More on Day 3 at the MWC

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

The one nice thing about the forum is that they provide lunch…. It is quite amusing to listen to conversations in foreign languages that are dotted with: LTE, 4G, 3G, 2G, ecosystems etc. I guess those words do not translate, but you can get a sense of what they are talking about.

I spent lunch chatting to the CEO of a codec development company based in Canada, Mississauga. Old Nortel territory for those who remember. Their multi million HQ was sold off for a knock down price. As a high tech company, you can never stop innovating and you must always listen to the customer – failure to do so may make you the next Nortel. The codec company actually does all the work in St. Petersburg, Russia (no, not Florida) where they have their “mad professor”. In discussing the finer points of video codecs, I realize I may have overdone the talking part during the last few days (except when people ask what iPass does, I do like to tell them!) and now I’ve lost my voice – some may say “good”!

So, a question to the reader….. Has anyone spotted the underlying requirement?

If the cloud ecosystem is going to work, then continuous connectivity is a must. Whether that is Wi-Fi, LTE or even copper. Connectivity without user intervention would be even better and perhaps some control of what you can do on the networks….. Open Mobile anyone?

Lunch and the LTE forum over, I head off to a seminar on the US market place. This involves all 5 US operators: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and MetroPCS (Yes they are an operator with 8 million subscribers). It sounded a bit dry but the 5 speakers really did a great job. The seminar was not only informative, but it was also entertaining. The playing of the 5 operators against each other might of had something to do with that aspect of the talk.

The first presentation was by Verizon – very upbeat and so they should be with LTE launched and devices in the market – quite an achievement. They are now planning to close down the 2G and 3G networks to free up spectrum and reduce costs; this will probably happen in about 2014. One interesting fact is that the LTE network will have a larger footprint than the current 3G network. Using 700MHz does help a lot in terms of coverage. Therefore, they have not planned for 3G to 4G handovers. They will not be needed.

A tough act to follow, but AT&T did it with a very positive and upbeat delivery. They touted their HSPA+ network and the fact they were outdoing Verizon in terms of deployment and coverage… all friendly banter. AT&T is targeting the ‘Bursty not thirsty’ part of the M2M market. The other evocative description was their plan to “stack ‘em high and watch them fly”. They then presented their M2M strategy especially for health care. I have already mentioned this as part of Day Two’s entry so will not repeat it here. But it seems this area has a huge potential to drive AT&Ts business.

Then came Sprint. The impression of a deer in the headlights with an LTE tsunami just around the corner was not lost on everyone present. and that he decided to stand directly in the spotlight – literally! The overall theme was that they are fully committed to WiMAX as their 4G network – no reason to change – it performs well. I did not see if his fingers were crossed as he said these words. The next slide presented their handset chipset plans which will all include 3G, WiMAX 4G and LTE capabilities. Guess you can roam anywhere

Next up was the news that they have just upgraded their network to fibre backhaul and deployed software-defined radio basestations or at least Ericsson has, since the Swedes now own the network and simply run it for Sprint – means you have 6000 less employees. This will help them address their iDEN PTT business and upgrade it to 4G capabilities. When asked, he did say these systems were capable of being turned on to LTE. So maybe Sprint does not need Clearwire? Who knows – just speculation but quite intresting.

Fast on the heels of Sprint came T-Mobile who also wants to go after the M2M market; go figure. Again the HSPA+ then LTE strategy was touted as the better play overall. The main thrust of the presentation was that T-Mobile was the easiest to do business with for those M2M providers who want to use cellular in their plans. They have a separate group devoted to enabling M2M solutions, each contract is unique and tailored to help make money for the M2M provider and I assume for T-Mobile. If you want, they can even help with the business plan and ROI analysis.

Last but not least, MetroPCS came to promote their mass market Android Smartphone; the target price is $99 with no contract pay as you go. They seem to be a very innovative company. Their future plans include trying to incorporate a Wi-Fi play to enhance their coverage. So they are looking for Wi-Fi partners to work with in achieving that goal. All too soon it was over and time to move on. The time seemed to fly in this seminar. It was fun.

At the end of the seminar, the MWC folks seem to prefer to kick you out of the room rather than let you wait for the next seminar. The excuse being they need to rehearse. So we all wait patiently outside before going back in. This set of presentations were on what a mobile device should contain – rather than the chipset, they meant software or as we say now ‘Apps’.

The first presenter from Intel gave some useful numbers on smartphone OS penetration: RIM -15%, Symbian – 37%, Android – 25% and IOS – 17% (3Q10 numbers). All except Android were going down. Symbian the fastest decliner. The prediction made was that Android would account for almost 50% of all smartphones sold this year. The IOS share would decline or remain flat. RIM was in a similar position although its new Playbook may change things.

Then RIM made their pitch trying to mildly discredit the previous speakers’ numbers, without success. The presentation started out by stating what the next gen smartphone should provide: long battery life, short time to on, always connected and richness of laptop features. Of course this would be best addressed by a tablet, perhaps the Playbook tablet would come top of any such comparison? The Playbook is indeed a nice adjunct to your cell phone; I had the opportunity to use it and would be tempted if I was a Blackberry user. I think they will sell quite a few of those little units.

Having been warmed up we moved into a panel session that everyone thought would be audience Q&A but ended up being moderator (Gartner) run with preset questions. The most interesting panelist was Robert Stephens, CTO, Best Buy. He founded the Geek Squad which Best Buy purchased and he still wonders why a retailer needs a CTO. He made one comment that resonated with me…. If a product needs a manual, then it is useless. A manual simply lists all the places the product fails. The other interesting comment being made was to pretend your company was irrelevant – how would you fair? Makes you think.

The overall conclusion from the stage panel session was that: you need to listen to the customer, as they are driving the change now. Make the devices affordable to everyone; partner to get best in class, rather than try to build yourself. This could have been such a great session. Unfortunately, it ended up being tedious.

Now that my voice had totally gone, I took one more chance to play with the Samsung tablets, trying to take pictures I was stopped – no pictures of anything on the booth floor. One huge disappointment with the otherwise beautiful machines is that they were Wi-Fi only.

Outside it is still sunny time to wander around Barcelona….. ready myself for the last day!!

Tags: carriers