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Connected Services: The Collision of Internet with Telco
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call ubiquity
End
- Any digital service that brings people together in a meaningful way – to engage, transact, share, and so on – is a “connected service”. This includes digital communications in telcos and on the Web.
- The real backbone of connected services is software, not networks. The dial tone of connected services is “http://”.
- A common architectural pattern for connected services on the Web is open platforms. Successful platforms enable digital ecosystems to flourish.
- Using standard telco business models to explore the value of a service isn't congruent with the value of Web platform services.
- When building a platform, user experience remains important.
1.1 Connected What?
An uninformed observer, or visitor from a distant galaxy, would be forgiven for thinking that telcos ought to have been at the heart of the Internet revolution that has swept through much of the developed world these past 10 years, following the tipping point of the Web. After all, telco is all about networks, as is the Web. Telco is all about connecting people, as is…
You've guessed it – The Web!
Instead of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Flickr, our alien visitor might expect to see the icons of the Web to be O2, Verizon, Orange…
But they won’t. Figure 1.1 shows what they will see (you will probably recognize most of them):
Users surfing the “mobile web” often arrive at their digital destination via the on-ramp of Google search. Users finding their way across town often arrive at their physical location via Google Maps. Developers are hacking with Google's Android. Users finding old friends, and making new ones, are doing so via Facebook. Business folk are connecting and networking via LinkedIn. And on the list goes, dominated by companies that all appear to have one thing in common – they were born on the Web.
But don't they have something else in common? That's right. They all appear to be obsessed with connecting people, to other people, to data, to places, to whatever – to things? Furthermore, many of these ventures were born in universities, although often not in the labs. They were born in the dorms and sometimes in the coffee houses. This is a key symbol of the Web 2.0's innovation culture. There you go – I did it – I used a dreaded “C” word.1 And I mean culture, not connecting.
Reluctant to use that particular “C” word as I am, as it generally sends corporate minds in a spin (“What is culture?” “How do we change culture?”), I am not going to shy away from talking about “non-tech” stuff in this book wherever it serves to make a valuable point. You see, in my experience, technological enterprise – the art and science of really getting something done, something worth doing with tech – is not done in isolation of people, attitudes and verve. This point, perhaps more than any other, might explain why the Internet is not dominated by telcos. They are different types of enterprise creature, if you will, or should I say ecosystem (more on that later).
It's not as if telcos didn't have the money to build substantial Web ventures. Well, some of them tried, and failed. It's not as if they didn't have lots of “technical people” either, or, more importantly, lots of paying people who make up those incredibly large customer bases that would be the envy of any Web start-up and most Web ventures. Maybe they didn't have the right cultural conditions. They mostly still don’t. And the only reason I mention this now is that Web 2.0 is as much about culture – the way people think and behave by habit – as it is about technology and business patterns. If you work in a telco and you still don't get this point, then I recommend reading this book on an airplane, one destined to Silicon Valley where you can hang out with Web ventures and see how they really work.2
Sure, 99 per cent of this book is going to be about tech stuff, but that's almost irrelevant if you don't set up the conditions to make the tech work for you. I know what I'm talking about. My first book – Next Generation Wireless Applications – explained much of the Web 1.0 tech, the emergent Web 2.0 stuff, and its mobile offshoots in great detail. That was back in 2004 (and I started writing in late 2002). I wrote the follow up in 2007/8 sprinkled liberally with 2.0-isms.
Both these books were bought mostly by folk in the telco ecosystem – and then mostly ignored. I know, because I held numerous workshops based on the books’ themes. I got the feedback firsthand, which was almost always a room full of “Why would we do that?” and other “Why?” questions that added up to a unanimous “We don't get this …” message, which is cultural, not technical. Culture is embedded in language and, if you don't speak the lingo, you really won't get the culture, not in any depth.
I set up one of the first mobile ISVs in Europe, back in 1997. I built the first Mobile Portal ever (Zingo) back in 1998, which we (i.e. with my client Lucent Technologies) took to Netscape as their mobile play – imagine that, a telco supplier (Lucent) pushing product to a Web darling. Whilst acting as Motorola's Chief Applications Architect 2005–7, I set up their “Mashing Room” lab to build hacks that would demonstrate the intersection of mobile and Web 2.0 – “Mobile 2.0,” if you will. We built a telephony mash-up not too dissimilar to Google Voice (previously Grand Central). I spent much of those two years evangelizing various Mobile 2.0 themes to operators globally. Again, my enthusiasm and ideas were mostly met with blank stares.
Which brings me to the next “C” word – COLLISION!
That's pretty much what's happened. Web 2.0 has hit the telco world, almost taking them by surprise, even though it's been a gradual creeping up, like the vine that slowly grapples a wall (and pulls it down). The overwhelming sentiment is that “these guys” – that is, the Web companies – are slowly eating our lunch, and they're doing it using our networks (bit pipes). What's more, they appear to be doing what we do, don't they? Connecting people!
