Good year, bad year. But who for?
2005’s winners & losers, an A-Z
A
A is for Apple, which took the consumer world by storm with the most hyped portable music player ever. Dodgy screens and questionable build quality aside, the cry went up, give us the i-pod mobile phone. Who from? Er well, not it seems from the consumers who reacted to the Motorola ROKR phone in a somewhat lukewarm fashion. And not, it also seems, from the rest of the mobile phone manufacturers, whose embrace of the i-tunes client seems delayed. Not even by the operators, who wondered why they should subsidise their customers to buy a player limiting them to one business and distribution model. Consumers are not that easily led. They already have a mobile phone. They already have an MP3 player. Many already have an MP3 player on their phone. So why buy another, especially as operators are now offering “buy once download twice” services?
Mobile Europe said: “Operators want to deliver value-added services without getting locked in to one company's business model or proprietary platform. In Europe, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone, and 02 all offer their own branded music services.”
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1432)
B
B is for BenQ, acquirer of Siemens’ Mobile Phone division. BenQ took the loss making division on in return for Siemens purchasing €50 million in BenQ shares and stumping up a further €50 million for future investment. As the unit was losing Siemens a million Euros a day at one point, you could take the view this investment would have achieved a fairly quick ROI for Siemens! The companies agreed to co-brand the phones for five years, with BenQ getting 18 months’ rights to the Siemens brand. BenQ said it would keep Siemens’ three manufacturing plants going in Europe, but it seems inevitable the company will take manufacturing back to China in the longer term. It’s hard not to view this as a sad end for a major European mobile manufacturer. With Alcatel’s disposal of its division in a similar manner, and Ericsson’s longer standing JV with Sony, Nokia is now the stand alone European mass manufacturer of mobile phones. It is worth noting that Nokia is producing 56 handsets in 2005, the kind of diversification that led Siemens up the garden path. But Nokia has some decent 3G phones, something Siemens struggled with, and is already flexible on branding, OS and manufacturing location. Siemens remained firm to the last that its brand was pre-eminent, and segmentation was enough. Not so.
Mobile Europe said (in our March issue): “Last year Siemens said it was launching 30 handsets during 2004, as it sought to hit an ever-more segmented market with point products for gaming, messaging, corporate, and so on. This year, it said its handset division is losing around a million Euros a day, and it is looking at the sale of the division! If the division is not sold then the other three options are to carry on as they are, which seems unlikely to say the least, to find a partner, which may have some value, or to close the division entirely.”
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1296)
C
C is for Cannes. We may be made to look foolish on this and so be it. But to our mind the decision of the GSM Association to take the 3GSM World Congress to Barcelona is a shame. Sure, we moaned about the transport and the hotels but the event had atmosphere, shedloads of history and something special. Recreating that in Barcelona will be very difficult. Yes, it will offer a shake up, letting some of the new players in the industry grab some real estate. Yes, the Cannes business community probably needed a kick up the derriere in terms of addressing the capacity issues of the Palais and the town itself. But we loved the hospitality boats in the harbour, the sprawl of tents along the beach, even the low ceilings and confusing lay out of the Palais (well, maybe). And it seems to us a very brave decision to replace that for greater capacity and a warmer handshake from the mayor. Of course we will be making the absolute most of Barcelona, which offers new opportunities for everyone, without doubt. And, of course, there lingers the suspicion that 3GSM will be back in Cannes before long. Until then, au revoir.
D
D is for Digital Rights Management. What happens when one company gets its hands on the IPR for the core technology behind the industry “standard” for a crucial element of operators’ content strategies? Merry hell, that’s what. So when MPEG LA, a kind of licensing store front for ContentGuard Holdings, Intertrust Technologies, Matsushita, Koninklijke Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation, said it was going to charge a dollar per device to integrate OMA DRM 1.0 functionality, plus a 1% levy on any transaction involving OMA DRM, it didn’t go down very well. The Mobile Entertainment Forum called the proposals “Onerous, Impractical and Unclear”. Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSM Association said operators were being “forced away from the OMA DRM standards by this unworkable licensing scheme.” MPEG LA then came back with an offer revising the cost of integration of OMA 1.0 and combined 1.0 and 2.0 into devices down a third to 65cents. Its royalty fee had also been altered from the 1% charge per transaction down to a 25 cent fee per user per year.
