New Product: RCS Advertising Platform. Creating a role for telcos in the advertisement market.

We got involved in RCS 3 year ago and pioneered the REST API network exposure. We received many telco feedbacks about considering great the API to create person-to-service cases but were concerned about the monetization capabilities of RCS/joyn in a context of free messaging apps competition. With this new product that is combined with RCS API GW, we provide telcos a white-label platform to engage development and create a new business model, use the contextual advertising in-chat RCS API based services created by developers.

In a sentence, a Google Adwords/Adsense model for telcos, using the instant messaging (not the search or blogs) as the media to insert ads.



We are sure that properly used it could be a very smart marketing model, both, for developers and users, and the API GW only will insert the chat or file transfer (pic, audio, etc). The textual and also location (push/pull) will allow a very accurated targetting, being this new mobile marketing the way to make service providers strong players in the SOLOMO (social, local, mobile).

Also, finally telcos can use their enablers to engage and foster the ecosystem by proposing a fair revenue sharing model while users are enjoying new services for free.

Any feedback welcomed.

Telco VAS decline, the key role of telco APIs & the coining of a new term W2P

Telco is an industry facing transformation, basic services being cash-cows with high margins as voice and SMS, and lately broadband, are becoming commodities in a fierce competitive market. Most of telco customers are contracting plans with a number of minutes, SMS and data enough for their needs at very low prices.

Value Added Services (VAS) being perceived as the next stream of revenues are not properly implemented by telcos. We could read this week about the VAS revenue declining.

What is happening? Well, too many things at a time:

• Telco enablers as Voice and SMS for VAS being exploded more successfully by companies creating REST API to use the communications enablers as they are costume to work with social networka and internet tools APIs. Companies as Tropo, Twilio, Plivo make easier to use telco enablers than the own telcos.

• New communication enablers beyond voice and SMS as rich messaging are being pioneered and led by amazing "over the top" companies as Whatsapp, Line, WeChat (Tencent) harming telcos in 2 ways: commoditizing the enhanced messaging as being offered for free or just for a small annual fee, and capturing new VAS market share (virtual goods, B2C, etc).

• Service providers (carriers) are not properly adapted to the new times: years to deploy a new technology is not an acceptable period, waiting to the perfect standards with all the features defined is not how now service cycles work. RCS (Rich Communication Services)/joyn had to be deployed years ago and just right now it is taking off slowly.

• Fortunately telcos realize about the potential of APIs and they are giving steps in the right direction launching developer portals as Telekom Developer Garden, AT&T Developer Program, Telefonica Bluevia and others. They are understanding finally that Parlay is not API for developers, developers needs web APIs (REST, SOAP).  Unfortunately the new communication enablers are not usually launched with API to try to generate non person-to-person communication use case from day 1.

• It is difficult for the carriers to work at the start-up pace required if they don't learn to work with start-up's and it would mean to use their investing arms to fund interesting companies creating stuff useful for telco transformation, paying fairly for trials...and avoid screwing up innovators :-(

• Also, incumbent vendors, the so-called NEVs, may also try to cooperate with small vendors with complementary stuff to jointly help telcos to adapt. Obvious? NO, we suffered first hand how NEVs tend to promise to offer "very soon" what small innovative vendors are doing and keep telcos (as they are more customed to work with NEVs) waiting and waiting and wasting time and time is money.

All above is the cocktail that could make telcos irrelevant in the VAS if they can not adapt properly soon, as sooner the better. Which are the keys? Telcos commercialized universal communication enablers, known user experiences that properly combined can be as Lego pieces to create services. APIs are the telco Lego. 

What can be built with that Lego? Whatever thing, communication is not about people only, or between machines only, communications is between people, services as customer care bots, machines, home sensors, etc. Today, the concept of A2P/P2A (application-to-person / person-to-application) coined for VAS using SMS is too small. 

A new term may be coined W2P/P2W (person-to-whatever thing, whatever thing-to-person) and messaging, RCS may be the enabler being the HUB of those type communications, with the benefit of not facing learning curve, chatting is chatting, sending files is sending files.  

