Access


The shop sells more if its doors are open


John Boniface, of IPL, advises telecoms operators to look outside for new ideas B


lueVia (Telefonica), Betavine (Voda- fone), the OrangeAPI, the oneAPI... all of these are attempts by the telecom-


munications industry to open up networks to third parties. T e idea is that the operator gives controlled


access to, say, an SMS service, and a third party which uses it for some new innovative service gets a bit of the revenue that using the network generates. T e operator-specifi c ones try to be diff erent from each other; the oneAPI tries to unify and standardize such access. But why would you, as an operator, want to


open the doors to your network to strangers any- way? Well, there are fi nancial reasons, business reasons and technical reasons why operators are doing just this and in turn maximizing their business capabilities by using the network as a platform to run a service. When the networks were originally built,


it was to support services that were largely de- signed by the telecoms industry itself. T at in- dustry has now built powerful facilities and has access to huge amounts of data, but the core network is increasingly being seen as a mere commodity. Making new money from it needs imagination; technology is evolving constantly and it is no longer just mobiles that require a network to connect. T e growing use of tablets and other hand-held mobile devices requires network connectivity.


Niche services Most of the services one could imagine requir- ing a network are just too niche to be fi nan-


About the author


John Boniface is sector consultant in telecommunications and digital media at the IT services company IPL (www. ipl.com)


cially viable for an operator to build himself. For instance, an SMS service for the RSPB to report on the location of tagged birds or a location-based service for fi nding wandering dementia patients – both are immensely valu- able to their own user communities, but not suffi ciently large to warrant an operator build- ing them. But get enough of them, and use third parties to build them, and it becomes a fi nancially attractive proposition, low-risk and low-investment. In fact, get enough of them and you can stop looking for the one killer app.


Network-agnostic For the most part, people are network-agnostic: they either don’t know or don’t care who runs the boxes in the data centre and the masts on top of the churches that let them make their calls. But suppose, in a fl ight of fancy, that one


of the operators lets the RSPB use its network to run a bird observation and tracking service. Suddenly every member of the RSPB wants a phone that runs on your network. And once they’ve turned to you for one service, you can ply them with others. Succeed with a small sale of a new innovative service, and it’s always easi- er to make a second bigger sale and migrate the client to dependency on your network. But where are the high-value customer rela-


tionships held? T ey are no longer held by the operators; rather they are held by the service providers that happen to deliver their services using an operator’s network (do you even know which operator your 3G Amazon Kindle uses?) But, as a telco, do you have an expert in e-read- ers? And one in telemedicine? Fleet manage- ment? Wildlife population tracking? All those fi elds could generate innovative products and services and deliver them using your network.


Gambling on trends For a telco, developing new ideas and trends can be a gamble. For example, a few years ago more than one of the UK telcos thought that MMS was going to be the next big thing and mistakenly over-specifi ed and over-resourced


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its new sparkly MMS services. Well, MMS wasn’t the next big thing and capex and opex were wasted on it. So why risk capex on a new service if you


aren’t sure it has a rich and lucrative future? In- stead, you could make available (nearly for free) your existing resources and facilities for other people to use. If you did that, then you didn’t put much eff ort in, and you haven’t much to lose if it goes wrong.


Global community A company’s own staff alone cannot possibly provide the development resource, or provide the sales routes and new market ideas of a glo- bal development community. T e world’s population has recently hit seven


billion. Let’s imagine that 1 per cent of 1 per cent of 1 per cent of 1 percent of that seven billion engages. T ere’s another 70 developers you’ve just recruited without spending another penny from your salary budget. Or look at the early co-operative development of Linux. You have access to an eager, collaborative and in- novative developer community. And it’s enor- mous. T ere is so much information available that


only a network operator has access to and so many facilities that only a network operator of- fers. However, much of it is more valuable in the hands of a non-telecoms service provider than the network operator itself. By exposing its capabilities to service providers, the network operator keeps a hand in the valuable business propositions that can be created. You only have to look at the case studies


on the websites of any of the APIs mentioned above and you’ll see some intriguing and inno- vative ideas. But no matter how specialist, how niche or even how bizarre some of them look, they are all making money for their host opera- tors. T e operators with the imagination not to succumb to the ‘dumb bit-pipe’ argument will recognize that they have a resource with infor- mation and facilities ripe for harvesting. T ey’ll be the ones who open the doors to their net- works widest.


LAND mobile January 2012


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