That was an extended Easter break for me and for many of the rest of you, it seems, as I’ve yet to be hit with the usual welter of news on my return.
That’s not to say nothing was happening out there. If we are to make some connections we could point out the increasing impact that small cell and the Het Net is having on the wider mobile business. First, respected analyst Infonetics Research pointed out that small cells and LTE will be one of the driving factors in backhaul investments going forward to 2016. Although there will be many more units shipped, in fact microwave revenues will shift very little, Infonetics forecast. What we are seeing, then, is a substitution, and price erosion, as operators place great store on being able to set up backhaul links for dense deployments with very little site and logistical overhead, combined with low per-unit equipment costs as well. That will place some special requirements on those in the supply chain.
Another indicator that SON, network intelligence and automation are going to be increasingly important at the small cells planning stage came with the news that Aircom, an independent network optimisation and SON specialist, is snapping up automatic cell planning outfit Symena. Operators are going to need tools that enable them to set up networks as efficiently and as near automatically as possible. They just cannot afford to keep sending engineers back to thousands and thousands of sites. You could even make a dotted line connection to another piece of news we carried this week from Commscope, who announced an interesting-looking product designed to take the pain out of DAS deployments.
Perhaps they were getting stuck into the chocolate eggs in Brussels as well. Today is the provisional deadline for the EC’s response to the UK operators’ plans to form a JV to handle m-commerce, advertising and payments opportunities. Known as Project Oscar, the Competition Commission needs to give its decision on the venture before it can go ahead, but no decision has landed as of yet. No doubt it will do so just as I press send on this mailer! In any case, the Daily Telegraph (A UK newspaper and chief photo archiver of the married lives of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) reckoned midweek that things were not looking too rosy for the UK operators, who, you will remember, did not ask 3 UK to their party.
Of course, the big hitters were slugging away over Easter. Facebook started the week by saying it was paying an Austin-Powers-like ONE BILLION DOLLARS for mobile photo-sharing app Instagram. This was greeted with the usual combination of jealousy incredulity that greets all major tech acquisitions these days. With our mobile operator hats on, though, I think this acquisition reinforces the value that the so-called OTT internet players place on eyeballs and useability, and that they themselves recognise they don’t hold all the cards. Mobile operators have one of these in place but as we all know have been failing dismally to crack the second part of the equation. There’s perhaps still time, as nothing is forever in mobile and tech, not least in mobile.
That nothing (except diamonds, obviously) is forever was reinforced by ailing giant Nokia, who followed up an Easter Sunday launch of the Lumia in the USA by popping up midweek to produce one of those, “er, you’re not going to like this” results warnings, with the sort of tone usually reserved for small boys telling their next door neighbour they’ve just hoofed a football through their window, but don’t worry because their dad is totally going to fix it (and can we have our ball back?). “During the first quarter 2012, multiple factors negatively affected Nokia’s Devices and Services business to a greater extent than previously expected,” the company said. Nokia attributed the decline to competition hitting smartphone sales, especially in India, the Middle East, Africa and China, as well as declining margins for the smart devices business unit. Also, as Stephen Elop said, although we totally hoofed the ball through your window it was a really good shot, and we anticipate significantly improved ball trajectory in the future.
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CEM Webinar
Finally, don’t miss our latest webinar which will focus on how to drive down customer support costs and empower better customer experience management. Our speaker, Tom Lybarger, has a wealth of experience designing efficient and effective operations environments at communications service providers, and will provide his own angle on how operators can meet the CEM challenge more effectively.
Keith Dyer, Editor, Mobile Europe
PS If you haven’t yet seen TelecomTV’s film on how the use of wireless telegraphy saved lives on the Titanic, then I would urge a look. Martyn Warwick is at the helm for this piece, and it’s rather good.