TeleSciences Laboratory Blog

The future of mobile is analytics

2008-11-16T15:43:00.001-05:00

When the iPhone was first launched the story was told that there would be no local applications and that developers should build Web 2.0 solutions. Given that the first iPhone was limited to slow EDGE data rates, that felt like using dial-up modems back in the 90s, these sites had to be carefully designed to minimize the amount of data being shuttled back and forth. These limitations drove the creation of some of the best designed web interfaces.

A lot of users prefer them to the regular web interface as they convey the important information succinctly without a lot of clutter.

Edward Tufte writes, "The content is the interface, the information is the interface, not the computer administration debris."

Powerset CEO Barney Pell told John Markoff of the New York Times "The small screen forces you to be even more ruthless and focus on usability almost like a haiku".

Usability testing can be monitored throughout the product life-cycle using actual measurements for Customer Behavior Analysis.

With billions of mobile phones in use, the future of web design is mobile.

The future of analytics for communication service providers is outlined by Telesciences CEO, Mark Trudeau in a recent Business Analytics article in Billing/OSS Magazine.

Do more, with less

2008-04-22T18:17:00.001-04:00

On April 22nd each year, Earth Day, we get the chance to think about our relationship to the planet, and how we should be more mindful of our carbon footprint.

As the sixties came to an end, many Americans were driving around, using leaded gas in massive V8 sedans. Wasting precious resources was a sign of prosperity, and air pollution was the price of progress.

Mainframe computer systems were housed in strictly controlled environments, and large amounts of energy was used to condition the air to keep the machines crunching data.

Although the computing power of CPUs has grown by leaps and bounds and great strides have been made in reducing the heat they produce, modern data centers are still energy hogs.

There are many innovative ways to reduce the computing footprint:

- Use data centers that are built close to renewable energy sources

- Use the excess heat from the data center to warm the local swimming pool

- Use virtualization and cloud technologies to efficiently use the smallest number of machines

- Write smart code, and use the latest compilers and optimized virtual machines

- Get old inefficient code off your mainframe and run your business with EventDynamics

At TeleSciences we can't control all of these elements, but we try.

The Long Tale of Roaming Data

2008-03-09T23:49:00.001-04:00

If you lose your cell phone while traveling abroad, you could ring up a large phone bill. Luckily for a British couple traveling in South Africa, whose phone was stolen, T-Mobile agreed to write off their $16,000 bill (as the circumstances were exceptional). A British soldier serving in Iraq was not so lucky when he rang up a $3,000 bill talking to his fiancee in Liverpool.

In order to reduce the likelihood of excessive charges being made from any handset, the GSM Association has being working with service providers and vendors over the last 12+ months to introduce a scheme for carriers to send roaming records from the visited network operator (VPMN) to the home network operator (HPMN), within 4 hours. The idea is that these Near Real Time Roaming Data Exchange records will be generated in addition to the traditional Transferred Account Procedure (TAP) records and High Usage Records (HUR).

All of these records are normally transferred via a Clearinghouse, but the billing records (TAP) are normally reconciled only once per month, and the HUR records within 36 hours, so it was felt necessary to generate a new format and to transfer it within 4 hours. In practice the NRTRDE records may be processed within 10-30 minutes. In this way out of control usage can be identified quickly and controlled.

The NRTRDE solution is due to become effective from 1st October 2008, but strangely the focus in only on voice calls and does not address roaming data charges.

Piotr Staniaszek, a Canadian oil-field worked from Calgary, was used to paying $150/month for his phone and was used to being notified of any high charges. He signed up for a $10 unlimited mobile browser plan from Bell Mobility, hooked his mobile phone up to his computer and proceeded to download high-definition movies and other large files. When he received his first bill for $65,000 in November 2007 he thought it was a mistake, but then the December bill arrived for $85,000. Bell Mobility has since lowered the bill to $3,243, but Mr Staniaszek says he intends to fight the charges anyway as he was not aware that connecting his mobile phone to his laptop and using it as a modem was outside his plan.

