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Issue 39 • APRIL 2013

#SMS Chat apps slash MNO SMS traffic as customers move with times

research by informa for the Financial Times has found that SMS revenues are on the brink of terminal decline as OTT messaging services such as WhatsApp and iMessage, along with social media messaging services, take traffic away from operators at a now alarming rate.

According to Informa’s research OTT messaging will double to more than 41billion messages per day being sent this way – more than twice the number of texts expected to be sent. This has massive implications for the mobile operators, which expect to generate $120billion this year from text messaging alone, says the reseach.

Many internet-based applications offer voice chat as well as text-based messaging services, including video links, which is striking at the core of the telecoms industry.

Pamela Clark-Dickson, senior analyst at Informa, said internet messaging was increasingly used as a substitute for SMS in a number of markets.

This had “a significant impact on mobile operators’ traffic and revenues in some countries, including Spain, the Netherlands and South Korea”. For example, text revenues in Spain have fallen from €1.1bn in 2007 to €758.5 million in 2011 as traffic declined from 9.5 billion messages in 2007 to 7.4 billion in 2011.

In the chat app market, start-ups such as WhatsApp, Viber and Kik are competing with services such as Apple’s iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger and Facebook’s Chat Heads.

“There can be no denying that over the past few years we have seen consumer behaviour, expectations and overall perceptions of messaging evolve,” says J F Sullivan, CMO at messaging specialist Acision. “Interestingly, our own research unveiled similar findings, revealing that 80% of UK Smartphone owners are now using Over-the-Top (OTT) or Instant Messaging (IM) services, with 76% of these using both SMS and OTT/IM messaging services together. It appears then that we are today witnessing a nation of ‘eclectic communicators’ with over three quarters of all smartphone owners using multiple messaging services simultaneously each day, with 40% admitting to using them all the time.”

THIS MONTH...News The latest news from the industry, along with analysis of what that news means, including:• 200m smartphones shipped in Q12013, Samsung booms 3• iTunes is 10: now music is almost totally digital 4• Bauer Group signs Velti to make 43 UK radio stations interactive 5• Luv2Chat shakes up ailing IVR chat business 6• Both Interested brings Bitcoin to UK online dating 6• 4G set to boost mobile shopping says IMRG study 7• Less than 5% of firms have mobile strategy, says Netbiscuits 8

Analysis EdItoRIAL Don’t kill SMS SMS is dying as consumers use more and more IM apps and OTT services. But it doesn’t have to be that way, believes Paul Skeldon 9

oPINIoN Misleading Marketing Digital marketing is all around us, but some unscrupulous affiliates are making the whole thing a bad experience. Can payments help, asks Rory Maguire? 11

ANALYSIS SMS Killer? As SMS hits the headlines with OTT services eroding its margins, Keith Mumford, director or product marketing and Kineto EMEA explains why it may be changing for good 12

ANALYSIS Getting connected With 4G coming online, are networks back in the game or they left it too late to beat off competition from Wifi and OTT services? Matthew Leach investigates 14

dIREctoRY The leading industry directory of services 18continued page 2>>>

Latest news at www.telemedia-news.comCatch our blog at www.telemedia360.blogspot.com

#DEVICES 200m smartphones shipped in Q12013, with Samsung on the rise

>>>from page 1 Chat apps killing MNOs SMS business

juniper research estimates that the number of smartphone shipments reached almost 200 million in Q1 2013, representing a growth of 30% from Q1 2012, with UK teens using more than US teens.

Samsung increased its smartphone market share by shipping an estimated 68 million smartphones and accounting for approximately 34% of all smart-phone shipments in the quarter. Sam-sung announced a steady pace in sales of the Galaxy SIII, and improved sales of the Note II for the quarter.

However, despite profits falling for the first time in a decade for Apple, the Cupertino based company posted better than expected iPhone sales at around 37.4 million, a 7% growth com-pared to Q1 2012.

With another product cycle due to be released soon Apple needs to innovate, with the next product release being critical in maintaining their position as innovation leaders. Apple will also need to ensure that they are attractive to

emerging markets to retain their title as global brand leaders.

LG posted its highest ever smart-phones sales quarter, shipping 10.3 mil-lion in Q1 2013, driven by sales of the Optimus G and Nexus 4. The company improved its smartphone market share from last quarter to reach just over 5%.

Huawei, which previously posted im-pressive sales in 2012 with the introduc-tion of a range of new smartphones and tablets, shipped an estimated 10 million smartphones. The company along with ZTE accounted for approximately 10% of the shipments market.

Nokia shipped 6.1 million smart devices in the fourth quarter and posted higher Lumia sales of 5.6 million compared to the previous quarter, a 27% rise. BlackBerry’s (previously RIM) recent results – which run to a different financial schedule – are expected to ac-count for almost 6 million smartphone shipments for Q1 2013. The Canadian company sold 1 million new Blackberry 10 devices.

Despite a positive start, the Black-Berry and Nokia ecosystem will indeed need some more time to grow and drive further competition and innova-tion within the smartphone and OS marketplace.

Following the news that Smartphone take up is higher among UK teens than US, Allen Scott, managing director for UK & Ireland at F-Secure says: “The UK’s teens are extremely tech savvy so it is no surprise that smartphone use in this age group is above and beyond the US market. As well as teaching their parents about the latest features and apps, teens are also masters at getting something for nothing. For example the explosion of the free BBM service in this group. Undoubtedly some will frame these findings in a context of fear – How can we ensure their safety? How do we ensure parental control? In real-ity, full parental control is a myth and arguably an infringement on our teens social freedoms. The real issue is around education.”