No need to debate this point. Let's get straight to the killer question:
“What can be done about it?”
This brings me to the final “C” word of the series (noting my dear readers that every seasoned evangelist has to tell a story using 3 or 5 Cs at least once in their career):
“CONNECTED services!”
This phrase happens to be one I've heard used by O2, one of the companies I consulted for when I was writing this book. But they're not unique in their ambition, which is to become something other than just a “mobile company” in order to avoid the inevitable descent to dumb bit-pipe, should they, or any other telco, not want to end up there, which is debatable (see Section 1.3 Six Models for Potential Operator Futures).
The phrase “Connected Services,” is supposed to cast a wide net, and one that frees us from the constraints of a telephony network. Any digital service that brings people together in any meaningful way – to engage, transact, share, and so on – is a connected service. In that way, Twitter is a connected service. Facebook is a connected service. Even search is a connected service. I don't want to get too prissy about definitions, as experience has taught me that such distractions are exactly that – distractions. A quick skim of the contents page will tell you the sorts of stuff I mean by connected services. The issue for operators is that telephony is a very old technology that hasn't changed much. And, while people will always want to talk, at least for the foreseeable future, we can see that more and more people are finding ways to connect without voice, like the examples just given, which all take place on a giant platform called Web 2.0, quite separate from telco networks, which just carry the traffic to and from these various Web platforms.
So, what can be done about it?
This isn't one of those “get rich quick” books. There's no easy answer… .
Actually, there is, which is to do something different from what you've been doing. That's the easy answer, incomplete as it is. Nonetheless, many operators remain in limbo, trying to gain the freedom to innovate that evades them and blesses the innovators at the extreme ends of the “freedom to innovate” spectrum – the cash-rich Googles and VC-funded companies at one end and the cash-starved boot-strapping bedroom start-ups at the other.
As I keep telling my colleagues in the industry: “Think, try, fail, tune, deliver …”
You've got to stop pondering about all this stuff, stop thinking about a “them (Web) and us (telco),” and start building stuff, putting it out there and tuning as you go. This is the agile way, the Web way (see How Chapter 10). The battle-hardened roadmap process for deploying and running vast arrays of network infrastructure, supporting millions of customers and running giant marketing campaigns serves very little purpose on the frontiers of the Web. It doesn't matter if you're a 100-year-old company that dug up roads to wire the nation, when it comes to the Web, you're a start-up – it's still a frontier world where more is still unknown than known and where we continue to be surprised by the rampant success of “new” ideas (like Twitter) and emergent categories (like Social Networking). In this regard, most Web ventures are still start-ups, whether launched in a dorm or from the labs of the 100-year-old giant. And in the world of start-ups operating in the unknown, agility is king, as are other memes, as the Web-geeks call them, like platforms, real-time and “Big Data,” all of which we shall explore in enough tantalizing detail to get you motivated to try something different.
This book is about the ingredients, patterns and technologies that will enable connected services to work in the Web that's emerging post Web 2.0. Is that Web 3.0? Well, I don't want to mess our heads with yet more conceptual claptrap, but if you think it's time you really got to grips with Web 2.0, then you're a bit late. But don't worry. Whether it's Web 3.0, the Semantic Web, the Internet of Things, the Real-time Web, or all of these things, you'll know which is which by the end of this book. You'll also have enough feel for these ideas to go do something new and interesting, maybe start the next billion Euro industry.
Most of what I have to write about in this book is the underlying technological patterns emerging right now, such as “Big Data,” which is the ability to make value from unthinkably large amounts of data that would have previously languished on arrays of disks and vaults of tape sitting somewhere, potentially gathering dust.
So let's crack on. Let's set the scene for moving beyond the collision of Web with Telco to a place of congruency – the world of connected services.
1.2 Ubiquity: IP Everywhere or Software Everyware?
I spent much of the ink in my previous two books explaining mobile and IP networks from soup to nuts. I'm going to follow the Web hacker's motto:
Don't Repeat Yourself … or DRY…
Most of the networks stuff I wrote about in my last book remains current, so go take a look. While interesting, it's really not that relevant to this story, so don't worry if you don't know it. However, networking and related protocols still underpin the Web and, for the unfamiliar, I still maintain that a solid understanding of certain principles, like the way HTTP works, will carry you a long way in understanding and accessing new ideas on the Web.
For years the mobile industry got us all in a frenzy about ubiquity. I think slogans were coined about it: “Anytime, anyplace, any … something,” I struggle to remember. Yeah, we get it. We really do – an IP connection that is! Almost everywhere we go, we can grab an IP connection thanks to the huge and ongoing investment in wireless broadband networks. In most advanced markets, it's difficult to go anywhere without the ability to connect to an IP endpoint: WiFi, 3G, 4G.
What this really boils down to is the ability to make “http://” work everywhere, which is like the “dial tone” for con...