Mobile Europe said: “OMA proponents have the advantage of relative ubiquity and standardisation so the most likely outcome seems to be that a deal will be worked out.”
www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1162
E
E is for Emblaze Mobile. You have to applaud the ambition of this company, taking on the mobile ODM and OEM market and making a large noise about itself. Is it a winner? Well, it has a phone for sale with Virgin Mobile, and that is enough for us.
Mobile Europe said: “Ceo Alexander, who at O2 has worked with Emblaze companies as a customer, will offer invaluable inside knowledge of operator strategies as well as top level contacts. He said that he thinks ‘all the pieces are in place’ for Emblaze to develop from a relative unknown as a handset vendor to being a ‘major brand in mobile devices within three years.”’
F
F is for Flarion. A star that burned brightly, notched up some decent contract wins and ended up the year in the hands of the all-acquiring Qualcomm (see Q, later). Flarion was doing nicely with its Flash OFDM wireless broadband technology, and was highly delighted to have been the technical supplier to the winning bid for a national rural broadband wireless license in Finland. This backed up other wins and across the continent, and was putting a dent in Qualcomm’s plans to use the same 450MHz band Flarion was targeting to sell CDMA 450 networks. And so it came to pass that Qualcomm solved that strategic blip by buying its competitor. Of course, both companies said that the deal would be good for both sides, and that Qualcomm would fully support Flash OFDM and bring scale to a technology whose main proponent had been unable to exert the kind of muscle Qualcomm can. Mobile Europe said: “Try as they might to appear friends now, Flarion's director of marketing Jo Barratt recently spent some time with Mobile Europe briefing against the technology qualities of Qualcomm's CDMA 450 solution.
Now Barratt says that the acquisition is in fact good news for Flarion, and for future purchasers of its FLASH-OFDM because of the increased heft and investment Qualcomm can add to the business.
“It will accelerate Flarion's technology and gives us a company that can create and ecosystem," Barratt said. The Flarion man also claimed that the acquisition would increase operators' choice of which technologies to go for.
“We believe that's what they bought us for,” he said, “to give operators that want to choose OFDM the confidence to do it.”
Whether OFDM will be viewed as equal within Qualcomm remains to be seen, however. Certainly ceo Paul Jacobs' initial comments on the acquisition might give room for a different interpretation,
“We believe CDMA will provide the most advanced, spectrally efficient wide area wireless networks for the foreseeable future, but with Flarion we can now more effectively support operators who prefer an OFDM or hybrid OFDM/CDMA track for differentiating their services,” Jacobs said.
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1402)
G
Gis for Gizmondo. Oh dear. What was worse? Swedish newspaper Aftonblat’s allegations that members of the management team have criminal records for fraud, forgery and blackmail (managing director Carl Freer, not himself one of the accused, tendered his resignations on 20 October)? The fact that Gizmondo manufacturer Tiger Telematics revealed in delayed results that is had suffered operating losses $210 million in 2004? THe fact that those results also revealed Tiger lost $163.8 million during the three months to 31 March 2005, the quarter in which it launched Gizmondo in the UK? Who knows. But with analysts now tipping the failure of the Gizmondo, it seems one outcome is widely expected.
H
H has to be for HSDPA. With Manx Telecom in Europe and, on a rather larger scale, Cingular launching live HSDPA services, adoption of the technology at a network level seems well on track. Outside of these actual launches there were a host of tests, with Siemens-NEC, Alcatel, Nokia, Nortel, Motorola, Lucent all involved with the main operators. At the moment the questions still remain about the best upgrade path for those with “older” R99 based UMTS networks. Power, traffic prioritisation and handset functionality are all issues as well. Lucent’s installation for Manx Telecom was a greenfield build, taking the operator straight from GPRS to HSDPA. There are also issues of available chips for handsets and terminals. Users on the Manx and Cingular network are using data cards for broadband wireless access. Operators and manufacturers too need to be clear on actual user rates in an cell, rather than concentrating public minds on peak rates of 14Mbps, which are unrealistic as an actual user experience.
