30 January 2012

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Lorenza Brescia as Strategy Director at Redmill Marketing Associates. Lorenza is a renowned industry analyst and consultant and brings more than 14 years of experience to the team.

She is leading research and consultancy projects in the fields of HTML5, cloud computing optic transport and transmission, NFC and strategic analysis. As a well-known and respected industry speaker and commentator, we are thrilled to add her expertise to our roster and welcome Lorenza to the team!

16 January 2012

Readers from outside the UK may have been amused by the protracted process that has led to the announcement of a new high-speed railway that will be built here. Our friends around the world must be wondering why it's taken so long to embrace something that, in many countries, has been around for several decades.

Well, better late than never – at least there's no competition for such projects, so there's no risk that someone else will get there first. But it does make us think about the decision making process in the telecoms industry. Year after year, we see operators undertaking lengthy reviews of projects that require investment. In some cases, this process for even relatively small projects and services – say, less than €2 million – take years. And there are most definitely competitors eager to enter the market and steal a march on the establishment.

Why does it take so long? When you consider net revenues in the industry and the profits that are still being enjoyed in many quarters, it's difficult to understand why such projects are subject to such scrutiny. We are not suggesting that overall diligence should be relaxed, but perhaps it's time to think about such projects in a different why. Why can't operators reserve a certain percentage of their revenues for investment in projects that can have an accelerated time to market? Just as a certain percentage is nominated for R&D, a fund of, let's say, 1% of revenue could be held back for riskier projects that don't have to be subject to the same investment criteria as others.

By holding a sort of "float", they could move quicker, unlock investment and accept a higher level of risk – which could ultimately lead to greater returns and accelerate both innovation and time to market. Just a thought. Certainly, something needs to change – because the number of competitors offering services to customers continues to grow. HS2 has taken about 15 years so far: we must wait until the 2020s before the first trains will run. Sometimes it seems as if operators run to the same timetable.

12 January 2012

Despite the considerable interest in emerging innovations in policy, billing and customer experience management, it can sometimes seem that the needs of customers remain overlooked. Each week, the newspapers in the UK are full of stories about poor individual experiences and problems in resolving particular issues.

It's usually customer support that is singled out. In my experience, this can be a very mixed bag indeed. We have contracts with a leading UK mobile operator and insurance policies that replace handsets in the event that anything goes wrong. The commitment is to provide next-day replacement. When I had to use this facility, however, the reality turned out to be rather different.

I reported the handset lost, as per the terms of the policy and I was assured that a replacement would indeed be sent the next day. I would also be sent updates via text. Really? To what? I have lost my handset, so what's the point of sending texts? Why not emails? Apparently, this could not be done, so we agreed that the texts would be sent to my colleague's phone. All seemed to be going smoothly until he received a note saying that the shipment was delayed – after an initial confirmation that had specified a time.

The delay was apparently due to heavy volume in shipping the new iPhone that was released in the Autumn. Fair enough, these things do happen. But then I wondered if calls to the mobile could be diverted to one of our landlines. Yes, they could, but in discovering this, I also found that my mobile voicemail had been disabled. Just like that – all calls to my number were simply being received with a message stating that the mobile phone was "unavailable". Apparently, voicemail is not the default setting and, as soon as the SIM had been disabled, voicemail was also turned off.

I asked the support representative to turn it back on again and also to apply a call divert. I was told that this could be done, but it might take anything from one to 48 hours to take effect. Really? In the meantime, Rob received a message stating that the shipment had been delayed again but the new handset arrived in any event. Of course, I then had to activate it and, guess what, it turned out to be faulty. Fortunately, a trip to the Apple store fixed that: they simply gave me a replacement. Instantly, with no quibbles or fuss.

In all, it took a week of phone calls, mistakes, incorrect information and rapidly increasing levels of frustration to sort everything out. Why? Why can't the support teams of one of the world's largest companies fix things? Why can't they activate a simple service, such as call divert instantly? It's not as if it's a new service, it should be possible to set this with a couple of clicks of the mouse, but if there is a self-service portal to do this, goodness knows how to find it.

I was recently interviewed for a journal and was asked about the key innovations that have taken place in mobile communications in 2011. I started to discuss policy 2.0, CEM and so on, but then I thought about this experience. It's excellent that the industry continues to innovate and OSS/BSS must be where MNOs should focus their efforts, but before creating new policy instruments, they really ought to think about more basic capabilities. Activating existing services should take place instantly, not in several days, if at all. Customers should have clear access to the range of services available and should be able to do this themselves. It's a start contrast with our fixed VoIP provider: if we want a call divert to be set up, we go to our control panel and do it.

Service innovation is a great thing, but MNOs really should be able to make the customer support experience so much better before they think about adding more complexity to their networks. In 2012, we may well hear more about policy 2.0, CEM and the like, but it would be even better to hear that MNOs really do care enough about their customers to address basic issues, especially if they have them on long-term contracts. I can cancel my VoIP service tomorrow and find a new provider the same day. I'm not going to do so, as they have always been superb, even allowing for the occasional service outage. Support is consistently excellent and there is follow up to ensure that issues are resolved. My mobile service provider knows I am tied to a contract and can't do much about it until it expires (in 90 days!). Perhaps that leads to complacency, but it also indicates that their OSS/BSS isn't sufficiently flexible or robust to do simple things, like activate a call divert service instantly.

It's great that they aspire to a new generation of real-time services, but perhaps they should be thinking about the overall experience. As far as I can tell, the only thing that's real-time today is the ability to actually initiate calls or data sessions. Everything else is simply best effort and that's just not good enough. So in 2012, why not try to address these basic issues? After all, customer retention is often stated to be a clear strategic goal for MNOs. Service innovation is all very well, but if you can't do the basics right, then what chance to lead the industry with new and more complex solutions?

08 November 2011

The recent RCS (Rich Communications Suite) conference in Munich saw considered, reasonable and realistic discussion of the prospects for RCS service launch – and its potential for success. In the past, we have seen both scepticism and undue enthusiasm in equal measure, but this year was different.

Thanks to the support of the "Big 5" mobile operators – Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica and TIM – it seems increasingly likely that we will actually see RCS being unleashed on an unsuspecting public at some point in 2012. While no-one would commit to a specific date next year, all agreed that it would happen. It's rather as we concluded after our research last year: RCS launch is inevitable; the question is really how much enthusiasm it will generate in users.

The key transition is that devices will start to ship with embedded or native RCS clients at some point next year. As Deutsche Telekom remarked, this isn't easy to achieve. According to keynote presented Kobus Smit, only around 50% of devices on DT's network are sold through their own channels. If you want software to reach the widest possible audience of new handset owners, then it means that all retailers need to be brought on board and the devices they ship must also be pre-loaded with the client.

Even so, it's still likely to be a trickle rather than a flood, as there are so many devices to address and, of course, there's still the vast community of IoS and Android users to win over. Downloadable clients will be an essential element of any roll-out. But, that aside, it's a significant step. If things go to plan, we shall finally see RCS breaking out of the closed user groups, trials, and labs to reach the public.

But, what kind of splash will it make? We saw no indication of any promotional strategies or how it will be marketed? Many present agreed that promoting "RCS" was likely to be as successful as the efforts around 3G. Whatever happens, there need to be solid indicators of value to the user, as adoption must spread rapidly. Of course, it may be enough for RCS simply to become the default messaging client and experience, but in the face of strong offers from OTT players that are already enjoying widespread success in the smartphone community, we should expect more. We shall be looking on with great interest. There's much more to say on the subject of RCS, so look out for further posts!