Martin Creaner's Blog - All Comments

re: The penny has finally dropped!

Martin Creaner — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:14:27 GMT

I came across this interesting article titled “OSSCS 11-09 Cross Industry 2.0 New Business Models: The Business Challenge and Orchestrating OSS BSS for New Revenue.” It is one more perspective of the thinking that has gone into this focus area. Recently, I was reminded that this Stratecast article was made available to the TM Forum working committee on this subject. It resides at the following link:

www.tmforum.org/.../OSSCS-11_2D00_09--Cross-Industry-2.0-Business-Models-v2.pdf

re: How fast will 4G grow?

Yalton Ruiz — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:29:08 GMT

The critical point between 3G and 4G development will be around the 100 Mbps. This is the throughput that will make the decision in the near future. I agree with both of you. There is still live for 3G for a long time but the introduction curve of 4G will be also important.

Don’t take my word for it: analytics is hot

sascom voices — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:13:47 GMT

Analytics is the hot new buzzword at the TeleManagement Forum (TMForum). Because I am the Communications Industry Marketing Manager for SAS, you would expect me to return from last week’s TMForum Management World conference with tales about the impor

re: Data Analytics might be the "White Knight" for the beleaguered Service Provider

Prashant Rajpal — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:51:04 GMT

This is a good debate. Enablement of analytics lies at the ground level where we have different types of data sets maintained in silos & capabiliies to extract data. New methods and technologies were built to support and now we are finding new was to integrate them. I like what Ian Emsley said...Practical Policies in leveraging of Information by Service Providers. I would like to add one more word to it...Practical Methods & Policies in leveraging of Informatio by Service Providers.

re: Why Operators need to become more 'Useful' !

Antonios Tatarakis — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:43:44 GMT

Well said Martin.

What I would like to add is the possibility of additional PaaS offerings by the CSPs. For example, cloud storage, something similar to DropBox.com, but offered by the CSP. If I was to use such a service to upload business-critical content to be shared across different geographies and devices, I would definitely prefer my trusted CSP as the provider of such a VAS rather than an anonymous startup.

CSPs definitely need to think outside the box if they want to steer clear of the dumb-pipe destiny, even by internal restructuring, and identification of the need to set up a completely new Department, with a particular focus on new VAS and latest market trends.

re: A new mountain to climb for for telecoms regulators

Martin Creaner — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:22:47 GMT

Stephen, Some good insights on the US market. 'Getting out of the way of sensible competition' is an important mindset for successful regulation.

I also note your point that ISPs have the table tilted in their favor over retail focused CSPs from the point of view of using customer data.

re: A new mountain to climb for for telecoms regulators

Stephen Fleece — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:13:10 GMT

Martin, I think telcos have generally been way too conservative and risk averse at testing the regulatory envelope of what can be done with customer data. Google and Facebook are clearly being very aggressive to further their dominance of the upstream side of the 2-sided service provider business model.

The Phorm thing in the UK seems to have been a real setback to initial efforts.

As a USA citizen, my opinion is US regulators have largely failed the public here in stimulating competitive innovation in communications except for how they've handled radio spectrum auctions. The telecom act of 1996 was mostly a failure as only a handful of CLECs remain. It is what US regulators have not done (laissez faire) that created a successful competitive market for basic communications services (not hindering cable, etc.) and not messed up Internet adoption and commerce yet.

The Internet web service providers have a completely unfair advantage to leverage service usage information for new business models today. Retail-focused CSPs need to get more aggressive across product development, regulatory affairs, and technology domains to fight back and create value to business customers in their ecosystems for services like advertising and enablers.

re: Why Operators need to become more 'Useful' !

Steven Cotton — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:56:54 GMT

These observations are some of the key business realities that have given rise to the heightened emphasis on Customer Experience and Supplier/Partner issues in the Revenue Management Initiative. The principal rationale for the Lean Value Stream Management is to present a satisfying offering to the customer while retaining as much of the resulting revenues for sharing of profits among the value stream partners. This is the ultimate "usefulness" of the Operator to their partners.

re: Why Operators need to become more 'Useful' !

Tal Givoly — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:20:54 GMT

One more thing - in your tweet regarding this post you said they need to become more useful if they want to "survive".

Well, I think that's too harsh. Most service providers aren't going anywhere, nor dying. They stand the risk of being commoditized and having their margins erode over time if they do not step up here. This is loss of value to all stakeholders. But it is not a matter of mere survival for most.

That said, nobody wants to merely "survive" - all corporations want to thrive and prosper - that's what corporations are built to do. So I'd restate - they should become more useful if they wish to thrive / prosper.

re: Why Operators need to become more 'Useful' !

Tal Givoly — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:13:05 GMT

Martin, absolutely agreed, and well said.

Unfortunately, we've been saying this for many years, yet movement is often at glacial pace. While I see more operators acknowledging these issues, decisive and competent action are lacking. Furthermore, joining forces in activities such as WAC are critical, yet very slow and late to come as well.