SDA Asia: Tell us about the mobile and convergence market? Why is mobile converging? What role does Wi-Fi play here? What place does Aepona have in the realm of Mobility and Convergence?
Michael Crossey (MC), James Aitken (JA): The convergence market is all about bringing together mobile and fixed services to a single device. Wi-Fi’s role is to bring in fixed and mobile networks together, by allowing you to use a single device to access two networks so that users will see it as a single network. Convergence allows you to access the network over fixed lines when you are at a Wi-Fi hotspot, in your home or in the office, and switch you seamlessly to GSM or other standards when you are in the field. This effectively creates a single unified service.
Aepona has been in the fixed-mobile convergence market for quite some time through our Universal Service Platform—a service framework that converges both mobile and fixed networks so that any service that is deployable within a fixed network can be deployed across the mobile network. We provide a network agnostic service layer, which means the service can be deployed regardless of the underlying infrastructure.
This includes new IP standards like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). It is these SIP interfaces that are fuelling convergence and bringing the networks together. Our platforms sit above the traditional interfaces and SIP interfaces to provide a unified abstraction of network resources.
Aepona’s Voice Call Continuity (VCC) solution is an example of our work in the area of convergence. With systems in the past, you could make the call over Wi-Fi, fixed or mobile platform but you could not move between the two in mid-call. The key proposition of our VCC solution is the ability to move between Wi-Fi hotspots and the cellular network and maintain connectivity automatically, without having to manually engage the switch, giving the user a seamless, converged service experience.
SDA: Can you brief us about Value Added Services (VAS) like games, streaming TV, video, music? Do tell us about how VAS in the APAC is faring. What are the business issues driving the demand for VAS today?
JA: The concept that drives Aepona’s business is in supporting the operators need to provide more than just voice call service or very simple text message services. In developed markets, mobile penetration was nearing saturation. Operators therefore needed to conceive of ways to drive revenue from their subscriber base. Value Added Services (VAS) became an avenue for them to do this.
Aepona provides operators with the ability to build a set of VAS on a common service framework deployed across multiple networks and multiple technologies. Previously, VAS deployed were specific to certain vendor technologies or vendor platforms. What Aepona does is to open up the network so that VAS can be deployed across these different networks and different technologies.
Services like games or streaming TV are definitely interesting applications for operators. However real-time, person-to-person communications based on voice, and increasingly multimedia, will continue to be a significant revenue driver.
Another thing that should be mentioned is that in the past, the availability of VAS to pre-paid customers has been quite restricted. One of the reasons is the technical limitations in how the pre-paid service works, which prevents the deployment of a full range of VAS. Aepona has a specific solution for that problem; we can enable our operator customers to deliver VAS across the full subscriber base, including pre-paid.
SDA: How is the APAC market reacting Aepona?
MC: Very positively, we are very encouraged by our traction in the APAC market. One thing that I’d like to say about APAC is that it is a very fragmented market. We do not look at APAC as a single market but as individual markets within the region. For example India is very different to South East Asia in terms of mobile penetration and in terms of the types of services required. I would say that we’ve received a lot of attention in India. The main focus in India in the past as well as the present continues to be subscriber growth, and building up the infrastructure to support this growth. At the same time, there is a lot of pricing pressure and intense competition in the Indian market. The way operators can off-set price erosion is by offering value added services. That is the reason why these operators are very interested in Aepona’s technology: we enable these new services to be delivered to the subscriber base in a non-disruptive way.
SDA: What is Singapore’s Market Dynamics regarding Aepona?
MC: Singapore is advanced in terms of maturity in the market; mobile penetration is high. In such a market there is a slightly different dynamic for this technology. What we are seeing in places with very high mobile penetration is that operators are interested in not only to drive more APRU, but also in how they can make maximum use of their network assets, and fully monetize these assets. They are also concerned about defending their position against new entrants from the Internet world, such as Skype, Google, e-Bay and so on. This is where the concept of Telecom Web Services comes into play, because Telecom Web Services enable operators to leverage their network assets and expose these network assets in a very secure and controlled way toward enterprise customers and third party application developers.
I think it’s fair to say that operators in South East Asia, including Singapore, recognise that there a lot of challenges in terms of growing revenues from the subscriber base as the market is pretty much saturated. They need new ways of deriving value from their investments.
SDA: Can you tell us more about the Bridge Mobile Alliance?
MC: The Bridge Mobile Alliance deployment is largely about exposing the capabilities of the networks in order to deploy Telecom Web Services across Alliance operators. What we’ve done is enable a standardised platform for the development and delivery of applications that are not dependent on each operator’s proprietary interface.
SDA: How exactly does Aepona’s combination of infrastructure and IT allow operators to deploy new services across fixed-line, mobile and SIP/IMS networks? Does this mean operators need not buy new hardware or software?
JA: Aepona’s position in the market is really about enabling VAS’, enabling fixed-mobile convergence, enabling a move towards new network architecture based on IP. I think overriding across all of that is the concept of Telecom Web Services. Telecom Web Services are a key driver for us going forward. This is really all about bringing the worlds of IT and the world of Telecoms together.
Web services have been around several years. One of the reasons why the Internet has become so successful is because there has been a system of innovation that has developed over the past five to six years. We no longer look at the Internet as a means of just accessing information and undertaking e-commerce - it is also a means of process outsourcing. Telecom Web Services is all about bringing that same model of business transformation to the telecom domain.
