It might be a brave analyst who tells the Emperor that he might not be cutting quite the sartorial dash he thought he was, but that was the approach taken by Infonetic’s Stephane Teral this week.
Publicising his latest Survey into operator attitudes to small cells, Teral chose to take a confrontational approach to the current enthusiasm for small cells. “Small cell is the buzz but DAS is the biz” was the tagline on the email Mobile Europe received.
Teral said that a dose of reality is required right now: “To the small cell vendors of the world, we know what you want to hear, but what you need to hear is that the small cell market simply isn’t going to explode as many are predicting,” he added. “The bottom line is, small cells – I’m not talking about residential femtocells here – remain a tiny market compared to macrocells, and will take time to reach meaningful penetration.”
Not exactly pointing at the naked fat man, then, but perhaps brave nonetheless. You’ll note, for example, that only this week the Small Cell and WiFi industry bodies got even closer, and talked about how they might align standards around service provision to small cells, and integration of WiFi and cellular small cells.
In fact, although Teral makes the entirely reasonable point that DAS is still the go-to solution for most operators looking to extend coverage in large buildings and stadia, the report also showed that there is plenty of scope for small cells too – in optimising in-building coverage.
So it’s the old boring, but true, story – there’s room for both, on a horses for courses basis.
Is there also room for both operator-led and OTT VoIP services? Our latest article from OpenCloud thinks so – especially if operators can use QoS to enhance and enable both their own services and that of their current competitors.
Mark Windle, who last month outlined how VoIP and VoLTE services might work, and who holds the service advantage, returned with a few volleys at net on the topic of Quality and VoIP. Can operators differentiate around Quality and service ubiquity? Windle thinks so.
“The first differentiator is something so seamlessly woven into the user experience that we are unaware of it until it disappears – dependability. VoIP calls can be unreliable. Many of us will have experienced the frustration of a VoIP connection dropping repeatedly, with disastrous impact on the flow of the conversation.
Equally, anyone suffering problematic VoIP calls will recognise that the solution is often to reach for our mobiles (or landlines): and the trade-off between the cost and the user experience is easily and quickly rationalised.
“Problems with VoIP can even occur on fixed broadband. In an attempt to avoid such issues while on a mobile broadband connection, those services are typically used from fixed locations: getting a free call at the expense of being less mobile. Taking it a stage further and attempting to use over-the-top VoIP while on the move just doesn’t seem worth the pain. There’s value in “mobility”. There’s value in “dependability”. The combination of the two is extremely potent: and it’s something network operators do well.
The second differentiator arises from the network operators’ data “pipe” that is essential for third party over-the-top VoIP. The so-called “Quality of Service” (QoS) – the way data flows up and down through this pipe – is under the control of the network operator and can be regulated to better suit the experience of the end-user.
“QoS is actually a collection of service qualities based on metrics such as how much delay the data experiences , how much that delay varies, how much bandwidth is guaranteed (if any), how much can be used for sudden bursts and so on. QoS settings may be established that enable good browsing but render over-the-top VoIP services useless. However, subscribers want access to VoIP services, to block them entirely would be detrimental and would stimulate churn. It would be more far better to enable VoIP use, and to extract some value from it.
“Network operators have now identified that the exposure of relevant APIs is a good opportunity for monetising QoS, and a variety of business models have already been conceived that can be extended to exploit QoS APIs.”
Windle’s conclusion, then, is bullish.
“There seem to be a number of reasons why network operators should launch their own VoIP services, but one reason is most compelling. By introducing their own free VoIP and basing their offers on ‘data allowance’ the network operators can neutralise the appeal of alternative VoIP services.”
Can operators “neutralise” the appeal of Skype, or Facetime, or other IP-based services? That, surely, remains to be seen.
Mobile Europe’s annual survey is now live. This is the survey where we ask people what they thought went on in 2012, and what will be key in 2013.
We want everyone to have their say here – so we can provide a in-the-round look into how the industry ecosystem views some of the key issues of the day. The results get written up into a full report that is published in our next issue.
It will take you only a very few short minutes. Thank you.
Keith Dyer
Editor