According to Sullivan, this evolution in the messaging space is a direct result of users today demanding a combination of requirements, including low cost, rich features and great service quality.

“Today, no single service on the market can provide this, and using SMS with OTT services like WhatsApp simultaneously can ensure the ubiquitous reach and reliability regardless of handset, network, or country which is a restriction of OTT services,” he says. “Going one stage further, we believe that operators have a great opportunity to launch one consolidated messaging app - given their customer relationships, network infrastructure, ability to interwork across platforms and control quality of experience, they are uniquely placed to offer a single rich, unified messaging service, combining what consumers love about SMS, with the richer user experience they have grown accustom to with OTT/IM services.”

Others see opportunities for operators lying in text services outside the developed world. Approximately 90% of Africa’s 500 million phone owners use feature phones and statistics from a TA Telecom survey looking at mobile trends in emerging markets show that SMS remains the preferred delivery mechanism of content on these devices and smartphones.

Moreover, 57% of users across Africa prefer for information to be pushed to them rather than obtained proactively (14%), hinting that SMS will continue to play a role even as other options offered by smartphone adoption increases as penetration of the devices rises to just 15% by 2015.

“It’s important not to assume that the same conditions for technology adoption exist in emerging markets as they do in the rest of the world,” says Amr Shady, CEO of Cairo-based mobile content provider TA Telecom. “The use of SMS in Africa is incredibly diverse and

becoming increasingly entwined with cultural habits. Breaking news mobile content, for example, has a 52% share of total content consumed in Arab Spring countries versus 7% in more areas with less political change. Faith and religious information represents 30% of content consumption across Africa. Similarly, sport has a consistent 10-12% share.”

But, says Shady, the rise of `over-the-top` chat-based apps should serve as a warning to operators to stay in touch with what customers want from their mobile phones or risk declining ARPU. By offering customers up-to-date value added services, he believes, operators can increase content services ARPU by between two and five times within a single month, such is the untapped demand.

“With appropriate content and effective delivery, both users and operators can continue to profit from SMS services in emerging markets.”

NEWS

#MUSIC 10 years of iTunes and digital is now the main way that music industry growsas the world celebrates 10 years of iTunes – and 20 years since CERN decided that the internet they had created should be free to use for everyone – one leading analysis firm has said that digital music channels could help artists capitalise on lucrative new markets.

A decade ago, the music world was reeling from the effects of Napster, the file-sharing website which was shut down amid growing legal battles. Apple’s iTunes service provided a solid income stream for labels and a user-friendly experience for consumers.

It is now the world’s biggest music retailer and has spawned a host of rivals, with the way we consume digital media being wholly rewritten.

Data from the first Digital Music Index

(DMI), published last September by Mu-sicmetric, the London and LA-based trend analysis firm, showed that where retailers like iTunes and legal music streaming services like Spotify were available, piracy

was reduced.Figures from the DMI, the most

expansive report on file-sharing and digital music consumption ever produced,

also highlighted the growth of

emerging music fan bases in countries

like Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.

As internet connection speeds increase around the world, millions will have instant access to any song they desire. This

means massive new markets will open up for artists who, once upon a time, would have been limited to a domestic market.

Gregory Mead, CEO of Semetric, which owns Musicmetric, said: “There’s no doubt that iTunes changed the game not just for music, but for retailing films, books and apps. It caught the crest of a wave just as the music industry sought a solution to the growing issue of file-sharing.

“Our data shows that piracy is still a ma-jor problem with billions of songs shared each year. But the good news is that retailers like iTunes and 7Digital along with streaming services like Spotify and Deezer can help reduce piracy.

“Streaming is becoming increasing pop-ular but we don’t see it eating into sales. What it does do is prove that demand for music continues to grow and having more ways to market your product can only be a positive thing.”

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#MEDIA Bauer Group signs up with Velti for interactive services for 43 radio stations in UKbauer media Group, home to many of the most recognizable and influ-ential radio brands in the UK, has signed an exclusive two-year mobile marketing partnership with Velti, to manage and maintain all mobile interactivity, market-ing and promotions for Bauer’s 43 radio stations, including powering all mobile messaging for brands such as Magic 105.4, KISS, Clyde 1, Key103, Radio City, Wave105 and Kerrang!.

This new partnership will help continue the strong and on-going relationships between Bauer Media and their audi-ences. Velti is running all of Bauer’s mobile messaging and interactivity, focusing on compliance and operational excellence. In addition, development of new concepts driving engagement and loyalty using data and customer relationship manage-ment (CRM) mechanics will be part of the services.

“Our aim is to develop closer relation-ships with our audience by providing mobile engagement opportunities and interactivity throughout our campaigns,” said Joanne Baldwin, Digital Commercial Director at Bauer Radio. “Our listeners expect the best from Bauer so we wanted to work with the best sup-plier in the market. Velti is a partner we can trust and rely upon to deliver these mobile marketing services while also guiding and advising us on how to best capitalize on technol-ogy advancements in the mobile and digital landscape.”