Mobile Europe said: “Motorola has said a multi-user, outdoor performance trial has produced three main findings operators will need to take note of when introducing HSDPA. Video needs prioritisation, as just four active users in a site can degrade performance. Handsets need equalisation technology included. And base stations need lots of processing power.” (www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1564)
I
I is for i-mode. European i-mode operators now include O2 in the UK, Ireland and Germany, KPN in Greece, E-Plus in Germany, Cosmote in Greece, Bouygues in France, Telefónica Móviles in Spain, Wind in Italy, KPN in the Netherlands. And who is most happy about it at the moment? As far as we can see, Cosmote, which is doing OK. O2’s outdoor advertising agency, NTT for selling the licences, and NEC for getting on most of the handset rosters. Customers? Well, The Netherlands launch was widely regarded as hampered by a poor (ie choice of one) handset range. The Cosmote campaign went pretty well, and O2 went so large on the initial advertising it will be very disappointed if its Christmas sales don’t at least include punters asking for i-mode in the shops. On paper i-mode stacks up. The user experience is pretty smooth, the business model is much more generous to content providers than WAP. Mobilising content is also straightforward for content providers.The biggest issue simply one of handset replacement. Someone is going to want a certain service very much to compromise on his chosen handset to gain it. O2 was offering free months at launch, aware it has to stimulate interest and use. After its purchase by Telefónica there is a greater heft behind i-mode across the continent, but the technology is still essentially a differentiator for operators that don’t come under an Orange, Vodafone or T-Mobile umbrella. The fact that O2 is retaining its WAP portal suggests it is reluctant to bet the entire farm on i-mode. Meanwhile, though, Qualcomm announced a tie up with mobile web browser vendor Access to port the latter's i-Mode client software to some of its WCDMA chipsets. So not a winner or a loser then, more a scoreless draw at half time, with a big name sitting on the bench.
Mobile Europe said: “Initially O2 is launching the service with four phones and 100 on-portal content partners. The mobile operator plans to offer two GPRS handsets from NEC at launch (the NEC 343i, which will cost £79.99 for pre-paid users; the NEC 411i for £99) while two will be available from Samsung by the end of October (the Samsung S500i for £249; and the Samsung Z320i 3G handset for £279.)
Amongst the content partners O2 seems most excited by Egg, and says other banks are queuing up to get a part of the action. Mobile Europe spoke to an Egg representative who said that at launch the mobile service would be limited to simple account enquiries. Actually moving money around would follow, he said, when all the security implications were sorted out. As for pricing, the operator has opted for a per-meg pricing policy. It is charging £3 per Megabyte, which it says averages out at about 100 web pages. To us this looks like about 3p per page, which means that logging onto a bank home page, signing in and looking at your recent account transactions may cost around 10p. Service will be free at launch, though.” (www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1465)
J
J is for Jamster. Interesting one this. By being responsible for the the ubiquity of the Crazy Frog ringtone, and its rise up the real life singles charts, Jama, the company that operators the Jamster service, did a lot to raise the profile of mobile content. The only problem was the profile wasn’t all positive, as users realised that instead of buying content on a one-off basis they were actually committing to a subscription. Oops. The UK’s premium rate regulator ICSTIS got involved, and the outcome may be a decent one for the industry, if clearer marketing messages and more flexible billing options become available.
Mobile Europe said: “Mobile content shops powered by 'browse and buy' technology, claims Bango, should replace the highly criticised mobile subscription services, which have generated thousands of consumer complaints.
“Bango says that companies such as Jamster have been accused of misleading people into signing up for a subscription service with a weekly fee when they thought they were buying just one piece of content. In the UK, which has a track-record of self-regulation, mobile operators are looking to the industry to clean up its act. In Germany, operators are already requiring double opt-ins while US operators are considering doing the same. In this case, a user would have to text back or reply to an email to confirm that they want to join the subscription service.”
