Blogging from the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators

I have arrived at the Global Symposium for Regulators 2009. It is a yearly conference organised by the ITU. I'll try to update you on what is going on here and what is being discussed. It is definitely a different conference. Let me give you some first impressions.

I don't have an opinion on Lebanon yet as I arrived at midnight and my hotel is a short walk from the conference hotel. The conference hotel is an oppulent affair called the Habtoor. They have a $25000 a night penthouse. So, a serious hotel, which was seriously out of my ITU daily allowance. Despite the opulence, there was no coffee for those arriving.

The swag bag was good: the usual memory stick, a book and a DVD on Lebanon and an umbrella. This last bit surprises me as the weather is supposed to be very good for the coming days.

The setup of the room is definitely different than what I am used to from the internet meetings like RIPE or last weeks Ecomm09 in Amsterdam. The seating is arranged with ITU- countries and other members in the front. AT&T is right up front. . I have to sit in the back as I am an observer. There are certain people who have VIP on their badge, which is probably very important for some reason or another. Translation is provided in 5 languages and of course the first speaker spoke Arabic so we do use it.

Interesting news was that yesterdays session of the GILF was opened by the minister of telecoms of Lebanon who wasn't a minister any more by the evening. There is a new minister now in Lebanon.

The Future of Interconnection, or why we continue to pay for Voice

My second presentation at Emerging Communications Europe 2009 (Ecomm2009). The outline is: One would expect that because of the rise of data we wouldn’t have to pay for voice anymore, this won’t happen because:

• With data overtaking voice even on mobile networks, one would expect that soon we don’t pay for voice anymore
• We accept paying by the minute because voice is highly valued and it is a familiar way of billing
• The way voice interconnection is paid for in Europe is the reason we are stuck with paying by the minute
• Only when the current interconnection model is removed will voice be ‘free’

The Future of Interconnection, why you will continue to pay for Voice

View more presentations from Raindeer.

Why all telecom companies should follow Free.Fr's example

I just finished my talk at the Emerging Communications Conference in Amsterdam. It was great fun to give and Brough asked the question he said he would ask. The answer is in the backup-slides. It was fun giving the presentation, unfortunately noone from Free in the audience :-)

Why all Telecom Marketing and Product management is wrong

View more presentations from Raindeer.

(Video) How the internet works, what peering is and what exchanges are

Vincent Rais, a mega-uber value reader pointed me to the topic of this article. Euro-IX, the European Internet Exchange Association held a competition for a movie that explains how the internet works and what the role of an Internet Exchange Point is and how peering works. The movie that was the result, is really good and much recommended if you ever need to explain it yourself, or need to understand it. (it comes with subtitles too) If you want to continue with your education, have a look at my explanation of peering and transit over at Ars Technica. (or have a look at the dr. Peering site)

Must read/see: Layar, Netflix saving millions, Telefonica invents FON on crack

Very Short post. Just some stuff that needs viewing:

Layar: Dutch company doing augmented reality browsers. Really the coolest stuff around. Wanting my next phone to support this (Android and iPhone)

How Netflix could save hundreds of Millions: Vijay Gill of Google calculates how much it would cost for Netflix to send all its traffic over the net instead of the US Mail. It would save hundreds of millions: Blog and Spreadsheet. According to some hardcore networking and peering geeks the numbers are conservative. Hat tip to Lantao

Telefonica doing some real inventing: Combining multiple DSL lines of different subscribers to one line for one user by combining several wifi access points. This is FON on steroids and crack. It opens up a vision of the future where your device would just look at how much spectrum and lines it can use depending upon its subscription and not anymore one accesspoint, one pc. Imagine combining UMTS/Wifi/Wimax and on top of that combining multiple wifi access points in that batch of wimax UMTS. I hope you can follow... Hat tip to Jap

I'll be speaking twice at Ecomm Europe in Amsterdam

Next month the Ecomm conference will be in Europe for the first time. The format is very interesting. Very short (10 minute) pitches from interesting people. Just to name a few:
James Enck (Eurotelcoblog)
Benoit Felten (Fiberevolution)
Frog Design
Martin Geddes (BT)
Brough Turner
The Google Wave Team
And a bunch of people that look just really cool.

Amazingly two of my proposals for a talk got accepted. Probably because I used bold statements and now lies on me the burden to deliver. My talks will be:

Almost all Marketing & Product Management of Telco Services is Wrong

Rudolf van der Berg, Management Consultant, Logica

Date: Wednesday, October 28

Time: 11:00 - 11:10 AM

Location: Transformatorhuis

Free designs and markets its services like a consumer electronics company would. Every 6 months new services.  All for the same price package. No questions about profitability of an individual service. No difficulty in getting the billing right, because there is no billing. It's services are used a lot and Free is a very profitable company.

The Future of Interconnection

Rudolf van der Berg, Management Consultant, Logica

Date: Friday, October 30

Time: 5:20 - 5:35 PM

Location: Transformatorhuis

How peering and transit works, why this is different from the traditional way of telephony interconnection, why this has the entire GSM world up in arms and lastly why countries like India show this would be a good way forward 

 

If you are there.... Please contact me. I hope we can meet up. 

