Showing posts with label TelecomTime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TelecomTime. Show all posts

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

CEO debate mobile telephony (TelecomTime)

CEO debate mobile telephone
Jens Schulte-Bockum, Marco Visser, Bart Weijermars, Mark Frequin
The challenge in the Nethelrands is that three new players will enter the 2.6Ghz.
Being a player in the market isn’t just about building a network. We’re spending more than a billion a year the three of us in Subscriber Acquisition cost.
Vodafone: We find it a pity that everyone is discussing how many new entrants there will be in the market. It is about getting more of 800 Mhz and offering more spectrum/bandwidth. But the Netherlands is lagging with the 800 debate. The Netherlands could fall behind a lot. It has also prohibited all of the existing players to get 2 times 20Mhz. So they cannot get 100mbit down
T-Mobile: is finding a pity that everybody is focussing on the network and not on the services. More networks will only increase the cost.
Vodafone: The Netherlands is the most competitive market in almost every segment of the telecom market. I am really passionate about innovation. The Netherlands has many interesting start ups. If we would speed up the 800Mhz network, than the innovators will come. I have sympathy for the 2.6Ghz auction, but why do we have caps. We don’t know if there are new players and you are already excluding us from the auction.
Roamning and MTA discussion.
KPN: I agree with the roaming decision. Regulators should have been much slower in their MTA regulation.
Question on pricing
Vodafone: A flat fee model is not sustainable in the long run. Additional usage means additional cost.
Question on last years debate where they said: SAC is too high, Too many shops, Too many brands
KPN is saying they are lowering SAC levels
T-Mobile: We are actually opening shops. It is not for us to decide how many shops there are in themarket. It is up to the consumer.
Vodafone: there are still anomalies in themarket. The current MVNO segment is not sustainable. 50-60 market parties just is too much. We aren’t subsidizing the internet retail market anymore. The indirect retail market is enormous given the size of the country.
KPN: I counted 21 telecomshops in the Kalverstraat alone. (3 of KPN)
KPN has written the book on multi-brands. It will work with MTV next year to launch a new brand
T-mobile asks if it is going to be SIM69 the erotic content MVNO on KPNs network in Germany

Min of Econ Affairs Vision on Mobile Communication (TelecomTime)

Mark Frequin, Director General Energy and Telecom , Ministry of Econ Affairs, Netherlands.
The change from old to new is hard in policy issues like spectrum policy. Flexible use of mobile is very hard to achieve as it influences the old ways of doing. We need more space for economic growth and innovation. Following changing circumstances quicker and spectrum use without licenses.
Current licenses are made more flexible. In the 2.6Ghz more flexibility in use by the license holder.
There is a lot of spectrum to be released until 2017 (short term in government terms). 800MHZ will be a consultation in Q2 2009. 900 and 1800 will be distributed in 2013. 2100 will be done by 2017. The idea is to do this in a way that shows consistency instead of working individually for each band of spectrum.
The goals of the ministry are:
1. A competitive mobie market
2. Innovation space for newcomers
3. Attractive services to the consumer
Dilemma is how to ensure continuity and space for new comers.
Competition in the market together with a space to innovate.
Market parties want to have chohesion between frequency bands, consistency and predictability, international harmonisation, cooperation between government players. They also want respect for ht ecurrent players and their investments.
The ministry will publish its vision on the mobile market in the coming year 2010.

On the future of (fixed) servide providers (TelecomTime)

On the future of (fixed) servide providers

Mirko Mensink Ziggo
The market is saturating. 50% of the market is bundling. The customer wants value added services. For digital TV the amount of channels is important. Competition is getting vry important with very aggressive market parties like Tele2 and Alice. FTTH is also an important competitor.
Ericsson is quoted with 4 scenarios. Brands and Pipes, User Choice, Green Shift and All inclusive. http://www.cicomra.org.ar/cicomra2/expocomm/imagenes09/E.%20Griffa%20Ericsson.pdf
Ziggo doesn’t believe any of the scenarios will be thefuture. The likelihood is all of them are part of the future. 
Ziggo asks the following questions:
Does the customer want choice or do they want convenience
Does the network evolve into a dumb pipe or will services be dependent on the network
Do we see all purpose devices and specialists devices
Etc
What is the regulatory environment?
Ziggo believes that the future is more and more different screens. Multiple screens per home/person. The TV market is developing fasts. Currently the market for Television screens 1.8 million per year. Interactivity and ond-demand.
Ziggos new commercial with Leo Beenhakker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yp7zAw9YOM
Ziggo is the first cable company offering Comon Interface Plus. It allows your tv to do digital tv without a set top box.
Ziggo tries to get closer to the customer. Travels through the country with a bus. New flagship stores and the Ziggo Dome.
Its content offers are standard Video on Demand, but also everything the History Channel ever made. Customers can also programme their own PVR via the internet and their mobile.

