Tag Archives: LBS

Robert Clark wrote a great opinion piece in last month’s Telecom Asia magazine, entitled “Mobile’s over-confidence problem”.  In it, he suggests that operators are currently doing okay – not great, but okay – leveraging the rise of mobile broadband, but are falling behind in the innovation game that will drive their future.

Clark’s argument is that the mobile and mobile Internet players – Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Nokia and particularly Apple – are the ones driving innovation in the industry, so any confidence derived by mobile network operators from their current position is dangerously optimistic.  As an example, Clark cites that any satisfaction operators derive from growth in mobile data use needs to be tempered by the knowledge that this growth largely results from devices like the iPhone, plus the applications and content they consume.   From which, ultimately, the operator receives nothing other than ever-commoditised data revenues. Ultimately, Clark sees this as a cultural problem:

“Carrier leaders need to recognize that the industry culture has evolved to deliver scale and reliability. Even among young and small cellcos, it isn’t geared to innovation.”

One of the challenges generally faced by “innovation units” within mobile operators – those teams chartered with driving application and services growth – is getting beyond corporate risk aversion. In the Internet world, companies can try, test, and measure new services and features easily, quickly and cheaply – Google’s “Lab” products are great examples of this.  In the mobile world, service offerings and VAS business cases face reviews by multiple committees, take months to deploy and often get launched as overly-sanitised versions of a once-original idea.  In a way, any service “innovation” gets watered down by internal processes.  Which is fine, if you are launching or upgrading multi-billion dollar network infrastructure.  But not if you just want to see if an idea works.

This month we’ve launched a new section on our web site: Locatrix Labs.  In it, we’re profiling in real-time projects and works-in-progress from the Locatrix engineering team, ably led by Andrew Eross and Johnson Page.  Of course the innovations featured all leverage or extend Locatrix/XLF, our VAS applications framework, which is exactly the point: we can provide mobile solution product managers a “safe” – in terms of both cost/capital expenditure and deployment risk- means to define, test-launch and measure new service ideas, and indeed mashups between services: perhaps Uandme supported by mobile advertising (we know one operator already is already considering this), or our entertainment/engagement application Nine with branded Facebook marketing.

By showcasing the Labs solutions we hope to provide our customers and partners a view of what cellco service innovation could look like, in an environment which allows them to (as Clark suggests):

“…marshall their strengths in network reach and enabling systems, and be the best channel partner for the broadband mobile internet.”

Which is precisely where they need to innovate!

Please check out Locatrix Labs and let us know what you think.

A major theme from this year’s Mobile World Congress, and a topic I hear repeated when speaking with mobile operators around the world, is how to create “value” in the mobile internet beyond data carriage. (And if you’ve noticed the price of mobile data reducing in every market worldwide, you aren’t alone).

This month we are profiling Locatrix/XLF, our hosted enabler-access and application framework solution. Mobile “enablers” – network elements that provide location, subscriber identity and profile, SMS/MMS messaging and charging – are powerful network assets that can create tremendous value for an operator and their subscribers, through facilitating personalized, interactive and monetizable consumer experiences.

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Locatrix CEO Mark White has been invited to speak on a panel session at this month’s Mobile Asia Congress in Macau.

Entitled “Mobile Internet – Missing Link or Misnomer”, the panel is charged with discussing moneitization of mobile assets for a new Internet – location, charging and demographics, and will be held from 4pm on Wednesday, November 19th in Conference Auditorium 2.

Joining Mr White on the panel will be Mike Singh, CEO Telekom Caribe, terry Ahn, EVP of Global Business for KTF, Kul Wadhwa, Head of Business Development Wikimedia Foundation, and Aggarawal Dheeraj, CEO Altruist Technologies. The penal moderator is Martin Gutberlet, VP of Gartner.

“We’re excited by the opportunity to present at such a distinguished event”, says White. “Through helping network operators to leverage location as a mobile asset, the mobile Internet engages subscribers and makes content experiences more relevant and contextual.”

Mark White will be in Macau for the entire Mobile Asia Congress event.  For more information about Locatrix Communications, or to arrange a meeting with Locatrix in Macau, please contact Locatrix.