Full Article: Device evolution: More power at the edge

The battle for the edge

This document examines the role of “edge” devices that sit at the periphery of a telco’s network – products like mobile phones or broadband gateways that live in the user’s hand or home. Formerly called “terminals”, with the inclusion of ever-better chips and software, such devices are now getting “smarter”. In particular, they are capable of absorbing many new functions and applications – and permit the user or operator to install additional software at a later point in time.

In fact, there is fairly incontrovertible evidence that “intelligence” always moves towards the edge of telecom networks, particularly when it can exploit the Internet and IP data connections. This has already been seen in PCs connected to fixed broadband, or in the shift from mainframes to client/server architectures in the enterprise. The trend is now becoming clearer in mobile, with the advent of the iPhone and other smartphones, as well as 3G-connected notebooks. Home networking boxes like set-tops, gaming consoles and gateways are further examples, which also get progressively more powerful.

This is all a consequence of Moore’s Law: as processors get faster and cheaper, there is a tendency for simple massmarket devices to gain more computing capability and take on new roles. Unsurprisingly, we therefore see a continued focus on the “edge” as a key battleground – who controls and harnesses that intelligence? Is it device vendors, operators, end users themselves, or 3rd-party application providers (“over-the-top players”, to use the derogatory slang term)? Is the control at a software, application or hardware level? Can operators deploy a device strategy that complements their network capabilities, to strengthen their position within the digital value chain and foster two-sided business models? Do developments like Android and femtocells help? Should the focus be on dedicated single-application devices, or continued attempts to control the design, OS or browser of multi-purpose products like PCs and smartphones?

Where’s the horsepower?

First, an illustration of the power of the edge.

If we go back five years, the average mobile phone had a single processor, probably an ARM7, clocking perhaps 30MHz. Much of this was used for the underlying radio and telephony functions, with a little “left over” for some basic applications and UI tools, like Java games.

Today, many the higher-end devices have separate applications processors, and often graphics and other accelerators too. An iPhone has a 600MHz+ chip, and Toshiba recently announced one of the first devices with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon. Even midrange featurephones can have 200MHz+ to play with, most of which is actually usable for “cool stuff” rather than the radio. [note: 1,000,000,000,000MHz (Megahertz) = 1,000,000,000GHz (Gigahertz) = 1,000,000THz (Terahertz) = 1,000PHz (Petahertz) = 1EHz (Exahertz)] Now project forward another five years. The average device (in developed markets at least) will have 500MHz, with top-end devices at 2GHz+, especially if they are not phones but 3G-connected PCs or MIDs. (These numbers are simplified – in the real world there’s lots of complexity because of different sorts of chips like digital signal processors, graphics accelerators or multicore processors). Set-top boxes, PVRs, game consoles and other CPE devices are growing smarter in parallel.

Now multiply by (say) 8 billion endpoints – mobile handsets, connected PCs, broadband modems, smart consumer electronics and so forth. In developed markets, people may well have 2-4 such devices each. That’s 4 Exahertz (EHz, 1018) of application-capable computing power in people’s hands or home networks, without even considering ordinary PCs and “smart TVs” as well. And much – probably most – of that power will be uncontrolled by the operators, instead being the playground of user- or vendor-installed applications.

Even smart pipes are dumb in comparison

It’s tricky to calculate an equivalent figure for “the network”, but let’s take an approximation of 10 million network nodes (datapoint: there are 3 million cell sites worldwide), at a generous 5GHz each. That means there would be 50 Petahertz (PHz, 1015) in the carrier cloud. In other words, about an 80th of the collective compute power of the edge.

bubley-device-1.png

Now clearly, it’s not quite as bad as that makes it sound – the network can obviously leverage intelligence in a few big control points in the core like DPI boxes, as traffic funnels through them. But at the other end of the pipe is the Internet, with Google and Amazon’s and countless other companies’ servers and “cloud computing” infrastructures. Trying to calculate the aggregate computing power of the web isn’t easy either, but it’s likely to be in the Exahertz range too. Google is thought to have 0.5-1.0 million servers on its own, for example.

bubley-device-2.png

So one thing is certain – the word “terminal” is obsolete. Whatever else happens, the pipe will inevitably become “dumber” (OK, less smart) than the edge, irrespective of smart Telco 2.0 platforms and 4G/NGN networks.

Now, add in all the cool new “web telco” companies (eComm 2009 was full of them) like BT/Ribbit, Voxeo, Jaduka, IfByPhone, Adhearsion and the Telco 2.0 wings of longtime infrastructure players like Broadsoft and Metaswitch (not to mention Skype and Google Voice), and the legacy carrier network platforms look even further disadvantaged.

Intelligent mobile devices tend to be especially hard to control, because they can typically connect to multiple networks – the operator cellular domain, public or private WiFi, Bluetooth, USB and so forth – which makes it easier for applications to “arbitrage” between them for access, content and services – and price.

