It’s perhaps too easy and fashionable to trash multilateral operator initiatives – to think they are doomed to failure from the word go. But their dismal track record supports such cynicism. And after attending Informa’s WAC Focus Day in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, one couldn’t help but leave the event with a pessimistic view of the prospects for the Wholesale Applications Community, or WAC for short.
When 24 of the telecoms world’s biggest players announced the formation of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) at the Mobile World Congress in February 2010, it’s fair to say the pundits’ response was overwhelmingly sceptical. Peters Suh, WAC CEO, tells Telecoms.com such scepticism was misplaced.
The Wholesale Applications Community has received a further boost with the news that Chinese vendor Huawei has provided a WAC-enabled app store for the Philippines’ leading mobile operator, Smart. Crucially, Huawei will also be providing a compatible handset to the carrier.
On its first anniversary, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), the alliance designed to build an open platform for delivering applications to all mobile phone users, finally announced its commercial launch. But is the operator-led app store initiative too late to the party?
The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), the alliance designed to build an open platform for delivering applications to all mobile phone users, has expanded its member base with the addition of 32 new organisations from across the industry. The body also announced the availability of the WAC 1.0 specification on Monday.
Popular nursery rhymes often have quite gruesome origins and typically tell the tale of some unfortunate character or event from history. Not that there’s anything gruesome about the origin of the Wholesale Applications Community, otherwise known as the WAC, of course. But the Informer fears the initiative might come to an unfortunate end after this week’s developments.
It all sounds impressive. So could operators prove sceptics wrong and successfully pull off a multilateral initiative of this scale where so many others have failed before? Could operators have found the answer to fighting back against the huge lead taken by mobile-industry outsiders Apple and Google on the mobile applications front?
The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) on Wednesday completed its formation as a corporate entity and cemented its partnership with the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL). The company also outlined the business models it will pursue, putting it some distance behind competing platforms.
When we think of mobile communication there are a few images that flash in ones mind: one of the ongoing ...
Ericson is turning out to be a dissapointment especially in the way they are handling emerging markets:case in point - ...
Dimitris,you have it completely right with Operators focussing on increasing performance which will improve cusotmer experience. That is why ...
Dawinderpal, you are right that mobile operators are facing many challenges while transitioning to the next generation of backhaul on ...
Loading ...