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Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Jensen’

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – To port or not to port, that is the question

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

This week I thought I’d look at mobile number portability having experienced it twice in the past month. Both experiences were very different but both were frustrating in their own way. My wife ported her number from 3 to O2 and from a technical perspective the process went very smoothly. However getting a PAC code in the first place was a challenge as the customer service agents tried every delaying tactic possible (including providing misleading information) and even continued to call her after she’d ported her number to O2! My port from a minor T-Mobile MVNO to Vodafone was a technical disaster. Initially everything worked on Vodafone but after a few hours the number went out of service. I could make calls but inbound calls and SMS failed. Callers were greeted with a ‘you have dialled an incorrect number’ message. Because of the weekend it took four days to resolve the problem! The problem turned out to be a failure on T-Mobile’s part to correctly port all the number data to Vodafone and it required considerable effort from Vodafone to resolve the problem. Both the MVNO and T-Mobile claimed everything had been done correctly, which only served to delay the resolution of the issue.

Talking to people it’s interesting to hear how often porting goes wrong and it wasn’t until I started looking at it that I realised how deficient porting is in the UK compared to other countries. Uniquely in the UK we have donor led porting where the customer has to contact the donor operator to obtain authorisation to port. Elsewhere in Europe and worldwide recipient led porting is the norm where the customer contacts the receiving operator and asks them to port in their number. One of the problems with donor led porting is it can be anti-competitive as it allows the donor operator to use delaying tactics, such as my wife experienced. The other issue we have in the UK is that we don’t yet have a central database of numbers for routing. Ported numbers are still routed via the original network which is inefficient and users can experience problems if there is a network failure in the original network. In addition, in the UK porting still takes 2 days whereas elsewhere in the world it is much quicker; 20 minutes in Ireland, 3 minutes in Australia! Belatedly, Ofcom is keen to move to all-call query of a common database of numbers (ACQ/CDB) to improve the management and call routing for ported numbers. I spoke to Ofcom for an update on their plans but they were unable to provide any information on the future of mobile porting, apart from stating their commitment to a two hour porting timeframe from 1 September 2009. This is an area I’m going to be keeping an eye on because it could work so much better.

The changes afoot at Mobile Industry Review mean that this will be my last weekly piece here. Thank you to everyone who’s read, commented and supported MIR. However I will continue to write about pertinent mobile issues, Normobs and the rest over at Sevendotzero, so don’t forget to check in there!

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – Mobile cost control for enterprises with Agito Networks

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Last week I met the team at Agito Networks to discuss their proposition for enterprise telephony. Agito was set up to address a number of issues in the enterprise mobile market. Poor in-building coverage is an issue for many businesses and has been exacerbated by the trend towards greener buildings which tend to use materials that impact radio propagation. Escalating mobile costs is an ongoing challenge for businesses; and mobile integration with PABXs, whilst saving money on calls to internal numbers, has had the effect of increasing overall spend for many businesses because users started using their mobiles for all calls. Communication has become increasingly complex, with multiple devices, and a strategy to simplify this improves the user experience as well as controls costs. However that simplification must combine the functionality of both the corporate desk phone and the mobile phone.

So how does Agito address these challenges? The Agito solution comes in two parts; the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router plus a handset client in the usual flavours – Nokia S60, Windows Mobile, with BlackBerry and iPhone due shortly. Agito’s goal is to keep calls on in-building WiFi when possible and it does this by using location context intelligence to determine when the handset should be using WiFi and when to fallback to cellular coverage. The location context intelligence ‘fingerprints’ the building access locations and combines this with cellsite triangulation to determine the handset’s location and optimise handover between WiFi and 3G/GSM. Hand-off between WiFi and 3G/GSM is achieved in a sub 100ms time frame and is therefore completely transparent to the user. The location awareness also enables optimisation of handset WiFi to maximise battery life – important as WiFi can be a mobile battery killer. In addition to corporate WiFi access points, the handset can use home or public hotspots when available. A neat example of the benefits of location context intelligence is switching on handset WiFi when you walk into your home. In order to optimise cost savings when out of WiFi coverage, the client will route defined call classes, for example international, via the office so they can be least cost routed to their destination. Whilst this all sounds great in theory it does work in practice; Agito has a number of existing deployments in the USA in both businesses and higher education.

What caught my attention with Agito is how they’ve used technology to deliver a simple, Normob friendly, user experience. Users continue to use their handsets as normal and the ‘clever stuff’ is completely transparent to the user. Agito took the view that their service had to deliver a user experience similar to the existing mobile user experience; meaning no additional complexity for the user and WiFi cellular hand-offs as seamless as regular cellular hand-offs. Users are not interested in the wireless technology behind their calls – the service has to just work.

Agito’s solution is a good example of using the best bits of different wireless technologies to deliver a service that addresses the shortcomings of each of the underlying wireless access methods.

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – Truphone; the first global operator?