Rob Weisz, Vice President of Sales at Velti said, “Velti has worked closely with Bauer to ensure a seamless implementation across the entire port-folio of mobile interactive services. After launching the existing interactive services, we are working with Bauer to optimise

and develop elegant CRM and marketing mechanics using data generated from SMS interactivity, as well as our range of platforms and technologies. Bauer has great ambitions and is driven to push new

and exciting initiatives. We look forward to helping Bauer and its portfolio of brands capitalise on emerging trends that can drive real consumer value.”

NEWS

NEWS#CHAT Luv2Chat aims to shake up the IVR chat businessthe adult ivr chat business is a tough these days, with . fewer callers each year, each getting harder to reach out to. And those that do call in are rather promiscuous, perhaps unsurprisingly. But there are minutes out there to be had, you just have to work out how to get them. All while keeping in mind the advertiser’s cost of acquisition.

And this is what is driving Luv2Chat, which is looking to use all the technology and techniques available to make it the premier supplier of IVR chat to media com-panies in these tough recessionary times.

So what is the company doing that is so different? Expectations among call-ers is now very high and in order to be a successful live service provider these days you have to understand what the callers needs are.

“When a caller wants to chat to a MILF he doesn’t want to be presented with a menu that only contains the profiles of cute babes. Or if he calls looking for a watersports enthusiast or a posh wife he doesn’t want to hear a carousel full of aspiring Mums offering to pamper adult babies,” explains Frank Brzeski, from Luv-2Chat, part of Worldwide Digital Media.

“If you fail to meet the callers expecta-

tions in the important first few seconds the call will be lost and the advertisers money will be wasted.

To paraphrase Tony Blair, our priorities are retention, retention and retention.”

To secure this rention, Luv2Chat is employing the latest in behaviour analytics and cutting edge marketing to make sure that the right people are spending money of listening and enjoying chat services.

“For example, our ‘chat stars’ are encour-aged to send callers a FREE ‘watermarked’ MMS picture during a call as a reminder of who he has been talking to,” explains Brzeski. “It’s a marketing adjunct to the service designed to facilitate retention and it’s highly effective.”

He continues: “Luv2Chat is attracting the best girls in the business and fast becoming the operators live service pro-vider of choice as a result of our effective training, mentoring, support, incentive programmes, professionalism and the fact that we’re actually just really nice people to work with. So, Luv2Chat is now the preferred choice of leading media organi-sations in the UK and we are working to develop exciting derivatives of existing programmes and services to generate profitable new PRS revenue streams.”

#DATING Both Interested becomes first UK dating website to accept Bitcoinsocial datinG site Both Interested has become the first dating site in the UK to adopt Bitcoin to allow users to pay for a wider service.

The free Facebook app, originally launched on the 13th March 2013, offers a way for Facebook users to find out which of their secret crushes likes them back. The original app for Both Interested let love-struck Facebook users select up to three of their friends who they have a secret crush on and send them an anonymous mes-sage; notifying their crush that one of their friends likes them. If your crush likes you back, you are both emailed to let each of you know that you are both interested.

The introduction of Bitcoin now allows the selection of more than three friends to find out which of them likes you back- widening your chances of finding love. Facebook users can use the ‘digital wallet’

to upgrade sending messages to as many crushes as desired. And don’t panic, just like the original version, if your crush doesn’t feel the same your interest remains a complete secret. Neither your crush nor any other Facebook user will see if you’re unlucky in love.

Both Interested understands how dif-ficult it can be to take the step and tell someone you like them, never mind doing it in front of all your online friends so all your crush activity remains private and the fact that you are using Both Interested will not appear on your profile. Cue sighs of relief from bashful romantics around the country.

So, if you are interested in one, two, three or more of your friends, what’s stopping you now? Give Both Interested a try and secretly find which of them are interested too.

#RETAIL 4G set to boost mobile shopping believes IMRG

just over a third (34%) of smart-phone owners will be ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to purchase more items from their mobile device thanks to 4G tech-nology and faster internet connections, according to the latest eCustomerServi-ceIndex (eCSI) survey of 2,000 consum-ers from eDigitalResearch and IMRG.

eDigitalResearch and IMRG found that 39% of smartphone owners have already used their mobile device to make a purchase, a number which is only likely to increase with the introduc-tion of more 4G networks and locations later in the year.

Whilst adoption of 4G technology currently remains relatively low (accord-ing to the study, just 14% of smartphone devices have 4G capabilities although not all are currently active), 4G users on average are much more engaged with mobile technology than their 3G smart-phone owner counterparts.

Over three quarters (77%) of 4G users have accessed the internet from their 4G enabled device whilst out shopping, compared to just over half (53%) of 3G smartphone owners who have done the same. Meanwhile, 62% of 4G users have used a barcode scanner to see if they could get a product cheaper elsewhere, compared to just 1 in 5 (20%) 3G smart-phone owners.

With the imminent release of more 4G services across the UK, the results signal to retailers and brands the importance of strengthening their mobile strategy, from a well-rounded mobile optimised site, to an interactive store experience.

Derek Eccleston, Commercial Director

at eDigitalResearch says: “The introduc-tion of 4G technology looks set to have a considerable impact on retail markets. With faster internet speeds and a better all-round browsing experience, more and more shoppers are likely to turn to their 4G enabled device to help them through their multichannel purchase journey; whether that’s to read custom-er reviews, check product descriptions or compare prices. Whilst the thought of this might scare some, brands need to embrace this next step of the mobile revolution and ensure that their entire end-to-end customer journey across all channels is set for more mobile”.

