by Kent Winter
Vice President of Sales - EMEAA
I recently participated in a panel discussion representing developer needs from Operators, moderated by Alan Quayle. Application Stores were a big part of that discussion, but as noted by the panel and the audience, Application Stores are being run by device vendors (phones, netbooks, etc.) and the applications are generally
data applications running on the phone or device with little or no interaction with the Operator, except offering the data link to download and sometimes enable the application.
Most of the problems discussed were device vendor problems and not Operator problems.
Many of the application developers want to know how to get the Operators to promote their applications. But the truth is, applications which run on the devices are only useful to an Operator if they can market it to look like they only run on the phones the Operator sells with contracts, tying the consumer to a new contract. By all accounts and voices, Operators will never be successful in creating their own Application Store for “on device” applications, and if the applications are Operator independent, they have very little interest.
Many of the application developers want to know how to get the Operators to promote their applications. But the truth is, applications which run on the devices are only useful to an Operator if they can market it to look like they only run on the phones the Operator sells with contracts, tying the consumer to a new contract. By all accounts and voices, Operators will never be successful in creating their own Application Store for “on device” applications, and if the applications are Operator independent, they have very little interest.
While everyone is frustrated with Operators and their bureaucracy, some of this is misplaced. Operators should be interested in applications which interact with and reside in their networks, not on the devices.
So, what should an Operator do? What if it does nothing?
If it does nothing, the Operator will simply become an ISP and its marketing will have two themes... reliability and price (fewer dropped calls = we suck the least). Profits and margins will be squeezed.... and they will not win. Doing nothing is not an option.
As TS Ramakrishnan, CTO of BubbleMotion stated, all his application needs to do is connect to the Operators SMSC via SMPP, which the Operators generally support. But, even though the Operators support SMPP, they do not grant access, and with that lack of access goes the hosted application and the joint revenue.
Operators need to open up their networks and share revenue.
IMS and the other SIP based NGN’s are based on open architecture. Open should mean open. These architectures utilize open Media Servers (MRF) which can be controlled by open standards… MSML, MSCML, VXML and Media Resource Control… in SIP. These open Media Servers can be shared by multiple SIP applications and even multiple SIP Application Servers.
With the service creation (see previous blog) needed for rapid development, application innovators can turn the core network into an Application Store to be used by application developers (revenue share) and the VASP market.
The Operators can avoid becoming irrelevant, but ultimately they must finally open up. The Next Generation core is their chance to save themselves.