(www.mobileeurpe.co.uk/1342)
K
K is for Keith Dyer. Your editor. Winner.
L
L is for litigation. A couple of barnstormers this year. The most hotly contested area seems to be in the world of mobile email. It’s kind of easier to assume any company in this space is either suing or being sued by someone else for patent infringement. Of course the biggest headline is that Blackberry may either have to stump up many hundreds of millions or stop service, after it lost a case in the US against NTP. This one is still ongoing, but Blackberry says it has a work around if it has to stop using the part of its service that uses NTP technology. The service black out would only affect US users in any case. Meanwhile, rival wireless messaging device manufacturers and service providers are licking their lips at the thought of a public climbdown from RIM. Elsewhere, we reported the dispute between Nokia and InterDigital. In a nutshell, InterDigital says Nokia owes it money for licences. Nokia says the terms weren’t valid. InterDigital won a ruling in the US committing Nokia to pay up about half of what it was looking for. This case means more to InterDigital than it does to Nokia but as we will see later, patent licensing was to rear its head for Nokia in a much more high profile fashion later in the year.
Mobile Europe said: “On Friday 1 July the ICC's Court of Arbritration ruled, in a two to one majority decision of the arbiters, that Nokia owes Interdigital $112 million for the period from January 2002 through to December 2003. Interdigital says that by the terms of this award, Nokia will also owe up to $140 million for the period from January 2004 to December 2006, dependent on Nokia's sales volumes.
But now Nokia has said it is not convinced that the award is enforceable, and has told Mobile Europe that InterDigital's decision to pursue enforcement of the decision in the US District Court for the Southern district of new York is "premature".To place awards of $112 million and up to $140 million in context — InterDigital Communications Corporation turned over $103.7 million in 2004, reporting a net income of $100,000.” (www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1319)
M
M is for MVNO. A recent survey by Motricity found that off 100 operators and other industry players surveyed, half of them thought that MVNO activity would peak over the next three years, with consolidation occurring within five years. It’s interesting that the greatest success story for MVNOs in Europe is always held to be Virgin Mobile. Fair enough, the company was responsible for most of T-Mobile’s net adds on its network. But the news that NTL was circling round Virgin may bring other potential bidders out the market. From our point of view, the industry risks consumer fatigue if it overdoes the MVNO model. Price pressure as seen in Denmark helps few in the end. Massively busy web pages offering enormous numbers of packages, and bundles and free handset deals can confuse the hell out of consumers, a figure no less than the ceo of KPN Mobile told us recently. If you add to that a range of deals from every major customer facing brand, that confusion is only likely to increase. But for this year MVNOs are a winner, as they are viewed by operators as a good way to reach markets they otherwise can’t touch, and do so relatively cheaply. If they are doing really well and eating into their own market share in more lucrative markets, well hey, they can always buy them.
Mobile Europe said: The most challenging hurdle for any MVNO will be convincing an MNO that opening up its network will not cannibalise existing revenue streams (30%). This appears to be leading MVNOs to avoid the traditionally high revenue business market, instead focusing on the youth (36%) and cost-conscious (28%) markets.
When asked what type of company would dominate the space in two years, 42% said that global content brands such as Disney and Sky would be leaders in the MVNO space. 50% believed that MVNO activity will peak over the next three years with extensive consolidation leaving fewer MVNOs in five years time.
N
Nis for next generation networks. This one would have been under “i” for IMS but we had i-mode in there instead. IMS is one of those terms that unites people in feeling a slight sag of the shoulders at the prospect of another article examining its importance. So we won’t do that here. (Again) But it is going to change a lot of things, bring in new players, aid convergence and enable new services. It’s also going to open up telecomms manufacturers to more competition from the IT vendors, if the operators are convinced by the new telecoms computing architecture based servers.