Controlling device software vs. hardware

The answer is for telcos to try to take control of more of this enormous “edge intelligence”, and exploit it for their own benefit and inhouse services or two-sided strategies. There are three main strategies for operators wanting to exert influence on edge devices:

  1. Provide dedicated and fully-controlled and customised hardware and software end-points which are “locked down” – such as cable set-top boxes, or operator-developed phones in Japan. This is essentially an evolution of the old approach of providing “terminals” that exist solely to act as access points for network-based services. This concept is being reinvented with new Telco-developed consumer electronic products like digital picture frames, but is a struggle for variants of multi-function devices like PCs and smartphones.
  2. Provide separate hardware products that sit “at the edge” between the user’s own smart device and the network, such as cable modems, femtocells, or 3G modems for PCs. These can act as hosts for certain new services, and may also exert policy and QoS control on the connection. Arguably the SIM card fits into this category as well.
  3. Develop control points, in hardware or software, that live inside otherwise notionally “open” devices. This includes Telco-customised UI and OS layers, “policy-capable” connection manager software for notebooks, application certification for smartphones, or secured APIs for handset browsers.

bubley-device-3.png Controlling mobile is even harder than fixed

Fixed operators have long known what their mobile peers are now learning – as intelligence increases in the devices at the edge, it becomes far more difficult to control how they are used. And as control ebbs away, it becomes progressively easier for those devices to be used in conjunction with services or software provided by third parties, often competitive or substitutive to the operators’ own-brand offerings.

But there is a difference between fixed and mobile worlds – fixed broadband operators have been able to employ the second strategy outlined above – pushing out their own fully-controlled edge devices closer to the customer. Smart home gateways, set-top boxes and similar devices are able to sit “in front” of the TV and PC, and can therefore perform a number of valuable roles. IPTV, operator VoIP, online backups and various other “branded” services can exploit the home gateways, in parallel with Internet applications resident on the PC.

Conversely, mobile operators are still finding it extremely hard to control handset software at the OS level. Initiatives like SavaJe have failed, while more recently LiMO is struggling outside Japan. Endless complexities outside of Telcos’ main competence, such as software integration and device power management, are to blame. Meanwhile, other smartphone OS’s from firms like Nokia, Apple, RIM and Microsoft have continually evolved – albeit given huge investments. But most of the “smarts” are not controlled by the operators, most of the time. Further, low-end devices continue to be dominated by closed and embedded “RTOSs” (realtime operating systems), which tend to be incapable of supporting much carrier control either.

In fact, operators are continually facing a “one step forward, two steps back” battle for handset application and UI control . For every new Telco-controlled initiative like branded on-device portals, customised/locked smartphone OS’s, BONDI-type web security, or managed “policy” engines, there is another new source of “control leakage” – Apple’s device management, Nokia’s Ovi client, or even just open OS’s and usable appstores enabling easy download of competing (and often better/free) software apps.

The growing use of mobile broadband computing devices – mostly bought through non-operator channels – makes things worse. Even when sold by Telcos, most end users will not accept onerous operator control-points in their PCs’ application or operating systems, even where those computers are subsidised. There may be 300m+ mobile-connected computers by 2014.

Conclusions

Telcos need to face the inevitable – in most cases, they will not be able to control more than a fraction of the total computing and application power of the network edge, especially in mobile or for “contested” general-purpose devices. But that does not mean they should give up trying to exert influence wherever possible. Single-application “locked” mobile devices, perhaps optimised for gaming or navigation or similar functions have a lot of potential as true “terminals”, albeit used in parallel with users’ other smart devices.

It is far easier for the operator to exert its control at the edge with a wholly-owned and managed device, than via a software agent on a general computing device like a smartphone or notebook PC. Femtocells may turn out to be critical application control points for mobile operators in future. Telcos should look to exploit home networking gateways and other CPE with added-value software and services as soon as possible. Otherwise, consumer electronic devices like TVs and HiFi’s will adopt “smarts” themselves and start to work around the carrier core, perhaps accessing YouTube or Facebook directly from the remote control.

For handsets, controlling smartphone OS’s looks like a lost battle. But certain tactical or upper layers of the stack – browser, UI and connection-manager in particular – are perhaps still winnable. Even where the edge lies outside Telcos’ spheres of control, there are still many network-side capabilities that could be exploited and offered to those that do control the edge intelligence. Telco 2.0 platforms can manage security, QoS, billing, provide context data on location or roaming and so forth. However, carriers need to push hard and fast, before these are disintermediated as well. Google’s clever mapping and location capabilities should be seen as a warning sign that there will be work-arounds for “exposable” network capabilities, if Telcos’ offerings are too slow or too expensive.

Overall, the battle for control of the edge is multi-dimensional, and outcomes are highly uncertain, particularly given the economy and wide national variations in areas like device subsidy and brand preference. But Telcos need to focus on winnable battles – and exploit Moore’s Law rather than beat against it with futility.

We’ll be drilling into this area in much more depth during the Devices panel session at the upcoming Telco 2.0 Brainstorm in Nice in early May 2009.

