Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: telco

  • Using city muscle to drive private investment

    Using city muscle to drive private investment

    Chattanooga in the US mid West introduced city broadband in 2008 in the face of legal challenges from the existing cable operators.

    The operators lost in the courts and were forced to compete with the local, city owned power company’s network.

    Now Wired reports Chattanooga is upping the ante by increasing the available throughput of their network to 10Gb.

    While that’s good news for those businesses and households in Chattanooga that need those speeds, there’s a much more important effect that Wired points out.

    Municipal broadband providers are raising expectations nationwide for what good Internet service means, forcing commercial providers to improve their infrastructure. And by increasing the amount of bandwidth available, they could be setting the stage for the creation of new, more bandwidth-hungry applications. This is how better service goes from a “nice-to-have” to a “you’d-better-have” for the country’s recalcitrant cable companies.

    A few municipal projects could be the trigger to getting better services across the country. This is a model that could work in many other fields as well.

    Similar posts:

  • Experian, T-Mobile and third party security risk

    Experian, T-Mobile and third party security risk

    Another day, another corporate security breach (or six). This time telco T-Mobile has revealed up to 15 million customers’ data has been compromised.

    Notable in this story is that T-Mobile are firmly putting the blame on credit monitoring company Experian.

    For both companies this is extremely embarrassing with T-Mobile stating, “our vendors are contractually obligated to abide by stringent privacy and security practices, and we are extremely disappointed that hackers could access the Experian network.”

    T-Mobile, like most telcos, sees a major opportunity in being a trusted provider of security services and this setback hurts them in a key market.

    Experian on the other hand have shown their slack attitude to user data previously, having been caught selling consumer details to identity thieves.

    That a company in such a privileged position as Experian can be constantly caught this way will almost certainly increase the push to see penalties for corporate data breaches start to get real teeth and the United States’ cavalier attitude to public privacy and online security will take another dent.

    For T-Mobile and most other companies, the lesson is start and clear. Trust starts with your own contractors and business partners, it cannot be outsourced.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Looking outwards to beat change

    Looking outwards to beat change

    Only one in four Australian businesses are prepared for change says a report released today by telco Optus.

    The Future of Business report is based upon interviews with over 500 business leaders across twelve industries and exposes a disconnect between managers’ beliefs of how ready their businesses are to confront change and the reality.

    Over four hundred of the respondents felt ‘confident or highly confident’ in their organisation’s readiness for change while the survey found only 23% of these organisations are actually ‘highly ready’.

    Organisations that appeared to be highly ready tended to be outward focused with almost all of them citing the desire to meet customer needs as the top trigger for transformation while less change ready businesses are primarily driven to change in order to reduce costs.

    “Change ready businesses are not only prepared for, but also anticipate and predict change. Disruption is happening everywhere and businesses of every size and in every industry need to be prepared to deal with rapid technological change and shifting consumer expectations,” says John Paitaridis, Optus Business’ Managing Director.

    While the Optus survey doesn’t produce any great surprises it does emphasise how the dynamics of change work, organisations that are outward focused are more likely to identify and understand change than those looking inwards.

    Listening to the marketplace and society almost always beats those counting paperclips.

    Similar posts:

  • Telstra adds Singapore to its Muru-D startup network

    Telstra adds Singapore to its Muru-D startup network

    Today Aussie incumbent telco Muru-D opening in Singapore.

    Muru-D is loosely based on Telefonica’s Wayra incubators that the Spanish telco has set up across Europe and Latin America.

    Wayra’s fortunes have been mixed recently with the incubators coming off badly in the company’s restructure last year and it’s interesting that Telstra are copying the model of opening in strategic neighbouring markets.

    Complicating matters is Telstra’s Singapore based rival Singtel has its own chain of incubators Singtel Innov8. Singtel’s model is different in that they sponsor incubators, Sydney’s Fishburners for example, rather than set up their own Wayra or Muru-D style operations.

    So Telstra’s moving into Singapore could be seen as another move by the Aussie incumbent to take on Singtel on it’s own home ground, something that will be assisted by the recent acquisition of PacNet.

    Also notable is the Singaporean government’s support for Telstra’s with Kiren Kumar, Director of Infocomms & Media at the Singapore Economic Development Board, welcoming the launch as enhancing the city’s repuation as “the innovation capital of Asia”.

    Telstra’s move is another showing how telcos are trying to move out of being utilities along with Telstra’s need to grow out of the domestic Australian market it now dominates.

    For Telstra both moves are well outside the company’s historical expertise, it will be interesting to see how successful they are.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Opening Telstra in a life and death market

    Opening Telstra in a life and death market

    “Communications are a life and death issue”, says Vish Nandlall the chief technology officer of Telstra. “You realise that when that pipe gets shut off people can die in the field.”

    Nandlall’s experience in weapons technology led him to a life in the telecoms industry which bought him to Australia as he believes Telstra is one of the most innovative companies in the industry. How much this is due to Telstra dominating its domestic market is a discussion for another post.

    Nandlall was speaking last week at a lunch for journalists and bloggers hosted by Telstra in Sydney. It was an opportunity for the company to introduce their CTO to the media following his joining the company last August and to publicise their push into health care services.

    One of the areas Nandlall was particularly keen to push was how Telstra was looking at opening their platforms to third party developers as he sees the nine to ten million strong community as offering opportunities that even the best resourced telecoms company can’t access.

    “How can I get telecom services into places where developers can access the information?” Nandlall asks.

    His answer is to open the services through the Telstra Developer Site which at present is fairly Spartan although one expects it will become more impressive ahead of the I love APIs conference the company is sponsoring in Sydney this June.

    Down the track Nandall sees the open systems assisting the company moving into the key growth areas for all telcos such as the Internet of Things, smart cities and the productivity growth applications in industry verticals.

    The big opportunity the company sees is in health care where a fragmented industry struggles to corral disparate sources of information that touch almost every person. It though just one of the growth telcos are looking at in a dramatically changing marketplace.

    For Nandlall the challenge is to grow Telstra beyond the domestic Australian telco market that it increasingly dominates as its competitors lose interest in the market and the nation’s ambitious but failed national broadband network slowly fades into irrelevance.

    While Telstra is by no means facing any life or death issues, many of its customers could be. Nandlall and his fellow executives are hoping they can help them.

    Similar posts: