It’s pretty safe to say that if you get three mobile operators in a room to talk about spectrum auctions, they won’t agree about much. But what they are likely to agree on is that it’s the regulator’s fault, whatever it is.
For those of us who spend our lives in the bubble of the international telecoms industry it was not exactly a massive surprise to see the news that Chinese vendor Huawei would be blocked from bidding for work on the country’s A$38bn National Broadband Network (NBN).
Customer demand for cost-effective IT systems which promise data monetization, content and partner management capabilities and above all else fully end-to-end OSS/BSS integration, was the driver behind the acquisition of Convergys’ BSS business, according to the management of Netcracker. The strategy however highlights the continuing trend towards single, fully-integrated platform solutions and away from open, standardized interfaces.
Pay-TV vendors received another major shock this week as Cisco, one of the foremost providers of telecoms infrastructure, bought NDS, a leading middleware and CAS provider.
M2M and connected devices were an important part of the CeBIT fair in Hannover, which took place this week – exhibitors were keen to show off their solutions for everything from vending machines to shipping to healthcare. While a section of one of the exhibition halls was given over completely to M2M, many of the telecoms operators present also devoted space in their own stands to their connected solutions.
Was there a press release or presentation at this year’s Mobile World Congress that didn’t mention customer experience at some point if only in passing? Of course the problem with customer experience – or CX seeing as we all love an acronym in this business – is that it can mean everything or nothing at all. Even slapping management on the end to give you Customer Experience Management (CEM) leaves you with a pretty slippery term.
While technology, in the form of smartphones, tablets and other new devices, has undoubtedly been a driver of change in the mobile industry, the take-away from Barcelona’s annual tech-fest that is the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress, has too often been that networks are struggling to continue delivering profitable services while managing the challenges wrought by increasingly data-hungry users.
Ever passed the time on a plane journey trying to think of new objects that could conceivably join the growing Internet of Things? These days, the flight would be short for the game to be worthwhile – there aren’t so many devices left that someone, somewhere isn’t already connecting.
My first Mobile World Congress is almost over and it has been one that I won´t forget any time soon. It has been hectic, and on Day 1, I was wondering what I had let myself in for. Now though, I´m looking back at the week gone by, and it has been absolutely fantastic.
Neelie Kroes today issued a stern warning to Vittorio Colao, Vodafone and the wider European operator community with an unexpectedly personal riposte to Vodafone complaints about “auto-pilot regulation” in the European telecoms marketplace.
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