Chris Anderson, the author of the Long Tail, recently blogged about having his iPhone account suspended when he hit $2,000 worth of international roaming charges, as unbeknownst to him his iPhone was polling for e-mail every 15 minutes as he traveled from Europe to Israel and on to China. As he wrote "How can AT&T be smart enough to offer a revolutionary device like the iPhone, which is all about delightful user experience, and yet let their own customer communications be a chilling reminder how little phone companies care about their users?"

The problem is often in the mediation and analytics solutions that operators are using. The sheer volume of data and the ability to process it quickly results in sloppy, backward, customer service. These are the problems that EventDynamics and 10e Business Analytics address, today. If you are looking to go beyond the NRTDRE requirements for 2008 and address the data challenges of tomorrow, give us a call.

"Sell me your children"

2008-02-24T19:36:00.001-05:00

When 'Joliet' Jake Blues (John Belushi) leaned over towards the nervous, preppy, wealthy diners at the upscale Chez Paul restaurant and asked them "How much for the little girl? How much for the women?" - they (and a part of us) were appalled.

When Hutchinson 3G and T-Mobile, as well as Orange and Vodafone, announced they were going to share their 3G networks, a lot of equipment vendors, and analysts were similarly startled.

A small part of the telecom community was not surprised, as there are a lot of benefits to sharing infrastructure and the data it generates.

However, many providers have not been good at developing successful business models built around sharing. The failure of so many US based MVNOs compared with similar efforts in Europe, and the issues in merging the different technologies involved in the Sprint PCS and Nextel merger, caution us.

In the IP world the spectacular growth of Web 2.0 applications, social networks, and mashups have shown that sharing is a model worth pursuing, and the more enlightened service providers recognize this.

The network is a rich source of data, that has value if shared. The presence information from your mobile could be shared with your significant other's IM client or made visible on your Facebook status. Tim O'Reilly recently mused in a New York Times Op-ed contribution "... what if this phone company opened up its databases to developers of software applications? We could soon see mash-ups of your call history with the address books from your personal computer, your telephone and your social network. Now imagine a user community turned loose to annotate that data."

Knowing who their subscribers are, what they like to do, where they physically are, and sharing that information responsibly, in real-time, to add value, is what TeleSciences' Business Integration Appliance Services enables - it's not the same as selling your children.

For a beautiful visualization of shared network data, take a look at how New York city breathes with voice and IP at the New York Talk Exchange exhibition at MOMA, designed by the SENSEable City Laboratory folks from MIT.

Why advertisers will love hybrid wireless devices - more than mobile service providers

2008-02-14T22:10:00.001-05:00

Two major strands of news emerged from the world's largest mobile show this week in Barcelona; mobile advertising and hybrid handsets.

Communication service providers are thrilled. With revenues for voice in decline, they're welcoming the chance to claw back some revenue through advertising. Of course they may have to offer incentives to encourage their subscribers to tolerate pesky adverts on their handhelds - maybe free voice calls, or sending international SMS at a reasonable price?

It's evident that if you are building the latest, greatest handset (Sony Ericsson X1, Nokia 96) to compete with that upstart Apple iPhone, then as well as slick software you've realised that providing WiFi is a must. Afterall, browsing the internet even at HSUPA or EVDO rates (let alone EDGE) is not the same as the real thing - the speed of the WiFi connection that you have at home. So any handset worth it's salt must include WiFi.

Why should an advert be sent over the carriers network, what if it gets to the handset via WiFi? Consumers are used to being faced with display pages (and ads) just before, and after they login to hotspots. No need to offer any incentive, Pavlov's canine has already been trained.

Ah, you say, but subscribers won't have the patience to enter usernames and passwords everytime they pass Starbucks or MacDonalds - but with services like those from DeviceScape they won't have to. They'll have already entered all their subscriptions and passwords into a website from the comfort of their home, so that when they're out and about they'll be effortlessly connected to any WiFi that will let them.

