EMOBILE: the mobile broadband revolutionist - Huawei

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Tao of Business Internet puzzle How can operators solve it? Operators are in quite a predicament with value-added Internet services. By and large, they are too big and slow on the uptake, not able to move as quickly as the small and lean development companies. Cooperation is their only option if they want to thrive in this ever changing and progressive environment. By Kevin Lee from In-Stat After the rousing success of the iTunes model of “Device + Connected Service”, Apple keeps playing to a full house around the world. One month after the service was launched, users of the Apple Store, the a p p l i c a t i o n a n d s o f t w a re platform of iPhone, downloaded more than 60 million programs, generating a total of about USD30 million in sales (1 million dollars a day average). By the third quarter 2008, Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones, with sales of USD4.6 billion and became the third largest handset maker in the world after Nokia and Samsung. A remarkable achievement considering they did it by offering only two handset models. Also, 77% of iPhone users say that they use more mobile Internet services than before due to having an iPhone; and among the top 10 services frequently used, six are mobile Internet applications. It is safe to say that iPhone is the frontrunner in the mobile Internet race with operators trailing behind. Evolution of Internet consumption When talking about mobile Internet services, it is important to understand the eco-system and the evolution of consumption patterns. Fragmentation of time: Most people have limited time and increasingly more content is trying to attract attention. The number of media types has grown from four in the 1980s to eighteen now. That is a lot of different media trying to capture the web surfer. Voluntary evolution: If you carefully study the differences between telecom networks and Internet networks, you will find that the two types of networks are like “voluntary evolution” vs. “intelligent design”. The nature of the Internet resembles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which emphasizes the “survival of the fittest”, while the telecom environment is suitable for intelligent design. The Internet generally uses some basic tools like IP, HTML, XML, etc. for diversified terminal applications. Only a few applications will evolve on a large scale and the speed of extinction is just as rapid as expansion. Voluntary evolution can be controlled by no one. It is characterized by progressive evolution, local evolution, a prosperity period and an outbreak period. Other characteristics include: genetic drift, such as VoIP coming from IM; evolution under environmental pressures, for example, rich Internet content leads to the prevalence of search and community networks. Google clearly sees the life cycle of “born and die” on the Internet and encourages small engineering teams to develop new applications and test them in the Google Labs. An application will graduate if it has sufficient users, or it will be left to die; survival of the fittest in action. Internet survival: The Internet has indisputably become the first media. This is particularly true along with the emergence of video sites, and users can find a lot of 15 Win-Win / FEB 2009
interesting video content on the Internet. Currently, more users are on the Internet than watching TV during prime time every day. It is no wonder that many professionals have an email complex. The first thing they do at a place with a network connection is to check their emails. Grassroots: In the mobile Internet field, operators have limited strength. It is not viable for operators to depend on their own resources for innovation. True innovation comes from the grassroots and a large number of small companies. Currently, users are not satisfied with only getting content from the Internet. They produce content of their own; examples include the content, editing, ranking and reviews on some most popular video websites. Grassroots involvement pools the wisdom of ordinary Internet users. One example is Goldcorp, a mining company based in Toronto that was having trouble locating exploitable gold and launched the “Goldcorp Challenge”. Contestants found 110 possible mining claims, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 percent of the new claims yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated, an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. Social networking: Since Internet content is so rich, users gather as communities and conduct and interact on specific topics. This is the basis of the wildly-popular social networking. For instance, an active user of Facebook on average, stays in the community for over 3 hours, far more than the time he or she spends on traditional portals. Internet predicament The changes in Internet consumption modes have brought new challenges to operators. Operators have endeavored to take the lead in mobile Internet