IMS isn’t a winner yet, but is set to be one when the race is finally won - as more and more HSDPA networks are rolled out and operators look for all-IP networks themselves.
Mobile Europe said: “This is IT technology, but the unique characteristic is that they are placed in a Telecom Environment. Central Office traditionally means operation up to 40°C and built according to NEBS standard. The table is set for a clash between the IT department and the network unit. The first department claims that this is IT technology and they are the masters of this art. The other side argues that this is a business that shall run come heat waves or earthquakes and we know how to deliver services non stop under these conditions. The bottom line is that the result of this battle is by no means given. The TEMs have opened the battlefield by introducing IP in the network and trusted that the operators would still consider this telecoms technology and only trust real hardened equipment in the Central office.” (www.mobileeurpe.co.uk/1599)
O
O is for O2. Hard to award winner or loser tag, unless you owned heaps of O2 shares, in which case you are definitely a winner. Perhaps the best way to look at it is that Telefonica’s purchase is evidence that the mid-sized operator is a tough place to be. O2’s management and technical staff should take it as a compliment that their acquisition became a given over the past couple of years. They got a decent price too. The brand is very strong, technical and marketing innovation and differentiation giving the company a smart edge. The arrival of Telefonica means the UK will have subsidiaries of three large incumbents playing in the market. How long before BT ups its MVNO presence as well? If Telefonica is smart it will listen to the O2 people before trying to impose itself too much, and avoid treating the deal as am expensive customer acquisition exercise.
Mobile Europe said: “Scale is one of the key factors in the mobile communications industry. The integration of O2 into Telefonica's portfolio gives the latter access to not only a valuable network of customers across three new territories, but also access to a very valuable brand. Although it is currently denied by Telefonica, one of O2's best potential qualities is that its brand and name translate well internationally. This would be a great access point to the US and Japanese markets.”
P
P is for Push To Talk. Loser. This year at least. It seems that operators were concerned about the OMA PoC standard being finalised, and also that the tremendous cases made on the back of Nextel’s high ARPUs and low churn rates may not quite translate to Europe and GSM. This is not to say that the technology has no future. Of course it does, and Nokia is beginning to rack up the odd European PTT customer based on PoC. But given that in February 2004 PTT was described as the next big application, its emergence so far can only be described as still-awaited.
Mobile Europe said: “‘Finalising the OMA Push to Talk Over Cellular specification is a major milestone for the mobile industry. Many operators already offer PoC services to their consumer and business customers, and vendors build their products accordingly. However, what the industry awaited is a common, agreed, open standard for facilitating interoperability between equipment and services,’ said Jari Alvinen, Chairman of the Board, Open Mobile Alliance. OMA recently held the first Interoperability TestFest for OMA PoC 1.0, where six servers and eight clients deploying the OMA PoC 1.0 Enabler were tested. OMA Interoperability TestFests are an important step in the OMA Release Program where basic inter-working of services between several suppliers can be tested in a production environment.”
Q
Q is for Qualcomm. Wow. What a year for the ever-news worthy US giant. Where to start? First off, Qualcomm hit the market. Elata and Flarion were added to last year’s late purchase of Trigenix. Then there was a re-alignment of the BREW business in Europe, in an admission the existing strategy was not opening up the European market in the manner Qualcomm had hoped for. The Elata purchase was part of that. Then there was the small matter of a falling out with licencees not happy with the way Qualcomm was licensing IPRs for WCDMA. For a while it was like being back in the great standards wars, as first the GSM vendors reported Qualcomm to teacher (the European Union) for not playing nicely. Then Qualcomm told Nokia it wanted its ball back (stop selling network equipment in the USA). Everyone said they had been good and it was the other side’s fault. Qualcomm said GSM was a closed shop where a minority of vendors controlled the market and wouldn’t let others in. This differs from CDMA, which is a closed shop run by Qualcomm, which lets lots and lots of people play, as long as it is mostly on its terms. (Which, of course, are fair, open and non-discriminatory). Meanwhile Qualcomm pushed ahead in chip development for HSDPA, set to be a huge market, taking part in interoperability tests with infrastructure vendors, and saying the chipset would be ready for handsets very soon. Love them or loathe them, they’re never dull.