Beyond Bundling: Growth Strategies for Fixed and Mobile Broadband – “Winning the $250Bn delivery game”

Summary: This report examines future retail and wholesale business models for fixed and mobile operators offering high speed packet data services. This includes – but is not limited to – providing Internet access.

The report charts the next 10 years for fixed and mobile telecoms network operators as the viability of the current broadband business model is threatened by intense competition and falling prices in maturing markets, changing usage patterns, and the adaptation of new technologies. The report identifies and profiles a new $250Bn content delivery market opportunity. (April 2008)


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This report is now availalable to members of our Telco 2.0 Research Executive Briefing Service. Below is an introductory extract and list of contents from this strategy Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the executive Briefing Service here

For more on any of these services, please email contact@telco2.net/ call +44 (0) 207 247 5003 

Future Broadband Business Models Series

This report examines future retail and wholesale business models for fixed and mobile operators offering high speed packet data services. This includes – but is not limited to – providing Internet access.

The report charts the next 10 years for fixed and mobile telecoms network operators as the viability of the current broadband business model is threatened by intense competition and falling prices in maturing markets, changing usage patterns, and the adaptation of new technologies. The report identifies and profiles a new $250Bn content delivery market opportunity.

  • Report Summary
  • Key Points
  • Who is this report for?
  • Business Context – The Changing Face of Broadband Distribution
  • Key Questions Answered
  • Case Studies, Companies, Services, Technologies & Applications Covered
  • Forecasts Included
  • Summary of Contents
  • Pricing and User Licenses
  • Customer Workshops
  • Team Biographies
  • Fit with other Broadband Reports
  • Other Reports

This study is supported by BT, GSM Association, the Broadband Stakeholder Group, the TeleManagement Forum, and Telecom TV.

Report Abstract

Intense competition and falling prices in maturing markets coupled with the challenges presented by changing usage patterns and the adaptation of new technologies are all starting to threaten the viability of the current broadband business model.

This report reviews the pain points in current operational scenarios, case studies of successful strategies and emerging new entrants, and profiles the key threats and future opportunities to the industry. It outlines a number of key steps to develop business models that can be viable in the evolving marketplace, and touches on the future of core Voice & Messaging revenues, Video Distribution, P2P technologies, the Next Generation Network, E-commerce Value Added Services, and more. The report identifies and profiles a new $250Bn market opportunity.

Key Points

  • Pain points in current operational scenarios.
  • Case studies of successful strategies and emerging new entrants.
  • Threats and future opportunities to the industry.
  • Steps to develop business models that can be viable in the evolving marketplace.
  • The future of Voice, Video Distribution, P2P technologies, the Next Generation Network, E-commerce Value Added Services, and more.
  • New propositions, channels and partners for telco operators, cablecos, ISPs, NEPs, Device Manufacturers, Investors, and Public Policy bodies.
  • Scopes an attractive new $250Bn market opportunity.
  • Short, medium and long term actions required.

 

Who is this report for?

The report is for senior (CxO) decision-makers and business strategists setting business strategy, and for product managers, technologists, and strategic sales, business development and marketing professionals acting in the broadband arena in the following types of organisations:

  • Fixed & Mobile Broadband Operators – to set and drive strategy.
  • Vendors & Business Partners – to understand customer need and develop winning customer propositions.
  • Regulators & Industry Standards bodies – to inform policy making and strategy.

 

Strategists and CxOs in Media and Investment Companies may also find this report useful to understand the future landscape of the broadband industry, and to help to spot likely winning and losing investment and operational strategies in the market.

Business Context – The Changing Face of Broadband Distribution

The chart below shows how the telecoms industry today offers two dominant types of distribution systems for content and services.

  1. Vertically integrated networks, like the Public Switched Telephony Network, its mobile equivalent, Next Generation Network replacements for these, and SMS messaging (“PSTN & SMSC”). Here, a dedicated network integrates connectivity, service and payment.

  2. Internet access, where connectivity, services and payment are all separate (“Broadband Internet”).

  3. In the future there will be a wide range of new business and payment models which assemble devices, applications, content and connectivity in new technical and economic ways (“Other”). Wholesale markets will evolve greatly to support this. This original hypothesis, affirmed by our proprietary market research, is explored in depth in this report.

This study looks at the impact of this significant change on the business models of those in the broadband value chain.

Key Questions Answered

This report uniquely answers 3 key questions:

  1. “What are the business models for fixed and mobile broadband voice, video and data access over the next 5-10 years” – how will these revenue streams evolve for telcos and cablecos?

  2. “What are the future wholesale and retail business models” – managing costs and revenues by learning from outside the telecoms industry.

  3. “How to rejuvenate broadband growth strategies” – what are the new propositions, channels and partners for telco operators, cablecos, ISPs, NEPs, Device Manufacturers, Investors, and Public Policy bodies.

In addition, to help operators and vendors maximise future opportunities from broadband-based services the following questions are also addressed:

  • What are the key pain points and problems in the current Broadband Service Provider (BSP) business model?

  • What are the limitations of reliance on voice and video cross-subsidy?

  • What are new potential upstream and downstream revenue models?

