Content is fundamental to the future success of Europe’s mobile operators, we all know that, but how do you identify, purchase and deliver that winning content? Catherine Haslam reports on the various technical and business issues that are being addressed to enable consumers to get their hands on compelling content they are willing to pay for.

The networks are now in place to deliver data effectively. GPRS is widespread in Europe and key applications have been implemented as well. Java downloads, MMS and even WAP are all technologies capable of providing the technical mechanisms to access content, are well on the way but without content they are nothing.

Content , however, is one of those all-encompassing terms that is easy to say but far more difficult to acquire in any meaningful way.  The Internet model — providing a single method for consumers to access a vast quantity of content, a browser, which they must then navigate their own way through, has grown steadily to provide more valuable tools such as search engines. The initial thoughts behind WAP were probably that mobile access to this vast store of content would drive itself, but the reality was that the mobile environment was, and still remains different.

Mobile specific

Reduced bandwidth, small displays and limited processing power and battery life meant that the Internet structure could not simply be ported to the mobile world. This created no end of technical challenges and, in finding solutions for them, most would now agree that the industry lost sight of the importance of encouraging content owners to want to enter the mobile market.  This manifested itself in the fact that applications developers and content owners needed to deliver content in a new language — WML — and in many different formats for the wide variety of handsets. This was always unlikely and the fact that mobile operators were unwilling or unable to develop revenue sharing agreements, put paid to developments at that time. Content providers were put off for some time but the fact that GPRS networks are now reasonably stable and MMS is rolling out, means that operators have been working hard on rectifying this situation.

In the UK, O2 has a long-running association with TV station Channel 4 and its production of Big Brother. This positive experience which began with text message alerts and has developed into a situation where, “On each occasion that a new technology becomes available, we have been able to showcase them with Channel 4.” The latest manifestation of this is cross-network MMS services providing consumers with text and images, talking heads and even video clips for those with the Nokia 3650.

Neither is O2 alone in its efforts to build relationships with content holders. According to Julian Zmood, head of entertainment for Orange World, there is now an “On going dialogue between Orange and major content holders with the aim to find a good fit for both sides.”
The level of such discussions has become obvious with the announcement of a content deal with one of the biggest content brands, Disney,  for the delivery of multimedia content across a number of Orange businesses. However, he also recognised that this is just one element of the process. 

“This is a very different environment with a wide range of handsets, colour options, and sound variations — mono and polyphonic sound in a range of formats. 18-24 months ago, people hadn’t thought through this but now they have. It’s a step change,” Zmood explains.

The key issues that have to be addressed are how you can take existing content, whatever it may be, and translate it into a format that is capable of being carried by a mobile network and received in the correct format by a mobile device. It sounds simple but it certainly isn’t.

Imagine sending the same multimedia message to the Ericsson T68i and Nokia 7650. They have different size and resolution screens; different versions of polyphonic sound and support MMS in different ways. The MMS standard and interoperability testing takes care of some of the transcoding for different handsets but alone it is not enough.
Firstly, the content has to be in the right format and, while Zmood suggests that, “Investment is needed on both sides to get this going,” Core Media’s UK Manager Val Karruck suggests, “Content people are not generally into technology and therefore we have to keep it simple.”

Keeping it simple for content holders means being able to take content in a variety of formats, perhaps even in the original format and translating it into the right formats for the mobile network and then for the individual handset. Obviously, it would be prudent to deploy a platform which is capable of doing this for all MMS content rather than for each specific content provider or form of content. According to Karruck, “In many ways it’s a ‘no brainer’. It has to be done,” but there are a number of options.

The Core Media solution is based on OMA standards which cope with the delivery of content to multiple handsets and, according to the company is the first such solution to hit the market. However, it does more than this as Core Media believes this platform should be about much more than formatting and transcoding and that it should be the central part of the whole content delivery system.  The content server can take content in any format and convert it into an MMS-usable form. The platform does more than this as it adds all the information necessary to ensure that content can be built into effective MMS services, billed for and the content holder paid. The system manages the thorny issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The right to manage

The system establishes who owns the rights and when content is free for the marketing department to develop services using a series of drag and drop tools. In accordance with the OMA standards, a rights object is attached to the content which gives the consumer the right to download the content and decrypt it. It also restricts forwarding unless that is allowed by the digital rights licence. Furthermore, the system builds a library of rights objects which speeds up the development of services as they can be included in any new service, rather than having to create them from scratch each time.

Far from the digital rights free-for-all that has characterised much of the distribution of digital content on the web, the mobile business and content holders are determined not to make the same mistakes. As Zmood says, “Digital rights management is a fundamental issue and one which Orange takes very seriously. The simple way to be sure is to check the copyright but many have made assumptions. In dealings with partners we check any claims and promote only what we are legally able to do so.” However, he did admit that confusion about rights “Had slowed offerings down.”

Selling concepts

Perhaps even more fundamental to the mobile operators business is to sell the value of mobile as a medium to content providers. This is something that Brainstorm has been heavily involved in. It has created a whole range of scenarios describing different possibilities for making sound businesses from mobilising content.
Brainstorm offers two products —  M-Enable and M-Designer which combine to offer a web-based MMS service delivery system. M-Enable is all about facilitating the easy flow of content to the mobile world. It sits between the content provider and the MMSC and supports 12 different APIs, something ceo Craig Massey explains, “Allows any content provider to come to Brainstorm as a content aggregator.”

The system uses genuine MMS coding to enable cross network services and creates style sheet templates for both content and the multitude of handsets on the market. As a result, new services can be created from menus quickly and effectively. Massey believes this is a vastly superior solution to those based on WAP Push which he describes as, “Atrocious. It degenerates MMS, it doesn’t support JPEG or GIF formats, or audio and therefore cuts down MMS functionality. It’s a seriously poor man’s MMS.”

Service abstraction

Another player in the content delivery marketplace is Mobile Cohesion. It, like Core Media and Brainstorn, believes that there is a necessity to make the route to market easy for content owners. All it requires is “very simple xHTML to get content up and running,” according to the company’s cto Louis Corrigan.

 The system reduces the input required from content providers by introducing another layer into the network which abstracts the network elements needed for MMS — MMSCs and SMSCs — from the content with a middle platform which handles the interfaces to these and other systems such as the billing system, and therefore takes the API programming element out of the content provider’s hands. This creates a “simple fetch mechanism for high value content,” according to Corrigan

. The company’s ceo Dennis Murphy, further explains that this abstraction means that content can be delivered across a range of applications and bearers which builds an applications safety net. While Corrigan admits that “Some operators have bits and pieces of this in bespoke systems, there is a need for a more co-ordinated approach.”

Whatever the route taken, Zmood speak for all operators when he suggests that, “Platforms make sense for operators and for content providers as then they know what they need to deliver.” However, he also explains that’ “It’s about building a market and having a visions about where we will be. With the new handsets, tariffs and service promotion, there has been a dramatic step change from 24 months ago and the same will happen in the next 12 months.”

