RCS Phase 2 - some progress

OCT 11 2010 NEW REPORT AND BLOG POST ON RCS HERE
I'm utterly buried with work & travel this week, so can't dig into this very deeply, but the GSMA has just announced its next iteration of RCS.

A key feature seems to be support for PC clients, which makes a huge amount of sense - and indeed, is just about the only area where there's historically been traction for these kind of enhanced operator services, through the efforts of software vendors like Movial.

That said, at first sight the press release seems to focus on multi-device sharing and interoperability, rather than integration into web-based services. My view is that RCS would probably get most rapid traction if it came as a slick Facebook plug-in, or interoperable with other social networking platforms.

The problem will likely be that most of the mobile operators will try to "own" the address book and hook it into subscription databases, rather than leverage a more open (or at least access-independent) contact list located online.

Should also be interesting to see what happens if I put MNO#1's RCS client onto a PC or other device connected via #2's mobile broadband......

I'll try & get a full briefing from GSMA or one of the partners when I can, although it's not likely to be until next week at the earliest.

Incidentally, the membership list for RCS supporters still seems to be missing a few important potential members, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, HTC, Facebook, Skype , Palm, Vodafone, H3G, Sprint, Cisco and so on.

Although after the treatment of Google Voice by the Apple AppStore guys & the ensuing FCC brouhaha, the RCS folk must be smirking about their chances of getting a client onto iPhones without direct support from Mr Jobs....

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Quick musing on Cloud Computing

I just heard the phrase "Everything as a Service" during a presentation on Cloud, SaaS and other forms of managed service offering.

I have no problems with hosted software in general - I use enough myself for email, blogging and so forth. I also outsource an awful lot of other things - financials to my accountants and so on.

But I can't get around the feeling that there's a fundamental lack of awareness among people in the tech industry, that every individual and company has specific criteria for owning vs. renting anything.

There are some things for which people prefer opex (renting, 3rd-party services, leasing etc) and some for which they prefer capex (buying stuff outright). This applies to all aspects of expenditure, from hardware to software, from physical infrastructure to one's personal possessions.

Some people rent houses, some own them. Preferences vary by individual and by cultural background. Some companies prefer to own and control their IT and communications elements, others prefer the predictability of outsourcing or "cloud services".

I've yet to see any good analysis of exactly what determines the optimum mix of rent vs. buy, or how this changes over time. Clearly there are hard aspects to this, like cost of capital, or the tax treatment of depreciation or capital investments. There are practical concerns, like uptime or connectivity limitations. Yet there are also softer issues, like trust or fear of lock-in. For consumers, there's even an emotional element - how many people would choose to use a "jewellery service" to rent their wedding rings?

This isn't an area where I have very strong opinions - but I do think it's important to have a good set of filters and questions to sift through some of the rhetoric and hype.

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Outdoor applications for mobile - underestimated?

I've been following the topic of indoor coverage for mobile for almost 10 years now. The general perceived wisdom is that most voice and data traffic on cellular devices involves communication from inside buildings (50%, 60%, 70% - pick your own number). This assumption has been the primary driver behind the growth of femtocells, and various solutions looking at WiFi offload.

I regularly see forecasts predicting that this proportion is going to grow, and certainly with the current usage patterns of 3G laptops and smartphones, that seems reasonable, at first sight.

But.... how solid is that assumption? I'm starting to wonder if the ground might be less certain than everyone thinks. Because fundamentally, the indoor/outdoor split comes down to use cases and applications. The problem is that most radio-network folk in the industry are often a long way from those thinking about next-generation applications, devices and services, and what impacts these might have on the network and traffic patterns.

I can see a few early signs of a new generation of "outdoor-centric" applications, that might reverse the trend. Most obvious is mapping/navigation in various guises. But there's also streaming audio/radio - it will be interesting to see how Spotify grows on mobile for example. Then there's the whole area of "augmented reality", cloud computing and quite a few other examples I can think of. Several of these might be more symmetric (or upstream-heavy) than current applications, too.

On balance, I suspect that any shifts will happen slowly, but it's quite possible that we'll suddenly all be surprised by a new app coming out of nowhere and getting rampant adoption, thanks to appstores and widgets and other mechanisms that make viral uptake simpler. I can think of a few hypothetical examples that might emerge, although I'm not going to mention them here. (Let me know if you're a VC, I might do one of them myself....).

It's not just applications either - factors around device and OS architecture will also make a difference. If iPhones supported background applications, cellular networks might be suffering even more pain than they are currently, for example.

If you're working in the radio part of the industry - on either the vendor or operator side - and you'd like to explore the risks of "outdoor applications" more thoroughly, please get in touch with me.

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Content: just a special sort of application

About 10 years ago, it became fashionable to say that "voice is just another sort of data on an IP network". VoIP, it was suggested, just turned telephony into mere bits, just like any others.

I want to extend and explore that description of subset/superset: I assert that "content is just a special sort of application on an IP network". It's just big chunks of software.

In both cases, there is a strong empirical evidence of truth, but the one word which is out of place in each sentence is "just", at least in the short term. Nevertheless, both assertions provide a view of how things change over much longer (10+ year) periods.

