When starting out in the telecoms industry in the 1990s, one of the subjects we had to grapple with was the functionality of Intelligent Networks. You probably know what’s involved. Basically, IN (or AIN to our North American friends) provided a means by which enhanced services could be triggered, but this was a deep set of mysteries to many.

It was actually rather simple, although it took some thinking about. The triggering of a particular service was typically performed on the basis of the dialled digits and that, coupled with the associated calling line identity (OLI or CLI, depending on where you are from) could be used in the relevant service logic.

The beauty of the system was that it was centralised, with the result that local exchanges didn’t need to be capable of implementing the service logic, but could simply route the call to another destination where the triggers could be recognised and the relevant service executed.

The IN took advantage of centralised service elements, so that there was a single place in which services could be implemented, but any phone connected to the network could effectively access a service.

A typical example of an IN service was the pizza delivery application. In this case, a caller might dial a national Freephone (non-geographic) number for their favourite pizza parlour. The local exchange would route the call to a service switching point which would recognise that the call needed an IN service. It would then send a request to the service control point, requesting information on how to treat the call. In this case, the control point would recognise the non-geographic number and would translate this to a geographic number but would choose one that was nearest to the geographic location of the calling party.

This logic was illustrated in powerpoints the world over. Thus, if you were in Berlin and called your favourite German pizza vendor, you would be connected to the nearest pizza parlour to your location in Berlin. Of course, things changed – mobility entered the equation, companies started using centralised call centres and so on, but IN evolved and still provided useful services that could be managed by the service provider. They generated a lot of revenue and still do.

It was interesting, then, to hear at the WebRTC workshop that preceded the recent IMS World Forum, the classic pizza delivery model being used as an example of services that might be implemented with new WebRTC-based capabilities.

The idea is, of course, simple. Instead of just using geographic location data from an old fashioned geographic number, WebRTC can provide context through browser-enabled communications to enhance the basic service. A consumer might use a WebRTC click to call feature, combined with analytic information and a personal history to select a pizza and have it delivered, so that the call centre agent would know any special details and confirm in a real-time voice session the information required to complete the order.

By integrating with CRM data, the agent could potentially offer a better experience to the caller, just as our favourite web-shops make recommendations based on our browsing and purchasing history. If we can’t complete an online form, then we use click to call to clarify matters, rather than simply being frustrated.

In essence, WebRTC extends the possibilities of familiar services. By using this example, which makes intuitive sense, we see how an old dog can be revitalised by these new tricks – and how blending capabilities and features to create richer services could enhance our experience with retailers.

In the early days of VoIP, the net-heads complained about IN and asserted that it had been a failure. On the contrary, it generated a significant amount of value and is still the foundation of many network services. It’s how prepaid mobile works, for one thing.

Service providers continue to leverage their IN assets and have been deploying upgraded NGIN solutions for some time. Adding WebRTC to the mix broadens the capabilities on offer and points the way to a much more interesting set of services. But, at the end of the day, it’s still a pizza. Perhaps we will come up with a better poster child for such services one day!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that telecoms operators are unable to innovate. This, apparently, is axiomatic. Leading analysts reinforce this perception and anyone attending a conference will be told that the real innovation lies in the Internet industry; it’s the small and nimble companies with real focus that are able to deliver.

Well, that may be true in some cases, but it’s clearly stating too much to suggest that it is genuinely universal. Our experience shows that there are different ways in which telecoms operators demonstrate innovation. As far as we can tell, none of the service providers that we use at RMA (our mobile and fixed providers) offer anything that is innovative – except the networks on which we rely. Of course, customers tend not to pay attention to these, simply taking them for granted.

But we also know from our research activities that there are plenty of initiatives in the industry that are innovative. Perhaps one interpretation is that most telecoms operators tend not to demonstrate their innovation obviously, not in the kind of flashy ways that capture attention and, when they do, they are held up as the exception rather than the rule.

It was nice, therefore, to chat with our friend Dr Naoki Uchida from NTT Laboratories at last week’s IMS World Forum in Barcelona. He discussed NTT’s approach to innovation and the culture behind it. The term “kaizen” is well known to many as an approach that focuses on continuous innovation. It is more usually applied to heavy industry than telecoms operators but it is clear that NTT has embraced this tradition in its practices.

Dr Uchida told us that his team is responsible for creating a new service each week. The role of NTT labs is to provide technology and products to be consumed by other companies in the NTT group. According to Dr Uchida, 30% of the services they create move to trial and about 10% to production.

This means that, while most services are deemed to be non-commercial and do not survive, there is a constant process of evolution. In this, the fittest services survive; the remainder are put to rest. More importantly, it means that NTT is not afraid to take risks; services are allowed to fail, but through careful development programmes, they increase their overall chances of success.

Several presenters at the IMS World Forum spoke of the need for telecoms operators to become more like “Google”, launching services and “throwing them away” if they are unsuccessful. We can’t find data on precisely how many new services Google launches each year, although there is a wealth of data about both new services and enhancements to existing ones given in the company history on google.com . If we assume that NTT also refines existing services, then launching an average of 5 new services each year seems a reasonable return for a major operator.

