A renaissance for voice?

In a recent TED talk, psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle warned that “we have sacrificed conversation for connection.” At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work, executives text during board meetings. “We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being ‘alone together.” Turkle says. “Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be.”

One of the points Turkle is trying to make is that our little “sips” of online connection don’t add up to a big gulp of real conversation. And she wants us to have real conversations, to take the time to really get to know people around us. Ideally face-to-face.

Of course, Turkle’s view did not go unchallenged. Businessweek said she was “proposing a false dichotomy, as though all the online communication we engage in somehow takes the place of “real-world” conversation. It’s like an updated version of the old image of young people sitting alone in their basements playing video games instead of going out to meet their friends in the “real” world.” And a recent blogpost on nytimes.com stated that “the brevity, improvisation and in-the-moment quality of e-mails and texts are those grand old defining qualities of spoken language. Keyboard technology, allowing us to produce and receive written communication with unprecedented speed, allows something hitherto unknown to humanity: written conversation. In this sense, they are not “writing” in the sense we are accustomed to. They are fingered speech.”

But getting back to Sherry Turkle. While there is no doubt that she has some very real points, there is another dimension to our use of technology as well – and that is that our mobile devices originated as mediums for us to talk to each other.

It is common for dominant trends and behavior patterns to give rise to a pendulum effect: a strong surge to do the opposite. Perhaps the behavior Turkle is pointing to (our incessant texting, e-mailing and social networking) will create a need to do the opposite: to have long spoken conversations.

And although face-to-face conversations might be the best, the reality of the matter is that in modern society, we live too far apart to meet many of our friends and families in person. Which is why the phone will continue to be an important tool for conversation.

Perhaps we will see a renaissance for voice services in the next few years, as we step out from our bubbles of connectivity with a hunger for conversation?

What do you think?

Is this the year of HD voice in the US? Or do we wait until next year?

Sprint announced a HD voice handset – the HTC Evo – last week, the first time the technology has gotten any real attention in the US, especially from mainstream media outlets like Time and Consumer Reports. 

Plus, ABI Research predicts that both Verizon and MetroPCS will soon bring HD voice (and VoLTE) handsets to market as well, as most US operators will apparently tie HD voice rollout tightly to the introduction of VoLTE.

So is HD voice finally taking off in the US, where it has lagged? Jim Eller at ABI thinks so:

“The demand for HD Voice in VoLTE phones will provide the critical mass necessary to encourage the device manufacturers to produce large quantities of phone models with HD Voice, which should lead to widespread adoption.”

We asked this same question on Twitter and got this (cleaned up) response from HD Voice guru Doug Mohney of HD Voice News:

“2012 year of HD voice? For North America, maybe 2013. Europe's year of HD voice is now.”

And lest we forget why HD voice has the potential to add such value to operator offerings, here is a 2011 clip from Orange, a pioneer that rolled out HD voice in the UK way back in 2010 and currently runs about one-third of all HD voice networks:

Meeting the OTT threat

The threat to operators from OTT players like, for example, Skype and Viber, is two-fold: they cut into operators’ voice-generated revenues and hog bandwidth in the networks.

A large number of operators have opted not to do anything to meet this threat – or at least they don’t actively fight it, and allow the traffic through their networks. Others have been more active in developing reactive strategies.

There are several examples of operators collaborating with OTT players. A fairly standard approach is to offer your subscribers access to OTT services like Skype – as, for example, 3UK does. Another example is Sprint, which offers its customers Google Voice.

Another way of dealing with OTT players is to become one yourself. Telefónica provides an example: In 2009 it bought Jajah, a competitor to Skype, and thus became a player in the OTT market.

There are also some operators that are looking at charging their customers for VoIP services – for example, TeliaSonera. At this year’s MWC, their VP of Service development, Tommy Ljunggren, said:  “If you want to use those services on our network, you have to pay; if you don’t, those services won’t work”. Similar messages have caused some stirrings in the operator’s Swedish home market. Håkan Dahlström, Head of Business Unit Mobility Services, said in Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter (article in Swedish) “There is a perception today that everything IP-based should be free. But we are going to charge for mobile voice calls, even if they are VoIP”. And through its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo, TeliaSonera is already charging for premium VoIP services.