  • Who puts money into BSPs today, and how does it gets re-allocated?

  • Who makes the margins today and why?

  • What are the drivers of economic activity inside and outside the network?

  • What are the competing fixed and mobile distribution systems and their relationship to services?

  • What lessons about wholesale/network business models can we learn from outside of telecoms?

  • How long are vertically-integrated service models likely to survive? What are the opportunities for new entrants?

  • What are the most successful players doing to combine multiple distribution systems to support the customer experience?

  • What are the lessons from dead or dying distribution systems (ATM, ISDN, MMS)

  • How much value will flow through new broadband distribution channels?

  • How to improve core Voice and Video services?

  • Which network ownership models will be most effective?

  • What are the economics of QoS, and how to create better alternatives?

  • What are the trends in traffic shaping and throttling?

  • What is the potential for new wholesale intermediaries to grow beyond providing backbone and interconnect peering for access networks?

What are the practical issues in taking new business models to market in a highly regulated and politicised industry?

Case Studies, Companies and Services, and Technologies & Applications Covered

Case Studies: Akamai, BT 21CN, BT Vision, e-TopUps, Illiad, Janet(UK), Joost, Kontiki, Limelight, LINX, Sky Anytime.

Companies and Services Covered: 3 UK, Akamai, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Apple, Apple iPhone, Apple iTV, ASUS, AT&T, AT&T/Bell Labs, BBC, Blackberry, Blockbuster, Blyk, BSkyB, Carphone Warehouse, Cinema Paradiso, Cisco, Dell, Deutsche Telekom, Direct Connect, Disney, DoCoMo, DoCoMo iMode, Easyjet, Ericsson, France Telecom, Freebox, Gillette, Google, Google Phone, Hutchison 3, Intel, Liberty Global, Link, Livebox, Lovefilm, Lucasfilms, Maxjet, Microsoft, Motorola, Motorola Tetra, Moviebank, MSN, My Moviestream, Myspace, Netflix, News Corp, Nextel, Nokia Ovi, Pixar, Qualcomm, Ryanair, Scientific Atlanta, Setanta, Sky+, Skype, Slingbox, Sprint PCS, Swedish Metro, Swisscom Hotspots, Tandberg, Tesco Mobile, The Economist, Tracfone, TV Perso, Verizon FIOS, Verizon Wireless, Virgin, Wall Street Journal, Walmart, Yahoo!, YouTube.

Technologies & Applications Covered: Broadband, Broadband Video, Broadband Voice, Cable, CDMA, CDNs, Deep Packet Inspection, DSL, Edge-Caching, Ethernet/ATM unbundling, Fax, Femtocell, FON, GSM, HDD, IMS, Internet Video, IP, IP Multicast, IP Stream, IPTV, ISDN, Linksys, Linux, MMS, Mobile TV, Muni Nets, MVNO, Mxit, Netgear, OpenID, OPLANs, P2P, PAN, Peak Shaving, PSMN, PSMs, PSTN, Telex, Traffic Shaping, VoD, VOIP, VPN, Wifi, WiMax, WLAN.

Forecasts Included

For 2006-2017: Wholesale and Retail BSP revenues by Fixed and Mobile Access, TV, Data, Voice & Messaging across 12 Western European and North American markets.

Summary of Contents

Introduction

Executive summary

Background to this Telco 2.0 research project

Part 1: The business model

  • A framework for business model innovation
  • Business model change in the airline industry
  • Applying the framework to telecoms business models


Part 2: Broadband service provider industry review

  • ISP industry
  • Entertainment market
  • Voice and messaging
  • Business model issues


Part 3: Wholesale and network business models beyond telecoms

  • Container shipping
  • Automatic teller machines in the UK
  • Power and energy distribution


Part 4: Competing distribution systems – theory and practice

  • Broadband as a distribution system
  • Drivers of vertical integration

Part 5: Emerging and declining distribution systems

  • CDNs: A freight service for the digital world
  • Vertical distribution systems
  • Hybrid distribution system case studies
  • Lessons from other delivery systems
  • Conclusions


Part 6: Survey results

  • Broadband video – is internet video a threat or an opportunity?
  • Broadband voice – which companies will prevail?
  • The network – what does the internet carry today?
  • E-Commerce value-added services
  • The wholesale market
  • The retail market
  • Case studies
  • Winners and losers

Part 7: Future broadband revenue models and scenarios

  • BSP market sizing
  • Wholesale market opportunity


Part 8: Conclusions

  • Beyond bundling: the quest for a new business model
  • Respondent views
  • Recommendations


Appendices

  • Research methodology and respondent profile
  • Glossary

This report is now availalable to members of our Telco 2.0 Research Executive Briefing Service. Below is an introductory extract and list of contents from this strategy Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the executive Briefing Service here.  To order or find out more please email contact@telco2.net, call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

 

Telcos’ Role in the Advertising Value Chain

Summary: A report identifying how to build a valuable new business model and customer base.

