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Telecoms In Emerging Markets - The Economist
From my editor at The Economist Tom Standage, an uber interesting report on telecoms in emerging markets. Here's how he describes the process of putting it together:
Aside from my food book, the project that has consumed most of my mental bandwidth this year has been my special report on telecoms in emerging markets, which is published in The Economist today, and is on the cover everywhere except Britain. The accompanying cover article highlights what I think is the most exciting aspect of the report: the potential for mobile money to trigger a second wave of economic development in poor countries, as big as the one caused by the initial introduction of mobile phones. In addition to the cover leader and the 14-page report, there’s also an audio interview in which I summarise the main themes, and a videographic that picks out some of the figures about telecommunications technologies and their impact on development. Yup, it’s a multimedia extravaganza.
Make sure to check it out!
Telefónica and Nokia sign agreement to market Nokia Messaging in Latin America
Check out this website I found at nokia.com
Orange to sell iPhone in UK
Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone in 28 countries and territories.
Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesales channels, as well as selected high street partners. A pre-registration site for customers to log their interest has been launched at www.Orange.co.uk/iPhone
More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates will be released in due course.
iPhones set to become cheaper as Vodafone signs deal to sell the smartphone
By Rupert Neate
Published: 9:42AM BST 29 Sep 2009
Vodafone's appointment on Tuesday makes it the third mobile phone operator to become an official seller of the iPhone in Britain.
It comes the day after rival Orange became the first operator to break into O2’s previously exclusive deal.
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British mobile phone operators have been locked in highly secretive talks over the new deal for about a year, but it is understood Vodafone’s deal was only signed last night.
The iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS will go sale at Vodafone outlets in the UK and Ireland in early 2010. Beginning today, Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland customers can register their interest in iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, the company said.
Without securing the rights to the iPhone, Vodafone faced the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of its customers to rivals O2 and Orange.
Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, has said that not having the iPhone was a key reason why the operator lost 159,000 customers in its latest quarter.
Opening up the phone to a third operator will almost certainly result in a price war that will see more than £100 knocked off the price of the iPhone.
"There will be a price war," said Steven Hartley, analyst at technology research house Ovum. "Research shows that in every country where there is more than one operator selling it, it is cheaper.
"It could be very disruptive, but it depends how Orange play it. If they get really aggressive O2 will have to respond and a full-on price war could start."
Mr Hartley said he expects the contract tariff for the iPhone to come down by about £4 to £5 a month, which would cut up to £120 off the price of the phone on a 24-month contract.
The 16GB iPhone 3GS costs £96.89 on a £44.05-a-month contract with O2. Orange refused to give details of its contract terms but indicated that it would be cheaper than O2's deals.
The iPhone has transformed the British mobile phone market since it was launched in November 2007. O2 has sold more than 1m of the devices and credits it with enabling the operator to increase its market dominance.
Virgin Mobile is also understood to be desperate to secure the right to sell the iPhone.
via telegraph.co.uk
BT brings jobs back from India • The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/16/bt_jobs_import/
The wheel has finally come full circle and the penny has begun its drop.
IT players vs Telecoms Players in the SaaS (software as a service) World. What're their business models?
I am not sure how many SaaS aggregators / platform providers today are ready for the ICT world where telecom services and technologies converge. On the IT world, traditional software players such as Microsoft is also now taking a serious review of their web strategy (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_ozzie). Microsoft however believes that in the Web2.0 world, the winning formula is software+services where a client software will be combined with cloud services. There are also purist web-based providers such as Zoho (www.zoho.com) or Google (www.google.com). However, even then, we can't deny the importance of having access to your data or documents even when internet is not available. That's why Google provided Google Gears to allow off-line access. Just like we have seen in the mobile world where the game is no longer just about the phone hardware, but also the applications. We have seen increasingly web-based applications providers developing their own marketplace. Broadsoft, a leading VoIP platform provider, has launched its own marketplace of applications (http://marketplace.broadsoft.com/). Salesforce.com for example has a marketplace called AppExchange ( http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/ ) that allows salesforce.com users to find and test drive and subscribe to third party applications that can be integrated into salesforce.com application. The benefit to a Salesforce.com customer is that he can enjoy a single sign-on (meaning using the same set of username and password for salesforce.com application, he can run access the other third party apps onboarded onto the AppExchange). System Integrators such as NEC also has its own SaaS solutions (http://www.applicationsnet.com/Solutions/SoftwareNet/FeaturedApplications__65.aspx). The benefit of a SaaS provider having its own marketplace of third party apps is that the SaaS provider can integrate the third party apps into its own application to offer mashups or data collaboration. On the telecoms world, we see that telecoms providers are also making an attempt to be a PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) provider, targeting at the SMB segment. Unlike SaaS provider, PaaS provider does not develop the applications. PaaS provider works more like a SaaS aggregator, collaborating with different applications providers to provide the services through a unified platform. Swisscom (http://labs.swisscom-mobile.ch/welcome.jsf) has a beta labs to offer web-based applications on a beta basis (the last time I checked, they collaborated with Zoho as well. Seems that this did not work out). Telstra has recently announced the launch of T-suite SaaS platform in November. ZDNet.com.au had done some testing and their first impression was that while the platform shows great promise (which probably is a nice way to say that T-suite is not exactly ready yet), there were many bugs that yet to be resolved (and I quote MANY). But then again, since Telstra T-suite is in beta mode, users should not complain (smart move by Telstra) and since it's in beta mode, users should not expect the same level of customer support, if provided. BT is probably more matured in the PaaS space than the other telecoms provider but too bad it seems a little hard to find the online SaaS portal on its website (http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/btbusinessProducts/displayCategory.do?categoryId=BTB-HOSTED-SOFTWARE-I). To give BT the credit, it has done alot more than just be an aggregator of services. BT also offers BT Tradespace, an online business directory and community site primarily for SMBs. As a PaaS provider, a telco player needs to work with different partners to onboard the service. The value proposition that a telecoms player brings is the single sign-on, single billing, single point of contact (at least for the first level support and the telco providers need to have a back to back arrangement with the various applications providers on the level 2 and 3 support), and an integrated bundle (telecoms + software). In addition, customers do not need to provide credit card details as the payment will be in a post-paid mode that can be included in the existing bills. Telecoms players have the advantage of knowing their customers as many of them have existing billing relationships with the service provider in one form or another. In addition, telecoms players are able to offer 'mass-customisation' of a bundle service to meet different requirements. For example, for a $200/month package, customer is able to choose his preferred combination in terms of its broadband speed and application that best meets its needs. SMBs generally have a deeper trust with their telecoms services providers than the smaller, independent web-based vendors. This gives an edge to the telecoms players. But if that's so great, why aren't the telecoms players jumping onto the bandwagon? My take is that they eventually will. We have to realise that telecoms providers have complex billing systems and order management and provisioning systems. Providing the front end (shop front) is probably the least of the challenge compared to integrating PaaS with the exsiting customer database and the order/billing systems sitting at the backend and to know when customers subscribe/terminate or renew/upgrade. The challenge is compounded if you include the traditional telecoms services onto the platform to be offered on-demand basis. To date, no telecoms player has proven the capability to offer traditional telecoms services such as broadband and software as a service on demand basis. Another challenge is the onboarding process. Most of the web-based players are offering the SaaS directly from their website. APIs may be provided but tweaking and adaptation is required to ensure excellent customer experience. For example, a telecoms provider will develop its own e-shop that shows its own catalogue of services and applications. The telecoms provider decides on the end user subscription bundles to be offered to the market. The customer is likely to find it confusing if the apps provider which is onboarded onto the telecoms provider's platform does not mask out its own support helpdesk or subscription packages (which may very likely be in credit card payment mode and may vary from the telecoms provider as the telecoms provider may package it differently or bundled it with its own telecoms services). Beyond the initial onboarding phase, as a PaaS provider, it will help to increase customer stickiness if you are able to facilitate ease of data export/import across multiple applications. However, if the telecoms player manages to crack this part of the equation, it will be a strong contender and my take is that they will win the war in the ICT era. ================================= More about T-Suite http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/productsservices/tsuiteapplications.52025 T-suite launched in beta mode in early November with hosted versions of Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange (messaging), Dynamics (CRM) and Sharepoint (collaboration tools) McAfee's desktop security, MessageLabs network security products and Telstra's own PC and server back-up products. ZDNet Australia has done a very good review. http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Telstra-s-T-Suite-First-look/0,139023769,3392935500.htm More about NEC Aggregated SaaS Solution-in-a-Box http://www.applicationsnet.com/Solutions/SoftwareNet/FeaturedApplications__65.aspx Globally organisations are shifting to rent applications, instead of outright purchase. A simple integrated model to purchase, manage and maintain SaaS ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) is essential to manage the ever growing SaaS landscape. The NEC Software Net platform uses an efficient, collaborative, user-centric and context aware Service platform to provide a simple and flexible network based application framework to achieve this. In addition, NEC has licensed leading application solution providers in the on-demand or SaaS space; this means that Software Net end users gain access to multiple best in class software application solutions all through one collaborative portal environment. More about Broadsoft Xtended Marketplace http://marketplace.broadsoft.com/ BroadSoft Xtended Marketplace is where you will find the latest Web 2.0 applications integrated with the world's leading voice over IP platform. Explore the Xtended Marketplace to find mashups with popular business solutions and social networking websites.