Thanks to telco APIs and semantic technologies (a hot topic) telcos may take benefit from the texting trend and become the relevant player making easy to connect the world, not a bit level but at service level: people with customer care bots or agents (B2C communications), people with their home sensors, people with social games & new smart advertisement, people with info services with just the same tool, the same user experience. 
Too, this common user experience thanks to the APIs will be available in all the screens (web, TV), telco should not be only tied to "phone-type" devices.

Long life to the W2P coin!

Solaiemes participated in the TelcoAPI workshop at SDP Summit.

Solaiemes had the opportunity to attend the SDP Global Summit organized by Informa Telecoms  & Media the past 17-20th September in Rome.

It was an interesting event with telcos and vendors explaining their approaches to the "service delivery". Topics as how close API exposure & telco core have to be in the architecture and long tail versos internal/enterprise users to be the target were discussed.

Our opinion is that telco exposure may be done in a way that could be deployed easily, and with no/little integration tasks. We know big vendors sometimes like the complexity as a form of lock-in but we embrace UNI-exposure (user to network interface, API behaving as telco-client/end-point). It is the way we are doing for RCS API exposure and also for WebRTC-Telco exposure.

We are including our slides from the TelcoAPI post-conference Workshop chaired by Alan Quayle where we could share the stage with great companies as Tropo, Telestax & Apidaze. We talked about RCS API as opportunity for telcos in the B2C communications space.


Alan Quayle just published about the SDP Summit review and the TelcoAPI Workshop with his own slides and the slides from participants in the SDP Summit and the workshop.

We particularly recommend the slides 36-64 of the his presentation, priceless as it is described with funny slides why the old-telco mindset could make telcos irrelevant soon. It would make no sense, many vendors, established ones and young blood ones are trying to help them to stay relevant and competitive players in the new communication services field.

Telco Dilemma, Apps "toll" or new services to compete with smartphone apps?

Major telcos published by the end of July their results for H1 2011, showing benefits and worries about the future and how mature services as SMS are declining. Smartphones providing thousands of applications are moving the innovation outside the operator, sometimes to really small companies, using their services only as a data pipe (mobile broadband or Wi-Fi). And strong competition on mature markets forces to reduce the prices.

KPN presented on the Investor Day data that is important to take into consideration:  penetration of Whatsapp on Smartphone users is 85% (in April 2011). To reduce the impact of the loss of revenue they have announced an increase of the prices of Mobile Broadband on September 5th, as the regulator is defending the net neutrality. Maybe it is not such good idea just to try to get more money for the same services (connectivity) instead of offering their own OTT services to compete against popular applications as Whatsapp or Skype.

Incumbent operators have lots of customers, the whole population in fact, with different income levels that would continue becoming loyal customers of their telco if they feel that value for money of the services provided is great, no matter the device they are using.

RCS-e is the opportunity for MNO or MVNO to offer a wide range of new services "OTT" competing with other pure OTT alternatives, with the strengths that telcos are still keeping (user real identities, 100% penetration, interoperability).

Coming LTE will increase the mobile broadband capacity, no sense to complain about investing in LTE and others (OTT) taking the bigger slice of the revenue cake.
Carriers must invest simoultaneusly in access technology (HSPA & LTE) and in VAS technologies in order to keep the broadband business and increase their share of the over the top revenue cake. In terms of investment, RCS-e technology (RCS-e Core and RCS-e VAS platforms) is an affordable investment compared to the deployment of LTE & HSPA networks.
It's time for action !

David Culebras

Credit: image by Wiangya

Communications Solutions as a Service, our vision

Just introducing our concept about Communications Solutions as a Service. Solaiemes currently offer try and buy SaaS of their platforms. Next ambitious project once completed tested reliable & stable release of our porfolio is to be able to offer "as a Service" with full scalation, sharing platforms for different customers but allowing own customization of final solution by customers, user tracking, billing reports, exporting media repository and additional enhanced features.
This keynote (brief) is our introductory vision and its relationship with SaaS landscape.
Feedback welcomed :-)