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Background

Fixed and mobile voice and data revenues are in free-fall in most European and North American markets. Since the 3G auctions at the turn of the century, content has long been considered the key future growth area for operators in the consumer segment. However excluding SMS, the only material content revenues for Telcos to date have been through movement into adjacent markets – particularly acquisitions in the cable and media sectors.

Through advertising, operators have a potential opportunity to:

  • Reduce the price of content and services to end-users;
  • Increase the volume of available content and services, and
  • Provide value to the advertising community

 

To achieve this they must contribute to the development of a differentiated new advertising channel in which users are provided with a portfolio of content and services supported by contextually-relevant advertising.

Operators have an opportunity both to provide their own advertising-funded services as well as become an enabler to the advertising community by helping advertisers interact more effectively with their targets (who may or may not be Telco customers). In this report, we examine both of these opportunities in both the fixed and mobile markets. We explore in detail what advertisers and users really want and the opportunities available to operators to carve out a valuable role in meeting those needs.

Key Questions Answered

This report seeks to help operators and vendors maximise future advertising-funded service opportunities by answering the following questions:

  • What is the rationale for advertising-funded services?
  • When will the market take off and how big will it get?
  • How can operators prevent cannabalising existing revenue streams?
  • What are the needs of the advertising community?
  • How should operators work with Internet enablers (e.g. Google), content providers (e.g. Sony) and aggregators (e.g. Motricity)?
  • What implementation issues need to be resolved?
  • What are the options available to operators to add value and what is the best option available?
  • What are they key factors for success?
  • What value is there in opening-up Telco assets (open APIs etc.)?
  • Which can be learned from market-leaders in advertising-funded services?
  • What are the attitudes of operators, internet enablers, content providers and aggregators to the market and how to be successful in it?
  • What needs to be done to develop the market and generate near-term benefits?

Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Background and Key Issues to Date
  • Growing Pressure on the Existing Operator Business Model
  • Content Delivery: Not a Panacea
  • Advertising-Funded Services: Tried and Tested in Adjacent Markets
  • Telcos’ Role in Advertising: Market Scope
  • Activity from Operators to Date
  • Advertising-Funded Services – Threat or Opportunity?
  • The risk of cannibalising existing revenues
  • Internet players – partner or competitor?
  • Show me the Money! – How big could the market be?
  • Understanding the Advertising-Funded Value Chain
  • Value Chain players in Internet Advertising
  • What do Advertisers *really* want?
  • Options for the Operator to add Value
  • Key Skills and Assets Required
  • Issues to resolve
  • Operator role: The Devil in the Detail
  • Who to Partner with and How
  • Meeting Advertiser and Customer Needs:
  • Return on Investment
  • Customer attention & interaction
  • Performance measurement
  • Ubiquity
  • Legal and Regulatory Issues
  • Learning from Web 2.0
  • Content and Communications: Two sides of the same coin
  • Social Networking Communities and Advertising
  • Case studies:
  • Learning from the Master: Google and the Art of Ad-Funding
  • Accelerating the need for Advertising Revenues: The X-Series from 3
  • The Whole Hog: Blyk’s Advertising-Funded MVNO
  • Delivering an Open Platform: Amazon
  • Views from the Industry – new primary research by STL Partners
  • Action steps & Conclusions

This report is now available to members of our Telco 2.0 Research Executive Briefing Service. Below is an introductory extract and list of contents from this strategy Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the executive Briefing Service here.  To order or find out more please email contact@telco2.net, call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Full Article: Beyond bundling, the future of broadband

This is an edited version of the keynote presentation of Martin Geddes, Chief Analyst at STL Partners, at the October 2007 Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London. It provides some initial findings from our research into future business models for broadband service providers (BSPs), including our online survey. (The summary results will be mailed out to respondents in the next few days.) Those wishing to find out more may want to take a look at our forthcoming report, Broadband Business Models 2.0.

To save you the suspense, here’s the headlines for what’s upcoming for the telecoms industry, based on what insiders are saying through our survey and research:

  1. Operators are going to face a slew of non-traditional voice service competition. To corrupt the words of Yogi Berra, “The phone network? Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.? The volume may linger on, but the margins in personal communication will move elsewhere.
  2. Content delivery is a logistics problem that spans many distribution systems. Those who can solve the delivery problem by sewing together many delivery services, rather than those focused on owning and controlling one channel, will win.
  3. Wholesale markets in telecoms are immature and need to evolve to support new business models.
  4. Investors aren’t up for more “loser takes nothing? facilities-based competition capex splurges. Time to look hard at network sharing models.

So, read on for the background and evidence:

Background to the survey and research

Our ingoing hypothesis is that telecoms – fixed or mobile — is a freight business for valuable bits. This could be via traditional voice networks. Broadband is another means of delivering those bits. It includes Internet ISP access, as well as other services such as private VPNs and IPTV.

Broadband competes with and complements other delivery systems like broadcast TV, circuit-switched phone calls and physical media.

Just as with physical goods, there are lots of delivery systems for information goods. These are based on the bulk, value and urgency of the product – from bicycle couriers to container lorries for atoms; phone calls to broadcast TV for bits.

