Around the World

Light Reading…
Telecom Market Spotlight: Asia
From a point about midway in 2010, Light Reading’s Market Spotlight looks both backwards and forwards at the Asia region. It updates the third-quarter estimates for the 2009 figures used in the previous Telecom Market Spotlight: Asia with now historic figures for 2009, and it includes estimates / forecasts for 2010. Focusing on the Asian market, the report touches on the following topics:

• Markets, Services & Definitions
• Market Spending
• Market Penetration
• Smartphones in China & India
• What Happened to WiMax?

It contains a lot of interesting information and compelling statistics about the region. What is particularly fascinating to us is the special focus on ‘What happened to WiMax’. In Asia, there has been a trend among operators shifting from WiMax and moving towards a LTE environment. Light Reading surveyed the scene a couple of years ago, and it seemed that WiMax was the sure leader, but not so much anymore. The result is partly due to the much wider deployment of established 3G technologies (particularly HSPA and now the enhanced HSPA+) and the resulting smartphone boom, and partly of the rapid acceptance of 4G LTE mobile as the preferred evolution to next-generation technology by most of the mobile industry. Another problem for WiMax the report references is that WiMax operators are increasingly open to switching to LTE when doing so is necessary and economical—check out LTE Watch: Yota Drops WiMax for LTE.

Connected Planet…
Q&A: Verizon On Why QoS and Policy Matter
BSS/OSS reporter, Susana Schwartz recently caught up with Naseem Khan, principal member of technical staff at Verizon Labs, to get his company’s take on policy management. Given the conversation, it seems that quality of service (QoS) is top priority for Verizon, as they believe it will give them the competitive edge in the industry. Khan states that QoS will be a key differentiator in the industry and if there can be standardization of policy management around QoS, [Verizon] thinks it will help with managing multiple services and applications on the network — IPTV, data and voice — not to mention all the different access technologies. When asked about hindrances he sees ahead, he believes that time to market could be expedited if vendor platforms interwork through common standards—standardization is just the first phase, and then implementation by vendors is next. Recognizing this, Comptel designed a portfolio of OSS solutions—Comptel Dynamic OSS—to help CSPs realize their growth ambitions, and achieve their service creation and delivery objectives.

Policy management certainly seems to be on the minds of North American operators, as Susana spoke on this topic earlier with Farooq Bari, lead member of AT&T’s technical staff.

TM Forum Online Community…
CSP Gives Itself ‘Bill Shock’
A TM Forum online community member shares that Australian CSP, Telstra, incurred as much as AU $90 million in bad debts in its past financial year, caused largely by customers that disputed and didn’t pay expensive bills. Telstra’s chief financial officer, John Stanhope describes the situation as “…a customer might be described a plan, but when they get their first bill it’s hard to understand or doesn’t match the plan they thought they were going to get as described by someone at the front of house. Then a dispute occurs with the bill”. Apart of Telstra’s ‘simplification strategy’ is to make sure that customers understand the plan they have and how it will look on their bill. Wouldn’t a simpler plan involve a customer defining its usage limits? For example, take Finnish CSP DNA Ltd—it deployed Comptel Roaming Cost Control, which allows subscribers to monitor their balances in real time, and notify them of any necessary actions, such as a notification or suspension of the services when a specified cut-off limit is reached—avoid any unnecessary ‘bill shock’.