Service creation and service quality; Microsoft, Telcordia, Qualcomm
By Keith Dyer, at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona
Microsoft Telecoms’ service creation
Vodafone’s service announcements with Ebay, MySpace, Google and Yahoo are evidence that the ability to effectively harness web services is becoming critical to telcos – according to web services giant Microsoft.
Michel Burger, cto of Microsoft’s telecoms sector, said that web mash up services have no quality of service, no control. So when they get aggregated, they tend not to work very well, or at all, for that matter. What Microsoft is keen to push through its Connected Services Framework and its Soundbox programme, in which developers can experiment with services in a managed way, is a concept of managed network mash ups. It calls this Telco 2.0.
The idea here is that the mobile operators can exploit web services but in a way which doesn’t leave them exposed either on quality of customer experience or on revenue leakage. But we’re not there yet. “We are on the edge of that,” Burger said. “The point is not that they run the services themselves, but that they control the aggregation and if you control the aggregation you are still in control. BT, for example, understands this very well.”
Michael O’Hara, general manager of the service provider business, said that we were now on the downside of the IMS bubble. “We think IMS is a great way of uniting wireline and wireless networks, but what it isn’t is the best way to deliver services. BT committed to IMS in its 21CN, and then it said, ‘Where are the services?’”
O’ Hara added that yesterday’s Vodafone announcement to co-brand and deliver Windows Live and Yahoo IM showed that the operator is now buying into Microsoft’s view of mobile enabled web services – as opposed to SIP-based IMS services built out in an operator network centric way. This was generous of him, as Vodafone is not actually a Microsoft CSF customer. But the point is made. A year ago Vodafone embarked on building out its own IM community. Now it is tapping into the established web services of that application.
Meanwhile Microsoft has launched a hosted push email service aimed at small business users and individuals. Carphone Warehouse and Swedish retailer ONOFF will sell the hosted solution to end users. SmartHost is hosting the servers whilst distributor Dangaard will also sell the product through to the trade. Microsoft is selling the servers at a knock-down price and will recoup through revenue share. O’Hara said the subs share would be in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, “So this is a significant piece of business for us.” Users will also need a Windows Mobile handset, so that will also be a significant piece of business for the Embedded Devices division, one assumes.
Telcordia’s service management
Operators should not underestimate how difficult network transformation, and the move to next generation OSS is going to be, says Michael Anderson, Senior VP Global Solutions at Telcordia.
“We’ve seen the disasters, and we’ve had to come in to clear up the mess. This transformation path we’re on is not an overnight process. It’s probably a 72 month process to take down a legacy system and migrate that to a next generation environment.”
Anderson was responding to the accusation often thrown Telcordia’s way, that it is a legacy company with TDM knowledge and assets, a telephony dinosaur in an IP world.
Referring to an implementation of a next gen fulfillment system with Sky EasyNet, where the operator has seen a 30% improvement in fulfillment in just six months, Anderson said true migration was about being able to work back to legacy systems from next gen systems.
“The big operators can’t afford to just switch off their legacy systems. Yet look at the way we can federate the capabilities of our next generation fulfillment systems. Now we’re federating that data, checking the data, and processing it and marrying the two systems. It is a marriage between the two.”
Anderson was speaking as Telcordia launches a new Service Management Suite, into which it has integrated its Service Director and Device Director products. The suite is about taking network and device CDR probe data, referring that to established KPIs and KQIs and distributing reports to relevant business sectors so that operators can offer differentiated, class of service and “more sticky” SLAs.
Operators can’t afford to let consumers have a bad experience. We’ll try something twice, and then give up if it doesn’t work, Anderson said. So the service management suite is about giving operators the tools to get a customer centric view of their service performance and, through trending analysis and the ability to provision adaptive network thresholds, take action before problems even occur.
With IBM’s acquisition of Vallent and Micromuse last year, this is now a fiercely competitive and consolidating area. Yet Anderson thinks it is now an idea whose time has come.
“I used to work for ADC. And when I was there Service Assurance was a solution in search of a problem,” he said. “But now with IP networks there is a paradigm shift, and operators are moving from a linear process of turning up services to a real time, personalised environment.”
Qualcomm’s Flash OFDM and MediaFLO
Qualcomm has proved in its Sky trial that MediaFlo not only outperforms DVB-H, but even out-performs its own claims for the technology, President of Qualcomm Europe Andrew Gilbert has said.
Gilbert said that Sky’s recent trial of MediaFlo confirmed that the technology offers twice the capacity of DVB-H. Or else the same capacity with half the base stations. Not only that, but the announcement that AT&T will combine MediaFLO services with UMTS services means that the technology will be proven to work in an interactive and blended way with UMTS services.
But Gilbert admitted that although, in his opinion, MediaFLO is a clear leader, its adoption in Europe will have little to do with technology. Politics, regulation and markets will all play an important role. Still, he holds out hope that as there has been very little spectrum awarded (Italy and Finland so far) there is still time time for FLO. And there’s room too, he said, as there is “probably” space for two mobile broadcast networks per country/ territory.
“I also know that where MediaFLO is delivered it’s going to give DVB-H a real problem. There’s a reason nobody has chosen DVB-H in the US – and that’s because they don’t want to compete with MediaFLO.”
Despite this, Gilbert pointed out Qualcom’s commitment to its multi mode TV chip, supporting FLO and DVB-H. Qualcomm’s presentation of the multi-mode chip is that it is aimed at giving handset manufacturers piece of mind to develop suitable handsets no matter which way the network cookie crumbled.
There was also endorsement from Gilbert of Qualcomm’s treatment of Flash OFDM since its acquisition of Flarion – Gilbert’s own former company.
“Contrary to what everyone said, Qualcomm has not buried Flash ODFM. The rollouts continue in Slovakia [T-Mobile] and Finland [Digita], and there is a small but growing ecosystem of devices around the technology,” he said.
Flash OFDM, now a proprietary standard, would migrate through 3GPP2 to form the basis of the UMB standard, Gilbert said, and Qualcomm will also be submitting elements of Flash OFDM to 3GPP for LTE standardization, although Gilbert admitted this path would be more problematical.