Mobile Europe said: “Days after Nokia was one of several manufacturers asked for an investigation into Qualcomm's CDMA licensing terms, Qualcomm takes Nokia on over GSM patent rights on some USA products. Coincidence. Qualcomm and its wholly owned subsidiary, SnapTrack have filed suits against Nokia in federal court in San Diego for the alleged infringement of eleven of Qualcomm's patents and one patent owned by SnapTrack. Qualcomm's lawsuit includes patents that is says ‘are essential’ for the manufacture or use of equipment that complies with the GSM, GPRS and EDGE cellular standards and ‘other patents that are infringed by Nokia's products’. Patents that are essential to a standard are those that must necessarily be infringed to comply with the requirements of the standard. Qualcomm's complaint states that Nokia is infringing Qualcomm's patents by making or selling products in the United States that comply with the GSM family of standards. Qualcomm seeks an injunction against Nokia's continuing sale of infringing products and monetary damages.” (www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1559)
R
R is for Russia. Russia is Europe’s China, if you take the analogy. In other words, a huge market ripe for development, offering vendors the chance to score lucrative contracts. Even better, it has no home manufacturers with guaranteed contracts knocking chunks out of competitors. Slightly less good, be careful who you do business with, according to more than one disgruntled investor (see this issue, page eight). But in general GSM networks are going down, and are swiftly being upgraded to enhanced 2G and 3G potential. It’s hard to keep track but perhaps a quarter of all the contract stories we receive at Mobile Europe relate to Russia and the CIS countries in some aspect. It really is that big at the moment.
Mobile Europe said: “The largest mobile provider in Russia and the CIS, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), has signed a framework contract with Siemens to supply a total of 265 million US dollars worth of network technology. Under the terms of the contract, Siemens Communications will expand the capacities of the MTS GSM/GPRS mobile net-works in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine in the course of the year. The strong increase in demand that MTS has been enjoying in Russia and the countries of the CIS is necessitating further expansion of its networks. The framework contract with Siemens provides for increasing the capacity of the provider’s radio and switch networks and integrating a platform for Intelligent Network services.” (www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1196)
S
S is for Sendo and Simpay. Both losers. Both no more. Which was the more significant? Simpay if you take the wider view. Sendo if you worked for them, probably, and weren’t asked to come and work with Motorola. Simpay’s demise came about after T-Mobile decided things weren’t working out and it would rather go it alone. So this attempt to stanardise the means of payment via mobile for digital content came a cropper as the remaining operators left in what was once known as the Mobile Payments Alliance didn’t have the will to carry on. Rival payments companies pointed out that the merchant acquisition credit card model wouldn’t have worked, was too complex and didn’t offer enough value to the content providers. To our mind, some of these objections were a little unfair. For instance, compared to current revenue shares on WAP content Simpay would have offered a lot more. No, it seems the ambition was too broad, and perhaps the operators were unwilling to take the plunge until everyone else did. Try singing in a choir and not starting to sing until the person next to you sings. Hear the silence.
Mobile Europe said: “Simpay, the attempted industry-wide standard for mobile payment being developed by a consortium of European operators, has folded. The initiative was wound up following the withdrawal of T-Mobile, which was apparently due to the company's concerns about the way the system interacted with handsets, networks and other payment systems. A statement from Simpay before the plug was pulled said, “Following the decision of one of its founding Members not to launch Simpay for the foreseeable future, the decision was made today at a General Meeting of Simpay not to pursue its activity on a pan-European scale as originally planned.”
Sendo simply just couldn’t cope with the harsh realities of the handset market, where scale and pricing is all. Damaged by a bitter dispute with Microsoft, the company was left with no cash in the bank, and saw its most valuable assets - the people and the R&D funtion - stripped out by the administrator to Motorola. A true shame for this innovative but doomed company.