Chipsets provide the fundamentals of mobile phones but in today’s marketplace, basic functionality is no longer enough.  Catherine Haslam reports on the ever-increasing demands being put on the producers of chipsets and the impact these are having on the market structure.

All silicon manufacturers face the same pressure  — to produce more for less. However, the mobile terminals market is even more exacting in its demands.  As a result, silicon prices are falling at an average of 6% per quarter and every new technology needs to be introduced at the at break-neck speed. Differentiation and growth therefore comes from adding value in terms of new functionality and greater integration.

Whereas this challenge would once have been the concern of OEMs, the structure of the market means that OEMs and indeed, ODMs, are putting more pressure on the chipset players to provide complete solutions.

Those requirements manifest themselves in two clear trends. The first fits easily into the traditional remit of chipset developers as it is all about reducing the baseband processing power required by the RF functions to free it up for other functions. The second is integrating those other functions into a system design to create a complete platform.

On the first point, Julian Hildersley, managing director of TTPCom’s Silicon Business Unit, explains that there is a desire to change the partition of the analogue interface between the RF and baseband sub-systems. “The analogue interface is being challenged…by a digital interface which will split the mixed signals into baseband and RF. It’s in the early days — about 18–24 months away — but it represents a significant change.”

Getting connected

There are also a number of new connectivity technologies that are impacting on the handset market, such as Bluetooth and 802.11, which are often pitched as complimentary to cellular systems.  As a result cellular devices which support these as well are hitting the market. However, supporting these functions needs to be done with as little impact on the overall functionality of the terminal. After all, no-one will want WLAN functionality if it doubles the cost of the device and cuts the battery life in half.

The cheapest way to deliver such new functionality, in monetary and power terms, is to integrate the new chips with existing ones for GSM/GPRS. However, that means that the cost and power consumption of the integrated chips are higher than the GSM/GPRS-only version. Therefore, it only makes sense to do this once the functionality is required by a significant proportion of the market.

According to Phillips’s marketing director for 3GSM, Ton van Kampen, “When features become mass market you can combine the chips as this is a lower cost option than keeping them separate.” While experts vary in their definition of what makes up a critical mass, 40–50% seems typical. However, in the case of Bluetooth which is now a prerequisite for high-end terminals at least, there are some who question the sense of integration. “The investment to integrate is still quite substantial and it is still not being pushed by the market,” says Hildersley.

Motorola’s Mike Philips goes a stage further and states, “It doesn’t always follow that integrating air interfaces is the best option. We are hearing that OEMs don’t want to integrate these because the evolution of Bluetooth standards are asynchronous with those of cellular technologies. This means that there would be more changes required and handset manufacturers are trying to keep these technologies separate. Multiple air interface integration is therefore about GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS.”

In the past, multiple RF has been about supporting additional GSM bands — 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz. GPRS has been added and UMTS has made its first entry into the market. It has done so in the knowledge that, with the exception of PCMCIA card chipsets, UMTS RF and baseband will need to work in a dual environment with GSM/GPRS. As a result, one of the first issues is whether or not the UMTS and GSM/GPRS functions should be combined. According to Werner Sievers, ceo of Zyray Wireless, “Ultimately, high volume dual-mode single chips are the aim and will be cheaper.” But, he suggests that time is not here yet, “Right now single chip are in the USD50-60 price range. GPRS chips are around USD10 each.”

The Zyray solution is a UMTS (FDD) co-processor which has been demonstrated working with Infineon’s GPRS chip and is easily integrated into the existing chipset because it looks like a piece of memory. Qualcomm, on the other hand is already on its third incarnation of UMTS/GPRS/ GSM chips — the 6250, which boasts a highly integrated baseband to reduce the size and power requirements.

However, as all are agreed, the RF capability is just the beginning, which brings us on to the second trend — supporting new application functions. This is not so straightforward and has created two distinct approaches to market. The first sees some of the larger developers, including Motorola and Samsung, developing the entire platform in-house, while the second sees a range of fluid and formal partnerships, aimed at providing the same complete solution.
These new radio technologies have been created for a reason and that is to carry data services effectively. That means that terminals need to support a step change in functionality. Even in the entry level market, polyphonic sound and colour are becoming standard. Java games and downloads are being added and all of these functions have implications in the chipset — on power, on processing requirements and therefore on the system design, the size of the unit and the price.

Early movers

As Mark Frankel, senior director of product management of Qualcomm QCT explains, Qualcomm is a long way down this road with Launchpad, an integrated chipset solution for multimedia applications. This includes a music synthesiser for MIDI, an MP3 player, JPEG encoder/decoder and MPEG4 decoder (an encoder is in development), all of which run on an ARM and DSP core. From this it is clear to see that Qualcomm is determined to integrate high-level functionality early, something that is epitomised by the company’s early inclusion of location technology.

According to Arnold Gum, senior product manager for position location, this early move (at least for the European market) has enabled the company to gain a clear cost advantage. Citing an incremental cost of USD3–4 for adding the GPSOne chip, he states that, “It is cheaper than putting in an MP3 chip.”

However, these decisions to integrate functionality are reactions to the market. They may be reactions to requirements in CDMA markets but they are far from being gambles on the future. Legislative requirements for location information in the US and the video and demands of the CDMA markets in the Far East, mean that a great deal of experience has been gleaned in integrating functions that are now wanted here in Europe. Yet this does not mean that it will instantly port to the requirements of Europe, or that others cannot meet Europe’s needs with equally cost-effective solutions. For example, Qualcomm has integrated its own applications platform, BREW, but runs Java, Windows CE and Symbian on top of that, whereas Nokia’s Series 60 fully integrates the Symbian OS.

The dominant trend is clearly towards platforms rather than chipsets. As Motorola’s Philips explains, “Handset manufacturers want complete platforms, rather than developing these themselves. This is because they have fewer people and also because the value of the terminal is in the look and feel and applications. They don’t see platforms as their differentiator …The trend towards platforms is extremely strong and if you want to be a major chipset supplier, you have to be able to play in this arena.” However, he suggests there are few companies capable of doing this single-handedly.

While this is not disputed by the like of Wavecom and TTPCom, the value of the single provider is. “Developing all the elements yourself is costly,” says Guy Lanrezac, marketing director at Wavecom. He continues, “We have taken an approach which provides a complete solution to OEMs. This is based on the best baseband and RF on the market. At no one time has anyone got all the best products.”

Motorola’s Philips is, not surprisingly, adamant that this is not the case. “Only a few players can do it all and this allows us to make key architectural decisions. Others will only be as strong as the weakest link…Partnerships are good because they can deliver a total solution but you have to get a number of companies working together and that slows things down,” he suggests.

