Thursday June 01, 2006
Update to Telecommunication Conference in Bonn (2)
The last part on thursday is all about regulation. Matthias Kurt, president of the Bundesnetzagentur, the german regulation agency, spoke about consequences of high dynamics of competition in Germany and how this affects his daily work. "Neither we face the doomsday in this industry nor that everything would be very easy and happy", so Kurth. The Bundesnetzagentur is supporting the plurality of access technologies and is very interested in all new services like HDTV, IPTV, DVB-H and DMB and sees no problem in the plurality of the standards in this area as well as a value for the customer.
One big discussion in germans telecommunications industry is that the incumbant Deutsche Telekom asked for "regulatory holidays". They say that if they should invest 3 billion Euros in VDSL infrastructure they don't want to open this networks immediatly to their competition and want some years protection (what I can personally understand). But the European Union doesn't want to allow this - other than the german government and the regulator (Bundesnetzagentur) who wants to allow escape rules in new markets. But: What is a new market? So far there is no decision - and after the first discussions and several reports from experts there is still a big confusion: but on a much higher level. (More infos here.) Again - to understand this discussion which seems very specific to Germany's telco market, you have to know that there are only around 10,4 million DSL subscriber (80m inhabitants), 76,1% owned or controlled by Deutsche Telekom and nearly no users with cable access (120k subscriber).
Last discussion topic was Network Neutrality (the principle that network operators should not discriminate among network applications). Kurth assured the strong interest in openess and standardizations - compliant to EU laws. But an existing problem is Quality of Service for special applications and the solution might be in extra fees for extra services as long the customer can decide freely and nobody from other service providers are dicriminated.
Posted by Horst Thieme ( Jun 01 2006, 06:07:27 PM CEST ) PermalinkUpdate to Telecommunication Conference in Bonn (1)
In following you can find some notes I took during the conference today. Sorry - some speakers I don't mention, but they have mostly presented company strategies which can be found already at their webpages and have no really brand new informations for us telco-insiders...
Carsten Schloter, CEO Swisscom AG (Switzerland): At the moment all application worlds (TV, PC, mobiles devices) are stuck in silos. Schloters pointed out that there are many ways to handle convergence and consilidation. E.g. consumer customers struggle with huge gaps between these application worlds. Convergence is for Schloter the key, but he sees that this won't happen because of standardization of services than through integrated service providers (buzz words: Triple Screen / One Service). These integrated service providers can offer bundles which can't be offered by service providers which focus in one or two services only. By this integrated service providers can manage prize battles much better. Additionally they face bigger cost reductions by going to only-IP networks. By convergence of networks they can drive much better consolidation and gain value in an economy of scale.
Rolf Hansen, Founder and General Manager of SIMYO (MVNO, Germany): The manager of germans no thrill-mobile discounter presented right to the first birthday of his own company, the first german MVNO named SIMYO. The joint venture together with E-Plus (the german KPN subsidiary) is still the leader and agenda setter in Germany - and this with only 29 employees. Hansen demonstrated how importent market research is for a new market and how he did his researchs. And finally he dropped some words about marketing: His slogan - combining the simpel DNA of a protozoan with a SIM card - is still a hit! Trends (he named them "Mobile 2.0", let's see if this word will get a own branding as well) Hansen identified in this market: fixed/mobile convergence, marketing (blogs, community, newsletter...), Web 2.0. At the end he gave an outlook that SIMYO might offer fixed line services in future as well - at the moment they're still analyzing the market. Stay tuned for news in this area...
The countdown is running!", told us Carsten Ahrens, General Manager Ericsson GmbH (Germany) and meant the World Soccer Championship in Germany and the revenue opportunities for mobile carriers. In his presentation about New Media Revenues he tried to answer the question where the revenues are coming from in mobile TV market. Opportunities, so Ahrens, are from monthly fees over interactive services and special fees ("Vote and Greet" Model), classic advertisement to transactional models. And again - one of the buzz words of the event: Next Generation Networks & convergence in all-IP networks. As a Sun employee (= IP in my own DNA as well) I can only say, that this is a very good story.
Versatel's managing director Peter Knauer started his slot with a provocing thesis: Wireline is dead - Long live Wireline! Some years ago everybody deckined a growth in fixed line. This was old school and so boring... And now broadband is back - stronger than ever. Why is it? For Knauer it's all about competition - and competition in DSL started in Germany very late in 2004. The broadband market (he is thinking about DSL market, because he argues that cable market has missed the window of opportunity in Germany) is still growing and Versatel as well. Three "C" are important for Knauer: Convergence, Consolidation and consistance in regulation. Exampel consolidation: Its growth is explained though dynamic growth and acquisition of other companies (19 companies since 2001).
Posted by Horst Thieme ( Jun 01 2006, 05:01:29 PM CEST ) PermalinkConference: Handelsblatt Telco Market Europe
Numbers about the telco market in Europe? You can get them in one conference - and the newest update about strategies of leading companies in this great industry! Yesterday Telekommarkt Europa (Telco Market Europe), a telco focussed conference organized by the newspaper Handelsblatt started. Sun is a long time sponsor of this annual conference and we have again a speaking slot as well (in the last years we had our CTO EMEA Hellmuth Broda, VP Telco Darrell Jordan-Smith and many more - this time it's up to me).
Today master of ceremony and key speaker Prof Dr. Torsten Gerpott started the second conference day with his annual view on the numbers. If there are a statistics which shows which mobile services catholic non-smokers in Madrid or Berlin is using and how often - Gerpott knows them. In short here's what Gerpott summarized:
- Growth of telecommunication services (source EITO 2006) in
- Western Europe (EU pls Norway and Swiss): +1,7% from 217 bEUR to 280 bEUR from 2005 to 2007,
- Eastern Europe (Bulgary, Chechia, Estony, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slowakia, Slowenia): +5% from 21 to 23bEUR
- USA: +2,4% from 191 to 200 bEUR
- Japan: +1% from 115 to 118 bEUR and
- Rest of World: 7,5% from 252 to 291 bEUR
- In the same years (from 2005 to 2007) growth will be in Western Europe in
- Classical fixed line calls: 3,1%
- Data services: +5,4%
- Wireless services: 3,3% and
- CATV services: 1,5%.
- Germany has the biggest decline in revenue in fixed line services and as well - compared to other western european - only a average growth opportunity in wireless.
- In Eastern Europe Poland and Romania are the most interesting countries if we have a watch on growth opportunities...
- After the first round of buy-outs in the cellular phone industry the question arose as to the strategic advantages of attempting to move towards consolidation among alternative and established fixed network carriers.
Have a watch on the agenda - it is one of the lonely conferences which really makes sense. It's good to be here, meeting so many of our customers, partners and our competition as well.
By the way: My speaking slot will be on friday morning - the last day of the three day conference - about "Next generation OSS – challenges and outlook". I'll talk about
- Going IP: converging networks
- Stay flexible: SOA-enabled SDP
- Increase profitability: the value of consolidation and standardization
