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To: Eric L who wrote (8881)	1/20/2001 4:19:41 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Part 3 of GSMA January 2000 AP Workshop - Vodafone's view on Interoperability ... as reported by: Ben Wood Mobile Lifestreams 15 January 2001 >> Interoperability - A Network Operator Perspective Patrick Neil Business Alliance Manager Vodafone Multimedia For Vodafone to provide compelling services there needs to be interoperability between services for their networks around the world - Vodafone currently have a presence in over 26 countries (recent announcements include China, Switzerland, Mexico, Ireland etc.). Vodafone needs to take advantage of this interoperability as well as the economies of scales that their size provides (infrastructure, brand, terminals, applications) in order to deliver the most attractive proposition to customers in the GSM World. The other key driver for change (and a focus on applications) is the fact that Vodafone expects to deliver 25% of revenues from non-voice activity by 2004 working with Vizzavi and other portals / applications providers. Part of this initiative is a commitment to partner with 3rd party companies to bring a wide range of services to end-users. In order to help third party application providers to deliver solutions using the Vodafone network, Vodafone Multimedia intends to offer access to certain technology components, interfaces etc. of the core Vodafone Network. The key application areas that Vodafone have identified are: · Workplace Applications · Information and Entertainment services · Vertical Market Applications In order to support this growth, Vodafone’s Business Partners programme is being further enhanced to support a wider range of developers be it small one man companies or large multinationals. Vodafone plan to offer test facilities for GPRS / UMTS, Joint Marketing, dedicated account managers and customer support teams as well as an extranet with FAQ's, best practice etc. plus a VC fund with over £100 million to support developers. Toolkits that are available to application providers include IVR, Premium rate numbers, reverse charge SMS, Location information, Content charging, Content delivery platforms, Subscriber information, Security (WTLS and SSL) etc. Vodafone plans to adopt as many open standards as possible to deliver inter-operability to application providers including: 3GPP/OSA, Parlay, SOAP, XML and are currently evaluating whether to migrate their current SEMA SMS2000 spec (which provides access to their SMS-C) to XML / SOAP spec. Finally the speaker was keen to encourage application providers to work with Vodafone and gave the following reasons: * Vodafone already have extensive experience in mobile data applications through their X.25 packet network (Paknet) - particularly with utility customers. * Vodafone plan to support all standards (WAP, Bluetooth, GPRS, Positioning, 3G) apart from HSCSD / EDGE. * Vodafone have a wide range of partners including Vizzavi, AA, HSBC, Reuters etc. * Vodafone are committed to supporting multimedia messaging. They already offer Picture messaging with their Message Cam product (see mobilemms.com to deliver picture postcards etc. and believe this is a very important market for the future. * Vodafone are working on Machine to machine applications in conjunction with Ericsson. << also: >> Interoperability from an Application Providers Perspective Ciaran Carey Jinny Software This speaker opened his presentation positioning a mobile phone as a PTD - "Personal Trusted Device" - something that the user always has with them, is always on and will become increasingly important as more (lifestyle) applications are added to the device. Jinny consider the biggest barrier to services today on mobile to be the fact that the customer has to "Lean forward" to find information (i.e. proactively request it) rather than "leaning back" (akin to surfing on the Internet as it is today). The company does not believe there are any killer applications but plenty of killer characteristics, for example: Location services which offer a very compelling enabler giving the mobile phone a "sense of place" allowing companies to take advantages of impulse purchases and contextual purchases. Another killer characteristic that was identified was billing. There are a number of Services challenges that need to be addressed to be successful in the applications market: * Phones are now available in a range of form factors (PDA, Smart phone, Feature Phone and so on) with a variety of interaction (input) methods. Unfortunately most end users contact a network operator for help when something goes wrong, so providing adequate support for new applications on these devices may be an issue in the future. This indicates that the operators and application providers will need to work more closely together in the future. * Coverage on new networks / technologies (GPRS, UMTS etc.) may lead to the creation of rural / urban divides such as GPRS / UMTS in city but not outside - it is important for the application provides to design applications that will cope with this. * Security is still a big issue, particularly in financial markets and this is a barrier that is still being addressed in the standards bodies. Jinny believe that there needs to be a global acceptance of PKI to resolve this issue and address security / privacy issues. * Customer expectations can also play a large role in the success of services - this is clear from the WAP backlash that has recently been experienced in the market when customers’ expectations were not met. * Billing is a challenge that will be critical to future success. Billing models have changed (particularly with Prepaid) and operators now have to share revenues with top-up agents (diluting the available revenues) making it even harder for application providers to get a "slice" of the revenue. * Information overload is a future concern - will customers be able to cope with the amount of information that they will be receiving on their PTD - Spam SMS is already starting to be an issue. << - Eric -