First, a quick re-cap of voice and VoIP. Certainly, at a network transport level, it is entirely feasible to get good voice quality with VoIP - most international calls use packet connections in the backbone. Millions use Skype and other VoIP services on the public Internet, while corporate IP-PBXs are mainstream. So at one, level, voice certainly can be viewed as just another form of IP traffic.

However, the word "just" is still not fully appropriate yet. Voice telephony has some very specific qualities that still mean it needs to be treated differently, and retains a quite high "value per bit". Aside from the obvious issues around latency and the need for realtime connectivity, it has some other , which have kept it at 60%+ of telecoms revenues. Firstly, numbering introduces barriers to entry and a need for interoperability. Secondly, regulatory issues remain wide and critical. Lastly, it has some very specific user-interface and experience issues - call setup times, the need for useable diallers and phonebooks, the natural human focus on time metrics (minutes) rather than IP packet volume, and so forth. There's also a hundred years of legacy experience, which conveys a lot of weight, authority - and sometimes arrogance.

The result is that voice telephony is indeed "special" - but over time, its importance and specialness are starting to wane. Basic voice revenues are falling - even in mobile, in some cases. The "phone call" is starting to blend into more complex voice interactions, new "voice 2.0" models are emerging in which context adds as much value as the media stream, and so forth. Networks are still designed with voice as a "special case", rather than just another packet stream. Voice is becoming blended with other applications and services, but arguably it is still over-represented and over-regulated compared with its long-term social and economic value.

Now, content. Compared with voice, the term "content" has always been a bit woolly in terms of definition; I've heard people refer to spreadsheets or even voice conversations as "content". But for most people in the industry, it tends to refer to visual programming media, chunks of written material, music, some images and so forth. The Wikipedia definition is:

"information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances. The word is used to identify and quantify various divergent formats and genres of information as manageable value-adding components of media"

Like telephony, content tends to bring with it some specifics that do make it "special" - regulation, legal and commercial rules (censorship, copyright, reproduction rights & so forth). Video and audio content often requires special treatment because of their-sensitivity and huge volumes of data. And of course, there are decades (video) or even hundreds of years (text) of user experience. There is also a huge sense of entitlement by the media industry, that makes its advocates believe in their own uniqueness.

Yet for all its power and "specialness", it is starting to be put in its place. According to PWC/Cisco the entire market for digital media is worth about $300bn, including digital broadcast [non-Internet] TV. The software industry is also worth in excess of $300bn - and is shifting to either "cloud" applications or over-the-network downloaded apps like the iPhone. The video game industry alone is worth $30bn or more. Even the software piracy industry costs $50bn a year.

There's clearly many different ways to slice the statistics, depending on definitions or what's included/excluded - Internet vs. non-Internet, inclusion of things like SMS or web advertising, is user-generated material "content" in its conventional sense, and so on.

But to my eye, there's a close parallel here. Content is getting subsumed into applications like social networks or music-based communities. Amazon's valuation is about much more than the "content" stored in its warehouses or servers - it's the platform itself which is the core of the business. Facebook's value is about it's user base and APIs, not third-party chunks of media. Even for Apple, the AppStore is much sexier than iTunes, capturing a far greater share of industry attention.

And just like VoIP, digital content is also feeling the pinch of arbitrage on pricing. I don't just mean piracy - look instead to the failing of the print newspaper industry, as value moves to other application-based sources. (Are blogs "content"? I don't think of this post as an application, but I'd wince if someone called it content, in the same way I wince if they call me a blogger). And in future, what might happen to the value of news or live sports/music, if I stream and back-up all I see and hear to a server in the cloud via "life-streaming" or a similar application? Do content rights apply to my optic nerve?

Just as I think that the telecom industry is facing a dead-end in the notion of communication as simply sessions (see my recent posts on IMS), I think the media industry is similarly constrained in thinking of content as "chunks" of video or audio material. I also think that designing next-generation networks that are content-centric is as wrong as creating them session-centric.

Let's be honest. Ultimately, if voice is just data, rthen content is just software. We're not there yet, but they're both inevitable in the long term. Lobbyists and incumbents in both cases will plead for special treatment - justifiably, sometimes. Both telephony and content come with huge expectations on the part of users and regulators, and need to be protected in various ways.

But let's not lose sight of the end-game either - or entrench decades-old prejudices or business models in the underlying technology architectures. The content tail should not be allowed to wag the future application-networking dog.

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Various quick things

I'm hugely busy at the moment, but a couple of quick things:

Skype's reported acquisition is very interesting, and it will be interesting to see what evolved. I'd expect to see:
- either collaboration or competition with Google's Wave. I'm increasingly thinking that the 100-year notion of a phone call or session as the basic unit of telecoms "conversation" between people is nearing end-of-life (well, on 20 year view, anyway)
- perhaps a proprietary carrier-grade service for VoIP on LTE or HSPA+, avoiding the IMS / CSFB etc conundrum
- I've got to believe that $100bn of profitable SMS revenue worldwide is a very tempting target, especially given the success of local alternatives like MXit in South Africa
- maybe the MVNO / SIM approach being targetted by Truphone and others


I see that 3UK is launching Novatel's MiFi. EDIT: Apparently it's actually a Huawei device (see comments). I'd thought it was the Novatel, but in a custom plastic shell; I stand corrected.