But there is a dual drawback to charging customers: As Royal KPN in the Netherlands discovered, consumers may react strongly and that can lead to discussions about net neutrality and even legislation that operators do not like. Secondly, and more importantly, customers may take their business elsewhere – because there is almost always a competitor or two ready to offer unlimited data use, flat fees and so on. 

The operators that are not doing anything yet might be developing other strategies. Or they may be waiting to find out if there is a winning strategy for dealing with OTT players. Perhaps that winning strategy is a combination of collaboration and competition – we might call it “coopetition”.

What do you think?

Do Yoigo customers in Spain really care about net neutrality?

TeliaSonera was very upfront at the recent Mobile World Congress about its intentions to throttle over-the-top (OTT) VoIP services like Skype and Viber unless customers paid for an additional package.

In Spain, through its wholly owned subsidiary , Yoigo, TeliaSonera has already begun to implement the first part of this strategy. Yoigo offers a plan, Bono VoIP, which is included in some of what they call their “Mega Plans.” In, for example, Mega Plan 40, you get 600 minutes of talk time plus 600MB data allowance, and in addition to that you get a 100Mb for VoIP calls.

Does this mean that Yoigo is throttling “unpaid” VoIP traffic? It would be in line with statements from TeliaSonera. It would also be in line with what many other European operators are doing, according to a recent report from BEREC, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications.

But what will the reaction be? When Dutch operator KPN last year announced plans to charge subscribers extra for the use of OTT services, with a focus on WhatsApp, which is huge in the country, it sparked an uproar, which ended with Dutch legislators quickly introducing – and passing – a net neutrality law.

The situation in Spain seems to be very different. Apart from a few disgruntled voices, Spanish subscribers seem to accept Yoigo’s add-on offering.

Why is this? Is it because Yoigo is the fourth operator in what is essentially a three-operator market? Are OTT services and their availability not an important factor in Spain? Or is it because consumers – outside the Netherlands – aren’t paying attention yet?

Or are we seeing the start of a new attitude from consumers, a willingness to pay for OTT VoIP services if the rest of an operator’s offering is attractive?  

What do you think?

Don't mix up LightSquared's wholesale business model with its spectrum troubles

The news for LightSquared these days is bad, all bad. Its proposal to create a combined satellite and terrestrial LTE network was rejected by regulators in the US, after months of technical and political battles about whether the company’s frequencies interfere with GPS devices.

Now comes the fallout:  the CEO resigned, investors are suing and the company has laid off almost half its workforce.  And while LightSquared vows to fight on, and has retained prominent attorneys, Sprint just cancelled its USD 9 billion network sharing deal.  Oh, and LightSquared has already spent USD 4 billion of its own money.

So it is easy to dismiss LightSquared’s business model. And many have, with major industry players calling the telecom wholesale business model “more hype than substance” and saying that the wholesale model “won’t play in mobile data for the next two years.”

Really? We looked at LightSquared last October, and the company seemed to have lined up an intriguing mix of customers, ranging from massive (Sprint) to retail (Best Buy) to wholesale (YourTel America) to innovative disruptors (FreedomPop and SmarterCar). It also appeared to have the potential to shake up the over the top (OTT) voice game, by potentially opening up direct network access to even mobile VoIP players.

Wholesale works. Think of the catering firms for airlines.  If you unwrap a soggy sandwich on British Airways or on United Airlines, it’s likely that it comes from the same supplier.  Same goes for plants in a nursery or the headphones sold by your favorite retailer.

Instead of dumping on the telecom version of this model, which would include not just data but also voice and SMS, before it’s even been tried, let’s applaud the innovation.  LightSquared has now created a scope for this wholesale model. It likely will not work for them, but perhaps it will succeed elsewhere, even outside the US.