A further problem in the multiple supplier approach is that it can create a tangle of Intellectual Property (IP), characterised by claim and counter-claim. For example, a single terminal may well have four technology providers for Java with four IP claims. Multiply this by the number of handsets functions and the situation is messy to say the least. However, it is not an issue that has passed Wavecom by as Lanrezac explains, “Wavecom sorts out all the IP issues for the OEM and presents it collectively for the platform.”

The market must decide which approach best meets its needs but, whether one or several companies are involved, the task of integrating new functions is about making decisions on what should be integrated when and how. This, Philips claims, makes up 50% of the work. New hardware means new software and new integration, therefore developers don’t want to change the hardware that often. Yet, on the other hand, changing the hardware is the most efficient form of integration. Getting the balance right is far from easy.

There are constant choices to be made, as van Kampen illustrates with the relatively simple example of MPEG4. “This could be done in software on the baseband as this is the lowest cost option but the baseband chip has limited power and throughput.  Therefore, sometimes it makes sense to have a companion chip with a separate interface. Alternatively, a half-way house can be achieved using an accelerator chip.”

MPEG4 is just one element of functionality and it is clear from van Kampen’s explanation that there is no simple answer. Every chipset developer has to decide what functionality will be supported for each range of chipsets but more than that, it must work out how to optimise this for the handset manufacturer.

As you then move up the handset scale, to picture and multimedia services and add  in more complicated Operating Systems (OS) such as Symbian, Pocket PC or Palm, the integration between the lower layers, applications and OS becomes massively more complicated and ever-more important.

Designing these systems is a real black art, a constant balancing act which defines what should and shouldn’t be supported and one which is particularly time sensitive. Getting the right products to market at the right time is crucial. Lanrezac explains, “If the OEM misjudges the end of a handset’s life, it can lose up to 50% of the gross margin for that product.” Therefore, chipset vendors have to be able to respond with system designs that provide the flexibility to add new functions at a speed the market requires, while maintaining reliability and quality. The price of chips may be cheap but the right integration is priceless.

The challenge for all forms of mobile communication is to deliver and PMR is no exception. Catherine Haslan asks whether PMR technologies can meet that need or will Europe’s emergency services find themselves left in the data dark?

According to recent research conducted by IDC on behalf of Orange, the time is now right for businesses to begin investing in mobile technologies to improve their workflow. In fact, the research goes so far as to suggest that businesses that fail to develop a mobile strategy will begin to suffer as a result.
As with any investment businesses are looking to make efficiency savings or productivity gains, or both, and they are looking to do so on processes that are vital to their businesses. Or, to put it another way, they will be looking to mobilise mission critical activities.
Providing mission critical communictions has long been and continues to be the mantra of Public Mobile Radio (PMR) and Public Access Mobile Radio (PAMR) technologies and the the digital incarnations of these — long-time rivals, TETRA and Tetrapol — are no exception. The problems is that the challenge to them for providing data comes not so much from each as has been the case for the past seven years or so, but from the mass communications cellular technology, GPRS.
Business-orientated applications and services based on GPRS are flooding onto the market from mobile operators, traditional IT providers such as IBM, Cisco, Intel and Oracle and from  data specialists such as Citrix and ExCellenet. Under such pressure, digital PMR is not only struggling to capture a share of this new market but is facing competition in its traditional stronghold of public safety. 
TETRA, Europe’s official PMR standard, has been pretty solid for several years (including widespread availability of packet data gateways) and has support with major public safety networks in Finland, Belgium and of course the UK, as well as commercial operations across Europe. Tetrapol has long since had a national network in its native country France, as well as other, smaller solutions in several other European countries. However, in terms of data, both face the same fundamental problem — their data rates are very low and therefore we have to question whether or not these systems are capable of meeting the requirements of today’s professional users, whether they be in the public safety or commercial markets.
Tetrapol is a narrowband FDMA technology which delivers around 4.5kbit/s. Though hardly about to set sparks flying, Philippe Meleard, business development director  at EADS, nevertheless explains it is far from useless, “We have customers that are using our data solutions today for such applications as fingerprint recognition, AVL and slow-scan video…One is a US Army training camp and the quantity of data they are sending is huge, although it is obvious-ly in small amounts at any one time.”
However, Meleard did admit that, “When the market is thinking about big data, narrowband PMR as it stands is not the answer.” But, he suggests, “Neither is GPRS.” To back up this statement, he cited the UK’s NHSi project which is looking into ways of providing mobile links between paramedics and hospitals to provide vital information on patients such as BSG statistics. Meleard suggests that the project team looked at GPRS but found it did not provide the availability and reliability required by emergency services. He further claimed that two European public safety authorities had made the decision to go with GSM/GPRS-based services and had been promised dedicated resources. However, Meleard says, “When an incident happened and resources were required, the service crashed because there was not enough time for the network operator to allocate resources.”

Wideband PMR

Meleard’s and EADS’ solution is therefore to create a real data technology for PMR; wideband PMR to give it another name.  This technology, which he claims will deliver speeds well in excess of GPRS, “Should be ready within two years and will represent a truly integrated highspeed data and voice solution for PMR.” Impressive though this promise is, this technology does not exist now but the require-ments do and some are already turning to GPRS to meet their data needs.
North Wales Police is one such organisation. It already has 50 PDA users including 30 operational officers and by the summer it anticipates there will be 200 vehicle-based Window XP tablets and 300 Pocket PC 2002-powered PDAs in active service in its jurisdiction.  This pilot, which will run for two years, provides access to key information sources such as command and control, picture line-ups and the fire arms registry, using a thin client on the device.
The use of a thin client combined with password protection provides a level of security. As no data is stored on the device confidentiality is protected even if a terminal falls into the wrong hands. However, the system is not perfect — coverage is not ubiquitous and availability and quality of service are not guaranteed as they would be with a dedicated system.
North Wales police has little choice but to use GPRS as Airwave, the provider of the UK’s national public safety network, is not due to provide a TETRA service to the force until 2006. However, even if it did, the force’s Mike Hughes suggests, “GPRS is our carrier of choice for mobile data.” He continues, “We see TETRA as a complimentary technology as there is an issue with the bandwidth it offers. We could perhaps use TETRA for messaging…but first generation TETRA from Airwave won’t do pictures.”
While Airwave has chosen not to offer picture services to the force, the packet data function of the TETRA technology is capable of this. It is a TDMA system with four timeslots, capable of a maximum theoretical throughput of 28.8kbit/s. More realistically, it can produce 4.5kbit/s per timeslot consistently and still pictures and even slow-scan video are being transmitted in Jersey on the same Motorola infrastructure as has been supplied to Airwave.
Indeed, as Brett Smith, product portfolio and marketing manager for Motorola’s Public Safety and Integrated Solutions Division explains, “There is a false belief in the market that TETRA can’t do data and GPRS is the only choice. But it’s about getting the application right for the environment.”  In the case of images, Smith suggests that the solution lies as much with formatting the data correctly as it does with the data pipe. Motorola’s Premier MDC solution therefore includes compression technologies which reduce images to between 4–7K. He explains, “You have to think about what these will be used for. If a police force wants to do an identity parade based on images transmitted to the field then they will need eight or nine shots. The average JPEG starts at 20K, therefore even with GPRS this becomes unfeasible.”
Smith further suggests that the data market for the emergency services in Europe is still in its infancy and, as such, there are several key applications which can and are being run successfully using TETRA as the data bearer. He cites auto status updates, automated vehicle and personnel location, accessing key information directly from the field, messaging and finally automating reporting procedures to speed up the process as the most compelling for public safety users today.