Of those that have 4G technology available to them, and have used it, 43% reported a substantial difference to their internet browsing experience claiming that it was ‘considerably faster’, whilst another 39% said they found it ‘faster’.

Andy Mulcahy, Head of Communica-tions at IMRG adds: “Retailers are very aware that they need to accommodate the mobile customer in-store some-how and there are a range of possible options available to do so, but the general approach has been fairly cau-tious to date. Many have opted simply to provide wifi for the time-being until how their customers really want to use mobile in the stores becomes clearer. These survey results suggest that when 4G becomes more widespread, it will accelerate the need for mobile engage-ment in-store as the speed at which customers are able to interact with brands through technology is a key fac-tor in building trust in the channel.”

NEWS

#BRANDS Less than 5% of global firms have internal mobile strategy teams, warns whitepaperenterprises and brands will be dominated by mobility, cloud services and increasing customer engagement, yet only 5% of businesses currently have any sort of mobile centre of excellence, warns adaptive mobile company Netbiscuits.

“We estimate that less than 5% of global firms currently have an official and centralised internal competency centre for mobile,” Nicholas McQuire, Vice President, Mobile Enterprise Strategies explains. “While many have different degrees of commitment and intent around mobility, a strategic view on the technology is already taking hold in many firms. Therefore, the need for better internal organisation around mobility, to drive governance, standards and accountability, has become pressing. To best prepare for this change, to better manage risk and

critically, to drive greater organization-al value – whether enhanced customer loyalty and reach, revenue growth, efficiency or lower total cost of owner-ship - firms should look to implement mobility centers for excellence.”

“Building a mobile web strategy to meet the highly fragmented and grow-ing diverse mobile market is hard,” adds Michael Neidhoefer, CEO Netbis-cuits.

“We see many enterprises try to adopt a limited or scaled approach to their mobile web rollout or let multiple departments throughout the company build incongruent apps and sites that have no control, scale or repeatability, and all too often quickly realising that they have wasted time and resources while delivering a poor user experi-ence.

“We are at the point where every

company has to be prepared to have an excellent web experience for their customers and employees on every de-vice. If you don’t have a Device Context Information Service as the core of your CoE strategy, you’re certain to be deliv-ering a poor to broken web experience on many devices, and have wasted precious time to market.”

Commissioned by Netbiscuits, the full IDC whitepaper establishes the key drivers for mobility centres of excel-lence including app development and global BYOD, and highlights some of the organisational models already being implemented in the market’s infancy.

By outlining the role of IT in address-ing enterprise mobility requirements, it provides direction on how best to im-plement mobility centres of excellence to achieve desired business outcomes.

NEWS

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OPINIONFROM THE EDITOR

Don’t let SMS dieSMS is on the ropes thanks to social DM and OTT apps. But it needn’t die, but the operators have to move quickly to make it relevant

it comes as no suprise that SMS revenues for operators are set to be ham-mered by OTT messaging services such as iMessage and Whatsapp to name but two. I know I use both extensively and now find it quite shocking when I actually have to send a text. And if text is the only option, I now try and use Facebook messaging instead – es-pecially now I can flick my friends faces across the screen while waiting for a reply.

The rise of messaging technologies that act a bit like text is unsurprising: for starters its largely free, so of course people are going to use it. But I think it also reflects once again how out of touch with consumers network operators are. SMS became a mass market consumer tool pretty much by accident: it wasn’t designed to be used by users, it was for engineers. As more people used and started to want to share more stuff such as photos – as they increasingly were with email – operators gave us MMS. And it was rubbish.

Now operators face the same problem again. While consumers got used to doing more and more with email – but couldn’t do it via mobile easily – they wanted to do it with text. And the operators blew it. Now they have people wanting to do much more with their messages: share their location, share content and data, find out who else is near them and message them and generally start to combine all the thinks they can do with social and mobile and other apps into messaging.

And the operators appear once again to have blown it. At least if the recent research by Informa for the FT is to be believed (See front page). Users are flocking in droves to these free OTT messaging services, while social media DM is also eroding SMS numbers.

And it is set to cost the operators dearly. They are already seeing SMS profits drop and the decline appears, currently, to be exponential as more smartphones hit the market and more users switch messaging services to save money and get more functions.

But the operators don’t have to just stand by and watch it happen. SMS still has one great USP: its cross network and, so long as you can get a signal, it works. Operators need to look at how to capitalise on this and turn SMS into something far richer and far reaching for all users.

While there are moves to let text users update Facebook et al using text. The opera-tors need to look at how to develop an all encompassing messaging service, not lim-ited to 160 characters, that allows seamless sending of photos, movies and data, that can use location information and can be of variable charges – to allow for purchasing of things – to make it relevant and leverage its cross network, work anywhere capability.

Text need not die and it would be a shame if it did, but only the operators can save it now…

Editorial Editor Paul Skeldon paulskeldon@me.com | Sales & Marketing info@telemediamagazine.com | Production Director Annika Micheli annika@telemediamagazine.com | Publisher Jarvis Todd jarvis@telemediamagazine.com

To subscribe, please go to www.telemedia-news.comWhat we’ve been listening to GMF – John Grant | What we’ve been amused by The girl who took a bag of curry from London to Bedford on the train | Who we’ve been following #textfromdog | What we’ve been reading about Fracking| May 2013 will bring... happy days

For forks sake HAPILABS, a company whose self proclaimed mission is to “help individuals in the 21st century take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices”, is raising money through Kickstarter for the manufacture and distribution of the world’s first connected fork. the idea is that it keeps track of how fast you eat and tells you to slow down or stop as a way of controlling your calory intake... just what you need eh?

