Thought Garage

Georgia Tech : Mobile Applications and Services with IMS by Russel J. Clark.

IMS Research and Competition (

http://forgedbyims-research-competition.com/index.html)Georgia Tech, Cingular Wireless, and Siemens Communications are kicking off a new research program in IMS applications. This initiative brings the students and faculty of Georgia Tech an opportunity to gain early, first-hand access to the latest telecommunications application architecture. The IMS program is a joint effort of the Georgia Tech Research Network Operations Center (GT-RNOC) of the Office of Information Technology and the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC). During the summer of 2006, Siemens is installing the IMS technology platform (valued at $5 million) in GEDC labs located in the Technology Square Research Building. The campus Wi-Fi infrastructure will be configured to enable access to the IMS platform for researchers.

About the Course:

This course provides an introduction to the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and covers the process of developing an application for IMS. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is the next-generation standard in telecommunications network architecture, enabling a leap forward for voice, video, data, and multimedia applications. Telecommunications companies will soon use IMS technology to offer new services that subscribers can access from any location on a wide variety of devices. The students in this class will learn to design and develop these new services.

Ajit Jaokar offers two different courses that cater to IMS/Mobile2.0 and Web2.0 @Oxford. They are sure the latest topics. Only question is what he has to offer. Since both the topics are quite a mystery for most business analysts and Marketers and technologists alike.

Mobile Web2.0/IMS

The course will have a dual perspective. It will approach Web 2.0 from the user perspective and also from the IMS standpoint. It will cover the basics of IMS and will then discuss how IMS would apply in a user generated content / Web 2.0 world

It would cover
• Understanding Web 2.0
• What is Mobile Web 2.0
• Significance of User generated content
• Content types: Movies, music, podcasting etc
• Business models and revenue streams
• Threats and opportunities: legal, social, trust, copyright etc
• The principles of Mobile Web 2.0
• The role of IMS in Mobile Web 2.0
• Seamless / Converged Web 2.0 services in context of IMS
• Threats and strategies for Telecoms operators from Web 2.0 companies
• Services
• IMS, OpenGardens and Web 2.0 – A competitive advantage
• Golden bit pipes
• Is IMS necessary for Web 2.0 services?
• IMS, Web 2.0 and third party APIs
• QOS
• DRM
• Privacy
• Security
• Context/Presence
• Consumer vs. Enterprise

Source: Mobile Web 2.0/IMS/User Generated Content/Mobile Network Operators training course ..

He also offers a course on Web2.0: User Generated Content and Web 2.0

• Understanding the new world of Content covering movies, music, news, blogging and podcasting
• Operational issues: Threats, opportunities, legal, social issues, trust, copyright etc
• Business models, revenue streams
• Social factors, community building and user interaction
• Web 2.0 and Mobile web 2.0
• Market evolution and scenarios
• The empire strikes back: how existing content providers are using their content in conjunction with new user generated content
• Case studies of successful transition to user generated content by established media companies
• Strategies of key players
• The impact of convergence
• The threat from external players due to convergence
• Future trends

If you are lucky to be around Oxford and interested in Mobile2.0 or Web2.0, You may attend. But both topcis are pretty hazy, that no one seems to have clarity and conclusive ways of either leveraging them for business or understanding how they really work. Most industry analysts and marketers are finding it hard to understand what turns ON this web2.0. How to create business streams out of this explosion.  But, it is interesting that he(Ajit) is attempting to discuss them.

Read some statistics on SkypeJournal about Skyp’s growth and comparisions with Telco’s traditional revenues. The author says that the dent made by Skype is so low that Telco’s won’t even notice Skype.

Numbers may be low. But, Telcos are infact scared of Skype and its clones all around. Go to any conference. Open any report. View any presentation or listen to any conference. Nothing starts and ends without mentioning the threat from Skype and its clones.  Why, Skype is eating out 25% of VOIP growth. Read on.

Interestingly, though, Skype’s growth has not yet had a quantifiable impact on switched volumes.

Skypelights:

• Skype traffic grew by 6.2 billion minutes in the last year. From 7.6 billion minutes in 2005 to 13.8 billion projected in 2006. 80% year over year.

Just in case that’s sounds like a lot…

• Other VoIP traffic grew by 16.8 billion minutes to 42 billion minutes. These are the Vonages, cable and telco voip offerings.

Their growth was bigger than Skype’s total traffic. But wait, there’s more.

• Swtiched telephony, grew 8% to 237 billion minutes. Switched growth was 18 billion minutes.

So even if Skype traffic is growing 10 times faster than switched service, picking up a few points of share, the Skype threat falls into telecom’s background noise. Skype’s revenue doesn’t even fall in telecom’s rounding errors.

If you look at the growth alone: Skype has around 6 Billion minutes, while Switched traffic has 18 Billion minutes and VOIP traffic has 16.8 billion minutes. That accounts to roughly 1/3 of switched traffic and roughly 1/3 of VOIP traffic as well. Quite considerable or not? I bet, its still a good number. Look at it this way: Skype is eating out 25% of Telcos VOIP growth.

It will be interesting to see categorised minutes to get a good feeling of where Skype and its clones are used the most. For example, international minutes. Skype’s adoption to masses hasn’t even begun due to lack of handsets. Many of us don’t like to glue to PCs to make a call. We want to move around. So handsets that can directly connect internet on WiFi will change the equation drastically. At this point, though these handsets are available, they are quite expensive ( $100+). If price comes down to $40-50, it would be interesting to see how these numbers jump up for Skype. I bet, they would jump beyond expectations.

U.K.’s The Register reports some surprising results of a survey of 1500 U.K. consumers, commissioned by hosting firm Hostway.