Mobile Europe said: “Sendo has gone into administration today. 170 employees in its design and test division will be transferred to Motorola which has bought the R&D business, but 30 employees, mainly in sales and marketing, will be made redundant. The Birmingham-based group manufactured and distributed mobile phones to Network Operators around the world. The latest figures available for Sendo International, and Sendo Limited showed a turnover of £50m and £80m respectively.”
T
T is for television. This is the year in which mobile television has not proved itself a winner, but it has certainly got itself into a good position to be one soon. TV content deals with operators are almost too numerous to mention, but almost every broadcaster now has a dedicated plan for mobile distribution, as well as developing their own mobile specific content. There are still debates about which broadcast technology is best suited to mobile, of course, as well as whether a mix of streaming services and broadcast could be the ideal offer for operators. Operators themselves have perhaps been surprised at the speed with which the TV community has got with the mobile programme, and at the positive public response to being able to watch TV on their mobile phones. They know, though, that there are still power consumption issues and processor performance concerns to overcome.
Mobile Europe said: Nokia has made the air interface specifications of its mobile TV end-to-end solution (DVB-H) publicly available which, it says, will help drive device interoperability and market development. Based on Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld (DVB-H), the air interface specifies how mobile TV terminals interconnect with the network end of the mobile TV solution. The Nokia mobile TV solution is based on available open standards such as the DVB-H radio layer standard, which was approved in 2004 by ETSI. Some additional application layer specifications are in the process of being finalised by standardisation bodies. DVB-H is a new technology that enables broadcast transmission of several television, radio and video channels to mobile devices. It combines digital broadcasting standards with specific features for mobile devices. To receive DVB-H transmissions, devices require an additional integrated receiver.
U
U is for UMA. This is one of the technologies upon which those proposing fixed mobile convergence are pinning their faith. The WiFi and Bluetooth based service provides “fixed” access to GSM and GPRS networks, and has been adopted within the specifications of the 3GPP. BT’s Fusion service, launched for real in June, is one outcome of the technology. FMC is of course a real attraction for the fixed operators, and for those addressing the enterprise PBX market and there were a number of product launches, but we struggled in vain to hear of real commercial implementations where a company’s fixed infrastructure had been ripped out in favour of mobile phones connected to the outside cellular world. Residentially, BT’s Fusion is one worth keeping an eye on. As we did below.
Mobile Europe said: “Another point that occurs is that under BT's price plan, the cost of calling a mobile from a Fusion phone will remain the same. See, if everyone is going to have a mobile phone only, from now on, that means nearly all of our calls are going to be to mobiles. So BT will surely then be forced to reduce that fixed to mobile premium, or else customers will be reaching for their old fixed phones again. So there are still challenges there for BT. And opportunities for their rivals who simply have to ask their customers if they are attracted to the concept of using their mobile whilst in the home, at fixed line prices. If the answer is yes, there's a much easier solution than BT's. Simply keep using your mobile and we'll either give you a "home tariff" or time sensitive billing, as we do already. One thing Fusion does do is make BT a Vodafone customer, as it is a Virgin Mobile customer for its newly announced mobile music service. It raises BT Mobile as a brand in its own right, and widens its service portfolio and gives it differentiation. From that point of view mobile operators all over Europe need to think carefully about how they will combat the threat, especially from incumbent fixed operators, of well resourced MVNOs offering attractive ‘point’ services.”
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1304)
V
V is for Vodafone. But it’s also for Voice over IP, which it somewhat related to fixed mobile convergence, as discussed above. But one thing that would have sent a shiver up the spine of many in the teelcomms world would have been the purchase by Ebay of Skype. What is Ebay doing buying Skype? And should it affect mobile operators? Well, yes. One way might be even in a point product such as IPdrum’s cable, which connects a mobile phone to a Skype client. No doubt there will be many more mass market mobile VoIP workarounds, but the principal question is, should operators, in an IMS world, offer VoIP themselves. Not something we can answer from a review of 2005, but whenever we asked the question the answer from both sides was, it’s going to happen anyway, so they have to embrace it ad extract what value they can from it. Same goes for messaging, by the way.
