Carnival of the Mobilists at Mippin

Some good stuff this week on the Carnival, plus a big thank-you to the author for the kind words about this blog. I really liked Andrew Grill's post on mobile advertising.

Actually, I have to confess I didn't realise what Mippin actually was - basically an easy way to reformat sites like blogs to work better on handsets. Now I've checked it out, I may use it myself.

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Question: When is UMA not UMA?

Answer: when T-Mobile uses the word "UMA" as its network ID for all roaming customers, instead of "T-Mobile US".

No idea why this happens - initially on an unlocked Nokia E71 with a T-Mobile SIM (I thought it maybe had a "hidden" UMA stack and auto-logged on to the SFO Airport network, until I switched off the WiFi). Then I got the same tag on my non-WiFi SonyEricsson, and realised the answer must be simpler.

I'm pretty sure it's always just said "T-Mobile US" when I've been here in the past.

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Next week in SF - Open Mobile Summit & Telecom Council

I'm going to be in the Bay Area next week for a couple of events and various client meetings.

I'd exhort anyone who's interested in the whole "openness" scene to consider attending the Open Mobile Summit   on Weds/Thurs 19th and 20th.

I'm chairing the track on the first day that's examining the implications of "open" for existing mobile operators, with speakers & panellists from some notable organisations like the FCC, AT&T, BT, TeliaSonera, Orange and NextWave, as well as well-known individuals like David Isen and Chris Sacca. A parallel track looks at the implications for upstarts & challengers like Skype and Truphone & the Kindle guys at Amazon. 

The event's also got other luminaries from Google Android, Nokia, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Accel, RIM and various others. 

Should be awesome, and I'll try and blog during it if I get a chance.

If you can't make that, I'm also one of four speakers at the Telecom Council lunch on the Tuesday 18th. Again, I'll be pontificating on openness in mobile.

Lastly, I've got a few hours spare on Tuesday 18th before and after that event. If you're in the Bay Area and want to set up a last-minute briefing let me know via [FIRSTNAME.LASTNAME   AT disruptive-analysis.com ]  I'm particularly interested in companies involved in mobile broadband (devices & services), femtocells and enterprise UC. And if you've got any urgent  requirements for analyst research or consultancy on these areas, so much the better.  

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The need for end-user forums to start specifiying handsets

There are already a number of organisations that capture operators' requirements for handsets and feed them back to the OEMs. The OMTP is probably the most obvious, along with the OMA and some of the activities of the GSMA and CDG and WiMAX Forum. Standards groups like 3GPP also are clearly important in defining the standards for "UE" (user equipment) behaviour.

These groups do sterling work in a lot of areas - from making sensible decisions about standard screen sizes & power connectors, through to defining APIs for browsers, and certification mechanisms for radios. They put out reams of documentation stating that manufacturers MUST do this, or SHALL do that, or OPTIONALLY MAY do the other.

But there's something missing.

As far as I know, there are no consumer advocacy groups defining what the end user wants to get from their phones, and how they expect them to behave. There's no group setting desirable specifications that "average" people want, such as "It SHALL be possible to delete useless apps like videotelephony from the homescreen", or "There MUST be a highly-visible indicator of monthly data usage, configurable in X, Y & Z fashion"

Particularly as handset subsidies fall - or handsets become cheap enough for normal people to buy "vanilla" - it shouldn't be just the mobile operators that get to define features & behaviour. Yes, they might be the handset producers' main direct customers, but it's about time that the people paying at the end of the value chain started to throw their weight around.

The only reason that people have to "put up with" hobbled Bluetooth, annoying operator-branded UIs, locked-down operating systems and so on is because they aren't organised enough to try to change it. Complaining on web forums doesn't cut it. But if a delegation from a "Phone Users' Forum" representing 100 million people turned up in Helsinki or Seoul with a list of demands, I suspect they'd get a good hearing. (Although probably not in Cupertino, California....).

There is already precedent for this in the enterprise world. Organisations like the EVUA represent powerful groups of telecom and IT-using multinationals, that collectively exert leverage on their technology suppliers.

Perhaps the starting point for mobile handsets is also in the enterprise space. Although the volumes are lower, there is a greater bias towards smartphones and "vanilla" devices. There are various organisations like systems integrators and unified communications vendors that also have a lot of pull here. Collectively, the business community needs to make sure that the phone manufacturers continue to enable "over the top" applications in the best way possible. An influential group articulating & defining that requirement in concrete terms would be hugely beneficial.

A particular point of future contention might be around the IMS RCS client, which if pre-installed on handsets could become the "default" IM and presence application, hooking them into operator IMS cores. This clearly needs to be delete-able from devices used as part of enterprise-controlled unified communications solutions. There need to be variants of handsets available that are optimised for server/PBX-anchored corporate alternatives.

Over time, there may be parallel consumer advocacy initiatives, but I suspect they be more difficult to organise, especially internationally. But I can see great benefit in mandatory requirements for easy sideloading / backup of content and contacts, for example, and better information about costs and balances. The best way for end users to avoid future "lock in" by their operators is to specify workarounds to the handset manufacturers upfront. Make them remember who the real customers are.