WiFi's limited range makes it ideal for Location Based Advertising, and the faster connection speed allows for more stimulating music and videos to be used in the adverts.

What does this mean for the mobile carriers? Are they going to wake up to the fact that there is more than one way to get an advert on that handset? And whose customer is it, Apple's, Nokia's, Starbuck's, Wallmart's or theirs? Wherever there is a friendly WiFi network, there's a chance that the advert being served won't be coming from the carrier.

Now, mobile providers still know a lot about their subscriber, a lot more than the browser cookie on a handset can tell the WiFi advertiser, but unless they start to do something useful with all that information, they may have to wave goodbye to an income stream they wish they already had.

Tapping into the mine of knowledge that the provider has about their customers and how, where, when and why they use the network, is one reason that mobile carriers are turning to TeleSciences to analyze, and in real-time provide relevant information for the display of the 'best' advert to their customer.

Open the window, stick your head out. Can you hear me now?

2008-02-12T00:05:00.003-05:00

Not before time, mobile service providers outside Asia are beginning to wake up to the fact that providing coverage inside, as well as outside a building is important.

What do femtocells, or picocells mean to you? Is your mobile provider taking them seriously?

Natives of Hong Kong and Seoul, are always surprised when visting their friends in London, Paris or New York how residents of these major cities consider it inevitable that they will loose their mobile signal when they go underground or even drive through a tunnel. It doesn't have to be that way. There's no technical reason not to have repeaters or local, mini cell towers, and if they are really small they're called pico or femto.

Vodafone Group plc, Telefónica O2 Europe plc, and TeliaSonera AB all made announcements of trials this week at the show in Barcelona. Cisco just took an equity position in ip.access. It's beginning to happen for the rest of us.

When the network is accessible anywhere how will service providers differentiate themselves? Back when AT&T Mobility called itself Cingular, it claimed (for a while) that it had the fewest dropped calls. Verizon Wireless claims to have "America's Most Reliable Wireless Network". What happens when the network always works, even on the train to work in the morning?

How will subscribers use the network? For shopping, talking, navigating, watching TV, listening to sports?
How should providers charge for services that benefit from these always on connections?

TeleSciences has solutions to help providers make decisions in real-time. To make sense of all the information that comes from their networks. These systems will help them to deliver better services, faster, rather than just worry about dropping calls.

Just think, soon you'll be able to use your mobile in your own house without having to stick your head out the window. Radical.

Is Bob Dylan Singing the Praises of Cost-Side Analytics?

2007-09-26T12:52:00.001-04:00

Like some MTV Wannabe band, typical revenue assurance solutions for communication providers lamely compare data from your network with billing records to try to find leaking revenue. But for the Stadium-crowd-selling TeleScientists – with its new band members, the 10e Solutions company – this is only the beginning.

Yes, we've acquired a true innovator (not unlike Mr. Dylan). The new and extensive suite of 10e Solutions from TeleSciences allows service providers to more quickly assess revenue leakage, address inaccurate or disputed interconnect charges, reduce fraud, provide operational margin analysis, and gain deep visibility into usage trends and network engineering performance.
Here's another way to look at it:

How much for your data?

2007-07-31T11:59:00.001-04:00

A recent trip to Europe and perusal of a recent OECD report (check out their StatLinks) caused me to consider the vastly different rates that consumers have to pay depending on where, when, and how they want to receive bits of data.

Imagine using an 'internets' where you had to pay for the distance the bits traveled to reach you, where rates depended on the interconnecting networks they had to traverse to get to your desktop, and the time of the day that you accessed a server altered the price of the web-page you viewed. How crazy would that be? And yet many service providers are still charging for web services as they do for 20th century voice calls.

Just consider that if you want to send a 160 byte text messages from a US mobile to another US mobile AT&T will charge you the equivalent of $983 per MB (International text messaging works out at over $1300 per MB!)