Despite investment by operators in services such as i-mode and Vodafone Live, 73 per cent of respondents to a new survey said don’t access the net from their mobile. Slow-loading pages (38 per cent) and navigation difficulties (27 per cent) were among the reasons cited why people would rather hook up to the net using a PC rather than a phone. A quarter (25 per cent of sites were unavailable to those with mobile phones.

Key Reasons why 73% of people prefer not to access internet on their Mobile phones are:

1. Too expensive to browse internet on mobile
2. Too difficult to navigate through pages.
3. Not comfortable to read the web content that is meant for desktop browsers on a tiny mobile browsers
4. Download time is too high and tiresome
5. Applications they want to access are not available

Also, most people want to access maps than reading news and blogs on Mobile. Seperate content for mobiles,  developed keeping the constraints of a browser on the mobile might save the frustration of consumers.

If not for Data applications, wirless carriers have little opportunity to survive in the markets leave alone making profits, considering the fact that voice already almost became a commodity. So carriers, hurry up with Data applications that are light weight, easy to use and most importantly apps that one wants to access on the mobile.

Its time to say Good Bye to the free INTERNET we know, where your packet is never discriminated based on what it contains, where it is coming from and where it is going. Senate Commerce Committee, rejected the compromise language on Net Neutrality by splitting11-11, which would  mean a defeat for Net Neutrality.

The Senate Commerce Committee, splitting 11 to 11 and therefore rejecting compromise language, set the stage for a carrier-controlled Internet. If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by the President, you can kiss the Net you know "goodbye." Farewell, open networks and open standards. Soon every packet will be subject to inspection and surcharges based on what it carries and who sent it or where it is going. [ZDNet: Saying "goodbye" to the Net  ]

So very soon carriers will be empowered to inspect the packet and charge a premium not only based on the content, but possibly where it is coming from and where it is going. or a Tiered internet based purely on content type, means carriers will now offer a package Internet connection deal which literally says basic internet connection is $14.99 with which you can access emails and visit a few allowed websites, with optional adds ons : music internet $4.99 (you can listen and download MP3s), Video internet $4.99 (you can watch and download videos) and the list goes on. Having a package like cable television will not be a big surprise even.  America Top 60 for $15.99, which allows you to access top 60 websites mostly news and general. America Video Classics, $11.99 which allows you to watch and download videos from any video website. America top 100 Music, that allows to listen and download music from 100 listed websites. In a variation, carriers may set Band Width limitations where if you visit carrier owned music site, you will have unlimited Bandwidth while if you visit a site like Youtube or Flickr, every byte is counted towards the bandwidth limit and the consumer will have to pay premium charge for the additional bandwidth if he chooses to use.  Or something very creative and unbelievable package deal, but you have pay like $140 to goto any website you like.

We just have to watch and see how creative these Telcos can go. This is particularly interesting keeping in view the fact that most Telcos have been threatened by internet innovation and have been lossing business starting from IM to Skype phones. Recent hurried consolidiations is nothing but an indication that they can not compete for the same already cutdown pie and possibly survive longer. So, now its time for them to take a revenge and show internet companies what it feels like to be threatened. Time again to put some bucks on these telcos, after a long long time.

During the christmas, be ready to hear the analysts, confirming "Christmas sales revenue is down 5% from last year owing to increase in internet access fees".

Tags: internet, netneutrality, senate, telecom, packet inspection, cable, Inspions

Happy with the last nights rejection of Net Neutrality in the House of Representatives, Telecom companies will soon be giving a generous gift to its consumers, called ‘Bit caps’. They have promised themselves to give this gift to their consumers now or little later but definitely. This time, they mean it. People, that rejected the Net Neutrality, do you know what is in the making and what can be expected from these greedy Telcos? Here you go.One tiny step. Bit caps.

If you have a internet connection from one of these greate Telecom companies, they setup a bit cap, a limit on the amount of data you can download or upload. That is not bad at all. But here is the problem. If you download video from the Telecom company, then that data will not count to the cap. You can download almost unlimited video from your company. But if you download a video from Google or youtube for example, then that video would count to the cap. Once you reach the cap you must pay for each bit you download. In plain words what Telecom companies are saying is that, “Use our service or Pay for each bit!“. This is one of the benefits what telcos call ‘competition brings so many benefits to customers’ if net neutrality is not enforced. This is how they define competition. Dictionaries and common sense calls it ‘exploitation’ of their size and network to reach. FTC calls it ‘Anti-competitive’. But these guys know how to play it to their advantage, just like they got Net neutrality rejected in HR. 

If you are following Net Neutrality debate, you must have heard that Telcom companies said there is no discrimination at this point. And so we don’t need a law to prevent something that does not happen. Read the report “MULTIPLE PLAY: PRICING AND POLICY TRENDS“  published by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). There is some thing called ‘Bit caps’ mentioned in the document that is already in force in many countries.

Bit caps : One potential bottleneck in multiple-play markets is the anti-competitive potential of bit caps in a few OECD markets. Bit caps are  limits on the amount of data traffic that subscribers can use in a given month. Once a subscriber reaches a bit cap they either pay an additional fee per Megabyte transferred or have their connection reduced to dial-up speed. The potential problems arise because providers typically do not include video streams from their own servers in the calculation of bit caps but the caps would apply on content such as videos from other sources. For example, TV quality video streaming would require roughly 2 Mbit/s for standard definition television. That equates to 256 KB per second of video or roughly
15.4 MB per minute of television viewing. A subscriber with a 2 GB bit cap would run over their monthly allotment in only 129 minutes of television viewing from a competitive provider.

Folks, who rejected the Net Neutrality bill, do you understand what is in the making?

Tags: net neutrality, internet, inspions, telecom, bitcap, oecd, multiplay, triple play