The UK's leading political blogger Guido Fawkes agrees with me about the faddish nature of Twitter.

I'm also skeptical about Android - I've said before that it's massively over-hyped and according to Andy, it seems like AT&T agrees with me. He's also had another great post up recently about service vs. product.

Symbian's David Wood has a blog post evoking something I wrote about a year ago - femtocell-optimised handsets.

Lots of noise about netbooks supplied via mobile operators, perhaps subsidised - but I'm waiting to see the outcome, as I reckon the market opportunity has been overestimated. I'm hearing anecdotal evidence that customers recognise it's cheaper to get a separate retail netbook and data contract rather than a bundle.

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Does telecoms NEED a unified control plane?

My IMS=Dead Parrot post the other week drew a significant amount of attention and argument, as I anticipated. It was followed by more comments in another post.

One of the consistent arguments that was advanced was that IMS is the only standardised mechanism for the control plane for telco-grade IP networks.

From my stance, a central part of my argument is that I don't see IMS as a suitable platform for future revenue-generating, customer-demanded services and applications, at a device level or through integration with Web/consumer electronics/enterprise/IT. I also think it is inflexible in terms of supported business models, for example around wholesale or SIM-free adhoc services.

In a nutshell therefore - is it better to have:

a) A cast-iron control layer for services that nobody wants, or...
b) A less-optimal control layer that permits more service innovation?

From a million-foot view, are we moving to a situation where the notion of a single, all-encompassing telecom control plane is a ridiculous notion, similar to the idea of a government controlling all its citizens through a single database and monitoring system?

(See what I just did there, political wonks reading this?)

Are the costs and inflexibilities and "injustices" (in technology, anything which is user-unfriendly) worth it, just to achieve pure elegance of the ultimate machine?

The more I think about this, the more the whole notion of a single IMS control plane for IP looks exactly like a totalitarian state, where everything is done "for your own good". Policy control is the equivalent of the nannying Health and Safety Executive, the HSS and SIM is the equivalent of the National ID Database and ID cards, DPI is the equivalent of pervasive CCTV cameras. And the whole thing is hugely expensive for taxpayers (end users) and doesn't actually work because there are always flaws in the system.

Personally, I much prefer to live in a libertarian society, where there are specific checks and balances at particular points. I'm happy with passport controls at borders, or fines for people jumping red lights. I don't mind tax evaders being pursued. I'm in favour of jury trials and punishing prison sentences. But I don't want to live inside The Matrix.

The Internet works well enough without a centralised control plane. Various point solutions like CDNs or peering points act as a form of decentralised, distributed and collaborative control, which works pretty well, most of the time. Other large-scale systems work well without central control as well - in fact, the whole basis of capitalist economies revolves around the concept.

Apologies for the high-level "philosophical" nature of this post. But after the last week or two of discussions, I am increasingly of the opinion that IMS has a flawed central assumption: that an all-encompassing "control plane" is necessary, feasible or even desirable.

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Femto industry needs to get real about WiFi

I've had two conversations this week with senior, technically- and commercially-savvy representatives of the cellular industry, both from very well-known organisations at the core of the mobile world.

Both have expressed severe reservations about the femtocell model, at both technical and commercial levels. They mentioned various issues I've discussed before, including the need to support multiple operators within a single household, and the prevalence of WiFi in almost all devices creating meaningful volumes of cellular data traffic.

Yet I still see various protagonists in the femtocell industry suggesting that femtos could potentially replace WiFi as an access mechanism in homes or businesses. (I'm going to leave public hotspots for a moment, as their owners have typically made a multi-year mess of pricing and ease-of-use, which is another bugbear of mine).

In my view, the positioning of femtos as WiFi-replacements diminishes the credibility of the companies involved - not just in the eyes of those who actually understand WiFi, but also in the eyes of those skeptics in the hardcore macrocellular community who believe that "outside-in always wins".

Yes, there are marginal cases where the precise configuration of a connection manager client on a PC or iPhone might divert a few MB of traffic one way or the other. But the lack of awareness of how ethernet (yes, remember WiFi = WLAN = Wireless Ethernet) works and gets deployed and managed is sometimes scary. I've sat through hour-long panel debates on supposed opportunities for enterprise femtos without a single mention of terms like "firewall", "power over ethernet" or a recognition that companies like to manage *their* LAN without bits of it being managed by a third party that typically *outsources its own servers*.

The same arguments apply in the home. Ethernet and WiFi are now pervasive, and I see no reason that they're likely to disappear.

My view is that the femto industry needs to tackle this issue head on, and learn how to play *nicely* with WiFi, rather than pretend it's either irrelevant or a competitor. Otherwise it is going to find it hard to convince even the skeptics in the mobile industry, let alone the IT world.

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