Fixed Network Track at TelecomTime

FIXED NETWORK Track:
Reggefiber
We believe in open networks and see fiber as the end play. Just like Cable and DSL see fiber as an end play. What we find interesting is that the big networks send their lawyers to debate new networks and that the we have to depend on very small providers to show that our model works and that innovation is possible.
We don’t believe in inventing services first. Edison didn’t know about ipods that needed electricity either.
We do believe in symmetric networks. Just look at the stats of Nuenen. See Herman Wagter.
How do traditional operators see FTTH?
Threats: Ne entrants enter into a greenfiel with no legacy
Our current equipment may need to written off earlier
My whole organisation works national. Fiber is regional
Regional roll out with the bundling of demand leads to a demise of market share of some traditional operators.
We offer under the name Glashart . We work hard on promoting locally with local shops.
We are rolling out a bit slower than we want.
Financing is sometimes difficult. Fiber is Real Estate. ODF is regulated over a long term. We are certain what our income will be.
Whehter the government helps out determines if we take 8 years to reach the whole country or 15 years.
Reggefiber is unique in Europe. We have fibered up one whole city already. This is Deventer. We have cooperated well with the government. Their input was removing the bullshit and working with us. Fiber is the Dike protecting us from the Exaflood.
Q: Do you see a role for yourself in mobile broadband? A: We haven’t looked at it yet.

Ziggo (took a while for me to start blogging_
Ziggo sees more than 1000 gbps to the World wide web. It has a lot of DWDM in its network. The customer is generally a maximum of 300 meters away from fiber. They are going to upgrade their customers automatically to newer faster speeds. They see themselves as competitive to FTTH. Ziggo is looking at QAM1024 in order to be able to deliver 1Gbps symmetrical over fiber, including 150 channels. They see a lot of potential for mobility. IP is mostly interesting for communicating with the back-office.
Qand A: Q do you look at Fiber at all? A: we believe in HFC. It is the way forward for us.

Eurofiber: The Future of Open Networks. Alex Goldblum
In the consumer market people may debate networking technology. In the business world it is much simpler. Fiber is the only future. Most of our competitors are using a vertically integrated and it makes sense for them. But we don’t do this, because the world is flattening … shows movie on the flattening of the world.
The cloud is expanding. The internet is becoming ubiquitous. The time to market has decreased and market penetration to reach 50 million users is decreasing to under 2 years. The could computing stack is having a great impact on how we do business. Everything becomes interwoven. Location doesn’t matter. It is scaleable, lower barrier to entry and it becomes transparant.
Eurofiber only looks at the datatransport in the disaggregated value chain. They provide the platform and the service. We just focus on the one thing we’re good at and that is fiber. We started with the alternative providers, but now vertically integrated incumbents have become partners. We have fully automated provisioning of fiber. Customers can ask for fiber to any location and get an automated quote back. We have our whole asset management available for them.
Every one is our customer now: Telco’s, Multinationals and local companies. We provide dark and lit fiber. But you can get anything you want and at every speed.
The only way is open. Cusomers want transparency and freedom of choice. The flattening world and cloud computing supports this. And they need fiber for it.
We are now the second largest provider. Tele2 is now third.

Telecom Time CEO debate fixed networks.

Eelco blok, Diederik karsten, Bernard dijkhuizen, henrik ringmar, chris fonteijn

UPC: our network is already 93% fiber.

KPN: I will give a sneak preview. I agree with UPC that most of the network is already fibre. All of us are already investing. Next week we will show how we will retain our number 1 position. What we think is important is that the networks are open. We are a wholesale party and we will open our networks. We will defend our market share.

Ziggo: We have invested already a lot in fiber. The question is what customers want. You have to stay ahead of what the customer wants. The speeds we are currently offering are not theoretical and we can attain much higher speeds in the future.

Moderator: OPTA can you tell me what you mean by that there are no services for fiber

OPTA: What I wanted to do is to push our thinking and counter a way of thinking that is prevalent in our politics. I don’t think we are in trouble in the coming 5 years. I don’t see a major role for the government. Our society isn’t in trouble at the moment.

UPC: We don’t believe in facilitating. Governments seem to think that it means doing most of the investments. The government should invest in new services. It’s like my kids who want me to facilitate my homework and I can say I recently had a 9 out of 10 for my report on Venice.

Ziggo: We believe in moderation for governments.

KPN: we also believe in a moderate role for governments in infrastructure. Governments should focus on new services for instance for eCare.

Moderator: KPN is focussing on open networks. Ziggo seems to be more of a media company.

