Tom Darell, Ericsson's regional head of BSS-OSS for SE Asia and Oceania, has no misconceptions where the telco market is heading and how his company will navigate the course
Telecomasia.net: Ericsson has talked about the mobile broadband market being characterized as three waves of revenue development for mobile operators – what are they?
Tom Darell: Ericsson sees an evolution from the first wave - initial establishment characterized by predominantly flat-rate services, through to the second wave - a growth and expansion phase characterized by segmentation and differentiation based on quality of service (QoS), leading to the third wave characterized by new business models to support the fully networked society envisaged in 2020 with 50 billion devices connected. Many of these will be machine to machine (M2M) and with a variety of QoS models in place.
What new services can we expect to see with the extensive rollout and take-up of mobile broadband?
The number of connected devices is predicted to grow some 60% per year on average. Services and applications like mobile TV, streaming music, social networking, blogging, mobile payment and banking will all feature.
The width and breadth of applications and services is infinite and it is going to be driven by user experience and personalization.
How do you see mobile operators being able to differentiate themselves offering broadband services?
In the new broadband-enabled and internet-hosted world, extensive coverage (ubiquitous access), speed and quality of the user connection are important differentiators. Those that can deliver the best user experience in terms of service choice, availability, speed and quality will gain brand loyalty.
This will include price/performance levels that suit different segments of users, offering end-to-end control over the user experience by managing the underlying enablers along the QoE life cycle and controlling costs while delivering a QoE that consistently meets or exceeds user expectations.
As the telecoms landscape evolves, how is Ericsson keeping up changing demands?
Like its customer base, Ericsson is itself going through a transformation. It has had to adapt by offering a consultative and a business-oriented customer engagement model with an integrated solutions focus.