US broadband users pay roughly 15x the price per Mbit per month ($3.18) than subscribers in Japan ($0.22) where Japanese fiber customers can download and upload data at 100 Mbit/s.
Sweden has the lowest always-on broadband rates at less than $11 per month for a 256kbit/s connection and recently provisioned a fiber connection for 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg to cruise the Internet with a 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection from her home in Karlstad (in less than 2 seconds she can download a full-length movie on her home computer.)

With the coming of fiber to the premises and cable MSOs demonstrating DOCSIS 3.0 will consumers still be asked to pay for bandwith? Or will content and the value of data drive revenues for service providers? The interactivity that consumers will enjoy will create billions of events and tracking these is the key to generating deserved revenues in an information world.

TeleSciences reflects new look of Telecom market

2007-07-05T23:34:00.001-04:00

Analysys, from the UK, views Ericsson's recent acquisitions of LHS and Drutt as vindicating the trends outlined in their recent research report,
Billing and OSS Trends: the transition to telecoms IT

Analysys views the pressures on the traditional OSS/BSS market as shown in this figure.

Looking forward this is how Analysys view the emerging telecoms IT landscape (Source: Analysys Research, 2007)

The solutions here in the TeleSciences lab, and already available to service providers, reflect this world view. Our latest solutions leverage our core usage management competencies to support service creation, delivery and lifecycle management. We marry the strength of EventDynamics to measure the use of services with platforms that can deliver services faster to subscribers, and support self-provisioning and self-care functionality.

Apple iPhone - unlimited US calling - GSM and 802.11 convergence - in the same week

2007-06-28T19:32:00.001-04:00

This week the North American telecom consumer is being treated to two remarkable events:
- The launch of a mobile handset from a former computer vendor (where the carrier, AT&T, is an afterthought for the consumer)

- The launch of all you can eat mobile calling from Tmobile (as long as you are using GSM over 802.11)

For the last two decades telecom service providers mistakenly thought that consumers cared about their networks and that they were willing to pay to use them. They spent a lot of time, and money, leaping from one TLA (three letter acronym) to another looking to improve coverage and data transfer rates.

The iPhone, and Tmobile combined GSM/VoIP phones, provide fast all you can eat data, and all you can eat voice - if you are within range of a WiFi hotspot.

Both use 2G GSM networks to provide voice calling but if you want to take advantage of "the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device" then it helps to be close to a Hotspot. Similarly if you want to talk for hours and not use any 'voice minutes' then jump on a nearby WiFi network. The WiFi connection does not have to be provided by the telecom service provider, any WiFi that will let you connect will do.

Is this what service providers had in mind when they first started to talk about convergence? That everything, voice and data, would end up on somebody else's IP network?

10 observations on Telcos from EuroTelcoblog

2006-10-10T22:25:00.000-04:00

How are Voice over IP and frozen peas related?

That and nine other observations of the European telecom sector are detailed in this article from James Enck. His discussion of Telcos (in)ability to innovate also resonates with the North American market.

Dittberner Associates Says Telecom Billing, Real-Time Charging and Interconnect Billing Software Market to Grow

2006-08-08T19:51:00.000-04:00

Dan Baker recently introduced our webinar on revenue leakage commenting on the ever changing needs for mediation. In this report he details the growing need for real-time mediation that is easy to deploy, scale and continually update.

Market trends:

* The Rise of Virtual Network Operators

* Wireline Billing Consolidation

* Real-time Revenue Generation — The explosion of data services in mobile markets is prompting telecoms to buy billing systems for their revenue-generating direct marketing skills, and not just for their accounting dexterity. Several billing vendors are leveraging merchandising and contextual advertising techniques to boost the bottom lines of their clients.

* Converging Postpaid and Prepaid Billing — These used to be very different markets, but the growing use of ‘dual use’ phones and the advantages of pricing from a single consolidated database are forcing the prepaid and postpaid billing markets to converge.

(Via Telecom OSS News Review.)