Keith Willetts' Blog

Not sure if you’ve seen Gartner’s technology adoption curve, but it’s a great model for how we treat technological innovations. It describes a ‘peak of inflated expectations’ followed by a ‘trough of disillusionment’ and finally a ‘plateau of productivity’. It’s a good lens to look at what has happened to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). I first experienced VoIP back in the mid ‘90’s and as the dot-com bubble expanded, VoIP became both the bogeyman of every telecom executive and every journalist’s nail in telecom’s coffin. The ‘peak of inflated expectations’ was that VoIP would kill off the telecom business, and their world would come to a crushing end. Clearly, somewhat inflated predictions and the great promise VoIP once held seems to be waning. A recent article in the (London) Times quoted a report by British communications regulator Ofcom stating that the percentage of adults using VoIP...

Not sure I’ve seen any fireworks lighting up the sky, but it’s now a full 25 years since the first telecom deregulation. In that time just about every market in the world has gone down the path to competitive communications. So what, fundamentally, has happened in that time? Competition and regulatory pressures have transformed prices, but as the communications world discovered the laws of market elasticity, rising volumes and the phenomenal growth of mobile have meant that revenues have continued to rise. In reality, the business model for communications services hasn’t changed much in that time – we’ve sharpened up marketing their old one. But just as financial markets found out, all good things come to an end! According to IDate, 2008 saw the global communications market grow only by +4.2 percent to $1.37 trillion, but most of that growth was from still-expanding markets like India and China. In mature markets, any volume growth was more than cancelled out...

Last week we publicly launched the Blueprint program - a major new program for the TM Forum that's driving the evolution of our most widely implemented of our deliverables, the Solution Frameworks (like the eTOM, SID and so on). Blueprint will take these vital process and systems roadmaps to the next stage to keep then continually relevant as our industry changes shape and embraces a myriad of new services. The Solution Frameworks evolved from our NGOSS program, launched several years ago. At that time the communications industry was much more clearly defined and separate from industries like the cable, entertainment and media and the digital economy was something few people had ever dreamt of. Over the intervening years things have changed dramatically and will continue to so, possibly even spurred on by recession rather than slowed down. Convergence isn't just a buzz word, it's a real life factor affecting a number of industries (including communications) whose boundaries...

In an industry which, at times, seems to move at about the same rate as molasses being poured from a jar, the communications and media world’s got a whammy recently when Apple announced it was lifting digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on all songs being offered on iTunes by April. This is big news, especially when you think about how hard record companies have been fighting piracy over the past few years. They succeeded in getting peer-to-peer sharing sites like Napster and Kazaa shut down, and they have not hesitated to drag individuals into court for the dreadful crime of sharing songs with others. How things have changed! The record companies probably figured out that they are going to lose the DRM war anyway, so why not make some money? Apple’s new tiered pricing means rather than just the usual 99 cents you pay for a song on iTunes, you might also pay $1.29 or the lower 69 cents, which likely will be reserved for older songs. Technically speaking, record companies...

As Margaret Thatcher said to George H Bush who was wavering before the first Gulf war "Don't go wobbly on me now George". For all of those service providers who have finally embarked on major transformation programs, now isn't the time to go wobbly on the need to cut costs, improved customer care levels through better customer service and slash lead times for bringing new products to market. Delaying investment because of the downturn could be the worst thing they will ever do. But trying to figure out what the communications industry will do over the next year is a serious conundrum: there are so many variables in play. How long will the recession last? How deep will it be? Where will it hit hardest? Financially, we are in uncharted waters and even the best and brightest economists can neither agree on the answers or the best course to chart. So let's start with what we do know. Communications company revenues are always pretty good indicators of the macro-economy...