digital businesses, while grouping together or reinforcing initiatives such as Amerigo, Wayra and Vc’s.

Figure 3: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy

Telefonica 2.0 Strategy chart Sept 2012

Source: Telefonica

Telefonica Digital is a significant development in the company’s commitment to Telco 2.0 services for three reasons:

  1. For the first time a CSP has been transparent about how much revenue it is generating from non-traditional ‘digital’ services. In 2011, Telefonica Digital generated revenue of €2.4 billion and intends to grow this by around 20% a year to reach around €5 billion in 2015.
  2. Telefonica Digital is a relatively autonomous entity with separate headquarters (in London rather than Slough) and separate product and service development capabilities. It can both leverage Telefonica’s commercial distribution capabilities (via the operating companies) and, crucially, distribute services over-the-top via app stores and the internet. Essentially, it has been given the authority to compete with the core business as an in-house ‘OTT player’.
  3. It is specifically focused on the services layer – both end-user services and enabling services for third-party service providers (including advertising and security). It will leverage Telefonica’s network where it makes sense to do so (e.g. for M2M) but will not be tied to the network if it makes sense to build OTT services (e.g. Tu Me, one of its OTT voice services, is available for non-Telefonica customers). It also seeks to buy (e.g. Terra, Tuenti), build (e.g. Priority Moments) and partner (via various models including Wayra, in which Telefonica makes seed capital available to early stage businesses).

Figure 4: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 service portfolio

Telefonica digital innovation calendar diagram sept 2012

Source: Telefonica

To read the note in full, including the following additional sections detailing support for the analysis…

  • Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 products and services
  • Vodafone’s approach
  • Background: safety first
  • Vodafone’s Telco 2.0 services
  • Vodafone One Net: Unified Communications in the Cloud for SMBs
  • Vodafone Freebees: Retaining the Pre-pay base
  • Summary: Strategic Evaluation

…and the following figures…

  • Figure 1 – Porter and Telco 2.0 competitive strategies
  • Figure 2: Positioning CSPs on the Happy Piper – Service Provider continuum
  • Figure 3: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy
  • Figure 4: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 service portfolio
  • Figure 5: Vodafone – main messages are about being an efficient data pipe
  • Figure 6: Vodafone One Net – a defensive play in the SMB market
  • Figure 7: Telefonica and Vodafone Telco 2.0 strategies – evaluation

Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream can download the full 14 page report in PDF format hereNon-Members, please subscribe here. For this or other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Companies and Technologies Featured: Vodafone, Telefonica, O2, Priority Moments, Top-Up Surprises, Freebees, Tu Me, Tuenti, Terra, OneNet, Wayra, M2M, OTT, Jajah, Happy Piper, Full Service, Telco 2.0.