Telco 2.0 - A pointillist picture

Friday, May 8. 2009

Telco 2.0 - A pointillist picture

More notes from the Telco 2.0 Conference - I was taking short notes on my iPhone rather than paper, so here is a miscellany of interesting statements made by various people:

On What's Next:

Real time business intelligence is next major challenge for telcos - google info is not current - twitter is current - next need is to be predictive - mobile is best realtime device

Emerging markets will not use copper - big change in structure eg safaricom as bank. Mumbai has 30% higher mobile pen than Canada for same population - Africa is growing as west declines, not encumbered by legacy

Move from UGC to UG Services, many will be real time and temporary

Web 2.0 Focus on advertising - but will it save Telcoworld? - Rory Sutherland dispels this - too many plans chasing fixed amount of money

Big in Japan means probably won't work elsewhere ( squid porn ) - can't use as a predictor.

Mobile will work with services for lazy people, laziness is a bigger human driver than sex - smart phones emerging as laziness "good enoughs" - watch TV on phone rather than hassle of switching TV on

Mobiles are not the only mobile devices, Internet of Things is coming

DRM will fail, as essentially its the device that buys stuff, not the user and that is unacceptable to end users

On Economics:

Channel preference overrides brand preference. - Argos found that when they went to new channels 50% of revenue was new

People dont pay for value, they pay for scarcity ( media cos have torn down 50% of billboards )

Widgets - people will pay for them but won't pay to visit a website

with demise of Ads, we will see a rise of "Sender Pays" economic models - its the standard model for network comms throughout its history, from Post Offices on.

On Enterprise 2.0

Comms enhanced biz processes - old systems heavyweight, e2.0 systems lighter and "Pay as you go" - better model in tough times, existing players and customers not structured for it though

Optimisation has stopped at the firewall - c 10 voice apps, c 10 000 non voice apps -> put voice into these.

Narrow cast messaging- eg furniture delivery - reduce truck roll cost & makes customer happy - many other segments/ cost reduction opps but one can't see these as a large player (eg Telco), so better to build platform and let entreptreneurs find the niches

Web as platform bypasses system integrators (eg strike iron), low churn for these sort of point apps - especially complex ones.

Every time a customer touches you its a marketing opportunity - real time response is very powerful

So what if one of the biggest-selling iPhone applications makes a fart noise? It beats a ton of unsaleable PowerPoint engineering.

And on The Privacy Thing:

Privacy is a social construct - varies by culture, situation, context etc. People in UK hate Phorm for doing the same stuff that people in US love Google for doing

Of the 100+ people there, I think c 10 were on twitter so clearly it has yet to jump into that great bastion of heavy-duty comms, the Telcosphere

Oh yes - and Mobile Multimedia has a Great Future, as per usual - the present, however.....

Posted by Alan Patrick in Digital Media Web 2.0 at 15:16 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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I wanted to pick up on your piece on "What Next" in emerging markets. Having spent a slug of time in Nigeria last year I saw most of the investment being ploughed into mobile voice and (increasingly) into mobile internet - which supports the view that copper won't be used extensively.

What's not usually highlighted is the lack of good quality, high bandwidth capacity for businesses - and, in quickly growing economies, that will slow the growth. The big question is how and can optical fibre play a significant role?

#1 Alan Townend on 2009-05-12 12:06 (Reply)

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