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OPINIONRory Maguire

we all know that mobile billing is a great service for consumers, allowing them to more easily pay for digital goods and services. And that Payforit is growing because of the way that the industry has worked together to make it as smooth as possible for consumers to go through the payment process, therefore producing better returns for the merchants.

However, as with any walk of life there is always one rotten apple that can ruin the whole barrel. In the case of mobile billing it is the so called affiliates that can drive traffic to a merchant’s site.

Many affiliates are good businesses creating referrals leads for their merchants, how-ever not all of them are. And those that aren’t have the potential to give us all a bad name.

Some time ago, I was searching the internet to see if I could find a digital version of a long abandoned vinyl album.

I found to my joy, that someone had digitised it and I could have the MP3 tracks for free – all I had to do was complete a survey. On clicking the “Survey” button, I was led to a sepa-rate site and a Payforit page for a subscription service. There was no link between the digital album, the survey and the subscrip-tion service, but they wanted to charge me a subscription of £8. Re-alising that I could send STOP after the first payment, I calculated that £8 was a rea-sonable price for the digitised album. I did not want the subscription product on offer, but after my £8 charge, that’s all I got and not the album. I had been misled.

In the complex way these relationships work the owner of the digital conversion probably received ad funds (cost

per click) from the survey site without delivering any goods. The survey site was an affiliate and was getting paid by the ad network which was then getting paid by the owner of the subscription service.

As an old hand in the industry, I felt humbled by being conned so easily, but as a regular consumer I would have complained. If there enough complaints like this then it raises red flags, possibly leads to a regulatory investigation and potentially gives us all a bad name.

This caused an OMG! moment for me because there are three facts of life in my “Cynics Guide to the Facts of Life”:

1. Advertisers cannot track a customer back to the affiliate they came from.

2. Ad networks don’t treat success with suspicion and

3. Marketing people fall asleep when their or-

ganisation’s regulatory people start to speak.

There is an indus-try education piece to be performed here for both consumers and merchants. There will always be people looking to use nefarious tactics to make money, but we

need to make sure that they don’t

damage the good name of the genuine

businesses that are us-ing and running Payforit

services.The PhonepayPlus consul-

tation paper into Misleading Digital Marketing may help with this

and help us to start the conversation. But as an industry we should not rely on the regula-

tor to “solve” this issue and we need to work to educate ourselves, our merchants and most of all our consumers.

MisleadingDIGITAL MARKETINGIn the digital world, afflitate marketing is increasing, but is it always such a good thing? Rory Maguire has had a bad experience with it and is not happy. So what can be done?

SMSAs SMS hits the headlines again as use of OTT messaging takes off, Keith Mumford, Director, Product Marketing EMEA at Kineto, explains why social media – as well as OTT – could really change the messaging landscape for good

ANALYSISMESSAGING

KILLER?

sms was never a service differentiator between car-riers. In fact it was the ubiquity and interoperability of text messaging that drove its success, although its usefulness as a substantial revenue generator has long since passed thanks largely to competitive forces.

Now, with the advent of a wide range of new, readily ac-cessible messaging services from third-party, Over-The-Top (OTT) providers, the mobile industry is, for the first time, experiencing an external challenge to its dominance in the mobile messaging space. Will this contest result in the rapid disappearance of the SMS from our screens forever, or is there a place for the text message within this new landscape for some time yet to come?

The death of SMS has been heralded several times over, particularly in highly penetrated markets such as the UK. Competition among carriers has effectively eroded SMS profitability, arguably to the point at which service providers would rather have subscribers eating into their data allow-ance to communicate (via social networks) than using the unlimited texts at their disposal. However, Ofcom reports that text messages remain the most-used method for daily com-munication with family and friends – 58% of UK adults do so at least once a day.

While most operators may wish to introduce more capable messaging services to compete with these OTT offerings, they must also maintain and preferably even enhance SMS to keep customers that value the messaging service interested through such a transition. Without mindshare from a loyal

SMS customer base it will be increasingly difficult to capital-ize on value-added service products that may ride on top of a new messaging platform, and hence more difficult to gener-ate incremental revenues. To see how this area might evolve, we must first look back several years.

Prior to the arrival of the smartphone, the mobile phone was a fairly bland device. Yes, feature phones added some new capabilities with cameras, games and other niceties; however, the number of actual communications options in the device was generally limited to those services the mobile operator provided. For the majority of users this meant easy access to any service they desired, just as long as it was either telephony, SMS and, if you were lucky, MMS for picture mes-saging.

The arrival of the smartphone has had a clear impact on the mobile operator. Users are no longer tied to just those communications services provided by their mobile phone company but can instead choose any available third-party service, paid for or free. Each time a user sends a message using WhatsApp or iMessage, the operator chalks up an ad-ditional lost revenue opportunity. And with the wide avail-ability of accessible private and public Wi-Fi services for OTT service delivery, there is small comfort for the mobile opera-tor looking to make up service revenue shortfalls with a jump in data usage over the cellular network.

