By Mark Everett Hall
At Management World Americas today in Orlando, Fla., two panel discussions wrestled with issues facing the two critical communications sectors of mobile and cable systems.
Tim Young, editor-in-chief of Pipeline magazine, grilled panelists about how their respective international companies were dealing with a range of issues from evolving technology infrastructures to government regulation.
Speaking on the mobile panel, Albert Hitchcock, CIO of Vodafone Group, said that unlike most telcos that were moving from fixed-line infrastructure into mobile systems, Vodafone was acquiring wireline companies to expand its primarily mobile operations to embrace customers’ needs for broadband performance in their homes and business.
Things are different in Brazil, said Ricardo Santoro, chief information officer at Claro Brasil. “We don’t have a wireline infrastructure.”
As such, he said, Claro Brasil is focusing its infrastructure investment in the company’s wireless backbone to fill in the gaps in coverage within the country.
Hitchcock echoed Santoro’s comment as it related to Vodafone’s mobile wireless investments in India, where there is also a dearth of fixed-line infrastructure.
“We’re rolling out wireless infrastructure there to support growth,” he said.
To keep users connected, both companies are developing programs to entice users to stay online. At Claro Brasil, Santoro said his company has sponsored contests for end users, primarily young people, to post homemade videos that win prizes after voting from other users.
Vodafone has rolled out its Vodafone 360 service that integrates users’ various social networking address books. He also said the company is developing applications to embrace a user’s physical presence with a virtual one.
In the more mature cable market, the panel confronted different issues. For example, according to Tom Vari, CIO and senior vice president, application delivery, at Rogers Communications, said attracting enterprise users was a major market opportunity.
“We’re exploiting assets in the ground,” he said, in order to deliver Ethernet over fiber optic cable as well as advanced voice services such as voice over IP (VoIP).
Roberto Nobile, COO of Cablevision Argentina, said to deliver services to the enterprise, cable operators had to be able to offer service-level agreements to business in order to get the business.
When asked about the role government regulation played in cable systems, Rodrigo Duclos, CTO of Net Servicos, said regulation “was strong and important in Latin America.” However, the changing regulation landscape made planning difficult for cable operators.
Nobile said new laws in Argentina have thrown the cable market there into turmoil. For example, the new regulation called for a limit to the maximum market share for a single company at 35 percent. However, Cablevision Argentina already has almost 50 percent market share. “Comcast or Time Warner couldn’t survive in Argentina,” he said.
In Canada, Vari said there is a tendency toward “cultural protectionism” for Canadian content, which makes it more complex for cable operators to offer a programming mix.
Management World Americas continues through Thursday in Orlando.
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