TELCO 2.0 and VoiceSage

I attended the Telco 2.0 conference in Orlando last week. Congratulations to STL Partners and the sponsors for a successful event. The quality of the content and participants was very high. I would encourage a search for other blogging about the event.

Here is my too quick recap with my prioritization,questions, and my agenda notes.

1. Leveraging Telco Customer Data as a potential gold mine is a widely agreed upon strategy. Tactically, no Telco has the ability to do it without tons of effort. It is too hard technically, physically, and organizationally. Can others aggregate similar client data, cdr, learnings in a fashion that generate real, ongoing business intelligence? Can an overlay of Telco business intelligence or other sources of data be on top?

Atigeo and Sense Networks are working to add contextual insight to these efforts.

2. Changing industry language and message focus caught my attention.

a. Telcos are starting to talk about a new metric of measurement. Instead of ARPUs ( Average Revenue Per User) they describe ATPU ( Average Transaction Per User) or AMPU ( Average Margin Per User). STL Partners soon to be launched white paper with Tom Howe will highlight these new metrics relative to CEBP... we will be looking for that soon.

b. Within the conference there was an ongoing challenge to balance forward thinking strategic presentations with what is real. Of the 11 themes, CEBP clearly came across as the most real especially when using new ATPU or AMPU metrics. My bias is showing.

c. Moving the needle for Telcos requires new business initiatives that generate in excess of 100 million annual revenue within 5 years or less. During my conversations with Sprint strategist Brad Grau, he laughed and said that every business plan that came across his desk had a 5 year target of $105 million. Margin rather than revenue is the real discussion point.

Can STL PARTNERS send every executive in the Telco 2.0 ecosystem a copy of the Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen? This is a classic case study waiting to be written.

d. Vendors and Telcos alike love the big picture idea of 50 billion connected devices around the world by 2020. Independently, I heard calculations that there are 5 billion connected devices now. (2020 estimates ranged from 20 billion to 60 billion.) Verizon speaks of moving from 80-90% market adoption to 500% market adoption in their regions. The thought experiment is fun..what 5-10 devices will be networked in my life?



DAY ONE AGENDA

1. Strategy and Finance 2.0
STL explained the Two- sided business model. STL defined TELCOS' potential new upstream customers along these 7 verticals.

Developers, Retailers, Government, Media, Advertisers, Utilities, Financial Services

Did they steal the VoiceSage customer list!! I almost jumped up and shouted Bingo, matched them all! ( I would argue about developers being a unique vertical). Very cool for VoiceSage.

2. Media 2.0
The Bit Torrent founder showed up and talked about ways to prioritize traffic. Brave Man, Smart Man. It costs Telcos money to support online media. No one actually believes Telcos will make much money in this sector unless they buy content companies.....see CableCos.

3. Consumer Services 2.0= App stores for consumers
Few thought the Telcos will make money in this sector other than at the infrastructure level. It could provide customer stickiness. It sells devices that enable the broader ecosystem. Again, this conversation was focused on consumer apps. However, the discussion began to move the conversation beyond consumer apps to enterprise apps. Scott Adler of Amdocs did a nice presentation. That seems like a winning space for Telcos.

4. Customer Data 2.0: Telco goldmine?
Most everyone agrees this is a goldmine. However, Telco's can't mine it on their own. Lots of start ups being funded around this topic. Privacy is an issue.
STL will be hosting a Privacy 2.0 conference at MIT in Boston in February. This is an important topic for lots of very big companies in the Web world too.

5. Digital Advertising 2.0:
An advertising panel that talked about viewers and impressions etc..
STL did a case study on an sms search service that tried to show there was real money in this space.

6. Mobile Money 2.0:
Lots of good analyst work on this topic. I was impressed with Lopez research. Plenty of startups working in this space. Vendors making money in Kenya (Safariicom) and Japan (DocoMo NTT) after lots of investment from major brands were the focus of the STL presentation.

DAY TWO

7. Internet Access 2.0: Mobile Broadband
We all are using a lot of mobile broadband. New devices and pricing models needed. Telcos can't keep up with the demand and getting commoditized. Dean Bubley presentation

8. Voice and Messaging 2.0= Ask Thomas Howe for his CEBP presentation. Irv Shapiro's Ifbyphone presentation.VoiceSage was highlighted well by Tom and Irv. CEBP is a clear path to ATPU and AMPU. According to Tom, VoiceSage and Ifbyphone are the leading CEBP companies in the world.

9. M2M opportunities in Health= Machine to Machine communications
Lots of money and time being spent on device to device communications ( some people to people too) by Orange, Intel, and other Vendors. Big opportunity, Big Challenges. Money is down the road. I really liked the work done by Niels Helkov from Orange in this sector.

10. Cloud Computing= Joe Weinman from ATT came across as the smartest guy in the room. Really good presentation. I talked with him afterwards. Nice guy too. Read his many blog posts highlighted by GigaOm

11. APIs and Open 2.0:
Tom Howe did a great skit with Sanjay Jhawar describing a conversation between a Telco and an API Developer. Half the room was semi- insulted. Half the room was laughing. Sanjay's firm Ideas and Plans looks sharp. I know this API topic all too well.

Bottomline, the Telco 2.0 event in Orlando was the best conference I've attended in years.

Patrick Murphy
VoiceSage, North America