Is there light at the end of the IMS tunnel ? I joined a panel to discuss IMS approaches to deliver rich communications. These days, the industry has become skeptical of telecom standardization’s ability to support cool services, especially with the competing wave of web and device innovations. But our moderator Stephane Teral, from Infonetics Research compared 2011 market of 8B$ VoIP infrastructure (migration of PSTN to VoIP is becoming mainstream) and 1B$ on IMS, (a significant ramp-up). I commented that perhaps it’s unfair to compare IMS and web 2.0 because the requirements have changed since the original specifications to connect voice devices and not to connect people with services.
But what if we were asked to develop IMS 2.0 today using the best of IT architectures ?
I think we would certainly come up with an open user profile, such as HSS GUP and content streaming control. I gave the example that HP OpenCall's IMS/HSS developments for user profiling can be extended to enhance group communications with a web 2.0 flavor. Also on the panel, Dan Bantukul from Tekelek explained that IMS is not about killer services but a framework for deploying IP services independently from media, network access and transport. It should be an incremental evolution rather than a greenfield deployment. He stressed the pivotal role of session management (CSCF) and SIP Proxy (RFC 3261) . Another panelist, Adam Stein, from MuDynamics talked about roll-out processes and avoiding problems and pain points before they occur. He mentioned the complex and symbiotic behavior of the many (>20 software and hardware) IMS components and methodology necessary to test the system as a whole. End to end testing and QoS validation is a necessary ingredient to any standard-based multi-vendor and distributed deployment.
Can IMS support visual experiences on consumer devices ? I said yes, but enhancements are required on IMS/MRF (such as HP's OCMP) to support video streaming and trans-coding across mobile, PC and IPTV. It’s more about content adaptation and visual interaction. This triggered questions from the audience on session support across multiple home appliances such as IPTV and phones. I wished I was more familiar with the work of Oliver Friedrich, et al, at Fraunhofer FOKUS who have published about their IPTV IMS client implementation at IEEE NOMS 2008 and illustrated here. The user experience include See-what-I-see to enables buddies to switch to the channel I am watching, caller-ID-on-TV and VoD stream paused during calls. I referenced other pre-IMS and IMS case studies in Germany showing the convergence with soft phones (Vodafone's IP Phone Pro), handsets (Visual mailbox) and web mashup (Fraunhoffer Fokus OpenIMS project).
Questions of the day at mobile web 2.0, 11th June London :
Finding monetization in the next phase of mobile web services, Innovation in user experiences New technologies
Monetization of mobile web is small At the end of the day, the money around mobile web is still small compared to the substantial revenues of mobile voice and messaging. Perhaps 30 B$ content and 3 B$ advertising compared to over 600B$ voice, SMS and data access. But you can’t milk a calf and the business will grow.
Tony Fish, CEO, AMF Ventures & Author, “Mobile Web 2.0” presented the opportunity in monetizing the mobile digital footprint (user profile and behavior ). The new world focuses on the [UGC] creation side and posting mobile content to the web. Advertising revenues complement value-added service charging models. This is a transition from the old world mobile industry focused on consumption, centered on payment for services, applications and content. But thee new world will not wipe the old word it will improve it.
The monetization opportunities coming from uniqueness of mobile : Mobile payment, complementing credit cards and cash ; in the old world you get back services and content. Mobile footprint : (data follows you all the time leading to accurate digital footprint, advanced personalization, beyond identity protected by AAA (bank and credit card details), location) ;. in the new world you give your footprint to the community and get in return reputation, enhanced search algorithms and results; the ownership of this meta-data is a new battle ground.
Nick E. Heller, Strategic Partnerships, Media & Publishing, Google. He also sees mobile advertising complementing overall advertising with unique features : Location remains the top unique selling proposition, despite the fact that this is a 10-years old idea. Usage pattern : 8:00 (commute), 12:00 (lunch) and most important 22:00 (bed time). Device interaction : primarly SMS (CPM) today – evolving to web searches (CPC) and user interaction (CPA) using cameras such as Android scan (taking pictures of barcodes to trigger searches). User authentication was one aspect when discussing privacy protection, safe search, personalized advertising (context sensitive)
Stéphanie Hospital, VP Marketing, Orange online advertising : said the priority is to establish basic metrics for mobile advertising and expand the main inventories in WAP banners and messaging. Current CPM/CPC rates are not significant at this stage. Experimentation with video or interaction (with Adidas to win tickets in France) shows the future potential for branding campaigns and later we will improve at user profiling.
