On May 11, Mobile Minute teamed with Informa Telecoms & Media to stage its second webinar of the 2010 season – “Meeting Consumer Expectations of the Mobile Internet Experience”. You can access a full replay of the webinar here and on the Mobile Minute page of our website.

The event drew approximately 500 registrants from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. Attendees included a cross-section of wireless network operators and other mobile ecosystem participants.

The webinar panel consisted of Dez O’Connor, head of Mobile ISP Domain Development at T-Mobile International (Deutsche Telekom); Mike Hibberd, editorial director of Telecoms.com; and Jeff Sanderson, head of Pre-Sales for EMEA and Latin America at Bytemobile.

As moderator, Mike Hibberd led off the discussion with a litany of compelling statistics regarding the growth of mobile broadband subscribers worldwide – from 450 million this year to 670 million next year – and its impact on network congestion and traffic patterns. He cited the experience of O2 UK in managing its iPhone subscriber base – with traffic volume doubling every three months – and TeliaSonera in its implementation of 4G technology and associated customer feedback regarding network performance and quality of service. Hibberd also emphasized the influence of video usage on traffic growth, quoting Cisco Systems’ forecast that multimedia will account for 90% of all wireless data traffic by 2013.

Next, representing a tier-one operator’s perspective, Dez O’Connor talked about the critical importance of intelligent traffic management in return on investment in major network deployments. He echoed Hibberd’s comments about video being the key driver of traffic growth and stressed the value of identifying and addressing ‘congestion hotspots’ in the network. O’Connor called out several techniques for improving network efficiency – packet dropping and shaping, traffic control by tariff and content enforcement, traffic compression and acceleration (optimization), Quality of Service (QoS) as defined in the 3GPP architectural model, and intelligent traffic off-load. He concluded that the timely, selective application of these techniques will enable operators to deliver the best customer experience at the best price – based on a manageable cost structure.

Jeff Sanderson rounded out the panel with a focus on video optimization as a means of sustaining network capacity through explosive traffic growth while controlling infrastructure build-out. He indicated that operators can achieve a more ‘deterministic’ user experience by directly addressing network congestion and its impact on quality and usability. Sanderson discussed just-in-time video delivery and the respective and combined merits of lossless and lossy optimization to reduce video stalling and enable operators to offer differentiated services. He concluded with a summary of the key attributes of smart optimization for multiple traffic types – perpetual value through subsequent generations of networks, especially 4G; dynamic adaptation to change; and a consistently positive experience for both operators and their customers.

Additional Mobile Minute events are being planned for the coming months. We will cover these events on our blog and website as part of our ongoing efforts to provide thought leadership and consultative education to the rapidly evolving mobile internet space.

-Jaishree Subramania

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The CTIA panel – held at 3:15 p.m. on March 23 and moderated by FierceWireless Editor-in-Chief Sue Marek – included executives from BelAir Networks, MetroPCS, Sprint, TowerStream, and Xanadoo. Highlights of the panelists’ general comments on 4G differentiation were as follows:

• BelAir Networks: The key to successful roll-out is investment in here-and-now solutions for delivering efficient 4G networks.

• MetroPCS: Simple, affordable, unlimited service is its commitment to customers and will continue to be its differentiated business model. Now, there is a growing requirement to efficiently manage data, and the customer base is moving to smartphones. MetroPCS is excited to bring the full mobile Internet to all of its subscribers.

• Sprint: Expects to offer 4G this year, with an aggressive roll-out of services. Indications are that 4G service is 10 times faster than 3G service. The key challenge for large service providers will to differentiate their 4G service from others.

In response to the moderator’s questions – “Does network speed matter? Do customers really know the difference? Will speed drive people to upgrade service?” – the panelists commented as follows.

• MetroPCS: High speed definitely matters to customers, who want to take their internet experience mobile. Smartphones demand higher bandwidth. Service providers need to deliver an affordable quality internet experience – anywhere, anytime. The key to success will be pricing and usage-based infrastructure.