Operators can innovate – clearly, not all are as active as NTT – but there are pockets of innovation. Some of that is network orientated and hence invisible to customers. But as NTT demonstrates, there can be considerable customer-facing innovation too. We have worked with companies like Avea, Turkcell, Cosmorom and others that have excellent engineering teams and produce many of their value added service portfolio in-house.

While we are reluctant to extrapolate from this (informal) sample, we wonder if it may be that NTT has the right management structure and a culture that is orientated around not just innovation but on capitalising on innovation with a clear path to market for new services. If this is correct, then it’s not that telecoms operators are congenitally incapable of innovation but rather that few of them have created the culture, processes and strategic orientation to make the most of the innovation generated by their engineering teams.

Location, in the context of mobile networks, is a topic that has been discussed for many years. It’s a fundamentally simple thing, but it’s also a can of worms, some good, and some bad. We have seen many market reports predicting a great future for services that depend on resolution of a person’s location – few of which have come true. Equally, we have seen a great deal of confusion regarding the precise nature of location and its critical role in the functioning of mobile networks. I

A year or so ago, there was a great furore about network privacy, kicked up by some WikiLeaks articles about the role of security agencies in tracking mobile users. There was a memorable press conference in which someone stood up, holding a smartphone and made the startling revelation that “if you have one of these, your mobile operator knows where you are”.

We paraphrase somewhat, but well yes, obviously: if they didn’t, it wouldn’t work. There’s clearly a great deal of ignorance about how the mobile network operates, but then why should consumers care? They just expect it to work. But there’s a difference between an operator knowing where you are so it can route calls to your smart device of choice, and using that information to send you things you don’t want or even know you are going to receive.

And it’s this borderline between legitimate use of location data (making the network work) and using it for commercial purposes that creates problems. It reminds us of the ways in which we happily surrender information to supermarkets (“do you have a clubcard?” Well, no, actually, but that’s another story) and providers like Amazon (customers who bought this also bought that – jolly useful, really), yet baulk at the somehow invidious use of mobile data by our MNO.

This is a problem. The same people who provide up to the minute details of their activity to Facebook may be upset to consider that their MNO might want to use similar information to present them with offers, services and so on. And yet, at conference after conference we are told that MNOs (and other service providers) have a unique position of trust with their customers and can act as brokers between them and other players.

Something doesn’t ring true here – if you’ll pardon the pun. We are expecting MNOs to somehow monetise the data they collect by putting it to interesting – but if we trust an OTT provider more than we trust our airtime provider, how can these new models emerge?

MNOs need to take a leadership position here. They need to make it clear that the will only use data with the permission of users (beyond doing what they need to do to make their networks function correctly) and be explicit about the benefits of using location information sensitively.

Today’s mobile consumer understands how great it is to use Google maps to pinpoint his or her location relative to where they want to be. With the right messages and propositions, MNOs ought to be able to create the same kind of trust. It’s essential that they do – if the kind of differentiated price plans that are so frequently discussed are going to evolve into innovative service offers, then this kind of trust in which context, location and activity data helps create personalised services has to be established. And MNOs should be easily able to counter the kind of paranoia that wonders why they should know where their subscribers are.

In the last few years, we have seen and heard much about the gathering momentum behind IMS. We’ve been through the early hype cycle, we’ve experienced the scepticism from some quarters, but in the main, the industry has enjoyed steady progress.

Our own early research indicated a clear commitment to deploying IMS from operators. The real issues were not if, but when, and what else could be done with the infrastructure once in place. Like so many debates, the real issue – that IMS is a strategic investment for the migration of session control towards all IP networks, a point well-made by a number of operators – were obscured by too much emphasis on business models. As we discovered, however, there weren’t necessarily clear business cases to be developed. Rather, motivation came from a variety of sources.

Last year, we felt a broad consensus had been achieved within the industry. The advent of LTE was going to drive, if not accelerate IMS deployment and we would expect to see much more focus on services, third party integration and so on, as the basic questions seemed to have been resolved, as well as many more deployments. Well, we’ve certainly seen more deployments, RFPs and the usual vendor / operator activity.

However, ahead of this year’s IMS World Forum in Barcelona , we can see that there is certainly room for debate around certain key topics. For example, the advent of OTT solutions for certain key IMS services has opened up the question, in some quarters at least, of IMS-less networks.

This leads into the whole issue of what IMS is for. It’s worth remembering that IMS is not about voice per se – it’s (eponymously) about multi-media. In fact, it’s really a session control architecture and framework that enables users to access whatever real-time services are available and to leverage applications, which may or may not be provided by the operator concerned.

Thus, the question as to whether IMS may not be needed for voice services should be seen in the wider context of managing sessions for millions of users, of which voice is but one example. And, whether voice makes any money or not, it’s still hugely important. But so too are other capabilities like mobility, messaging, emergency services, interworking, roaming and so on. IMS caters for all of these, so to view it in the context of a single service may be misleading.

