Posts Tagged ‘voice services’

Why carriers are the better cloud providers

by Dr. Arvind Sharma

09
Jan
2012

Before we begin, Happy New Year to all of you. I would like to begin this blogging year with some cloudy thoughts:

Our industry has been clouded. I think the cloud is the biggest buzz since the late 1990s where you were considered an innovative company just because you had a website. The older among you may remember.

With the cloud customers use services that are hosted in huge data centers over the internet, including voice services like PBX or IVR using the SIP protocol.

Many say this reduces carriers to mere bitpipes because all that’s left for them is sending data back and forth. I say, however, carriers can offer business voice services far better than all of those cloud providers. In fact, carriers have the better cloud. Let me explain:

Better because all clouds are not created equal. Depending on the underlying technology various clouds are suited for various purposes. Carriers have the best cloud for voice services. Obviously, voice and speech technology are their core business.

The reason for that is the carriers’ networks. These are highly elaborated and evolve constantly. They have the know-how to run services smoothly and can offer their customers five nine availability. Cloud providers, who offer voice services over SIP usually cannot, with them Quality of Service (QoS) will always be an issue. This will always be followed by the discussion whether it’s the carrier’s fault because data gets lost or is it the provider’s fault.

What carriers can sell as cloud services are network-based solutions based on next-generation intelligent networks. They make a service like IVR almost a part of the core network. At the same time, critical functions like databases are not publically accessible because they’re on a different network layer. This is a great argument for those who are afraid of security leaks in cloud applications.

The next reason is the unparalleled infrastructure carriers have when it comes to billing. They have all address and billing details of their customers because subscribers usually trust their operator with billing issues. This is something a company renting contact center seats or an IVR based in a carrier’s network benefits from. The company can be pretty sure to pay only for what they’ve ordered.

Then there are services only carriers can offer with their networks, like multi-country services or billing in multiple currencies.

In other cloud areas carriers may not be the suppliers of choice but when it comes to voice value-added services there’s no cloud like the carrier cloud. Shouldn’t operators emphasize their advantages over other providers stronger?

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Value-Added Services with LTE

by Walter Rott

03
Aug
2011

There has been one recent trend in the telecommunications industry that’s hard to evade. I am talking about mobile broadband, ideally realized with LTE. During the 2010 spectrum auctions carriers spent billions of Euros for LTE frequencies; Deutsche Telekom alone spent about 1.3 billions in the auction, the entire spectrum auction in Germany amounted to 4.38 billion Euros. Sounds like carriers see a huge potential in mobile broadband and a glance at the smartphone market, which is geared towards high speed mobile internet proves this.

The whole idea behind LTE seems to be a substitution of fixed-line telephony and DSL. Of course the extreme high bandwidth helps to achieve high quality of everything that’s transmitted. There is however a downside: LTE does not support voice, which is bad news if you want to substitute fixed-line telephony.

Of all discussed ways to integrate voice with LTE, the general consensus is that the IP Multi Media Subsystem (IMS) is the most promising one. Many carriers, that’s the main point against LTE via IMS, haven’t upgraded their networks for IMS. I don’t think that’s a valid argument. They haven’t upgraded their network for LTE either, and in Europe carriers do have IP-based core networks.

Let’s assume carriers generally have an IMS core and use the SIP protocol. Apart from high-speed mobile data transmission, this would enable new kinds of value-added services:

With LTE we could enhance our Virtual PBX with video telephony and video conferencing. You would have your video phonecall on a smartphone over a fixed-line number. Depending on your phone, it would be possible to share files like presentations with the person you’re having a video phonecall with. A combination of Virtual PBX and LTE would revolutionize meetings. I know of course that video conferences where you can share files already exist. But you don’t have them on your mobile and not with the integration of internal and external numbers.

Ring Back Tones are another service that would invite you to take advantage of LTE. And again we’re talking about video phonecalls. With our ECT Multi Media Ring Back you can show people who call you a videoclip while they wait for you to pick up the phone. That’s no new solution and we’ve already sold multi media ring back solutions that work in IMS networks. However with LTE you could enhance the quality of the ring back video and tone because you can transmit large amounts of data at very high speed.

What other value-added services could you offer with LTE? Please share your ideas with me.

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Are Voice Services Waning? Or: Voice is Dead, Long Live Voice!

by Dr. Arvind Sharma

22
Jun
2011

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain exclaimed after hearing his obituary had been published in the newspaper.

How many obituaries for voice services have you seen recently? I strongly believe that reports on the demise of voice services are greatly exaggerated, even if many executives working for carriers would disagree.

At almost every large operator I visit, voice is viewed as a dead or dying service. Most board directors would be happy to put it out if its misery if they could. Today, everything revolves around data.

I suppose it’s not surprising: many of the major network equipment vendors have reduced their portfolios and concentrate solely on infrastructure to provide more bandwidth and a better Quality of Service – for data. They no longer invest in voice and add to the hype by telling their customers to forget about voice and focus on data services.

The funny thing is, voice is still a cash cow for carriers, not data. And yet the norm is to lay off almost everybody who is in voice and invest as little money as possible.

Two to three years ago, carriers looking for a number portability solution or an IVR self-care for pre-paid would have issued a huge tender. There would have been a detailed specification, procurement would have been involved and dozens of vendors would have participated. Today, they just don’t have the personnel to even bother with a tender. They want get it over and done with quickly and get the service up and running. On the vendor side, there is hardly anyone left to create value voice services. An executive at one of our oldest and biggest customers said we at ECT are “the last of the Mohicans”.

Actually, this is good for ECT as that is what we’re really good at. Our order books are full but we can’t help asking ourselves: is their view incorrect? Are voice services going to disappear and will it all be Skype and iPhone apps? Or are we right and voice services will retain their importance and companies will continue to ask for value-added features? Who’s fooling who?

Data services aren’t helping anyone to earn a lot of money. Skype doesn’t earn any money, they were sold to Microsoft. I wonder who’s actually making money on data.

Data communication has very little to do with intelligence, it’s just infrastructure. The only way to differentiate with data is via a bigger and less leaky pipe, i.e. more bandwidth and higher Quality of Service. However there is no margin.

The question is when data will reach saturation? Isn’t it unrealistic to assume that people will keep demanding more and more bandwidth? Can this development go on forever?

Voice is a cash cow today and an integral part of our lives. It is also essential to most businesses. Value-added services such as network-based contact centers, virtual PBX and even directory assistance services are high-margin services generating a lot of cash. When will we be able to say that about data?

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