• Sprint: Most people can tell the difference and will upgrade to faster service. When you are actually experiencing and using 4G, you ‘get it’. Fifteen years ago, people knew the difference between wireline and wireless connections. The same will be true for the difference between 3G and 4G experience.

All panelists agreed that user experience will be a major differentiator when consumers choose a 4G wireless service provider.

-Stacey Infantino

Image courtesy of adam & lucy via the Creative Commons attribution license.

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The “dumb pipe” risk for operators is nothing new in the fast and furious world of the mobile Internet. However, it’s an eminently manageable risk, given advances in traffic management technology and value-added services with the potential to close the gap between data volume and data revenue.

Please join senior executives from Sprint, Accenture and Bytemobile at 11:00 a.m. EST on Thursday, February 4, as they take on these and other critical issues in the first Mobile Minute webinar of the 2010 season.

The February 4 webinar – as advertised in selected FierceMarkets publications throughout Europe, North America and Asia – will be led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program. Editor Phil Goldstein will moderate the discussion among Scott Lane, director of sales and marketing at Sprint 4G; Fabio Mungo, chief technology officer of Accenture Mobility Operated Services; and Joel Brand, vice president of product management at Bytemobile.

Please register to participate in the event here. The next Mobile Minute webinar will be held in April – stay tuned for details.

-Jaishree Subramania

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I suspect that most people involved in the mobile industry would acknowledge both the phenomenal growth in mobile internet usage and the increase in relative importance of mobile internet services to wireless carriers. With data revenue growing and mobile internet services becoming a larger slice of that revenue, it becomes obvious why this is of increasing interest to carriers. Also, in mature markets, carriers look to offset the erosion of revenue from traditional voice services.

The opportunities for carriers in the new world of the mobile Internet come with their own challenges. The volume of data that must be carried across the network due to the uptake in mobile internet usage is growing at a significant rate. This uptake may seem like a positive trend that would drive an increase in data revenue. It is only when you realize that the increase in infrastructure investment required to support the data growth outstrips the increase in data revenue that it becomes evident that the current model is unsustainable.

There are a number of options available to address this disparity between cost and revenue. For example, one option would be to move away from the ‘all you can eat’ data tariff approach and introduce tiered pricing for mobile internet services. Another approach would be for carriers to determine how they can effectively add value within the content and media ecosystem in order to create new revenue streams around mobile data.

Considering the options available at a conceptual level is one thing. However, carriers will ultimately need to step through a process of evaluation and decision-making regarding their mobile internet services and how they can most effectively monetize their network assets. For such a process to be effective, it must be informed. The carrier must be able to understand its customers in order to provision mobile internet services to address customer needs - while also delivering a commercially viable product.

This is where most mobile internet services fall short. In the vast majority of cases, visibility of user behavior patterns and content consumption is not available. Even where it is available, the level of detail is insufficient to enable effective decision-making and often limited to the carrier’s on-deck content or oriented toward network-focused metrics. Also, the information is frequently suppositional and based on small sample sets. This should not be the case when the data is carried over the carrier’s own network. So how big an issue is this? Should carriers really be that concerned?

I believe that carriers do have an important role to play in the new world of the mobile Internet and that there is enormous opportunity for them. After all, carriers have the potential for an intimate relationship with their customers through what is arguably the most personal communications channel – the mobile device. The perspective that it is just a matter of time before carriers will need to adopt a low-cost ‘utility’ business model is seriously flawed.

Marketing executives and managers within carriers need to be empowered with information and insight so that they can act, ensuring that the industry makes the most of the opportunity for customer intimacy. In order to seize this opportunity, they must have factual data about their users and what they do on the Internet. This is the key to unlocking business value that will successfully address carriers’ current revenue, cost and profitability challenges.

-Kingsley Harding

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