This question of what IMS is for remains relevant. The real issue is where it will go in the future as voice revenues and voice consumption decline relative to other forms of communication and services. It’s time to look again at what else IMS offers for the (many) operators that have taken steps to deploy solutions.

We also have the emerging topic of WebRTC and web-enabled communication. We wrote an extensive report on WebRTC, HTML 5 and their implications for operators last year. This year, we have seen a flood of interest in the topic and are working with our clients to devise the most appropriate strategy for capturing momentum.

In the WebRTC world, there is a need to interact with non-WebRTC devices, despite the viral like proliferation of WebRTC enabled browsers that will soon take place. IMS has a role here , as even Google acknowledges – although it’s somewhat amusing to see SIP described as “legacy”. Regardless, breaking out to IMS / PSTN / PLMN end points will be critical.

The IMS World Forum, then, promises to be a key talking shop for these and other issues. We will, of course, learn from operator experience, but it’s clear that there are a number of new topics that need to be aired.

We’re looking forward to going. Just as last year, MD Guy Redmill will be chairing sessions and participating in debates. We’ll report on what we learn during and after the event. If you are planning to attend, get in touch – it will be nice to hear your perspective and catch up with old friends.

We said recently that we would write more on recent RCS developments – of which there have been many. A good place to start is to point readers towards this post from our friends at Solaiemes .

It’s a good summary of recent developments. But should we interpret this slew of good news as real indicators that RCS is, finally, gaining the required momentum? Can we be as optimistic?

At around the same time, DT announced that it was now back on track and had officially launched Joyn. We think it’s now safe to say that we agree with this assessment.

If this view is correct, it’s significant, not least because there’s a nice bit of shadenfreude to be shared with those who suggested that DT’s postponement in previous months might have been a heavy blow to the credibility of Joyn etc.

At the time, we thought such negative pronouncements might have been premature, having gained some inside information as to the reasons for the delay. Of course, negative opinions sweep through the news pages like wildfire. Does bad news spread faster than good? Who knows, but the launch is timely as it certainly adds further credibility to our suspicion that times are changing.

What it does not do, of course – and this is where we tend to adopt a more cautious line and have more sympathy with the gainsayers – is mean that Joyn will become a rip-roaring success this year. It probably won’t be, at least not in terms that many of today’s applications are measured. We have all seen charts that indicate how particular applications have built vast communities in a matter of weeks or that another has achieved x million downloads in a few months.

We don’t believe that RCS (and its alter-ego Joyn) will be like that. We tend to take a longer-term view. It is absolutely fair to say – as many have – that RCS doesn’t do much to enhance features already available in OTT messaging and communications applications. True – it doesn’t. But there has been considerable misinterpretation both within and without the industry regarding what RCS can achieve.

It wasn’t helped by the fact that some saw it as a response to OTT challenges. There was a view that it will help “operators fight back”. We don’t think so and never have. In particular, we have learnt from working with people like Newpace et al and interviewing operators repeatedly at conferences over the past few year that it never can be like that, whatever some of the most ardent enthusiasts have said.

Yes, you will find cheerleaders who will use that line, but it’s mistaken. We learnt early on that RCS was not something that could be monetised. You can’t charge people for it to increase revenue – and if that’s the case, what is there to fight back against? Can you compete head to head with a free offer? The reality is that messaging revenues are faced with challenges from everywhere.

But a free offer isn’t the whole story. What you can do is deliver an enhanced, upgraded messaging and communications experience that is available to all. Maybe it’s time to focus on what it does do rather than point the finger at what it does not.

That’s the most important thing. It’s not a challenge to OTTs: rather it’s an upgrade to what mobile providers do today. It helps them stay relevant and delivers something of obvious benefit. Yes, we can Skype people in our buddy lists. Yes, we can use some other closed group (insert favoured OTT application of choice, from whichever market here) to reach particular people who also belong to that community. But if we want to reach anyone and everyone in our professional and personal phonebooks, the default remains standard voice and messaging.

This is what RCS is still about. It’s not something really clever and complicated, but that doesn’t matter. In other words, it’s just something that operators need to do to extend new capabilities to something we take for granted. Of course, it can be attacked for being late or delivering less than some of the shiniest OTT applications can.

And, the more tech-savvy critics can point to other deficiencies too. But it’s not about that – it’s more about the lowest common denominator, delivering a better experience for all rather than a select few, and making sure that it leverages the same benefits of interoperability which are available for mobile users today, rather than existing in clusters or islands of isolation.

In the longer-term, we expect to see the opening up of APIs and integration with other solutions (including those from OTT players) and novel new applications that will bring significant benefits. It may help promote a range of new services, simply through ubiquity. But that’s to come. For now, it’s enough to consider that it really does seem as if positive change is coming. As we have remarked before, we’ll know for sure that’s the case when we don’t have to comment on the topic anymore.