The compelling selling points of femtocells are increasingly becoming more noticeable.
The apparent strong compelling factor is the disruptive value proposition in terms of cost of delivering a minute of calls (or Mbytes of data) to the end user. Another obvious one is related to service bundling and other innovative marketing ideas.
One area that is increasingly getting attention is the femtocell as platform for added value services (VAS) . The femtocell concept can be extended to make it an integrated 3G access point and intelligent home gateway that offers added value services to the customer. Imagine what can be achieved if a mobile operator can offer something like this, but with a proper cellular flavored radio. This will make femtocells ideal candidates for IMS type of deployments.
The femtoell can also be used as a content distribution platform. In this model content/services/application can be pushed to the UE when the femtocell senses the UE is in its vicinity.
Even a more exciting proposition, is what I call Reverse Content Distribution, where a roaming user outside the femtocell zone can access his content remotely. The femto can orchestrate the user’s access to various equipments at home, such as the PC, Home Media Server, Apple TV, …etc. It can also perform various remote home control functions, like switch on the heating, prepare the bath, access the burglar alarm …etc. There are various mechanisms to enable this. For example, it can be via a femto access interface on the application level. Alternatively, the femtocell can be a passive element and home control can be achieved pretty much in the same way it can be done today from a PC across the internet.
Showing posts with label Content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Content. Show all posts
19 Oct 2007
7 Aug 2007
More on Google's interest in Femtocell Technology
...here are more dots to connect:
- FCC revises 700MHz band rules to facilitate "new and innovative wireless broadband services for consumers"....read here.
- Rumours about Google phone, to be available end of 2007.... read here.
- Google wants to redefine the principles of wireless market. Read here about Google's plans to replicate the openness of the broadband environment in the wireless environment. Mobile operators: prepare yourselves to become utility companies!.
- FCC revises 700MHz band rules to facilitate "new and innovative wireless broadband services for consumers"....read here.
- Rumours about Google phone, to be available end of 2007.... read here.
- Google wants to redefine the principles of wireless market. Read here about Google's plans to replicate the openness of the broadband environment in the wireless environment. Mobile operators: prepare yourselves to become utility companies!.
22 Jul 2007
Google invests $25 million in Ubiquisys
The recent news of Google's $25 million investment in Ubiquisys is the beggining of a major change in the race to win the Femtocell race.
While architecture, coverage and RF performance are some of the important areas to keep a close eye on, content and applications will be the major differentiating aspects. I talked in a previous post about content personalisation and customisation possibibilities with FemtoCell solutions, which is going to be an exciting area to watch over the next 6 months.
While architecture, coverage and RF performance are some of the important areas to keep a close eye on, content and applications will be the major differentiating aspects. I talked in a previous post about content personalisation and customisation possibibilities with FemtoCell solutions, which is going to be an exciting area to watch over the next 6 months.
18 Jul 2007
Indoor FemtoCells and content personalisation
One of the tooted selling points of FemtoCells is the enhanced user experience indoors. There is no doubt that in terms of radio coverage the FemtoCell will enable a more uniform and better RF signal indoors.
The story does not end there however. The underlying concept of "convergence" with FemtoCells will give content personalisation and customisation a whole new dimension. In addition to simple signal radiation, a FemtoCell router serving 2-3 mobiles can also perform a whole bunch of other tasks on behalf of users. This is a new uncharted territory with a poetic license to daydream. A variant of social networking can also emerge if it is embraced by the new breed of "converged" operators.
With Google putting effort on mobile content search, the FemtoCell era will be a very exciting and interesting period and one should expect interest in this technology to extend beyond the circle of traditional mobile operators.
The story does not end there however. The underlying concept of "convergence" with FemtoCells will give content personalisation and customisation a whole new dimension. In addition to simple signal radiation, a FemtoCell router serving 2-3 mobiles can also perform a whole bunch of other tasks on behalf of users. This is a new uncharted territory with a poetic license to daydream. A variant of social networking can also emerge if it is embraced by the new breed of "converged" operators.
With Google putting effort on mobile content search, the FemtoCell era will be a very exciting and interesting period and one should expect interest in this technology to extend beyond the circle of traditional mobile operators.
3 Dec 2006
Review of article: What exactly is IMS?
Just read this article by Ian Poole in IET Communications, which is a good overview of IMS architecture. (I don't know why I pay them subscription fees for the magazine when you can download all the articles for free!).