PMR basics

mith goes on to explain that he believes there is a fundamental mistake being made by many observers in believing that headline data rates and grade of service are the same thing. “Predictability and reliability of service are key,” Smith says. “Within Motorola’s Dimetra infrastructure technology there is an ability to allocate multiple channels as necessary. You can drill right down to the individual user  and allocate resources on a particular site and therefore spread the load on the network and maintain the grade of service,” he concludes.
As anyone involved with GPRS will freely admit, quality of service guarantees are still some way away and, as the likes of MMS gain momentum, so will competition for the radio resource of the network.  Therefore, many remain sceptical about the long-term viability of using a public network for emergency service communications. The increased loadings of the commercial networks will inevitably coincide with increased demand from the emergency services as they too become more familiar with mobile data and the benefits that it can bring to their working practices.
Finally, there is the issue of cost. Pricing models for GPRS are likely to be volume-based due to the mass nature of commercial services, whereas ‘all-you-can-eat’ is perhaps more of a long-term option on dedicated networks.
The message coming through from the PMR community is that bandwidth is not everything and the traditional PMR benefits of reliability and predictability of service are as important for data as they are for voice: competing for service with the general public is just not a realistic option. In terms of the future, both the TETRA and Tetrapol camps understand that data speeds need to be increased.
According to Smith, TETRA2 is certainly a relevant technology here and it provides an all-important migration path to protect investments already made in TETRA. However, he also explains that Motorola has its own research unit working on high-speed wideband PMR technologies. At the moment this work is focused on the US market, where the 700MHz band has been allocated for the purpose, but the developments which are already seeing high speed video streaming and Internet access will certainly translate to Europe when the time is right.
As Smith concludes, “There is a lot that can and is being done with the bearer as it stands at the moment. The biggest challenge is making sure the technology relates to user requirements; that solutions fit with and meet the key objectives of the customer, whether that be more time on streets for police offices or getting a vehicle to where it is needed in the shortest possible time. By the time the market matures enough to be looking at more complicated data applications, the bandwidth will be available.”
Just like the cellular market has discovered, PMR users and suppliers are finding that data is about more than just the bearer. Its success is based on applications and the value of those to the user.  However, in terms of the technology, Hughes’ suggestion that bearer-independent applications with terminals intelligent enough to identify, and use, the best available bearer in terms of bandwidth and price sits comfortably with Smith’s vision of the future. He says, “Ultimately the  goal is wideband PMR with something like that, but there is still a lot that can be done with low throughput… Customers need a data roadmap and that is something that we as an industry need to help them with.”

Can Java provide all or any of the solutions mobile operators need to deliver compelling content? Catherine Haslam reports on what Java can and can’t do and how it fits into mobile operators’ business models.

When Java first became associated with a mobile environment, it was viewed with suspicion as an import from the fixed world. However, it was soon being referred to as a cornerstone for delivering mobile content. Java’s ‘write once, run anywhere’ promise was seen as an opportunity to bring the thousands of Java content develop-ers to the mobile world without having to demand they learn an entirely new development language and environ-ment. After all, that barrier had already proved insurmountable with WAP. However, the reality of Java has been much the same as any other standard — its early incarnations are falling short of the promise and the question therefore remains as to whether Java is the answer to some if not all of the content creation and delivery issues now facing the mobile industry.
Java is a programming language and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) is the development environment in which Java applications are created for mobiles. It therefore takes into consideration such things as limited memory, processing power and battery life. To access Java content — games, downloads etc — from a mobile device requires support both in the handsets and the network. A simple download requires a Java client in the terminal which is capable of receiving information from and interrogating a download server which in turn, is connected to a content repository. Taking each of these in turn, it has to be acknowledged that a considerable amount of progress has been made.

Terminal support

According to figures from the Zelos Group, the 44.9 million Java handsets shipped worldwide last year, will almost double this year to 86.4 million and reach 74% of the market by 2007.  Download servers are easily available and Java content is clearly leading the market. According to a survey of 250 mobile industry professionals by the ARC Group, respondents believed that Java would account for around 35% of all applications developed in 2004, with Microsoft’s smartphone predicted as the nearest challenger with 19%. The others named included Symbian, Palm, Brew and Linux in that order.
However, Java is not a fixed entity; it is an evolving standard which means different companies can interpret it in different ways and develop at different speeds. This is the situation we face at the moment.
Java handsets are now hitting the market in numbers and from a range of manufacturers. Unfortunately, amongst these are different handset and operator extensions of J2ME MIDP 1.0 (Mobile Information Device Profile) which means that although there is undoubtedly plenty of Java content around, that content is written for different flavours of Java and therefore matching content to handsets becomes complicated. As Mitch Lasky, ceo of games developer Jamdat explains, “Different manufacturers are at different levels of the standards and it will take nine months or so for these to converge.”