The bottom line is that the billion or so handset purchasers need to play the system better. Otherwise, the system will continue to play them.

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Mobile Broadband - the cracks are starting to show

Over the last 2 weeks, I've encountered a steady stream of indicators to suggest that the mobile broadband market, and especially 3G USB dongles, might be starting to overheat.

The problem is that operator and retailer marketing departments have suddenly found a new source of revenue, and are engaging in a massive land-grab to sign up new customers, roll out new propositions, and offset declining voice revenues as we go into recession.

But I'm starting to hear some creaks. I initially missed this article, about an increase in the return rate for 3G dongles which had been sold "over-enthusiastically". I've noticed a distinct uptick in marketing hype, especially around headline speeds for HSDPA. I've also noticed a distinct lack of warnings about the fact that coverage is patchy, especially indoors.

I suspect what's happening is that the market has shifted from people like me, who already have ADSL and use their mobile service as an adjunct when they're out (and typically out in areas with good coverage like airports or cafes with big windows). The customers coming onboard now are those who want to use the products at home - perhaps instead of ADSL/cable, and perhaps in buildings with a couple of walls between their room and the outside world. Unsurprisingly this makes for unhappy results with 3G at 2.1GHz.

I've also noticed slowing speeds on 3's network in central London - although whether that's because of capacity limitations or throttling of certain apps (I really notice it on streamed audio) is hard to tell.

But above all, the alarm bells have started to ring with the rate at which network capacity is being apparently used up. It was only about 6 months ago that I heard a presentation refer to an operator that had "fired up a second carrier", ie had filled up the initial 5MHz chunk of their 3G spectrum, and had started using another. Then I spoke to a large vendor a few weeks back, who said they knew of a few places where people were on their 3rd carrier.  And then another last week who mentioned somewhere they had heard about a 4th carrier - which is apparently outside the original UMTS specifications.

So given that most operators only have 10MHz or 15MHz paired allocations for 3G, it's no surprise to see the panicked interest in femtocells, 900MHz refarming, 2.6GHz auctions and various approaches to adding or splitting cells. LTE offers the chance of some more headroom too - but only if you've got convenient 10MHz or 20MHz chunks of decent spectrum spare. As if. The problem is that none of these is going to be ready for prime-time in most markets in 2009. And anyway, the backhual is still another bottleneck for many operators.

I'm predicting that next year is going to see some fairly ugly examples of mobile broadband "capacity crunch". And given that capex budgets are going to be a bit thin, I reckon we'll see quite a few more dissatisfied customers. The problem is that the €10 flatrate genie is out of the bottle, and it's going to be very hard to step up the prices now.

Another open question is how this will start to impact the useability of all those nice new smartphones & broswer/widget frameworks that are starting to get traction as well.....

Last point to raise, that I'll tackle in another post soon..... what does all this mean for upcoming spectrum auctions in 2.6GHz next year? Lots of capacity, but auctions at exactly the wrong time (hmm, shades of 2001 again?). Will the auction-tuned game theorists controlling the bidding remember that 2.6GHz and bricks/concrete don't always make a happy combination, I wonder?

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Mobile data revenues more than messaging?

There's plenty of commentary today about Vodafone's half-year results out today. However, given the currency fluctuations that have been going on, you need to be a professor of accountancy to back out some of the more granular underlying trends. Nevertheless, there's plenty of evidence of both the economy and tightening competition and regulation squeezing some of the historic cash cows like roaming.

On the upside, there's plenty of healthy growth in European mobile broadband, which is taking the edge off the declines in voice revenues somewhat.

One little data point I do find a bit strange is tucked away on page 14 of the results release. Apparently, the EMAPA region (Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East & Pacific)  has seen particularly spectacular increases in mobile data revenues, more than doubling compared to the same period in 2007. But what's really odd is that for Africa & Middle East, data revenues now exceed messaging , by £127m to £107m. That compares with £48m vs £88m last year. Given that number is mostly made up of Egypt, South Africa [Vodacom] and India, I guess that indicates a huge ramp-up of 3G modems at Vodacoms, possibly aided by mobile payments.

The release says "Strong growth in data revenue was driven by the increased penetration of mobile PC connectivity devices, as the absence of fixed line alternatives makes mobile data a more attractive offering. Data revenue also benefited from the launch of South Africa’s first high speed uplink packet access (‘HSUPA’) and the launch of Vodafone M-Pesa/Vodafone Money Transfer service in Tanzania"

I don't think I've seen any other operators reporting 3G dongle revenues > SMS, so that's definitely a first if true.  Vodacom reports its detailed group financial report next Monday, so maybe we'll get some deeper insight.

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Carnival of the Mobilists 149

Thanks to Mark Hooft at Ubiquitous Thoughts for hosting this week's Carnival, and highlighting a couple of my posts. Some other really good reference to others' blog posts as well, like Mjelly's post on the impact of the recession on mobile. Check it out here.

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