Folks: I attended to this speech by Mr Alfred Mockett, former executive at the mobile phone division of BT. I thought this speech summerised exactly what technology means to all of us. Though nothing disability-specific, I thought this speech highlights some of the emerging technology trends and that way, is useful to the tech-observers among us. Sorry for having posted such a large speech, but it's useful and so thought it fine. Here it goes:
Speech by Alfred Mockett: Broadband means many things to many people. In the US the total length of broadband business is being controlled by cable operators, with DSL coming second; in Europe the latter is the leading technology. Whereas in South East Asia, broadband remains the primary access technology. Telecom operators around the world are broadband enabling their phones, for the customers to access the Internet anytime, anywhere. No matter where you live, the trend is clear: high-speed Internet access is the way to go and it is changing the way people work. Last year, the total number of broadband use grew by 30 per cent; the total of 280 million broadband users. It is going to grow at that pace and in 2010, we are going to have 400 million broadband users around the world. Now, to put things into perspective, let's take the example of Google. The Internet service provider receives a billion information request every day and that volume accounts for just one percent of the total Internet traffic. And in the UK a milestone event happened this year -for the first time, watching television, as the most popular form of leisure activity, was surpassed by Internet surfing. Whether this is progress or not is a matter of opinion, but there is a great impact of broadband both at home and in businesses. The countries with the most broadband users are, obviously, the US, UK and Japan. But, if you look at the rapidly growing areas that would tell a different story. You have Greece, Romania, Ukraine, and, yes, India. India, I am told, is growing at the rate of 20 per cent per month. That may mean a small user base -perhaps two million-but the price is attractive -six bugs compared to 20 or 25 bugs elsewhere. China is the second in the countries with most number of broadband users with 52 million and is growing at 90 percent per year. With this kind of growth, it will surpass the US as the country with maximum number of broadbabnd users this year. But, even with that kind of growth rate, China is still a potential market, as the penetration rate is just 3.4 percent of the population. While the broadband is going through this phenomenal growth, it is also going through a massive transformation. Telecom operator have to resort to business that are completely different from traditional telephony business such as video-on-demand and VOIP services. In Europe, a project to transfer even the telephony services into broadband and replace the existing PSDN services is in its near completion. Last year, BT (British Telecom) had announced that a million of its customers are making phone calls using VOIP services. In the US six million homes switched from traditional phone services to cable-based telephone services- that again is another the firsts for the industry. Even the traditional print and broadcast services have changed their business models -some of the leading TV channels in the US have tied up with Microsoft to give access to their web programmes. The telecom companies all have recognised need for different services -the tripple play is not enough and so they are getting into quad play. A survey in 2006 by research firm IDC revealed that 44 percent of customers preferred using mobile phones to make calls than the landlines -in the survey's 50 year history, mobile phone has overtaken landline services for the first time. All the major telecom players are either setting up their wireless divisions or trying to buy back the ones they had sold off years ago or spending money to get back into the wireless business. There are some real monstors in the US like AT&T; BT, France Telecom, Deutsch telecom -all have their wireless business along with the traditional landline business. In the US all the cabel companies are answering the call to the wireless demand -Fox cabel has started its own wireless division, while Time Warner Cable is planning to introduce wireless in all its divisions. And here in India, BSNL has tied up with Microsoft to offer its applications. In the past, it was enough to have a foothold in one of these services, but today nothing shorter than quadplay is enough to sustain the business. These progresses are of course the tip of the iceberg, for the real end goalis actually to provide a comprehensive package of services and contents which the customer will be able to access anytime, anywhere, no matter what device he has at that moment -mobile phone, PDA or even the gaming consort. This is the way the industry is converging today. Moving content across the network seamlessly has been talked about for ages now. Of course, this is turning out to be a reality in recent times. But the sheer complexity of it all is keeping it more a vision than a reality. Hardware venders and bodies like the Wi-Fi alliance and the Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance are now working to making this vision a reality. The interesting thing in this convergence is the investment operators are making to migrate to next generation technology. Last year, the number of Fiber opticusers grew by 54 per cent; the number of Internet users through fiber optics was 30 million. Though it is comparatively smaller than the traditional DSL and twist-pair cabel, demand is likely to grow along with the need for higher bandwidth to access the content. For example, the new digital TV services require a bandwidth of 3MBPS and High-Definition TV or HDTV may require anything north of 8MBPS, which is tough to achieve with twisted-pair. A recent Wallstreet Journal article suggested that the amount of HD video that would flood utube users is enough to double the Internet traffic -just one company, with one application still in its infancy, look at the effect it can have on the market. WIMAX is another technology that is particularly applicable in countries like India. The technology has its origins in 2001, when it was defined as the wireless technology that is designed to address the last-mile connectivity issue and an alternative to DSL. In fact, it is proving to be much more than that. Today, it is running head-to-head with 3G all UMTA and CDMA 2000 networks. WIMAX has several applications -it can connect hotspots, it can connect various networks to give comprehensive connectivity. It has its application in point to point high speed data, it can leapfrog to provide local access in countries like India, where the last mile connectivity is continued to be an issue because of the remoteness of certain regions and the difficulty in connecting 650,000 villages. It can be the de-centralised, deployment friendly way of providing internet access to the rural population. There are two challenges -getting the spectrum from the government and evolving a business model