Game, set and match

It’s a familiar story but it is not the only criticism targeted at Java as some are now questioning whether it is the best choice for games. According to Qualcomm’s  president QIS, Peggy Johnson, Java may not be the automatic choice for eye-catching games. She says, “Developers for the more complex games, such as multi-player games, prefer C or C++ because it’s a little closer to the metal.” To a certain extent Lasky agreed, stating, “Can Java do everything that’s needed? Yes and no. Java will need to continue to evolve. We are working on things like 3D graphics at the moment and the standard, even MIDP2, is not keeping up with that.”
However, the creation of MIDP2 (terminals supporting it should be available at the end of the year) is expected to smooth the interpretation wrinkles and, just as importantly, deal with a number of functionality issues. Mark Stolz, marketing manager of Esmertec explains, “MIDP2 brings with it higher levels of security and interac-tion with the phone functions. This will enable better integration of Java Midlets and standard handset features such as the phone book.” Furthermore, Stolz suggests that Java is more than capable of holding its own if a Java virtual machine based on native code, such as the company’s JbedE virtual machine, is used. Esmertec believes that this provides substantial advan-tages and usually runs between 10 and 20 times as fast as an interpretation but it can be up to 50 times as fast.
However, he did recognise the technology’s shortcomings. “The implementation of Java has to be good. A fragmented offering with extensions is not a sustainable model,” he says before continuing to explain that, however good the client side may be, “If the server side is not delivered successfully, the Java will fail…It’s not about technology, it’s about delivering to meet the market needs. The hard part is figuring out the market and dealing with issues such as Rights Management, billing and provisioning.”
Inherent in meeting the market needs is understanding where Java fits into the  business plans of operators. A key question for operators therefore, is whether Java should lie at the centre of its service developments, or whether it should rather be a technology supported by a wider platform, such as MMS, Nokia’s Symbian-based Series 60 or Qualcomm’s Brew? “No one is suggesting that Java is not a highly valuable technology, just that it may not be the only choice,” said Lasky.
Building data service offerings is a highly complicated business and operators are having to make regular decisions on which technologies they support and when. Java is one of those options and whatever happens it will need to be supported.  The choice of service delivery platforms and management systems will be examined in detail in the May edition of Mobile Europe, but it is worth mentioning here, that some, such as Elata with its Senses platform, believe that Java has a central role.
Ultimately, the deciding factor will be the amount and availability of handsets and content. If an operator chooses to focus heavily on games, then Java may well sit at the heart of its content delivery strategy. Certainly there are many applications already in existence and, initiatives such as the release of first game development kit to bring Java MIDP technology to Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance, suggest that the market is set to expand rapidly. AJile’s JAMiD game development kit supports MIDP 2.0 and comes in the form of a Java game cartridge, which plugs into the external card slot on any Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP. The two markets combined offer a highly attractive proposition for applications developers.
Market size is a key factor and terminals need to be available in enough numbers and at the right price to make them appealing to the right markets. In this, Stolz believes Esmer-tec has an interesting proposition. Using a JbedE-based terminal, all applications, including the browser, email, instant messaging etc, as well as games, will come in the form of Java Midlets, providing a truly customisable experience for the user, he suggests. Furthermore, because it is priced at a comparatively low level, it is aimed at low and mid-tier terminals that have so far been unable to deliver such compelling content. “This doesn’t take away from the high-end fully function-al phones, as they are really optimised for particular purposes. Therefore, it doesn’t necessarily compete with Nokias and Motorolas. In fact, it fits very well with the emerging ODM model,” he says.

Market penetration

Java is a technology and, like so many other technologies in the mobile arena, it has been expected to provide technical solutions to issues that are business-based. As Stolz explains, “We had a very immature market where everyone was looking for the next silver bullet. The industry rushed to Java and focused on the technology. Now, we are looking at the problems and what needs to be done.” With its large and diverse base of  applications developers and growing solidity of client software and hardware, Java is a credible and potentially money-making technology but it does not have the ability to magically dissolve the thorny issues, such as rights management, partnership management, service pro-visioning and billing. Java’s success will therefore be tied up as much with the solutions to these issues as with the evolution of the standard itself.

If 2.5 and 3G data services take off there will be literally billions of pieces of data flying around the airwaves, but where will they be stored? Catherine Haslam explains the options.

According to the ARC group, in excess of 20% of mobile data users will be using MMS by 2007. And after 2007, ARC’s research suggests MMS usage will grow exponentially with 50% of all usage being content-to-person, although early growth will be driven by person-to-person messaging. This equates to just over 2 billion messages a month and 25 billion a year, a considerable percentage of which will need to be stored somewhere. Even if the take-up is slower  — 200 million messages per month in 2004 — as suggested by World Wireless Forum, the need for users to have a mechanism to save and store messages is clear. Add to this demand the requirement to store other information such as games and MP3, not to mention email, and the need to sort out storage for wireless generated and terminated content becomes pressing.
There are three main options to storing content in the wireless world — embedded storage in the handset; external memory card and servers in the network — and a case can be made for all.

Embedded storage

Mobile handsets have traditionally been stand-alone units and as such there is a user and operator expectation that the handset will be able to support all the functions of the terminal. Users may be willing to accept that text messages are transitory, but the personal and evocative nature of picture messages will inevitably lead to a demand to be able to store them somewhere.
As has happened in the PC market, memory capabilities for mobiles are improving. However, the memory capacity of any terminal is the result of a delicate balancing act based on such things as capacity, power consumption, size and cost. Up until recently, the principle requisite was for the phone to operate effectively and provide comparatively little in the way of data storage.
According to Mary Curtis, 2G/2.5G international product marketing manager baseband at Philips semiconductors, 4MB of S-RAM  combined with up to 16MB of Nor Flash used primarily to run communications aspects, are supported in the volume phones of today. In contrast, newer developments, SDRAM which offers a much higher RAM capability in excess of 256MB, and Nand Flash which was developed specifically for data storage and is much more effective for larger sizes of Flash memory, have yet to be seen being contemplated for anything but the high-end phones. Indeed, although high-end products including these are expected by the end of the year according to Curtis, there are few signs of these capabilities being included in mass market products for some time.

Balancing act

The reason that such functionality remains the domain of the high-end feature phones is basically down to price pressure. However, behind this is a complicated balancing act which means that if other savings can be made which reduce the demands of other essential elements of a chipset, more can be invested in memory; more in terms of power, space and money. As Curtis explains, “Everything comes down to system design.” (The trends of the chipset market will be examined in detail in the May edition of Mobile Europe). 
In addition, there is the question of what happens to the data if something happens to the phone — it breaks, is lost or stolen? The personal and therefore valuable nature of the data  stored on the device means its loss will create animosity that will directed at the handset manufacturer, the operator, or both.
Another option is therefore to store data on an external resource as is used for other electronic goods such as digital cameras. Indeed, a number of existing and soon-to-be-released mobile terminals already have external memory slots. This option overcomes several problems of the embedded memory. Firstly, the resources required to support the slot are fixed, while the memory capability is limited only by the user. This leads us to the second benefit (for the handset manufacturer and operator at least), the cost falls on the user.  The handset manufacturer and/or operator is then also provided with the flexibility to offer additional functionality which will only work when additional memory is added through the expansion slot.
Obviously, such an approach has appeal but it does have a down side. Firstly, it puts a cost barrier in the way of certain applications and/or storage and secondly, it could tie users to specific handset models as the memory card market is proprietary. Currently, there are three main players — Multimedia Cards (MMCs); SD Cards and Sony Memory Sticks.
MMCs can be used in: Nokia’s 9110, 9210, 3300 and 3560; Siemens’ SL442, SL45 and CL35; Palm’s M130 and Handspring’s Treo 90. SD Cards are usable in the Nokia 9210i, Orange Microsoft SPV, Palm M130, Treo 90 and Siemens s55, while, not surprisingly, the Sony Memory Stick Duo is the sole preserve of Sony Ericsson’s P600 and P800 terminals, although it is transferable to any Sony product.  Although not equivalent to the cost of upgrading a handset, the cost is not insignificant if you believe that the target is teenagers. The MMC and SD cards weigh in at around UKP25 (â‚-36.50) for 64MB, while the Sony Ericsson Memory Stick is virtually double the price for the same storage.
Even if the price and multiple standards are not enough to stifle usage, the question remains as to whether even these external memory extensions provide enough storage. Obviously, data can be transferred to a PC (or Mac) and that will be useful as a back-up but if, as is expected, much of the data is to be used with the mobile device, it will need to be kept in a way hat it can be used when mobile. If you consider that a 64KB card stores around one hour of MP3, then it will get pretty expensive to store music downloads in this way, although it may be more suitable for games.
The final option is to store data on the network and provide users with access to it, preferably via fixed and mobile devices. Vodafone is set to provide its Live! subscribers with space free in the form of a message library and others will follow this model. It has the advantage for the subscriber of minimising the hardware costs, while for the operator, it is hoped it will drive traffic as data is accessed and transferred. The downside is that it requires an investment from the already over-stretched resources of mobile operators. However, Mirapoint for one, is offering storage as part of its overall MMS solution.
The Mirapoint storage platform is MMSC agnostic and comes complete with an application which triggers an SMS that contains a URL to identify where the recipient can locate the MMS that was intended for them, providing some form of legacy support. It is also possible that such functionality will encourage the purchase of MMS-capable handsets as those without such handsets will get a taste of the application.
According to Mirapoint’s EMEA sales director, Steve Ashmore, “MMS storage is just the beginning as operators begin to offer storage services for all forms of messaging — SMS, EMS, MMS, voicemail and e-mail.”