services, for example, proactive promotion of handset customization (from hardware, operating system to chipsets). However, operators have little control over terminals. Innovation and operation related to handsets are controlled by handset makers. The appearance of the iPhone remarkably improved the use of the mobile Internet for users, but operators do not have the ability to realize their ambitions. Most operators lack comprehensive knowledge of the Internet industry and the operation of the Internet industrial chain. Moreover, operators lack the ability to innovate and cannot offer standardized products to meet the needs of the majority of their subscribers. Customers place more importance on participation and information selection. Operators have to cope with the “Long Tail” of the Internet. In fact, the Internet usage habits are established and the emerging mobile Internet merely uses another display and transmission pipe. Therefore, operators have to depend on cooperating with terminal manufacturers. For instance, China Mobile works with Samsung making custom terminals and even wants to launch its own handset operating system called the “Ophone”. In this environment, handset makers are given more power when negotiating with operators. Once handsets are in the hands of consumers, the manufacturers can use them to promote their own services, without paying attention to the operators, like the Apple Store does. On the other hand, operators have to take advantage of being the transmission pipe. Mobile operators dislike being called data pipes. While they suspect that certain risks on the Internet will cause them to only be data pipes, just providing the connection for handset users to access data and doing nothing related to the Internet. If this is the wave of the future, then mobile operators are re-treading the path of fixed operators in an uneconomical manner. From the commercial efficiency per bit (revenue per bit for operator), broadband access has much lower commercial efficiency per bit than SMS text messaging. In 2007, the revenue of China Mobile from SMS was approximately USD6.1 billion, while the revenue of China Telecom for Internet service was over USD4.5 billion. Compared with SMS, broadband generates an astronomical amount of traffic. Mobile operators do not want to tread this path when the bandwidth of mobile data is realized on the wireless spectrum that is already a scarce resource. Faced with these conditions, operators first think of building a portal and only allow handset users to access the Internet through the portal. The portal of China Mobile is called Monternet. However, this mode was soon sloughed off and increasingly more third party mobile Internet websites have emerged. The “surf” key of iPhone allows users to easily access third party websites. Portals like the walled gardens of telecom networks will most likely not succeed and possibly could even become extinct. If this mode is not successful, operators have to improve the value of data traffic by enhancing the value of information through the telecom channels, becoming “information experts” instead of just “communication pipes”. BizNavigator, Best Tone of China Telecom, and 12580 of China Mobile are all geared for precisely this type of transformation. However, such services cannot be said to be totally successful, because it is difficult for these value added services to be standardized like a telephone. Users have changing and diversified needs and operators cannot respond swiftly to meet their mercurial needs. Operators are in quite a predicament with value added Internet FEB 2009 / Win-Win 16
Page 1 and 2: Voice from Operators Perspective Ta
Page 3 and 4: 02/09 Initial issue Editorial Spons
Page 5 and 6: Tao of Business 25 AIS keeps Thaila
Page 7 and 8: Bharti Airtel is on a journey of ex
Page 9 and 10: managed services managed by vendors
Page 11 and 12: We also focus on new business oppor
Page 13 and 14: EMOBILE the mobile broadband revolu
Page 15 and 16: Now aided by very small, briefcase-
Page 17 and 18: Perspective Huawei Views on Future
Page 19: equire broad geographic coverage. W
Page 23 and 24: Tao of Business Inspiration from In
Page 25 and 26: The entire network solution is not
Page 27 and 28: In recent years, governments around
Page 29 and 30: ackyard,” one engineer said. Just
Page 31 and 32: As the largest and leading mobile o
Page 33 and 34: PCCW builds a CDMA broadband bridge
Page 35 and 36: generation BTS. Based on advanced p
Page 37 and 38: Managing the largest network expans
Page 39 and 40: and downlink. To remedy the situati
Page 41 and 42: In Paris, London, Belgium, and even
Page 43 and 44: England, France, and Spain). The ol
Page 45 and 46: Few people are familiar with China
Page 47 and 48: MegaFon transforms and prepares for
Page 49 and 50: network resources must be maximized
Page 51 and 52: MANIA In April 2008, Vodafone Roman
Page 53: Reach for the sky and transform you

EMOBILE: the mobile broadband revolutionist - Huawei

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