that ensures services reach the rural hinterland. WIMAX should be able to achieve both. However, the subscriber base I just 250,000 and equipment sales is just $ 400 million -which means WIMAX is still in its infancy. While in the US cities like San Jose, San Francisco and Philadelphia have partial WIMAX solutions, Taipei is the only city in the world which is fully WIMAX enabled. I hear from the government here that Bangalore could be the second WIMAXED city. Investments in the convergence are quite staggering. In the next few years, BT will be spending 10 billion pounds to lure its customers into the next generation network technology. Telecom Italia say it will invest eight to nine billion Euros in the next ten years. In the US the AT&T is going to spend $ 750 million this year alone to accelerate its fiber-based IP services. Telecom operator in Korea is investing heavily to provide anytime, anywhere, broadband access and even mobile operators are investing on 3G and beyond to equip themselves for the transformation and are also adding Wi-Fi capabilities to the phones. But, despite all this, the success of broadband hinges on a very important point -delivering a compelling customer experience. This means having services that value to the customer and services that the customer can consume easily and simply. The best example for that is technologies like Blackberry which have made customers adictive. The above mentioned qualities have actually transformed Blackberry from a high-level business tool to a social phenomena. That social phenomena has even lead to a popular medical condition, the Blackberry thumb, the soring of the thumb due to excess usage of the device. As a result of the phenomena, market for smartphones grew last year by 75 per cent and the users' numbers went up to 280 million. Similarly utube and My Space have created markets for online video sharing and social networking that never existed a few years ago. Blogs have created a new dimension and is used by teenagers and professional journalists alike. The tipping-point in these cases happened when someone created a tool that instantly appealed to the mainstream users. Let's take another example of a service expected to take-off but customers are yet to use it in a large scale: mobile videos. There are reasons for that, the screen of television at home are getting larger and High-Definition videos are becoming quite possible and so, customers don't see more back for their buck as far mobile video is concerned -it isn't seem to be giving compelling user experience. These are smaller , whereas customers can go home and surf around 500 channels of high-quality. What is so compelling to pay for a limited content on a small screen? So, I don't see a tipping-point here. Another application in the piping for long is home network. The technology is available to move images, music and other content between different devices from room to room but the reality of making it all work is proving to be very difficult. So, home technology appeals to the savviest of technology users today. Up to half of the home networking devices are returned to the venders with no faults to be found. Simply put, they are too complex to install and activate and customers couldn't handle it. But that may change. In the consumer electronic show in Las Vegas Sony announced that it is going to attach networking with the televisions and customers can get the content by just pressing a button. When we talk about technology, we can't under-estimate the importance of consumer experience. For example, AT&T has said that its IPTV roll out isn't going on as predicted -just last year they announced with much fan fair that it would have 18 million IPTV users by the end of 2007. And a few months ago, they quietly announced that it's going to be eight million. This is due to a problem with the middleware. Not that it doesn't work, only that it is just so clumsy. The point to be remembered is that mainstream consumers are not interested in technology for technology sake. Yet the continuing growth of the broadband suggest that they are interested in what they can do with the digital devices that can become part of their life. All that they want is to access their music, photos, text messages and so on wherever they are and with whatever devices they have. Unfortunately delivering services through all those disparate sets of devices is anything but easy today. The other problems is that these devices are growing incredibly complex -cellphones of today have several features we just don't use. And using smartphones,service providers are realising that it is six times more costly to maintain them than the traditional phones. Our service providers say the explosion of Blackberry services is causing to double the seats in their call centres every six months. That is the bowlway of activities that comes with the complexities of smartphones. Set Top Boxes and even gaming consuls are getting complex. This places a huge demand on the consumers, who already have so many demands in their personal lives. The emortional difference the device makes is the key to attracting customers to technologies. In short, rather than providing similar technology services, it is imparative for technology venders to add crucial differentiators that can enhance customer experience and keep him to the service. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Syed Imran Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 8:56 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AI] Nokia 5500 What is third generation phone? ----- Original Message ----- From: "sweety bhalla" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 4:33 AM Subject: [AI] Nokia 5500 > Hi all, > Nokia 5500 sports, this mobile phone is listed on nuance's website and > will work with talks. > Me and one of my friends willing to by this phone after getting attracted > towards it's very good features. Moreover, it's cost is just RS. 6800! And > its > a third generation phone! > A Month ago, it's cost was around 13 K but now it is available on very > cheap price. > There is a bit confusion about it's performance with talks. I have not > found any user of this handset with talks so we can get the proper > information. As > per the review, some of the sighted people are not satisfied with the > performance of Nokia 5500. > Its a Symbian 9.01 phone and has 64 MB internal memory and we can extend > up to 1 GB memory card. There are many good features in this set but > question > is that does it hang so oftenly? Sighted people are not happy with it, > will this create any problem to us people too using with talks? > Why the price has come down at this level? > Please let me know whether should we go for Nokia 5500 or not if anyone of > you is using the same mobile phone. Thanks a lot in anticipation. > Regards > > (Sweety Bhalla) > Assistant Manager > Mobile # 9868300466, 9818132488 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, > please visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.i n To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.i n To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