Free from ties

Mirapoint is not the only provider of storage systems, but, according to Ashmore it has two USPs which set it apart from the competition. Firstly, its storage system is not tied to a particular MMSC. He explains, “Openwave ties MMSC with storage and while this is open to some extent, they interface together better than with third party options.” Secondly, Mirapoint has adopted what Ashmore describes as the “Cisco IP routing model.” This means that those elements of the system which are mature have been built in hardware rather than software. This both increases processing capabilities and also massively reduces the levels of integration required. “Anything that is part of the hardware is obviously pre-integrated and therefore we offer an out-of-the-box solution.”
Intuwave has also included a data storage offering as part of a larger middleware platform and its co-founder, Jeremy Burton believes that the company’s msafetynet service, which represents over-the-air back-up of data provides an “attractive value proposition for the user and for the operator which can use it as a mechanism to reduce churn.”
Ultimately, there is no simple or single answer to the storage question. The need will inevitably be met by a combination of the available  memory resources. Burton believes that the applications will dictate the storage mechanism used. He says, “For extremely private data that the user wants to keep close to them, the terminal is the obvious choice but for volatile information that is constantly changing such as stock prices, it doesn’t make sense to cache or store that locally.”
For Curtis this then correlates to the well-defined segments of the handset market, “The amount of data storage is based on the target segment of the handset. At the high end, performance is everything and therefore storage capabilities will be included sooner rather than later, at the low end cost is key,” she says. For this lower cost but mass market, at least, it would seem that operators face little option but to offer storage facilities as a service. The only question is whether or not to charge for it as an entity in itself?

M-commerce has long been talked about as a cornerstone of next generation services but is still to make an impact. Anjum Sawhney of Convergys explains why and looks at what still has to be done.

Although there seems to be no agreed absolute definition of mobile commerce, or m-commerce — some people think of it as a service, others as an application — it can be usefully characterised as a multi-facetted entity, comprising a number of products and services. Services can range from buying physical goods in a retail store (using the mobile phone as a payment tool), to the purchase of financial services (using the mobile device as a communication tool) and the downloading of software or content that has a transactional value.
Precise definitions aside, many would agree with the assertion that m-commerce is a logical step in the emergent age of cashless transactions and electronic money flows. Even the most casual of observers is familiar with recent technological advances that enable mobile users to subscribe to simple information-based services. Many too will be aware of more advanced SMS-based developments, such as the ability to order and pay for drinks from a vending machine. These developments hint at the potential of m-commerce, but the real revolution will only come about when it is embraced by the high street.
This is contingent on a number of factors, not least the development of proven user-friendly technologies, common payment standards and effective regulation. Above all, the introduction of adequate transaction security and data privacy safeguards will be essential to build consumer confidence. After all, the initial failure of e-commerce to live up to forecasts was not simply due to an overestimation of the significance of the dotcom economy, it was also due to an underestimation of the importance of security.