As part of our research we’ve also been looking at how other communications and delivery systems have evolved commercially, and what the lessons are for the telecoms industry. After all, broadband as a mass-market business is barely a decade old, so we can expect considerable future change. In particular, the container industry has some strong parallels that may hold important lessons.

Physical goods and the telephone system have developed a wide range of payment methods and business models.

With physical goods we have “collect it yourself?, cash-on-delivery, pre-paid envelopes and packages, as well as express parcels, first and second class postage.

The phone system offers freephone, national, non-geographic and various premium-rate billing features. It offers the user a simple, packaged service that includes connectivity, value-added features, interoperability, support and a wide choice of devices.

Likewise, SMS packages together the service and its transport. It’s wildly popular, bringing in more money globally than games software, music and movies combined.

The problem is that this has come within closed systems that don’t enjoy the rich innovation that the open Internet brings.

Internet access, by contrast, offers an abundance of goods but is relatively immature in the commercial models on offer. Broadband service providers typically offer just one product: Internet access. And they generally only offers one payment mechanism for delivery of those online applications: one-size-fits-all metered or unlimited, paid independently of services used. (There are some important exceptions — you can read more here.)

As a small example of how the Internet under-serves its users, when a small non-commercial website suddenly gets a surge of traffic it typically falls over and is swamped. That is because there’s no commercial incentive for everyone to pay for a massively scalable hosting plan just in case of unexpected demand. The telephony system doesn’t suffer this because the termination fee for every call is designed to at least cover the technical cost of carrying the call.

Oh, and don’t expect Google to host it all for free for you either – the error message in the slide above is cut and pasted from a bandwidth-exceeded Google Blogger account.

There is also a lack of incentive for access providers to invest in capacity on behalf of Google to deliver richer, heavier content (where Google collects the revenues).

The question therefore is: How can BSPs find new business models inspired by more mature distribution systems?… whilst at the same time not killing off the innovation commons that is the Internet. BSPs must both create and capture new value in the delivery of online applications and content. Being an NGN or IPTV gatekeeper is not enough.

Fixed voice revenues are declining; mobile voice is peaking; and SMS is slowing down. The theory has always been that broadband ISP services will take up the slack, but in practise margins are thin.

Our research is testing out a wide variety of alternative commercial models. For example, would an advertiser like Google pay for not just the hosting of content (via YouTube, Picassa or Blogger), but also the end-user usage on a fixed or mobile device for receiving that content?

We believe that whilst these alternative models may individually be much smaller than traditional broadband Internet access, collectively they may add up to a larger amount of value.

Survey supporters and respondents

The research would not be possible without the active support of the above sponsoring and supporting organisations, and we thank them all.

We’ve had over 800 respondents, with roughly one third from operators & ISPs; a quarter from vendors; and the rest consultants, analysts, etc. The geographic split is Europe 40%, N America 30%, Emerging 20%, Developed Asia 10%. There is a ratio of around 60:40 fixed:mobile respondents, and mostly people from commercial (rather than technical) functions.

We asked about four main areas:

  • Today’s ISP model — is it sustainable.
  • Future of voice service in a broadband world
  • Future of video service, as the other leg of the “triple play? stool
  • Future business and distribution models

Rather than assault you with dozens of charts and statistical analyses, what follows is the gist of what we’ve discovered.

Furthermore, we’re looking 5-10 years out at macro trends. You might not be able to predict Google, Skype or Facebook; but you can foretell the rise of search, VoIP and socially-enhanced online services. Even in our own industry, there can be large structural changes, such as the creation of Openreach by BT. You could probably have foretold that as vertical integration weakens there would be such organisational upheavals, even if not who and when.

Sustainability of ISP business model

What’s the future business model for broadband?

Around 20% see the current stand-alone ISP business model as sustainable long-term. This includes many senior industry figures, who cite better segmentation, tiered price plans, cost-cutting and reduced competition in more consolidated markets. It may be a minority view, but cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Around a quarter of respondents thought that broadband works as part of a triple or quad-play bundle of voice, video and data – cross-subsidised by its higher-margin cousins. This is the current received wisdom.

However, a majority of respondents say that a new business model is required. These results hold broadly true across fixed and mobile; geographies and sectors.

Which brings us to our first lesson from the container industry. Old product and pricing structures die hard. The equivalent efforts at maintaining a “voice premium��? all failed. Trying to price traffic according to the value of what’s inside the container or packet doesn’t scale.

For BSPs, that means technologies like deep packet inspection might be used:

  • for law enforcement (“x-ray the containers?), or
  • to improve user experience (at the user’s request), for example by prioritising latency-sensitive traffic (“perishable goods?)

However, traffic shaping can’t be your only or main tool for the long-term; you can’t reverse-engineer a new business model onto the old structures. It doesn’t, ultimately, contain your costs or generate significant new revenues.

Broadband voice

One of the big surprises of the survey was how quickly respondents see alternative voice networks getting traction. We asked what proportion of voice minutes (volume – not value) will go over four different kinds of telephony in 5 and 10 years from now. Looking at just the growth areas of IP (i.e. non-circuit) voice, you get the following result.