I am not convinced that the need for IMS stems from the desire to "converge". The main objective for IMS is to give the operators a mechanism by which they can charge for any user activity and control the content distributed over their network. With the introduction of 3G data access the operators realised that the future is bleak if they simply offered mobile data speeds for users to access the (mostly) free Internet content. Therefore they wanted a mechanism by which they offer an alternative or additional content they can generate revenue from and control what content the user has access to. Flexible content distribution platform and flexible service provisioning are by-products and not the core issues.
With IMS revenue generation may not be focused on the end user. It could well be based on a sharing revenue with 3rd party content providers or by selling to marketers or retailers alike access to customers.
I am not convinced that the need for IMS stems from the desire to "converge". The main objective for IMS is to give the operators a mechanism by which they can charge for any user activity and control the content distributed over their network. With the introduction of 3G data access the operators realised that the future is bleak if they simply offered mobile data speeds for users to access the (mostly) free Internet content. Therefore they wanted a mechanism by which they offer an alternative or additional content they can generate revenue from and control what content the user has access to. Flexible content distribution platform and flexible service provisioning are by-products and not the core issues.
With IMS revenue generation may not be focused on the end user. It could well be based on a sharing revenue with 3rd party content providers or by selling to marketers or retailers alike access to customers.
27 Nov 2006
VoIP Episode 6: To VoIP or not to VoIP, that is the question
Cellular operators seem to be confused about VoIP. On one hand they seem to think that the whole world is going IP, hence VoIP is inevitable. On the other hand, they do not want to undermine their number one profitable application: trunked voice. There is also confusion about benefits of carrying VoIP on cellular radio access networks.
Most cellular operators see VoIP as a dangerous proposition because it cannibalises their stable voice market share. That's why, until recently, any talk about VoIP over cellular was accompanied by a view that VoIP traffic will be controlled and billed by the operators in a very similar fashion to traditional circuit switched voice. Therefore the concepts of a myriad of sophisticated "boxes" were introduced to enable quality controlled VoIP (as opposed to best effort VoIP over the Internet) along with all the added value services associated with the IMS architecture. So the emphasis is on the user experience, and perhaps the vision is to do voice "sessions" in the same way you use your Instant Messenger with the added guarantee of quality. Operators don't want to merely become bit pipes for other content providers, and they dread the prospects of following the footsteps of DSL providers.
The other driver is to have a more integrated core network. This may be true in the long term, because legacy networks will stay for some time (perhaps a generation) before they get obsolete, so the vision of one integrated core still needs sometime to materialise. Incidentally, convergence (I know, an overused word these days) is really about using less boxes to carry different types of traffic, and it is not necessarily about everything becoming IP based.
In a nutshell, the vision is to bring VoIP to cellular radio in a controlled fashion that guarantees the operator's grip on the revenue. UMTS operators can stop users from using their packet access to transmit/receive VoIP traffic. There are network devices that can "sniff" the types of packets generated by users and if you are running a Skype client for example, they can block it for you. Nokia launched a VoIP blocker to help operators stop cheap peer-to-peer VoIP from competing with their own voice services.
So on one extreme, the operator may want to run the business as a "walled garden" and have full control over content and traffic. The other extreme is to run the business following the ISP model: they give the user a bit pipe (could be fat or slim) and the user does whatever he likes with it. Content providers provide their services to the end user independently of the operator in the same way it is done over the Internet.
The cellular business could also be run in a balanced way between these two extremes, perhaps by "cherry picking" content providers that are allowed to promote their service over the cellular network. Perhaps the cellular business model can shift from generating income from the end user to making money from content providers instead. Perhaps they can diversify their business and get into making content themselves to compete in equal footing with everyone else.
3 has recently announced its launch of mobile Internet in the UK. Their model is "all you can eat" flat fee. They are partnering with Skype, eBay and Google. It is yet to be clear how much control they will have over the traffic, and what revenue streams they will have together with their new Internet partners. It seems likely they followed a "we give you the pipe you do the skype!" model. If this turns out to be true, it can be considered as the end of the cellular industry in the UK as we know it. peer-to-peer VoIP does not need any "expensive?" boxes to control it or monitor it. Users should not expect a quality better than VoIP over the Internet though; this is not trunked grade voice. So It is all about extending the Internet experience to the mobile world in this case, full stop. In contrast to this, do you remember the "IMS tax" we talked about before? It is about the quality vs complexity tradeoff again.
3 has got nothing to loose, they have a loss making business and Hutchinson was rumoured to be thinking of selling the business (I hope they will not sell to Orascom, otherwise the egyptians will run it in the same way they run EgyptAir) , therefore it is not surprising to hear that they have decided to try the rather uninspiring ISP model.
On the other hand, incumbents like Vodafone are not doing any better. They have an endemic problem of lack of creativity and ability to introduce new exciting services. The are too frightened of competition from fixed wireless and fixed wired, and feel the threat coming from every corner.