Paul Goode from m:metrics confirmed the success of SMS advertising campaigns with 50% of EU and 20% of US subscribers having received messages. He estimated mobile media audience being 25% of all EU5+US subscribers (~ 106 million, > 6% growth) with a >3X greater usage by the 10% smart phone users (~ 37 million, 0% growth). The biggest growth is seen in social networks, used by ~ 4% of subscriber spending 1:30 hours/month on facebook.com or myspace.com, ranked in the top 5 visited sites. US now leads over Europe in mobile media consumption and web access : Americans spend 4:30 hours/month browsing, British spend 2:25 hour/month. Demographics show 45% of 28-30 year old with the biggest usage of mobile content. On the topic of smart phones he noted that N95 outsold iPhone 1:2, the iPhone being bought by those who can afford it. Innovative user experiences More than the money, the passion of both users and developers alike seems to fuel the development of new user experiences, whether for self-expression, social networking and the holy grail of location-enhanced services.
Carl Taylor, Director of applications and services, Hutchison Whampoa Europe : stated the priority is to improve the interaction between users, devices and content to make the experience more relevant. This involves more psychology than technology and aims at enabling consumer peer review and viral marketing. [ Carl has been an advocate of applying semantic web mark-up such as W3C Powder to ensure better relevance ]. Hutchison has made the 3 mobile broadband offer attractive to consumers and had the courage to launch Skype phone at £12 / month. They see premium content and advertising business model expanding, provided there is tuning of the delivery value-chain across operators and content providers.
Christian Lindholm, Partner and Director, Fjord : he told the story how he came late at Radisson Edwardian May Fair Hotel because his search for london mayfair hotel brought 400 results on mobile Google Maps excluding the right one. In this user experience, “places” are different than “street addresses”. He joked that London black cabs is the best LBS system because they have contextual and semantic information.
Matt Jones, Co-Founder and Lead Designer, Dopplr.com Commenting further on looking LBS user experiences he said he liked the topic because it's so difficult and bad things can happen. Dopplr is about describing interesting parts of places and the social aspect of places. For this you may want to increase fuzziness rather than accuracy of the location.
Anja Kielman, Founder aka-aki demonstrated their innovative social service piloted in Berlin, uses bluetooth to alerts users with similar profiles logged within 20m in bars, shops and crowds. Anja says it’s designed to take your social network to the street and create connections in the real world. The web version has all the standard features like profiles, friends and messaging. The mobile version is a small Java application that you can send to friends, one connected phone can serve as a hub for the other, therefore reducing the cost of data connections.
New technologies Virtual and real devices are also fueling innovation.
Anders Elleby, Swisscom Participation : innovative services can be launched with devices such as the Ogo2 devices adopted by (~100’000?) Swiss teenagers who can connect to MSN IM, call and now browse the web. Also mentioned, Starfruit virtual phone booth in Second Life allows SMS and offering flowers to the real world. In general MNO can innovate with network enablers (for all access networks), device applications (despite the fragmentation of platforms) and overall services, rather than focusing at declining premium content revenues.
Thomas van der Zijden, VP of Marketing for Polymer Vision: presented the “Readius” a pocket sized reader with a 5" rollable display and 3.5G connectivity. Readius uses organic materials in all elements of the display and can be rolled.
Blue Ocean strategies in telecom from around the world
The content, information and opinions shared on this blog are mine and do not reflect information from my current customers. Claude Florin. claude@florin.ch
I said yes, but enhancements are required on IMS/MRF (such as HP's OCMP) to support video streaming and trans-coding across mobile, PC and IPTV. It’s more about content adaptation and visual interaction. This triggered questions from the audience on session support across multiple home appliances such as IPTV and phones. I wished I was more familiar with the work of Oliver Friedrich, et al, at Fraunhofer FOKUS who have published about their IPTV IMS client implementation at IEEE NOMS 2008 and illustrated here. The user experience include See-what-I-see to enables buddies to switch to the channel I am watching, caller-ID-on-TV and VoD stream paused during calls. I referenced other pre-IMS and IMS case studies in Germany showing the convergence with soft phones (Vodafone's IP Phone Pro), handsets (Visual mailbox) and web mashup (Fraunhoffer Fokus OpenIMS project).