And it will be interesting to see what both LightSquared executives and the competition do with the lessons – technical, political and business – from the whole process.  Dish Networks is the most logical successor in the satellite-based LTE game, while Clearwire is working hard to make wholesale work for them.

But before we get bogged down in spectrum talk, let’s take a look at LightSquared’s visionary aspirations for expanding LTE access.  It’s a good one, and hopefully we’ll see many more such innovative ideas in the near future.

Can telco standards make high definition video conferencing the next big thing?

The operators, vendors and handset makers behind “joyn” – the new GSMA branding of RCS services like instant messaging and voice calling – weren’t the only ones getting together at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.  At the same time, a wide array of mobile operators and telecom equipment vendors announced a broad initiative behind a new set of standards for high definition video conferencing.

These new standards were on display in a HD video conferencing demonstration between Telefónica's booth in Barcelona, an Orange site in France, a Telecom Italia site in Italy and a Deutsche Telekom site in Germany.

According to the press release, the new video standard is based on 3GPP IMS and uses GSMA IPX to interconnect. And behind this nice use of standardized technology is an ambitious but crucial goal: making video conferencing as easy as making a phone call.

The video below is a year old, but it gives you an idea of the possibilities:

This ease of use is crucial, as video conferencing is often seen as the next big thing, with the market just waiting for prices to come down and standards to be set. This is a field in which operators still hold some important strategic cards, like interoperability, the ability to set standards, and control over their networks.

There is a clear trend here, one of telco cooperation, after a decade of brutal competition (and the failure of MMS because of a lack of interoperability).

Let’s not forget that even Apple and Skype only reach a small percentage of the overall market.

These new standards could have their first big impact in enterprise, where the available proprietary solutions cost too much, and operators have the potential to offer companies high quality video services with good interoperability. 

And if operators can succeed in enterprise, evolving HD video conferencing into a mass market service would be a natural, and very lucrative, path.

Is "joyn" the telco turning point in the competition with OTT text and voice?

So are you going to “joyn”?  We hope so.

On Monday, the GSMA gave both a long awaited kick off and consumer branding to Rich Communication Suite 5 (RCS), the latest version of an industry-supported suite of features such as instant messaging and video calling based on IMS.

A quote from the GSMA website:

The industry body said the new brand would be used by operators to give a global ‘face’ to RCS services. “Joyn will act as a mark of assurance to customers that they will have simple and direct access to enriched voice and messaging services wherever they are and whatever network they are using,”  said the GSMA’s Director General Anne Bouverot.

The idea is simple, and is supposed to help operators compete against OTT players like WhatsApp and Viber that are cutting into their texting and voice business, particularly in certain developed markets like the Netherlands and South Korea. 

With joyn, RCS services, such as messaging, chat, video calling and document and photo sharing, will be either be embedded as an icon on a smartphone or tablet, or will be accessed via a downloadable app for today’s devices. Either way, the service will show if a person’s contacts both have joyn and if they are “online” at the moment.

Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone will launch RCS services this summer, while operators in France, Germany, Italy and South Korea have also committed to commercial launches in 2012, the GSMA said. The key to reaching consumers, of course, is getting joyn on popular devices, and manufacturers like HTC, Huawei, LG, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony and ZTE have all signed up.

RCS is one of the telco battlegrounds right now, and there are doubts about whether is the successful way forward.  But whatever concerns some may have and even if some may think operators should just become a date pipeline and be happy, joyn is a sign of progress and may very well be the turning point.

This is quite clear in a blog post from Spanish tech company Solaiemes, in which they write about huge interest in RCS at Mobile World Congress, and about how independent developers will get joyn onto iPhones, negating Apple’s refusal to officially get on board.

What’s most important here is the evolution of the telco mindset. It’s great to see the industry start putting consumers, plus experiences, at the forefront.  It’s all part of the slow but necessary journey up the user experience ladder we wrote about a few weeks ago.

And in the grand scheme of things, it’s helping operators make communications more natural, more like the easy, conversational modes of communication we as humans are hardwired for.

What do you think?  Is joyn going to be the playground for the largest community in the world, the six billion mobile subscribers?