What Happened in Vegas

by Ken Denman, Openwave CEO

Trade shows have a vibe. While far from scientific, the overall "feel" of a show usually reflects the state of our industry. From the moment I entered the Las Vegas Convention Center for CTIA Wireless, North America's largest mobile industry trade show, I could tell that the vibe was decidedly more upbeat than previous years.

As always, the initial buzz centers around the slick new devices. (I especially liked the new YouTube HD service shown on Sprint's impressive new HTC Evo device running on 4G.) Thanks to the undeniable increase in demand for mobile services, mobile video has moved from flashy sideshow to one of the central topics in the industry. Cisco predicts that video could be responsible for as much as 66% of all mobile traffic by 2014.

This demand that we're seeing is truly a wonderful thing for an industry that endured some low points only a few years ago. Even as it confirms what we all hoped -- that consumers really do want to be connected everywhere, all the time -– we can never take the user experience for granted. Yes, usage is up, but we can always improve the experience.

At Openwave, we are working to help our operator customers achieve two basic goals:

1. Lower the total cost of running their networks, including managing their capex on upgrades.
2. Create new ways to monetize the mobile experience, (see previous blog post on our new relationship with The Nielsen Company to spur mobile advertising).

With regards to the former, Openwave's Traffic Mediation solutions leverage powerful analytics and policy awareness to understand the context behind the traffic. Building on the proven foundation of our directory technology, we announced Openwave Smart User Repository, a new solution that stores and delivers subscriber policies across large networks in real-time to support policy enforcement for each flow, transaction, packet, etc. with low latency. Our smart optimization technologies for web and video traffic are also policy- and analytics-driven so that operators can maximize bandwidth without diminishing the user experience.

Intelligent traffic and bandwidth managements solutions are a necessity. But they are only one half of the equation. A new way to monetize new services with innovative pricing and service models is essential. I heard from several US operators who were taking steps toward different data pricing models. A lot more education will need to happen if we're really going to move to a volume-based pricing model, after all how many KB does an average Facebook visit consume? How can we empower the consumer to track their own consumption?

As we've been meeting with customers to discuss our context-aware approach to traffic mediation, we've talked about different use cases for tiered pricing and service levels. One of the methods is to use analytics to segment user groups and develop service levels to match specific data consumer types. For example, someone who uses their phone to download or stream movies could pay for "Gold Service" which would come with the commensurate high (or unlimited) volume limit and a guaranteed highest quality of service (required for the video experience).

Our announcement of Passport, the latest version of our in-network, notification and billing service not only informs users when they are close to their roaming limit (or pre-pay limit, or premium service limit, etc.), but it can offer any number of time- or volume-based extensions. Passport can enable enhanced service-tiering and customer care capabilities to help operators to better manage network resources and avoid subscriber 'bill shock.'

One final thought:

It was great to see AT&T Mobility's CEO, Ralph de la Vega, remind us that it is incumbent upon the entire value chain to make sure we're maximizing bandwidth. In his keynote, he publicly appealed to application developers and internet services companies to help bridge the divide between demand and capacity. He is of course, absolutely correct that we all will have a role to play in ensuring the network can handle the increased demand, especially demand for heavy content like video. But there is a fundamental question of economics to answer. Who should pay for the hardware and software needed to support the increased load: the operator who owns the network; the content provider whose resource-intensive apps are causing the strain; or the consumer who should pay to play?

But that’s a topic for another post.