It seems those WiFi phones we laugh at now are more dangerous than previously thought – maybe when 90% of your young customers are communicating via social networking sites, you’ve got some unexpected competition? (Indeed, we note that social network traffic is just overtaking the traditional email portals.)

We were also given a surprise in that respondents saw most of these changes happening over the next 5 years.

Insiders see the growth in voice traffic as being anchored on best-effort Internet delivery, which gets around 1/3 of the IP voice traffic. Using traffic shaping, offering tiered levels of priority, and using traditional end-to-end quality of service guarantees all got roughly equal share.

There are some small differences between fixed and mobile, and mobile operators might like to seriously consider offering tiered “fast dumb pipe? and “slow dumb pipe? that applications can intelligently choose between.

This all suggests that operators may be over-investing in complex NGN voice networks and services. They need to urgently work out how they can partner with Internet application providers to offer “voice ready? IP connectivity without the costly telco-specific baggage of telco protocols and platforms.

So what’s the lesson from container shipping for the broadband voice community?

At the same time as containers where being adopted, some ports doubled-down on the old business model and built better breakbulk facilities – and lost. Manhattan’s quays are gone, Newark has replaced it.

Others waited to become “fast followers?, and lost too. London went from being one of the world’s busiest ports, to zero activity. Dubai did the reverse by investing exclusively in the new model, with a low cost base and high volume. (Shades of Iliad’s approach in France.)

The winners were those who staked out the key nodes of the new value chain.

There are some clear lessons here for telcos and their NGN voice networks. The cost of broadband access technology is dropping, capacity is rising, and the voice component’s value is decaying towards zero. Furthermore, session control (the software part of the voice application) is just another IT function that runs inside a big server, and isn’t something you can charge for above hosting costs. It has the economics of email, and that’s mostly given away for free. So IP voice isn’t adding anything to your triple/quad play bundle, and can only be justified on the basis of reducing cost in the old business model. An IP NGN voice service that’s still selling metered minutes does not constitute a new business model.

Broadband video

The survey results for video are a little less dramatic than for voice and follows received wisdom more closely. Overall respondents endorsed Internet video as far more of an opportunity than a threat. (Only in telecoms can a significant proportion see more demand for their product as a problem! The potential issue is that video could drive up costs without sufficient compensating revenue.) A long slow decline for broadcast TV and DVDs is matched to a slow ramp-up in various forms of on-line delivery. Every form of Internet delivery, from multicast IP to peer-to-peer file sharing gets a roughly equal cut. There were some things to watch out for though…

The opportunity is to become as supplier of advertising, e-commerce, caching and delivery services for a variety of video portals, not just tied to your own. This isn’t surprising; can you imagine a Web where there were only two portals to choose from, both owned by the network owners? The same applies to video.

Economic migration, cultural fragmentation and user-created content ensure that we’ll need a diversity of aggregation, recommendation, filtering and presentation technologies.

Given a choice between building a closed IPTV solution, or an open content platform, the response was well in favour of the latter as the more profitable to run. (The slow ramp up of BT’s Vision service suggests its success is more likely to be based on the “push? of analogue switch-off than the “pull? of the telco brand as a TV provider. Why do no telco TV plans centre around external entrepreneurial talent and innovation?)

Both options beat the alternative of disinvestment in video delivery technology. So fixed and mobile operators are well positioned to help enable and market video, just not “TV over IP?. That’s the steam-hauled canal boat, when you’re supposed to be using IP to build a railroad. It seems telcos are over-investing in emulating broadcast TV and under-investing in the unique nature of the online medium.

P2P and “over the top? are here to stay. You deal with the costs by offering more profitable alternatives, not by punishing your most voracious customers. (See our article on Playlouder as an example of how to do it right.)

In music, Apple’s iTunes captured the key bottleneck in the distribution chain. Could the same happen for online video?

We gave respondents a choice of four scenarios:

  • Direct to user from the content author or publisher
  • A single dominant player
  • A fragmented market dominated by telecoms companies
  • A fragmented market dominated by non-telcos

Our respondents say that the market is likely to be fragmented with many aggregators and non-carriers will dominate. Again, “triple play? doesn’t capture the richness of the business-to-business model required with many partners in the distribution and retail value chain. How will Telco TV satisfy my wife’s taste in Lithuanian current affairs and my interest in gadgets and economics lectures? It can’t.

Our take-away from the shipping industry is that when it comes to shifting bulky stuff around, big is good and bigger is, err, gooder. Networked infrastructure businesses have strong increasing returns to scale. There’s no point in building a new port anywhere near Rotterdam because that’s not where the other ships go. There’s a good reason why Akamai takes the bulk of the profit pool from content delivery networks — their one is the biggest.

Network ownership models

Compared to today’s dominant models (facilities-based competition and structural separation), respondents rated a third ownership model – co-operatives of telcos – surprisingly highly. The two currently dominant models remain on top.