The developments in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is exactly what web services in general are aimed at - the ability to have loosely coupled sets of capabilities from which to develop functional services.
Take the example of Sprint, the American telecom operator that is moving down the same path. Their Business Mobility Framework leverages Telecom Web Services to standardise and deliver a positioning service that can establish the location of a mobile handset. Through the Telecom Web Services interface, they can then sell this service to a company that builds applications and services on top. This company can now determine the location of a mobile in order to deliver targeted, location-based information – converging telecom and technology infrastructures across a standards-based web services platform.
Another example is a partner of Aepona’s that is a leading provider of e-mail marketing solutions. Using Telecom Web Services, they can “telecoms-enable” the marketing campaigns run by their clients, so that each e-mail they send invites the recipient to make an immediate, toll-free call back to the enterprise via an embedded click-to-dial button within the e-mail.
In this way, Telecom Web Services is bringing flexibility and interoperability to the enterprise and to the carrier, fuelling hundreds of little applications and services.
SDA: Recently Aepona announced the launch of their latest product, a Cellular to Wi-Fi Roaming Solution based on 3GPP Voice Call Continuity (VCC) specifications. This announcement reinforces Aepona’s move into the Fixed-Mobile Convergence market. How so? Please tell us more about how the APAC market is implementing this product?
JA: Aepona has been in the fixed-mobile convergence space since the beginning. Aepona’s Universal Service Platform is a service layer that sits on top of both fixed and mobile networks, enabling convergence across both these networks. VCC is a specific case where we are enabling a converged service.
One of the main drivers for fixed-mobile convergence, from a mobile operator’s perspective, is to re-gain control of subscribers. With Voice over IP (VoIP) services from Internet players, subscribers today can bypass the telephone network completely. By implementing a Cellular-to-Wi-Fi roaming solution, the operator regains control of the subscriber by offering exactly the same service, while providing a high level of mobility and availability that only operators can provide -seamless interoperability between VoIP and the cellular services, requiring no additional intervention from the end-user.
SDA: Can you update us on Aepona’s business and product strategy as they move toward delivering converged Telecom Web Services?
MC: Aepona’s business strategy is built around the value propositions that we bring to market. Telecom Web Services is one of those value propositions. We have five other value propositions. They are:
- The network evolution towards an all IP network. I use the term evolution because what we enable is a controlled migration to the IP network, allowing operators to migrate at their own pace.
- The next proposition is a set of applications that we are bringing into the market, developed both by ourselves and our application partners. These include Virtual PBX, Multi-Line service, the VCC solution that we mentioned earlier and others in the pipeline. We are able to bring not just the enabling technology but also the revenue generating applications to our customers.
- Network Abstraction is another proposition — the ability to allow operators to have a common service framework regardless of the underlying infrastructure. As networks become more and more complex, it becomes more difficult for operators to deploy some other services across their different domains. We enable a common service layer, a way of abstracting their complexity to a very common cost-effective set of application programming interfaces.
- We enable Service Interaction, which allows all services to be provided to all users, so there are no restrictions related to payment plan, services already received and so on. If you are a pre-paid customer you have access to the same services as a post-paid customer.
- Lastly, Aepona has a professional services capability, which we call Expert Telecom Services. This is really bringing together a long history of delivering complex network solutions, even designing so of these networks for our customers, and offering that as a professional service.
- Aepona’s business strategy encompasses these six propositions.
Many of our peers in this industry usually depend on some kind of channel whether it be the OEM channel or a re-seller channel. Aepona has been really unique as it sells directly to some very large customers. In Asia, we will be using more partners to overcome some of the challenges of marketing to this diverse geography. Even when we sell through partners, we engage with the end customer directly because it is important for us to explain our value proposition accurately to the end customer.
SDA: Last year Aepona announced Universal Service Platform and Multi-Line Application. Tell us how this works? How is the APAC market reacting to this?
MC: The Universal Service Platform is a set of technologies, a set of capabilities that enable of all that we have described so far. The Universal Service Platform enables even the service interaction capabilities. It brings our products together under a common framework and sets the foundation on how we want to move into the future.
A lot of our focus will be placed on the services and applications that add advanced capabilities into the existing network, and the Multi-Line Application is an example of that. This is where a customer can have two lines associated with the same phone, have two telephone numbers and be able to use those two telephone numbers independently of each other. They are charged and billed separately, allowing a user to have a single handset with multiple numbers. This makes it much easier for users to separate their business and personal affairs.
We are getting a lot of traction in places where the cost of phones is relatively high and also in places where there isn’t a high fixed-line penetration and customers want to use their business phone also with their private phones.
Michael Crossey joined Aepona in June 2006 and is responsible for directing all of the company’s marketing activities, including Strategic Marketing, Communications, Positioning and Market Intelligence. Prior to Aepona, Michael held the position of VP Marketing and Business Development with Transmode, a Swedish pioneer of Optical Networking technology. During his tenure, Transmode grew from a start-up with a niche product offering to one of the world’s leading suppliers of WDM systems to Tier 1 and 2 telecommunications operators.
James Aitken is the principal solutions evangelist for Aepona. He has been in the computer
industry for over 30 years working on a wide range of services, concentrating on advance services architectures for telecommunications in mobile and fixed networks. He holds a BA in physics from Oxford University, England. |
