North America Entering Era of Integrated Business and Technological Innovation

The North American communications market is undergoing significant transformation as technologies converge toward bundled voice, Internet and TV offerings, and as new business models are introduced. In addition, the decline of landline revenues in the United States will continue due to increasing competition from mobile providers and new technologies. Meanwhile, in Canada, the rapid deployment of advanced broadband and mobile services experienced during the early part of the decade has, in more recent years, slowed. John Giere, Editor-in-Chief for Enriching Communications and Chief Marketing Officer at Alcatel-Lucent, asked Cindy Christy, President of the Alcatel-Lucent Americas Region, to discuss the dynamics of this market.


John Giere: As traditional revenue streams reach their peak, where do you see the growth opportunities for the communications value chain over the next five to seven years?

Cindy Christy: First let's recognize that while new subscriber growth in North America may be under pressure, we are still adding 60,000 new mobile subscribers per day - and nearly double that in Central and Latin America. As part of that, we are seeing a huge rise in consumer demand for personalized, always-on communications - such as interactive video and web-enabled solutions - that keep people continuously connected over multiple devices. Last year alone, more than 100 million consumer electronic devices were sold in North America.

Also in North America we're seeing the highest broadband penetration, thanks to demand for user-generated content through social networking media (think YouTube and MySpace, to name a few). And the opportunity is real: Alcatel-Lucent's market research shows that 18% of North American consumers are willing to pay a premium for composite services that remove barriers between communications and digital video features on any device. That spells new revenue for service providers as they intertwine voice, video and data in just these two services.

In line with these trends, service providers are shifting both mobile and wireline assets to IP to provide multimedia services at a lower cost.

Underneath that, Alcatel-Lucent is bringing technological advances in areas like deep packet inspection, web applications and high-bandwidth, low-latency wireless technology to help service providers ultimately connect more people over more devices. And we are facilitating entirely new business models to help service providers create new sources of revenue. For example, multimedia broadband entertainment via IPTV and mobile video are where many service providers are looking to expand beyond subscription-based communications services to generate new revenue streams.

Advertising-based services represent another business model that is growing tremendously in our broadband-connected world - we're projecting that this market will grow from $25.7 billion USD (€16.6 billion) this year to $38.5 billion USD (€24.8 billion) by 2011 (Figure 1).



Looking at the growth of these business models, service providers have the opportunity to capture new revenues by making the most of their subscriber data and billing relationships. This is done by analyzing and using subscriber information, such as user context (presence, location and availability), preferences and behaviors. This allows providers like Verizon to collect revenue by:

• Aggregating information about their subscriber base before a "consumption of service" occurs;
• Providing the connectivity and control to enable the fulfillment of the service; and
• Providing billing, payment and e-commerce related services, after the engagement, for both the user and supplier of the application.

JG: What impact do you see large non-traditional players - like Google, eBay, Apple and so forth - having on the competitive dynamics of the North American communications sector?

CC: Clearly, these players have had a tremendous impact on our traditional customers by riding "over the top" of the access and transport infrastructures. Their use of the latest IT technologies in application development and the lack of "legacy" network OPEX allow these players to focus on innovation and time-to-market for new applications.

They are making major advances into the world of entertainment and social networking services and have largely built their businesses using the advertising business model. However, the fact that many new players lack assets in the form of the networks on which they "ride" is a major limiting factor. All of their services are subject to "best effort" delivery.

This is where facilities-based providers have a significant opportunity. A service provider's ability to manage Quality of Service through routing choices, bandwidth and latency management puts them at a great advantage. Alcatel-Lucent research shows that US end users are willing to wait no more than eight seconds for advertising content to arrive on their phones. A network that does not have proper latency and bandwidth management could force end users to wait far longer than that and prompt the potential customer to flee the ad. In this scenario, the service provider will not be compensated by the advertiser. So I believe brands will gravitate toward the network that provides the best user experience.