 

Ouch, KPN forgets it offers FTTH in Almere

KPN has launched a new website called "internetvergelijken.com", which is a website to compare internet subscriptions. The website only shows KPN DSL-subscriptions of KPN brands; KPN, Telfort, Het Net and XS4All. It however omits KPN's FTTH offers.

As all of you know Reggefiber has built an FTTH-network all the way into my house in Almere and KPN is the sole provider at the moment on that network. KPN has invested in a 41% stake in Reggefiber, so I thought I would be able to see the KPN fiber offer in my home.After all at 1000 euro/house connected it is quite a sizeable investment. Unfortunately this isn't the case. KPN seems to dislike people moving away from DSL to fiber and doesn't promote it's offer at all on this website (or by any other means as far as I can see, except for kpnglasvezel.nl).

The site also excludes providers who use KPN's network to offer their services, resellers and those that use KPN's copper but through Local Loop Unbundling (BBNed, Tele2 etc) and of course offers of cable providers like UPC, Ziggo or Kabel Noord are not shown. I can understand omitting cable as KPN doesn't get any money from customers going to these networks, but LLU and wholsale broadband access is real money for KPN. I once heard someone at KPN say: "I don't care who sells the copper as long as it gets sold. When they  move to cable, that is when I get angry"


So my question to you Are the margins on DSL so good that it is more profitable not to get a return on a sunk investment in FTTH?

But of course I will promote Virgin Broadband for free on my blog.

It seems like Virgin UK broadband's ad agency spammed the blogosphere with its new ad and asked for feedback on it. Where feedback means; "could you please post it on your blog and be nice about it". James Enck already put a review up: "Cute, but pointless, and it does nothing to convey the sort of message this company should be telling regarding its competitive strengths." I can only say that I am glad that I got an e-mail explaining the ad, as otherwise I would never have known that:

We’ve recently been working on a new video to promote Virgin’s 50Mb broadband service, following on with the ‘Powerful Stuff’ idea. For the video, we’ve recreated the famous ‘When Harry Met Sally’ diner orgasm scene, but with a slight twist!

The video was shot with all the men in the diner thinking they were just extras in an advert. The reactions are genuine, which hopefully gives it a funny edge.

Unfortunately for Virgin I don't like When Harry met Sally, it makes me cringe everytime it is on TV. This ad, though more original than UPC's ad for Fiber Power makes me want to switch away as quickly as possible. Imagine this coming on tv, when you're on the phone with a friend. Nope, if they want funny, they should go to Hong Kong and see how real fiber is promoted.

Virgin's ad agency should have a look at what KPN does with its commercials. The current series of Generation KPN are quite good in promoting KPN.

WARNING: Virgin's ad is Not Safe For Work (with audio on)

From GigaOm: What a daughter's broken leg tells about broadband

This is just one of those stories that explains how our world changes through the internet, through access to highspeed broadband. There is no business case, there are just billions of examples.

http://gigaom.com/2009/08/17/what-my-daughters-broken-leg-taught-me-about-broadband/

OECD publishes Communications Outlook 2009

UPDATE the next morning: Tad Reynolds of the OECD commented below and on the OECD Facebook page. The OECD Facebook page contains a bit more stats. I knew I should have called Tad at midnight, just to ask him to clarify, but I didn't otherwise I would have written a totally different article (something along the lines of OECD publishes unclear chapter in Comms Outlook 2009. Here are Tads comments.

Thanks Rudolf. The OECD basket methodologies define a number of calls (rather than minutes) which then can vary in terms of duration. So the high basket covers 1680 calls (which works out to 2952 minutes per year) using the methodology. This works out to around 4 hours a month of outgoing calls which is a good size in Europe but on the low end of typical consumption patters in Canada and the United States.

We will work to correct and clarify the situation in the PDF version.

Original: It's here, it's full of statistics! Statistics we can all fight over! The OECD Communications Outlook 2009 (in online PDF) is every telco business/regulatory geeks best friend! And boy have I found some statistics to fight over already on page 280.

It aren't even the broadband stats, sorry haven't looked at them yet. Nope, the mobile pricing stats are the one's I want to start a fight over. I don't know who, but someone in the mobile industry convinced the polite and naive OECD that 760 mobile minutes (outgoing) per year is medium usage and 1680 minutes per year is high usage. That is respectively 65 minutes and 140 minutes per month. As I wrote in a previous post the average usage in most of Telenor's countries of operation is higher then that. Developing nations like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand all reach these numbers. Only Serbia doesn't.

In the USA (as the OECD reports as well) the average usage is 5-6 times this number. And as the US is a country with high fixed an low usage costs, it gets an especially bad deal in this comparison. The OECD acknowledges this, but I hope that next year the medium usage will be at least at the medium usage of countries like Sweden, Denmark or The Netherlands (200-300 minutes).(and now I will take my medication and calm down again)