Cellular operators tend to forget that they have two very strong commodities which the others do not have. The first is mobility. The fact that they can support an advanced level of mobility is something competitors can not even get close to, at least not in the short to medium run. Roaming, portability and ubiquity flow naturally from this.
The other strong commodity they have is the location information, which many services and applications can be wrapped around. In their short sighted and rather uncreative vision, they have only looked at things like emergency services and mapping applications, but very little real work on any real creative applications.
Meanwhile, most operators are still stuck in the same corner thinking: shall we VoIP or shall we not?
© Copyright belongs to the author. Do not cite or quote without the express permission of the author
Most cellular operators see VoIP as a dangerous proposition because it cannibalises their stable voice market share. That's why, until recently, any talk about VoIP over cellular was accompanied by a view that VoIP traffic will be controlled and billed by the operators in a very similar fashion to traditional circuit switched voice. Therefore the concepts of a myriad of sophisticated "boxes" were introduced to enable quality controlled VoIP (as opposed to best effort VoIP over the Internet) along with all the added value services associated with the IMS architecture. So the emphasis is on the user experience, and perhaps the vision is to do voice "sessions" in the same way you use your Instant Messenger with the added guarantee of quality. Operators don't want to merely become bit pipes for other content providers, and they dread the prospects of following the footsteps of DSL providers.
The other driver is to have a more integrated core network. This may be true in the long term, because legacy networks will stay for some time (perhaps a generation) before they get obsolete, so the vision of one integrated core still needs sometime to materialise. Incidentally, convergence (I know, an overused word these days) is really about using less boxes to carry different types of traffic, and it is not necessarily about everything becoming IP based.
In a nutshell, the vision is to bring VoIP to cellular radio in a controlled fashion that guarantees the operator's grip on the revenue. UMTS operators can stop users from using their packet access to transmit/receive VoIP traffic. There are network devices that can "sniff" the types of packets generated by users and if you are running a Skype client for example, they can block it for you. Nokia launched a VoIP blocker to help operators stop cheap peer-to-peer VoIP from competing with their own voice services.
So on one extreme, the operator may want to run the business as a "walled garden" and have full control over content and traffic. The other extreme is to run the business following the ISP model: they give the user a bit pipe (could be fat or slim) and the user does whatever he likes with it. Content providers provide their services to the end user independently of the operator in the same way it is done over the Internet.
The cellular business could also be run in a balanced way between these two extremes, perhaps by "cherry picking" content providers that are allowed to promote their service over the cellular network. Perhaps the cellular business model can shift from generating income from the end user to making money from content providers instead. Perhaps they can diversify their business and get into making content themselves to compete in equal footing with everyone else.
3 has recently announced its launch of mobile Internet in the UK. Their model is "all you can eat" flat fee. They are partnering with Skype, eBay and Google. It is yet to be clear how much control they will have over the traffic, and what revenue streams they will have together with their new Internet partners. It seems likely they followed a "we give you the pipe you do the skype!" model. If this turns out to be true, it can be considered as the end of the cellular industry in the UK as we know it. peer-to-peer VoIP does not need any "expensive?" boxes to control it or monitor it. Users should not expect a quality better than VoIP over the Internet though; this is not trunked grade voice. So It is all about extending the Internet experience to the mobile world in this case, full stop. In contrast to this, do you remember the "IMS tax" we talked about before? It is about the quality vs complexity tradeoff again.
3 has got nothing to loose, they have a loss making business and Hutchinson was rumoured to be thinking of selling the business (I hope they will not sell to Orascom, otherwise the egyptians will run it in the same way they run EgyptAir) , therefore it is not surprising to hear that they have decided to try the rather uninspiring ISP model.
On the other hand, incumbents like Vodafone are not doing any better. They have an endemic problem of lack of creativity and ability to introduce new exciting services. The are too frightened of competition from fixed wireless and fixed wired, and feel the threat coming from every corner.
Cellular operators tend to forget that they have two very strong commodities which the others do not have. The first is mobility. The fact that they can support an advanced level of mobility is something competitors can not even get close to, at least not in the short to medium run. Roaming, portability and ubiquity flow naturally from this.
The other strong commodity they have is the location information, which many services and applications can be wrapped around. In their short sighted and rather uncreative vision, they have only looked at things like emergency services and mapping applications, but very little real work on any real creative applications.
Meanwhile, most operators are still stuck in the same corner thinking: shall we VoIP or shall we not?
© Copyright belongs to the author. Do not cite or quote without the express permission of the author
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