Ziggo: we don’t see ourselves as a media company. We provide access to services and content, but that doesn’t make us a media company. We just want to make things easy for our customers.

UPC: we deliver access and services. People often say we are a dumb pipe. I do think we add value and we do offer a service.

Moderator: Tele2 is offering over different infrastructures.

Tele2: We think that OPTA is doing a good job. We have the second biggest fiber network in the country. For a customer its about the services and not about the network. We are ahead in the market and offer VDSL already. We will keep our competitors sharp.

Moderator: how big do you think the role of mobile will become in the Bundle.

KPN: We think that the role of mobile will become very important in the Bundle. Not for telephony, but it will be important for the data market.

Tele2: The Netherlands is lagging a lot with mobile internet. There are three very happy mobile operators and they aren’t competing.

KPN: I believe it is because we are so far ahead with fixed broadband. People don’t really focus on mobile broadband as they already have access.

Ziggo: I believe that OPTA is wrong with its statement of two is not enough. I believe we have one of themost competitive markets. We have 5 networks already.

OPTA: At this moment mobile isn’t a competitor in the broadband market. We only look 3-5 years ahead. Longer ahead just isn’t possible. 2 networks is the current situation. Satellite, mobile and fiber isn’t big enough yet. We evaluate this position every three years.

Moderator: UPC and Ziggo how important do you think mobile data is.

Ziggo: We think mobile data is important for the future. We are evaluating how we are going to offer that in the future, but haven’t made any decision yet.

Tele2: we do all these things already. And we promise we will be a very good customer for analogue cable too. Eelco can confirm this.

Ziggo: you would be very good customers at 13.5 euro.

Question: What do you think of the developments in France.

UPC: The French broadband market used to be scary for us and we would think that that shouldn’t happen here. Now we have a much more open idea of what can happen. We do see free.fr as a possibility of what can happen in the Dutch market.

Question: Do you expect other ISP’s to offer over your cable network
Ziggo: we only see wholesale in B2B. There is no place for it in the consumer market.

Chris Fonteijn, OPTA vision on infrastructure and next generation networks (fixed and mobile)

I start with some propositions. Propositions are never fully true, but that will lead to debate.
1. We’re doing very well in The Netherlands
2. FTTH is only used for downloading of movies and music and there are no services available for it
3. Municipalities should only facilitate the FTTH roll out and not invest in it.
The Netherlands is leading Europe in broadband connections. The price for broadband internet have dropped with84%. According to the OECD we’re the cheapest country in the world with regards to mobile bundles. Bundling is very important in the Netherlands. With FTTH we see steady growth and Reggefiber has 388.000 connections. We believe that the market has the primacy. The market delivers new innovation. Even though market is a dirty word at the moment.
If you look at competition in The Netherlands. We have always focussed on infrastructure competition. There has been some evolution in our thinking. The Commission started with the ladder of investment. New entrants would grow and would roll out multiple networks to the end-user. We do see that this vision hasn’t become reality. And we do believe that 2 is not enough. Having just cable and KPN is not enough for the market. Access regulation has served us well with KPN. We will look at cable too. We want to give investors long term regulatory certainty.
The future is bundling. We haven’t looked at bundling yet in our market analysis, but this will come. We expect in the future that content will become part of it too. We are concerned about the business market where KPN is still too large. With the Wholesale Cable regulation we want to give new entrants access to the analogue signal. This is still a very important competitive advantage for the cable networks. With fibre we want an open network, but have also seen that it isn’t going as fast as we had expected. This however isn’t our concern.
We do see a roll for the government in FTTH but it should be very limited. They should only facilitate. Competition should be the idea. Competition is the reason we have Docsis 3. Competition is why KPN works with Reggefiber. I do wonder what the consumer will benefit from fiber. We haven’t seen much yet. We don’t care too much about the technology, but what the consumer will get. We do see fiber as an end play.
We understand fiber is a risky investment. As the first regulator in Europe we have given long term certainty to private operators. We don’t see a big roll for the government in  investing financially in the network. In the Netherlands competition is taking the lead and I don’t know if municipalities can accelerate growth. Governments can disrupt competition if they invest financially in new networks. We also wonder if private parties don’t profit too much from governments cooperating with them. Profit too much compared to other existing parties. We expect much from competition. Combined with our regulation and local governments making FTTH roll out easy. I do believe we have created the right conditions and the business now will have to do it.

Ed Achterberg on what happened in 2009 in the Dutch Telecom Scene.

Ed Achterberg on what happened in 2009 in the Dutch Telecom Scene.