We also know from our research that Quality of Experience is a major concern for brand managers when it comes to promoting their products over a service provider's network. The fact is, while Internet-based application service providers are competing with the facilities-based provider for core revenues - in essence "biting the hand that feeds them" - a symbiotic relationship is emerging.

New "application" providers and traditional "service" providers recognize that together they can enable new business models, provide higher quality services and capitalize on end-user demand. For that reason, Alcatel-Lucent is broadening its partnerships in the Americas to include entertainment companies, device makers, content developers and advertisers, so we can smooth the way for service providers to offer personalized new services in ways our industry had not considered before.

JG: These radical changes in business models are imposing new demands on the communications industry. How are organizations responding to these changes, and how is it impacting the way they go to market?

CC: Ten years ago, service providers were more focused on technology and what the network could deliver. This included connectivity, hosting services like call centers or some very rudimentary applications.

Today, however, it's a more services-led industry as consumers want information at any time, wherever they are, and they're demanding mobility in all that they do. And in many cases, these users want to create the content. In the US alone, there are 70 million social networking users and 64% of online teenagers are content creators¹. What's more, this trend is not limited to the North American market. For example in Europe, Google, YouTube and eBay are leading the way for web-centric applications where more than 50% of the younger population is showing interest. (Source: ©2007, Strategy Analytics, Figure 2).



As a result of these trends, service providers are moving away from technology and process silos, as they look to reduce overlaps in their organizations and create a structure that better reflects the needs of their customers - breaking down barriers between wireless, wireline and enterprise businesses. In addition, they are looking for opportunities to outsource some of their operations, such as Customer Relationship Management or billing. We are also seeing non-organic growth strategies, as illustrated by the merging of BellSouth, Cingular Wireless and AT&T. This is the "transformation" that is happening today and it's happening at the network, services and business levels.

JG: How do organizations rationalize these decisions? In other words, how do they decide where to put their limited financial resources to advance their mission-critical objectives? Can you offer some examples of what you have seen?

CC: Our customers realize they need to look at both the top line - new revenues - and the bottom line - higher margins. This means making investment decisions that have cross-organizational and cross-portfolio impact.

For instance, the decision to move to all-IP networks requires strategic investments, such as those made to enable entertainment services. Verizon's roll out of FiOS, AT&T's implementation of U-Verse, Telefónica's Imagenio and Telmex's new WiMAX deployments in Latin America are all real-world examples. They are very calculated investments executed on a massive scale, which is why we are placing our bets in developing technologies like fourth-generation wireless standards, Passive Optical Networking and IMS - to help support any mix of broadband services while protecting the operator's embedded base. We also started to exploit the use of femtocells for Enhanced Residential and Services Gateways which will create true fixed/mobile convergence. This translates into high-quality delivery of content to the home and among devices in multi-screen distribution.

Offering super-high-bandwidth wireless data services is the next big strategic investment for some of our customers. This allows them to capitalize on users' willingness to pay for the untethered, always-on experience.

Traditional service providers are also forming strategic relationships with Internet players - like Yahoo - for portal services, and with consumer electronic manufacturers - like Apple - for device innovations such as the iPhone. These relationships are driven and guided by consumer demand for services. Further, these relationships can be monetized differently as indicated by Vodafone's public projections of revenue for its MySpace partnership (Figure 3).



Today, technology is being harnessed to enable new business models as well as to grow the subscriber base. As these new business models often involve areas that are not part of a traditional service provider's core competencies, early phases of investment may require partnerships or outsourcing. Mobile video is a good example of this - most of the Tier 1 wireless providers in the Americas region are using either MobiTV or Qualcomm's MediaFLO hosted solutions to enter the mobile video market to assess market uptake. Alcatel-Lucent recently teamed up with ICO Global Communications to demo North America's first video broadcast based on the new digital video broadcasting standard, as they plan to deploy a fully-integrated MobiTV network in North America. So there is no shortage of possibilities.