 Market Growth

Growth in m-commerce across Europe has been steady rather than spectacular. Whilst there appears to be a consensus amongst analysts that m-commerce has much potential and will grow, there is less certainty regarding the rate of growth or the total value of the market two years hence. Analysts’ forecasts for the total value of m-commerce transactions in 2005 range from â‚-7bn to â‚-24bn. Sceptics may argue that such divergence renders forecasts meaningless, but that is not to deny the vast potential m-commerce has to create new revenue stream.
It is, however, unlikely that the market for m-commerce services will really take off until the end 2004 — companies need to build and install new systems and it takes time for a critical mass of people to learn about and accept new ways of buying. In addition, the penetration of m-commerce at a European level is critically dependent upon the harmonisation of certain regulatory and business protocols. At present, payment systems and business models vary considerably between countries, reflecting different cultural and economic structures. However, the challenge to develop common standards is being taken up by a number of industry consortia and forums, mostly led by mobile network operators or financial service providers.
On the plus side, there already exists a very high mobile penetration across Europe, which will act as a driver for the take-up of m-commerce. This is particularly the case in Scandinavia, for example, where extremely high mobile penetration is catalysing the development of pioneering mobile commerce. Further, m-commerce is not wholly reliant on 3G, and much of the necessary technology is already in place: as well as the wide proliferation of 2G handsets, there is an increasing number of GPRS users, benefiting from higher speed, always on mobile connectivity.
Assuming that the technical, logistical and political hurdles are overcome by 2005, what will the m-commerce market look like? As the market matures, so the variety of goods and services on offer will grow from in-band content to include out-of-band soft goods, hard goods and one off or repeating services.
In-band m-commerce refers to the purchase of content that is downloaded to a mobile handset (e.g. ring-tones, news headlines, sports results). Conversely, out-of-band m-commerce involves the purchase of any goods and services that are delivered by all other methods (e.g. by post or by the customer in person in a traditional high street retail environment). From shopping, ticket booking and personalised information services to banking and insurance, the range of potential services is vast.
The increasing variety of ways that individual consumers and businesses can buy and pay for goods and services will by itself act as a driver of growth in m-commerce. Just as transactions can be made on the mobile or fixed Internet, at real world shops and vending machines, and as person-to-person payments, so payment can be made by credit or debit cards, bank accounts, mobile bills, and other rechargeable or anonymous cards and stored value accounts. New payment systems such as Vodafone m-pay cards, Mobipay and Paybox promise to make payment even more convenient and consumer friendly.
At a macro economic level, however, the impact of a system that enables people to make large or small, explicit or implicit purchases, anytime, anywhere, is likely to be a concern to agencies involved in the collection of tax and settlement revenues.
Ultimately, the full potential of m-commerce will only be realised once high street merchants have adopted it, which means overcoming the virtuous circle of merchant and customer adoption: merchants will adopt when they perceive there is a large customer base, while customers will adopt when they perceive there is a substantial merchant base. Proponents of m-commerce would no doubt point out that this is a conundrum faced by any new investment-driven retail venture, and there are more practical issues that need addressing first. For instance, high street merchants are likely to place a premium on convenience and simplicity, requiring a quick and easy to implement mobile commerce process.
Business opportunities look inviting on paper, but selling the concept to profit-sensitive high street merchants in the real world will rest on the availability of proven new technology, stable mobile payment standards and guaranteed revenue streams. Mobile operators and other parties in the m-commerce industry will need to market the benefits of this new approach to both large and small merchants, and these two constituencies may have different priorities. Most commerce actually takes place in small, local outlets, but attracting a critical mass of such small players will rely on convincing individual businesses that enough new custom will be secured through m-commerce to warrant investing. The entry into m-commerce of large corporations such as supermarkets and banks raises different issues. It is unlikely, for instance, that such organisations would accept a structure that is predicated on separate agreements with multiple providers. Moreover, the entry of such large corporations threatens to re-shape the balance of power in an area traditionally dominated by telcos.
Whilst the growth of m-commerce and content-driven services will give rise to new business models, many of these will involve much more complex value-chains comprising numerous parties, such as network operators, content providers, advertisers and retailers to name but a few. M-commerce has the potential to blur distinctions between business sectors and providers more than ever, and whilst many parties can share in revenues from a single transaction, there will be competition amongst parties to ‘own’ the customer. The concept of loyalty is far more slippery in the world of electronic commerce than in traditional bricks and mortar business, and network operators, credit card companies, banks, and a whole range of other businesses will need to develop new strategies and business models in order to compete effectively.
The onus will be on operators to develop value-added services if they are to retain their central position vis-Ã -vis customers. Networks will need to act as more than transportation conduits for information; instead operators need to participate actively in the financial transactions that their networks carry by offering value-added services.

Central systems

Competing effectively in an m-commerce environment is contingent upon business systems as well as strategy. Depending upon their current infrastructure, operators may need to replace or augment legacy systems to ensure that they have m-commerce-ready OSS. An effective end-to-end m-commerce platform needs to support key processes such as payment acquisition, retail billing and partner settlement.
Billing is a crucial component of an m-commerce system. Those companies that manage to secure the optimum position in the m-commerce value-chain will be ideally placed to exploit the opportunities that arise. To do this they require advanced billing systems that can bill for, and on behalf of, multiple parties. Operators can make money from payment services by billing for their own value-added services and content, or on behalf of content providers and retailers of real or virtual goods and services.
As the variety of m-commerce scenarios increases, so too will the need for a truly convergent and flexible billing system that can support any pricing models and provide sophisticated discounting functionality. Such capabilities will be essential tools for reducing churn, building customer loyalty and increasing ARPU. M-commerce revolves around real-time transactions and companies will need systems that support pre-advice of charge and pre-authorisation so that customers can obtain information — for example about the cost of a transaction — before deciding whether or not to proceed. Customers will expect to be offered the choice of paying before or after a given transaction, and companies will need a strategic billing system that can integrate pre- and post-paid accounts. It will be essential for operators competing in m-commerce to be capable of offering the same tariffs, discounts and bundles irrespective of payment method. Systems that enable customers to switch between the two payment methods will become the norm, not least as the drive to capture pre-paid customer details intensifies.
In addition, operators will need conditional settlement in order to minimise exposure to risk and fraud. Conditional settlement is a way to achieve this without forcing financial losses on partner merchants. In order to manage conditional settlement with thousands of partner merchants cost-effectively, operators will need closely coupled retail billing and partner settlement systems that support the tracking of retail bill payments and due partner payments on a transaction by transaction basis.
Perceived concerns over fraud, privacy and security have long plagued e-commerce, and customers need to be assured that mobile commerce transactions are subject to rigorous checks and safeguards. Consumer confidence will also depend on the reliability of m-commerce, and it is incumbent on the industry to ensure, not only that regulations and safe settlement procedures are established, but also that they are adequately policed and supported.

Fulfilling potential

The potential of m-commerce is considerable, but its realisation rests much on the quality and timeliness of preparatory work at both micro and macro levels. Organisations will need to upgrade IT infrastructure and review business strategies, addressing key issues, such as: where in the value-chain should the business sit; how to integrate m-commerce with existing distribution channels; what partnerships and alliances will best deliver new revenue streams; what marketing strategy will work in this new environment? At a more prosaic but no less critical level, is the need for operators to unlock the real value of pre-paid users. This is contingent on capturing pre-paid customers’ details and records of their transactions, without which it is very difficult to sell additional services and increase ARPU for this type of customer. And the issue of ‘pricing’ per se is one that will have to be resolved, though what consumers are prepared to pay for m-commerce services will only become apparent over time as the market matures.
At an industry level, there needs to be agreed, stable and secure mobile payment systems and high merchant penetration to make conversion from old to new payment methods worthwhile. Once these are in place, and user-friendly handsets and handset applications are widely available, then it is down to organisational strategies and market forces to decide the winners and losers. M-commerce is unique in many ways, but ultimately, success will rest on a tried and trusted recipe — giving consumers what they want, when they want it, and at a price they are willing to pay.

At a time when every penny of expenditure has to be signed off in triplicate it is strange to think that mobile operators are losing billions of euros through fraud and leakage but that is what’s happening. Alun Lewis reports on the problems and some ways to counteract them.