Growth has gone out of the broadband market. FTTH is growing slowsly. DSL has lost its steam and Cable has taken the initiative. DSL can only compet on price or on extra services. KPN is doubting between dSL and Fiber. On December 15th KPN will announce what she will do with DSL or Fiber.
UPC and Ziggo are offering the fastest speeds and DSL is the slowest technology. Also because the advertised speeds are up-to 20mbit/s. Glass fiber is out of this chart as the average speed is much higher than the 3 mbit/s max limited. 40% of the installed base of Cable is stuck already. If they go DSL they go back in speed and functionality.
The service revenue for mobile seems completely insensitive to the crisis. It seems to be… But is it really stable at 1,6 billion euro. KPN has slightly below 50%. It can’t become more or the OPTA will get mad and it won’t become less because KPN doesn’t want less. The total amount of active SIMS is much higher than our stats, because only KPN reports on its M2M installed base. ARPU is a very bad metric. What the consumer is paying for prepay is twice as much as what the operators are reporting as ARPU. The consumer is paying 12 euro, the telco reports 6, because of the amount of inactive SIMS. About 15% of the consumers have a databundle. And we see a growth.
Nokia is declining fast in the handset market. The Blackberry has become very popular with the youth segment. Blackberries can send free SMS’s called pings. Kids love those! Nokia has lost 25% of its market share in the Netherlands. From 42% to 34%.
In the television market we see that KPN’s Digitenne is flat. IPTV over DSL grows slowly. The wholesale offer analogue cable is an interesting proposition for Tele2. Television over Fiber is still difficult as many people keep their cable connection because of the abundance of channels and content and people only use fiber to connect to the net and telephony. HDTV is a great product and gives very little extra revenue. The average customer with an HDTV is willing to pay 3 euro extra for HDTV. Those without an HDTV capable tv are only willing to pay 1.50 euro.
Question: The Netherlands is the world leader in MVNO’s. What do you see there?
We see that everyone moves to smart pricing (making the contracts less transparent to the customer) For MVNO there is an opportunity there. MVNO’s can only distinguish themselves if they do more than just being cheaper. They could offer pico-cells.

Telecom Tim 09: Keynote Job Witteman on AMS-IX and growth

Job Witteman, Oei ik Groei…

Oops, I’m growing. Our growth shows the traditional hockeystick. In the summer we see a decrease in our growth. After the summer, when it’s cold our growth continues. Our IXP offers ISPS a neutral environment to interconnect their IP traffic. It’s a physical infrastructure where the ISP connects his network too.
ISP’s need to make their own peering agreements with other parties. The IXP itself isn’t a party in that deal. We don’t define what an ISP is, this has opened up our IXP to content providers like the public broadcasters and also the likes of Google. Traditionally the iXPisn’t used for exchanging Transit deals, but we don’t prohibit that. Peering is really a bilateral arrangement. My traffic to your network and your traffic to my network. It’s limited to that network. The IXP is neutral. We only charge for the port and we don’t take a fee per costs.
AMS-IX is the biggest with 846 Gbps and 54% growth. Moscow is smaller, but has 200% growth. The top 3 IXP’s take 60% of the traffic. The next 5 take 20% and the following 11 take 13%. Being big is an advantage. It draws more customers, which attract more customers still.
We’re an association, with a limited corporation. Everyone connected is a member of the association. Every member has one vote. There is a board with 5 members and 2 times a year there is a general meeting. In those meetings we vote for board members and the Long Term Commercial Plan.
All the stock in the limited corporation is owned by the association and can’t be sold. The limited corporation owns all assets, but it only lives to serve the association.
Basic values are:
-          Neutral and independent,
-          Democratic and open
-          Reliable
-          Continuity
-          Leading edge technology
-          Dynamic
-          Not-for-profit
Our core switches can work with 128 10Gbit/s ports at non-blocking speeds.
3 interconnect options:
-          Transit (also known as upstream). Can be quite expensive
-          Private interconnect
-          Public peering over IXP’s
Most ISP’s make use of a mix.

Carriers and mobile interconnects
IP convergence in the 2 world. Mobile operators are united/associated in a separate VLAN on the AMS-IX infrastructure for GRX roaming. There is a strict separation with the internet. There is a Closed User Group with its own agreements.
My first statement is:
-          Mobile internet is an illusion.
-          Mobile internet is a goldmine for the Mobile operators. Mobile telco’s don’t need to do anything for their customer. At 10 euro per month this can be as much 100 million per month in the Netherlands. You can build a nice network for that.
-          Video is not disruptive and will nog give you an exaflood, it’s normal growth and business as usual.
The growth at the GRX V-Lan is now around 100%. It used to be 1000%. We expect more growth if the mobile telco’s connect to the ISP VLAN and interconnect directly.
Question XS4All, where is there a possibility for disruption. Job explains about how well they organized everything redundantly.