What you will generally not find, however, on any modern smartphone is a specific, operator-branded application for SMS. Messaging services often appear as basic, un-branded

ANALYSISMESSAGING

and generic tools available on each smartphone, usually isolated from other communications services and with a separate application interface and message log.

In fact, that it is Vodafone, AT&T, Telefonica or any other mobile operator that is providing this high-quality, always available and critical service is mostly hidden behind layers of interfaces provided by the device OEM or by the OS manu-facturer, or both! Contrast this with WhatsApp where, when you send a message, the WhatsApp brand is staring you in the face. The result is that users begin to regard the providers of the basic communications services they are actually pay-ing for with little respect, and the service itself loses its value and status as an essential communications tool.

IN THE REAL WORLDOkay, so in the real world most users do actu-ally realize that it is their mobile service provider performing SMS handling, but it is likely that most rarely think about this fact at all. That is, until something goes wrong. It is not too strong a statement to say that the mobile operator’s own brand tends to be linked in our minds with the few times that problems occur, rather than the 99% of the time that everything works just fine. Is there any other business sector that is apparently as con-tented to have their brand primar-ily associated with the failure case?

As mobile phone companies plan to widen their services portfolio by offering IP-based messaging in competi-tion with the OTT providers, perhaps now is a good time to rethink the part that SMS can play in this new world.

The GSMA’s RCS-based Joyn approach and various home-grown operator platforms such as Libon (Orange France) and Tu Go (Telefonica) are amongst the first of the so-called Telco-OTT apps: mobile service provider applications that operate over any access network including Wi-Fi and are sometimes available even to users outside of their immediate subscriber base. Few of these applications, however, make any attempt to be inclusive of existing, high-quality mes-saging services such as SMS and are generally positioned as standalone apps for new services, rather than as a means of accessing current messaging capabilities too.

On the other hand, a Telco-OTT application that does integrate existing Telephony and SMS services together with new messaging products into a single, operator-branded experience can boast of advantages for both user and service provider alike.

FOR THE USERFor the user, this means a single interface into all mobile comms services including SMS, with an integrated conver-sation timeline showing all text and multimedia messages (SMS and IP/chat) for each contact in the address book. The user doesn’t have to think in advance what service he or she needs to select to message a particular contact, the applica-tion automatically chooses SMS or IP chat depending upon the other party’s range of capabilities and/or online status.

Other messaging service enhancements can also be considered, such as a single mes-

sage broadcast to multiple parties being delivered over the appropriate

network service for each contact automatically.

For their part, the service pro-vider now has an application that enables them to provide a wider range of comms services while at the same time putting the opera-tor’s brand and image squarely in front of the user for both new and

legacy products. Now the user can clearly appreci-

ate that each time they text a friend or colleague it is the operator pro-

viding the SMS service and, with each successful transaction, there is a positive

contact with the operator’s brand. Once the app is established, the operator may choose to add features such as network-based storage of all messages and conversa-tions at a low price to generate incremental revenues from the installed base.

Clearly, by integrating SMS into the user experience within a Telco-OTT application, the operator is making a clear state-ment that SMS remains an important service and is valued both by the provider and user alike. Including SMS as part of an enhanced communications services suite with a set of new features and a new, branded user interface will ensure that SMS survives for some time yet to come as an integral and complementary option within the overall messaging portfolio.

ANALYSISNETWORKS

GettingWith 4G coming online are mobile network operators back in the game or have they left it too late and will the rise of wifi and OTT services simply see them become dumber and dumber pipes? Matthew Leach investigates

CONNECTEDit has been a momentous year for network operators as the much-anticipated bidding process for the 4G spectrum came to a head. The winners were EE, O2, Vodafone, Three and BT, paying £2.34bn, well below the £3.5bn expected by the Treasury. The stakes and expectations are high with carri-ers under pressure to reverse declining revenues due to a fall in voice and SMS traffic.

EE was the first to launch 4G last autumn in major cities, us-ing existing airwaves, and paid £588.9m to extend coverage across the country. Despite stealing a march on its competi-tors, analysts have alluded to sluggish figures. Andy Sutton, principal network architect at EE, disagrees: “We set a goal to launch when we did, to change the direction of the UK mobile market, which was stagnating, in comparison to the rest of the world. Olaf Swantee [EE chief executive] had the vision and we lobbied to have our 2G spectrum liberalised to enable LTE (Long-Term Evolution) in the 1800MHz band. We hit the target and launched on time. We brought the auction forward and other operators would thank us for it.

“As far as talk of sluggish figures is concerned, it is such a competitive market that to reveal too much would only help the competition’s roll-out. Suffice to say, we are very happy with the uptake of 4G. We are on target to exceed our expectations and we are confident that when we do release numbers, people will be extremely impressed.”

Vodafone secured the largest amount of bandwidth, buying at 2x10MHz of 800MHz, 2x20MHz of 2.6GHz and 1 x 25MHz of 2.6GHz (unpaired) for a cool £791m. But Voda-fone was puzzled by the head start given to EE. A Vodafone spokesman said: “Vodafone UK never understood Ofcom’s rationale for allowing EE to launch a service before the 4G auction had taken place.” Telefónica UK (O2) has invested £550 million to secure 2x10MHz of spectrum at 800MHz. The acquisition of this block of spectrum will see O2’s 4G network provide indoor coverage to 98% of the UK population. BT paid £187m (2x15MHz of 2.6GHz and 1x20MHz of 2.6GHz) and Three forked out £225m (2x5MHz of 800MHz) to com-plete the bidding.