Mobile Europe said: “IPdrum, an emerging company in VoIP to mobile convergence,has launched IPdrum Mobile Skype Cable, which connects Skype to a mobile telephone. ‘Finally there is a telecom solution offering the best of both worlds; mobility and free Internet calls,’ said Kjetil Mathisen, ceo, IPdrum. ‘Our product is one of the first proven solutions that will deliver IP telephony to any mobile phone.’ The company's product will let Skype users make mobile calls worldwide over the Internet via Skype, for little or no cost. To date, there have been over 168 million downloads of the Skype software.The company has said it is the first to bridge VoIP and the mobile phone network with its patent-pending software and a cable that, together, can turn a mobile handset into a wireless gateway for Skype's VoIP application.
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk1484)
W
W is for WiMax. Another disruptive technology that offers a competitive offering to mobile. Especially in countries where there is not a developed fixed broadband infrastructure. One mobile company that not been afraid to chase alternative means of de-furring the same feline is T-Mobile, which has used Prague and he Czech Republic as a proving ground for alternative mobile technologies. Elsewhere there have been WiMax launches in Austria and Serbia. Many of the chief vendors took a look at integrating the technology with their broadband cellular nodes. Again, too early to bring down the winner or loser flag, but live service launches are a decent sign that things are moving in the right direction.
Mobile Europe said: “Most of the current debate is largely driven by silicon chip giant Intel which plans to incorporate WiMAX 802.16e into next generation lap top computers. ‘The specification will be complete mid-2005 with products to follow in 2006, ramping up in 2007 for notebooks,’ says Jim Johnson, Intel's VP Mobility Group. ‘Putting 802.16e in city towers adds capacity for notebooks and PDAs. Mobile operators selling 3G want better data performance and can use the WiMAX specification transparently. The unique selling points for WiMAX are that it is easy to deploy and is based on IEEE standards so thousands of developers and engineers can create services. WiMAX will take off in similar ways to WiFi and Ethernet but equipment and subscription costs must be low. Every PC ships with Ethernet connections and soon all will incorporate WiFi and then WiMAX.’”
X
is for X-rated. A winner. Any more questions? Hmmm? Speak up. Let’s just say that although you won’t be hearing much
from operators but adult content is
already huge. MMS, to take one, sees vast quantities of what one executive described as “body parts” being sent across the network. If you’ve seen any of the the video clips that we have (in the course of researching this article) you’ll know that porn is already all over people’s mobile phones. And it’s not just P2P viral stuff either.
Mobile Europe said: “Cheers... to the Alcatel senior exec who could only get the adult section of Orange's Pay per View Live TV service to work, as he sought to demonstrate the smooth working of his company's convergent billing product. Never mind, sir, we're sure you'll get the other services working too, just as soon as they are installed in your favourites list, and we salute your dedication to supporting your company's customers.”
(www.mobileeurope.co.uk/1126)
Y
Y is for Yalta. See page 10 of this issue for much more. But when three French operators allegedly carved up their market share in a “Yalta” type treaty, it made them big, big potential losers. Half a billion Euros worth of potential losers, to be precise. France Telecom denies it ever employed the Yalta term, and all the operators are appealing (Orange France and SFR are the other two). But if the appeal fails. Losers. All three of them.
Z
is for ZigBee because it begins with Z. Frankly, we know very little about it. But apparently the goal of the ZigBee alliance is to “provide the consumer with ultimate flexibility, mobility, and ease of use by building wireless intelligence and capabilities into every day devices. ZigBee technology will be embedded in a wide range of products and applications across consumer, commercial, industrial and government markets worldwide.”
Mobile Europe said: Not much at all.
Share this article with others
Post to del.icio.us
Printed from http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/features/111566/Good_year%2C_bad_year_But_who_for%3F.html
Comment on this article
Skip to comments
We encourage users to analyse, comment on and even challenge Mobile Europe's articles, including the one above - 'Good year, bad year. But who for?'
User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site.
Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site.