The old adage that any chain is only as strong as its weakest link has a particular relevance in mobile communications these days. Making the move towards higher value content and application services may bring with it higher revenues, but it also increases a service provider’s vulnerabilities to fraud and revenue leakage. On top of that, and given the far more complex value chains that are growing out there, any revenue assurance problems that a service provider may have will soon reverberate across that value chain, impacting content providers, mobile commerce merchants and, of course, the paying customer.
While fraud has always been with us — from those now almost nostalgic days of phone phreakers using children’s toy whistles to control the international PSTN during the 1960s — these days it truly has become big business, both for crooks and for those companies seeking to eliminate it. On top of that, the introduction of choice and competition into the telecoms space in the late 1990s brought a far more open and far more complex interconnection environment that was prone to both billing inaccuracies that could add up to millions and to outright fraudulent practice from the telecommunications equivalent of ‘fly by night’ companies

Direct challenge

Taking direct fraud first, much work to combat it is distributed across a number of different bodies such as the international GSMA Fraud Forum and regional bodies such as the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum (www.tuff.co.uk) and the USA’s Communications Fraud Control Association (www.cfca.org). Many of these organisations reflect particular concerns in different countries, as well as the differences that occur in legislation and approaches to fraud and, for the time being at least, there is little in the way of truly coordinated formal activity between different countries — despite the fact that frauds are increasingly international in focus.
The whole interconnect regime in particular can be vulnerable to both outright fraud, as well as what might more charitably be called ‘creative billing’, as Martin Brown, ceo of Azure, BT’s specialist revenue assurance company, explains, “Revenue assurance is an extremely broad discipline and can cover everything from the efficient management of least cost routing to actual criminal fraud. While telecom-munications fraud has traditionally concentrated on the retail end of things, over the last few years there’s been an increase in companies looking to exploit weaknesses in the intercon-nect environment to make more money than they should.
“For example, a service provider in one country might set up a dialling scheme so that extra digits are added when dialling into another country. The call is received and then trans-ferred — but is billed back at local rates. Similarly, an element of ‘spoofing’ can be invoked so that they’re actually presented to billing systems as being mobile to mobile, for example, when in fact they are mobile to fixed or vice versa and involve a premium charge.
The implications of interconnect are also highlighted by Graham Coffey, wireless solutions manager at Agilent, “While the quality of radio links can lead to a lot of retransmits and longer time on-line, the interconnect regimes behind these services — the GRXs involve a lot more complexity — and vulnerability, especially when roaming is involved.”
The move towards added value and more advanced services also carries direct fraud risks — even in what are known as ‘developing countries’. Azure’s Brown continues, “In many regions in the world, the mobile infrastructure is the only public service that actually works. In South Africa, for example, the lack of ATMs and banks means that many poor people use their phones to transfer money to friends and family and there have been many cases of fraud exploiting this opportunity.”
Pat MaCarthy of ADC believes that we need new approaches to fraud, “Traditional fraud management focuses on detection and action follow up, analysing large electronic data record files and transactions to identify unusual activity. What we need now are fraud provisioning strategies that can identify some of the more common issues in real time and, using ‘Pay Now’ mechanisms, get the user, via their device, to authorise large transactions.”
In many cases however, revenues aren’t being collected because of the inefficiency of the service providers’ own infrastructure. Doug Carr, managing director of mediation company Narus sets out the issues, “It is no secret that many carriers have yet to address the problems of revenue leakage. But even when carriers are aware of the problem, they may well be unaware of its full extent, as fraudulent usage goes undetected.”
This point is echoed by Chris Merrick, wireless director at billing company Convergys, “While most operators have woken up to the importance of revenue services for voice only services, recent figures from Chorleywood Consulting seem incredible given that profitability has been pushed to the top of the operators’ agendas. Chorleywood estimate that operators are currently failing to capture up to 15% of all possible revenues — for an operator with a turnover of £20million, that could add up to an annual loss of £3m (â‚-4.36m). Acquisitions and mergers are a particular headache in this area. In the fixed service environment, for example, UK cable and telecoms operator Telewest inherited 63 switches and 15 billing systems when it acquired or absorbed other licensees. By putting in place a multi-disciplinary team to address revenue assurance they produced additional revenues of UKP3m (â‚-4.36m) per year.”
While these figures are impressive, they in reality reflect the past — and not the future. If the marketeers’ plans come to fruition, we’ll be spending far more on multimedia messaging, content and other entertainment services than we currently do on voice alone. Andrew Rodaway, corporate communications director at Intec raises some interesting caveats, “For a long time now, every year has been going to be the year of revenue assurance. Faced with a variety of challenges, operators now aren’t so much looking to invest in entirely new systems to combat fraud and leakage — what they are doing instead is looking to make far better use of the data that they have available at the moment. It’s important to realise that like many engineering and design problems, there’s a law of diminishing returns on investment,” he says.

Squaring the circle

“When you start adding premium content-based services to the equation, what was a trickle of billing or Quality of Service data can turn into a flood and it can be difficult to correlate and manage this effectively to get meaningful results. Squaring the revenue assurance circle in the 2.5 and 3G world now necessarily involves mediation companies like us interworking with other parts of the value chain, such as media or location-based services servers — which may be owned by entirely separate companies from the mobile operator,” Rodaway concludes.
Before looking at advanced services, we need to establish where we are with current services. Revenue assurance here already has an impact on nascent relationships being formed between operators and content providers. “30% of premium SMS is bad debt,” is the blunt comment of Rob Ellis, MD of iTouch. “The question is who covers this debt? While it is currently met by the operators, they effectively pass it on to content suppliers — bad debt is their argument for keeping out-payments to content partners low. We believe that this is a serious problem, as low out payments are stifling the m-Commerce industry by failing to incentivise content developers to produce compelling content.”
The length and multi-dimensional complexity of this service cycle also create what Frederick Aries, EMEA managing director of Kabira calls ‘pinch points’ in the flow of data — much of which has to be processed in real time to support pre-paid services, “Engineers sometimes get too focused on individual issues when what the ceo wants is an efficient return on investment. When you look at all the problems that can, and do, cause leakage, it’s essential to take as wide a view as possible across the multiple systems involved. Causes, for example, can involve data collection failures, data parsing failures, error log overruns, poor data correlation, time-expired matching, CDR rejections and data source identification errors. Ideally, you need to be able to touch multiple systems at different points if you’re to get a clear view of what’s going wrong and correct it accordingly.”
The other revenue assurance issue closely allied with next generation services involves Quality of Service and how this relates to billing and customer satisfaction. Paul Bassa of Tertio Telecoms says, “Elements of QoS may have been lurking in the revenue assurance toolbox for some time, but when will they really be put to use ? The answer inevitably depends on a combination of evolving technological capabilities and the benefits they could offer users. If a user decides to upgrade from silver to gold service on the spot, will they then be told on completion that they got the service and what the charge was?”
Bill Branagh EMEA vice president of Watchmark believes that there’s a crucial relationship between revenue assurance and QoS, “If you dropped the occasional voice call, the customer might have been unhappy for a short time. Drop an expensive multimedia transaction however and you’ll lose the money as well as the customer’s trust. Unless a mobile service provider is going to waste money over-provisioning, they’ll need to balance QoS and revenues in near real time.”
“Ultimately, revenue assurance in a world of advanced mobile devices and services is going to involve a far closer control of the handset environment,” comments Stephen Artim ceo of device management specialists DoOnGo. “That involves being able to do a lot more to the handset remotely than has previously been possible, in order to block or enable services and updates as the customer relationship changes.”
So, all in all, a longer and potentially more vulnerable chain, but one that has opportunities for everyone involved, but with hopefully smaller chances for crooks to exploit any inherent weaknesses.