Derek McManus, Chief Operating Officer at O2, said: “We made a significant investment in 800Mhz spectrum to ensure we can deliver the widest and deepest possible reach for new services. But it’s not just about the purchase of spectrum. It’s about investing in innovation and infrastructure for future products and services that can utilise high-speed mobile access. It is these that will provide the greatest financial gains for businesses and the economy, and the sooner they are available for widespread use, the sooner these rewards will be realised for the UK.”

Network operators have already started to upgrade their core networks to offer 4G capability. O2’s McManus said: “We’re investing £1.5M every day in our network as a whole and we’ve been trialing and building our 4G capability for a number of years. This means, that as 4G becomes a nation-wide reality in the UK, we will have the infrastructure that can offer seamless connectivity to deliver innovative, digital services and experiences to our customers.”

EE’s Sutton said: “Since merging Orange and T-mobile to create EE, we have been busy with network integration to deliver the largest 3G network in the country and rolling out 4G/LTE infrastructure. We have currently rolled out to 37 cities and that will be at least 72 cities by the end of June.”

Vodafone’s recent acquisition of Cable & Wireless World-wide has given the operator 20,500KM of fibre optic network in the UK which it believes will provide the key differentiator to its competitors. A spokesman said: “This means we control more of our fibre backbone than any other operator and that means we can offer customers a quality of service that other operators can’t. We already use our intelligent core network to support innovative services such as Vodafone One Net and Vodafone One Net Express – which seamlessly integrate fixed and landline calls – and we monitor our entire UK network in real-time from our £5m Network Operations Centre (NOC) facility here at HQ in Newbury, Berkshire.”

But despite this investment, network operators must find solutions to the growing challenge of Skype or other VoIP services. The networks’ fall in revenues is not solely down to these OTT services. The harsh reality is that consumers are making fewer phone calls. The networks are also up against companies such as FooTalk, who launched a low-cost smart-phone-calling app billed as the ‘first global Facebook calling service’. The app enables users to sync with their Facebook profile and allows them to call friends and contacts for free, anywhere in the world.

Graeme Hutchinson, co-founder of FooTalk, said: “With Facebook connecting over 680 million mobile users, we want to offer people the chance to take this connection over and above simply sharing status updates and images. We believe this is the next step in how we will use social media to com-municate.”

FooTalk users are able to make free calls to other FooTalk users anywhere in the world, via Wi-Fi or mobile data. They can also make big savings on calls to mobiles and landlines, with a low cost call rates for calling internationally and do-mestically.

In March, O2 launched TU Go, an app which lets users make and receive calls and texts via a tablet, computer or smart-

ANALYSISNETWORKS

phone. It is the latest attempt by the telecoms industry to tackle competition from Skype and other third-party VoIP ser-vices, which do not normally charge for app-to-app call but need the user to buy credit if they want to call or send a text to a standard mobile number or landline. TU Go, instead of credits, deducts charges from the user’s existing call minutes allowance and works over Wi-Fi or 3G and 4G data connec-tions.

O2’s McManus said: “TU Go enables O2 customers to make and receive calls and text messages, using their existing mobile tariff, on a range of devices rather than being tied to one handset. Customers using TU Go will be able to take their existing number wherever they like, even away from their mobile. It lets you take a call on a tablet, pick up text mes-sages on a PC and have conversations in places with Wi-Fi coverage but no mobile signal.”

The threat of VoIP is not a new one. Last year, Ovum forecast OTT VoIP will cost telecom operators $479bn in lost revenue in the next eight years. But the scale of this threat was highlighted in February when Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom carrier, insisted the he was more concerned with competition from Microsoft’s Skype and Tencent’s Wechat services than rival mobile net-works in China like China Telecom and China Unicom.

The way in which Vodafone have taken the wind out of the VoIP’s sails is to offer ‘unlimited calls and texts’. Vodafone spokesman said: “We always ensure that customers have a choice of services, so all our Vodafone Red plans allow cus-tomers to use VoIP services (as well as tethering). Perhaps the most obvious way in which we are mitigating the potential impact of VoIP services on call revenues is through our Voda-fone Red plans which offer unlimited calls and texts.”

The network operators’ falling revenues are also down to their inability to monetise social media. Networks are strug-gling to find a way of becoming more than just pipeline. Services and content are increasingly been delivered on the mobile web by companies like Google and Facebook, but the carriers are not sharing the revenue being generated by that content. Despite this, EE insists it is happy to act as an enabler for content companies. Sutton said: “All mobile operators are trying to monetise data services. Social networks need to differentiate themselves, and this could happen as the mar-ket matures, with more collaboration. With regards to apps and content services, our role at this stage is to be the best enabler of those of our Facebook/Twitter users to get a better service on EE, and we are happy to do that. We are not about competing with these companies. There will be a lot of excit-ing new services, real-time services, which will be improved by, or enhanced, on EE, increasing collaboration.”

Vodafone, are equally upbeat about social media. Voda-fone’s spokesman said: “The social media phenomenon is a very good thing for mobile phone companies. It is helping

to drive the uptake of smartphones and mobile data. By the end of last year, 53.3% of all our 19.54 million customers had a smartphone – up from 41.5% a year ago.”

