Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC

10/22/2014– strictly confidential, confidential, internal, public – 1

EXPANDING PROVIDERS’ REACH WITH WEBRTCSEBASTIAN SCHUMANN, SLOVAK TELEKOM22. October 2014. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

FUTURE DISRUPTION

SCOPE

Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC

“Quickly brush up the old and focus on the new”

“WebRTC is much more than a technology for operators”

“Proper enablers are more important than fully standardized services”

“Just do it – it’s easier than ever to innovate!”

October 2014, Amsterdam, NLSebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 2

@s_schumann

Feedback is welcome, get in touch during/after the event!

SLOVAK TELEKOM

Former fixed & mobile incumbent (merger in 2010), Zoznam, Posam, DIGI

Diverse service portfolio (fixed/mobile network and communications services, Internet access + content, data services, CPE, ICT services(data center + cloud), radio/TV broadcasting, call center services, …)

The major shareholder is Deutsche Telekom AG.

Successful deployments in SEE as well as in DT group:

One of the biggest national-wide deployment of NGN technology in Europe in 2004, whole city migrated to all-IP NGN in 2007

Fixed network IMS migration to be finished in 2014

Leader in IPTV, offering hybrid sat TV (s. 2009) & OTT app (s. 2012)

Extensive FTTx deployments (360k households)

First nation-wide 4G/LTE network (s. 2013)October 2014, Amsterdam, NLSebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 3

Slovak Telekom Group is the telecoms market leader in Slovakia

“Quickly brush up the old and focus on the new”


WEBRTC “OPTIONS” – EVOLVE AND INNOVATEWHAT CAN THE TECHNOLOGY BE USED FOR?


Integration Options

Adding “RTC” to the “Web”Adding the “Web” to “RTC”

WebRTC WebRTC

? ?

“WebRTC is much more than a technology for operators”


SO WHAT IS WEBRTC FOR OPERATORS?

For many, “adding WebRTC” means adding voice/video to a service and have this service in the browser

Due to Telecom’s business’ history “communications” = “telephony”

Is it important?

Yes, because it comes with certain presumptions for the service and also in discussions

It comes with less defined constraints than VoLTE/RCS, operators sometimes forget that!

When WebRTC is discussed within operator units, they are almost always discussed with legacy assumptions in mind WebRTC is much more

Comparison with legacy services (IMS/RCS/VoLTE/OTT) needs to answer what they actually are

Technologies, services, concepts, ways of thinking?

“VoLTE is just telephony” Telephony in the browser

“It’s a technology, not a service” often cited, deductions from that statement are in fact an iceberg


DEVELOPING OPERATOR STRATEGIES

WebRTC can be one of the technologies to accelerate development and decrease costs, if operators want to build “OTT services” services that are:

Access independent/network independent/location independent

Use a software front-end (app/web) Completely new experience in how they deliver voice in the application

A separate “OTT strategy” does not make sense

Is has to be elaborated per service how it should be exposed, delivered, and made accessible

Current “new” operator services such as VoLTE and RCS are “old Telco services ”

Stand-alone services, no initial and easy integration considered, QoS over QoE, etc.

New thinking needs to come with building things on the web, not yet clear everywhere!


WebRTC

“Proper enablers are more important than fully standardized services”


THE IMPORTANCE OF APPROACHING SERVICES CORRECTLY

Important to affect current planning and new services. Do not think about new communications services, but

evolve existing communications services and innovate on UX/QoE

embed features in new services (own, partnering)

Service updates can include “modernized interfaces”, but need to go beyond

Adding “Web” to existing products means they are defined, and mostly limited

Integration where it makes sense is more important than a “pure web dialer”

The WebRTC paradigm introduces a new "way of thinking“ that has often not even started

The "front-end design/functions” defines services now

The back-end is completely irrelevant


Interfaces/services need to be built flexibly and deployed capabilities need to be reusable and added quickly and frequently to different products.

NEW ARCHITECTURAL REQUIREMENTS

The WebRTC paradigm introduces the need for new architectural requirements, also for operators

Every service or integration going beyond telephony or not requiring the full subset of its features should have a prior discussion about proper architecture (back-end enabler)

Telephony: IMS/MMTel/VoLTE vs. lightweight open-source alternatives – almost exclusively SIP

Non-telephony: Own backend, libraries, protocol alternatives (XMPP, REST/JSON)

Case-by-case decision, not just use because it is there (efficiency, suitability)

For everything that is not telephony, alternatives most likely much more suitable

The discussion about WebRTC & IMS should not be at the beginning, but the end of any consideration

Get a gateway if legacy is important (incl. identity, integration etc.), if not chose depending on your resources

Choose your vendor wisely, WebRTC often comes with the IMS and that will have impact on your creativity

Good open-source products available, client-side JavaScript knowledge often enough to get started!


“Just do it – it’s easier than ever to innovate!”


USE IN-HOUSE RESOURCES – HOWEVER LITTLE YOU HAVE

Use cases or prototypes can be developed so much faster than before

Support for building instead of talking, especially for the “renegades” , trying to inflict change for the better

Especially useful to proof that IMS is not always needed if the use case does not justify it

Much easier to show what WebRTC is at first hand

I once did a presentation from Joburg to Bratislava via Amsterdam (approx. > 10000 km, phys. delay approx. 50 ms)

People will be stunned to perceive it themselves if they all of a sudden know the people that built it

Prototyping means learning

We have developed various prototypes and every single challenge was also a lesson learned (some shared today)

Use NT and IT resources, both are needed. Expect also innovations from purely IT side


PRACTICAL BACKUP: WE ARE DOOGFOODING

Slovak Telekom has implemented a PoC not connected to legacy telephony, actively used by employees

A WebRTC gateway RfQ on IMS and show telephony would be easy, but doesn’t have much value yet

We developed a (simple but yet) contextual web application

Sent E-mails contain signature to web portal (address built using E-mail as identifier), contact employees

People can be contacted and also notified out-of-band using various channels, owner/guest not equal

No telephony dial-out: Faster, easy b/c no legacy boundaries such as billing, integration, approval

No complex account setup: Address confirmation using received hash/token for mapping

No one-size-fits-all: Many features consciously omitted (directory, collaboration, conferencing)

One application doing one thing well and which contains only those features required


SUMMARY

It is important to understand our heritage and acknowledge who pays the bills for now

Main business still legacy IMS architecture often “a given”

Telephony and “boring use cases” need to be on board

Modernization of current voice service important

This is a pretty straight forward path, many obstacles are being worked on (as Victor presented)

Most of the operator voice back-end is IP based now, but simply attaching “a WebRTC front-end” won’t do

Less ubiquitous, but more targeted applications will replace telephony general purpose communicationsuse case by use case

Flexible re-useable capabilities exposed through simple APIs are tremendously important

Standardized core technologies (HTML/CSS/JS, Objective-C, Java), but not services

Standardized interfaces (REST API w/ doc/SDK is enough) trumps complex E2E scenarios


THANK YOU.Sebastian Schumann

Application & Platform Innovation | Slovak Telekom, a.s.

[email protected]

@s_schumann

+421 903 419 345

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Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC

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