The issue is how to structure the vehicles for mutual or co-operative asset ownership. The financial industry has already created structures that allow shared operational businesses, either mutually owned or as private special entities. Furthermore, they’ve managed to preserve barriers to entry. To become a member of the VISA network, you need a banking license. That costs a lot of money.

Telecoms and the Internet business have some common structures around numbering and interconnect, but could emulate these other models from other industries.

The arrival of containers shifted the balance of profit away from the shipping lines and towards the ports.

In terms of telecoms, it’s where the content is originated or goes between delivery systems that matters – from CDN to broadband access, from broadcast to DVR. That means every Googleplex and content delivery network that gets built puts Google or Akamai at a massive advantage, since everyone wants to peer with them.

Traditionally it has been long distance and access networks that have dominated telecoms economics. AT&T’s early years found it the only owner of a long-distance network and thus able to negotiate very advantageous terms in buying up local carriers into the Bell system. It mistakenly help onto the long distance network just as the bottleneck shifted to the access network. At the moment the US sees a duopoly in access networks, and supernormal profits. Wireless carriers enjoy an oligopoly in most markets as a by-product of spectrum licensing.

However, Europe is moving towards structural separation or open access of fixed networks. Homes and offices offer WiFi or femtocell bypass options for cellular. Over time, local access ceases to be such a bottleneck. Furthermore, there are many physical paths and proliferating technologies and suppliers hauling data between the distant points that want to be connected up — be it transoceanic cables or competing wireless backhaul technologies. So the owners of the transmission networks don’t enjoy the benefits. It’s the owners of the places where traffic is exchanged between delivery systems that do, since those feature increasing returns to scale and dominant suppliers.

What is the product we are selling?

Today operators expect you to go out and buy yet another access plan for every device you touch or place you make your temporary home. They sell “lines��?, either physical, or virtual (via a SIM card). Is this really the right way for the future?

All I want to do is connect my phone and laptop to the Internet wherever I am – but I get different prices and plans depending on which combination of device and access technologies I use – yet all from a single vendor. (The first is using my phone as a 3G modem over a USB cable; second is a separate 3G USB modem; third is WiFi.) This creates the perverse incentive when I’m sat in Starbucks to use my phone as a modem for my laptop over the expensive 3G network.

Also, I might be a peer-to-peer download lover, and hopelessly unprofitable. Or I might just want to check my email and surf the web a little on my mobile. How can you rationally price this product? What are the alternatives?

We gave users a choice of 3 alternatives (above) as to how broadband connectivity is provisioned. Should we sell you “unlimited browsing?, but listening to Internet radio is a separate charge? Or should we price access according to the device, but not make the plan portable between devices? A data plan on a basic featurephone would differ in price from a smartphone, Internet tablet or laptop. Or should we just give the user a set of credentials that activates any device or network they touch and bills that usage back to them?

The preferred one was to offer users a connected lifestyle, regardless of devices, applications or prices.

BT’s deal with FON is an example of a step towards this goal. Picocells too have the potential to upend the access line model. In terms of immediate actions, mobile operators should recognise the trend towards divergence and users with multiple handsets. Don’t make me swap SIMs around when I go from my “day phone? to “out on the town phone?. Give them a common number and interface.

New, more liquid, ways of combining together devices and networks for sale would require wholesale markets to evolve.

We asked what impact it would have on BSP revenues if all the friction were taken out of the wholesale market. Anyone who wants to come along and build an application with connectivity included in the price would be able to source their wholesale data from any carrier. You don’t have to be Yahoo!, Google or RIM to negotiate a deal with every carrier in the world, or make one-off special billing integration.

The effect? A 50%+ boost in revenues, which has a commensurately greater effect on profit. How much value is the broadband industry leaving on the table because of its inability to package up and sell its product via multiple channels?

Even more profitable than the ports are the agents who arrange the end-to-end logistics and supply chains for their customers. In telecoms terms, it’s the operator who can assemble a multitude of fixed and mobile networks, content delivery systems and B2B parterships with the application providers that wins.

For telcos, the critical development to enable personalised packaging of connectivity, applications and devices is to build richer wholesale models. The hot activity will be in the B2B markets, not direct-to-user. The failure of most MVNOs has shown that you don’t just want to create “mini me? telcos, but to enable more granular offerings.

Conclusions and summary

Telecoms is going to move to a multi-sided business model. Google are as likely to be paying for the full delivery of the ad-supported YouTube video as the user is. The telco will also feed Google usage and relationship data to help target advertising. Google might use credit data from the operator to manage its own fraud and chargeback risk on its checkout product. Telcos are logistics companies for data, helping the right data to be at the right place at the right time. This is completely different from being a “dumb pipe��?, wannabe media company or end-user services provider.

When you buy a new electronic gizmo, it typically comes with batteries included. The battery makers have learnt to supply batteries wholesale to consumer electronics makers, as well as to end users. Broadband needs to evolve to add “connectivity included?, with the right quality and quantity packaged up with the application or content in ways that the user finds easy to buy. Today’s product is selling users a raw unprocessed commodity, which is serving neither the interests of the users, merchants or operators.