Faced with soaring mobile data demand, many networks and service providers are coming around to the idea of mak-ing more use of Wi-Fi. Most carriers are looking at Wi-Fi to offload data from their 3G and 4G networks, allowing them to use the unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi uses to reduce congestion on licensed spectrum in areas of dense usage. But it not just about offloading data. Carriers want to use Wi-Fi as more than a data connection. New gateway technologies and industry specifications make it possible to integrate Wi-Fi with the carrier’s core services, making value added services possible.

Sutton admits EE do use Wi-Fi for data offload but believes this is just the start. Sutton said: “We do have a Wi-Fi estate from our T-Mobile hot spots. But, moving forward, we have been expanding Wi-Fi’s role. At present, that is primarily data offload but we have come to realise that this is not the optimal way of using Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is part of the solution but it needs to be integrated with the core networks. The key to this is the Evolved Packet Core, which gives greater capability for not only the cellular network but also the Wi-Fi network. By integrating Wi-Fi as part of an optimal network solution, it will enhance the user experience.” Despite these encouraging sounds from Sutton, Wi-Fi’s inherent limitations as a short-range wireless technology mean the cost of delivering high capacity; reliable Wi-Fi coverage is not cheap.

ANALYSISNETWORKS

Big talk of WiMax being a viable alternative to LTE for 4G services seems to have quietened. When comparing the two technologies, under the same circumstances, LTE promises better download/upload speeds for the user, resulting in lower cost per bit to the operator. Muralidhran Nadarajah, Head, Xchanging Malaysia explains: “The combination of LTE’s increased spectral efficiency and flex-ibility, added capacity and simpler network architecture should offer a very cost effective value proposition. WiMax is a good technology but is still paralysed by the unavail-ability of devices from major vendors which can work on multiple networks. LTE on the other hand has seen a huge market adoption.”

This lack of devices has been the main barrier for the mass adoption of WiMax and EE’s Sutton believes LTE is the right choice. He adds: “EE has no plans to utilise WiMax as we favour the 3GPP route. LTE is a more established ecosystem, there is more demand and it is able to deliver at the right price point. WiMax is for more niche applications, not many of these in Western Europe. On the consumer side of things, iPhone and other high-end smartphones are not available on WiMax, but they are on LTE. If you want to deliver a compel-ling range of devices, LTE is the way to go.”

Operators are keen to recoup their massive investment

in the 4G revolution and third-party content providers and aggregators will be waiting with bated breath to see what opportunities these enhanced capabilities will bring.

O2’s McManus believes the changes will be far-reaching. He said: “2013 is the year that 4G will become a nationwide reality in the UK. Our industry is making a huge investment in this new technology, which has the potential to transform many aspects of our everyday lives, from how we do busi-ness, to how we go shopping, to how we relax.”

McManus adds: “Enhanced bandwidth and throughput ca-pabilities will not only ensure that 4G is fast, but will usher in a new era of bandwidth-intensive mobile apps. The apps will be able to become more ‘heavyweight’, akin to the software that you find on your computer, which opens up a wealth of opportunity for developers.”

Although McManus is cautious about second guessing the way businesses and entrepreneurs make use of the new platform, he insists that “building a network now so that high speed corporate LAN access becomes the norm” will see a new wave of app innovation and smart business solutions.

EE’s Sutton believes LTE is a “game-changer”. He said: “Content providers will not be so constrained by what they can do on the network and will be able to develop apps that

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ANALYSISNETWORKS

can take us in a new direction. The innovations will come from third parties, but the enhanced uplink of 4G/LTE has a big role to play.

Sutton said: “Full mobile broadband services available mean that third-party services and innovations can be opti-mised. The services will take advantage of the 4G networks. The advantage of having access to a lot of services for free means that, in time, these might move on to a premium model whereby, if the quality is there, consumers may buy services straight from the third-party aggregator.

“EE 4G/LTE is an enabler for a great OTT experience. LTE is so different, it has low latency download, increased capacity, and an enhanced uplink which will lead to a whole new era of services.”

4G, we are told, will also have more practical uses than creating the latest compelling app that will change people’s everyday lives for the better. O2’s McManus said: “Beyond mobile phones, the effects of 4G on our everyday lives will be felt across a huge variety of industries and sectors. This could be a water company monitoring its network for leaks with sensors and automatically notifying the nearest repair team vehicle in a matter of seconds. For emergency services, real-time video streaming from incident locations will allow for better remote management and monitoring from control

rooms. In health care, the greater coverage and data capacity delivered by 4G will kick-start growth in remote monitoring and assessments, or the ability for on-call health profession-als to respond to alerts and access records and files wherever they are.”

Rhian Kelly, CBI Director for Business Environment has high hopes 4G will give the economy the boost it so desper-ately needs. She said: “Digital networks are as vital today to growing the economy as road and rail links. Faster con-nections will drive private investment, underpin jobs, and spark innovation, particularly with small firms. Globalisation means firms are increasingly ruthless in choosing where to base their operations, so the roll out of 4G services will be key to attracting inward investment as well as winning busi-ness overseas.”

The forecasts seem to back the belief that exciting times lie ahead for operators, content providers and third-party aggre-gators. Juniper Research believes 4G LTE service revenue will exceed $340bn by 2017, representing over 30 per cent of to-tal operator billed revenues. The opportunities are bountiful as McManus says: “Whether it’s high-definition video stream-ing, real-time online mobile gaming, or high speed corporate LAN access, it’s crucial that the UK starts the journey this year on taking advantage of the true potential of 4G.”

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