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

The item that caught my eye at Mobile World Congress was Truphone’s announcement of Truphone Local Anywhere. As a long time fan of Truphone I’m always interested to see what they’re planning next and this looked like the announcement that nailed the question about where their strategy is taking them. In one respect announcing a product that won’t be available to users for about six months might seem a little premature but Truphone’s intention was to stimulate interest from potential partner operators around the world; and talking to the Truphone guys it seems to have done that very successfully.

So what is Truphone Local Anywhere and why has it got the potential to be a game changer? Truphone Local Anywhere will be a global virtual operator (MVNO) with its own HLR & IN (for the geeks) infrastructure, operating worldwide. Users can have local mobile numbers in all the countries they spend time in and make calls at local rates – not roaming rates. So for the first time one SIM allows you to use your phone worldwide, without being stiiffed for roaming, without having to stick another SIM in your phone and without expecting people to call you on international numbers. Truphone Local Anywhere also addresses a shortcoming of some travel SIMs by including data as well as voice and SMS.

I asked Geraldine Wilson, Truphone CEO, about pricing and whilst no firm details have been announced yet, the intention is to price well below existing roaming rates and slightly above existing in-country tariffs. This is probably a good place to pitch it because Truphone needs local operator co‑operation to get the coverage footprint but needs to keep prices sufficiently competitive so travellers don’t bother switching SIMs. An intriguing feature I’m looking forward to seeing is the ability to change CLI depending where I am. I’m hoping this will allow the CLI to be changed depending who I’m calling. So if I call someone in the UK I’ll want them to see a +44 UK CLI but if they’re in the USA then they should see a +1 US CLI. Not sure if that’s the plan but Truphone, if you’re listening, that’s what I’m looking for!

Truphone’s MWC presentation covered a number of scenarios where a single SIM would make life easier – airline pilot, family international business traveller, homes in more than one country, expatriates with family in the home country, people in the armed forces. The one that caught my eye is the airline pilot; my brother-in-law is a captain with one of Europe’s biggest airlines and therefore spends time in a vast array of countries. A Truphone Local Anywhere SIM would be perfect for him – definitely an early customer!

The Truphone Local Anywhere announcement didn’t go into detail around service value-adds but I’d really like to see a tie-up with SpinVox to convert voice messages into text and deliver as SMS. This would be a significant enhancement to the current ‘traditional’ voicemail setup and crucially, make it easier for international travellers to pick up their voice messages. Number porting is also going to be key. Potential customers will need to be able to port in their existing mobile numbers to make the transition to Truphone as simple as possible.

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – New phones for Normobs

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

This week I’m returning to the travails of the family Normobs (normal mobile users). A few weeks back I wrote about my son George’s search for a new mobile (to be fair he’s more than a Normob). Well this week we closed the deal for the next 18 months. George’s contract is in my name as he’s under 18, so I phoned 3 to discuss the options. George had decided he wanted a Samsung Tocco but had seen a better deal on Orange. When I told the 3 advisor this he ‘disappeared off’ to talk to his manager and came back with the offer of a discontinued Direct Text tariff with an £8 monthly discount plus a free handset! Not a bad deal. Handset arrived next day – one happy son! I’m impressed with 3 that despite George having only spent £15 a month with 3 they still offer some recognition for sticking with them. The result is he stays with 3 and will now be spending about £20 a month.

My wife Jo decided after much deliberation that she would defect from Nokia S60 and join the ranks of iPhone addicts! However her experience with 3 was a little different. After saying she was leaving 3 because she wanted an iPhone, the 3 advisor tried every possible objection to her stated wish for a PAC code. Despite getting the PAC code they continued to phone asking her to reconsider and didn’t give up even after she said she’d bought the iPhone! She began to feel she was being stalked by 3!

Now Jo’s got an iPhone she’s thrilled with it and hasn’t stopped plundering the App Store! So what aspects of the iPhone really impressed her? To quote ‘It’s so easy to use and it’s a really fun phone’. For me what’s really telling is the fact that Jo has only looked at the user guide once (which is good because she hates user guides!). Despite the complexity of what the handset can do, the user interface is so simple that Normobs can use it ‘out of the box’. The ease of use of social networking apps is another attraction. She’s a big fan of Facebook and Twitter and the iPhone is a great device for this type of interaction. The user experience on the iPhone is so much better than having to fire up the S60 browser and then go to your bookmarks to select Facebook or Twitter. In fact her ongoing commentary about how great it is is becoming increasingly irritating!

When it originally launched I said that the iPhone was the smartphone for Normobs. I’m a big fan of Nokia S60 devices but they don’t make the smartphone experience easy for Normobs – no App Store (yet, but it is coming at last!), no seamless WiFi/3G experience and a limited application set ‘out of the box’. The iPhone WiFi integration is a neat touch as it takes the decision making on 3G versus WiFi away from the user. This is especially useful where 3G data coverage is flaky, e.g. in-building, and the bundled access to commercial hotspots gives a reasonable level of public hotspot access.

Next up for Jo on the iPhone is Truphone so she gets all her IM accounts in one place plus free calls between us!

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – Too many numbers

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

I’m not attending Mobile World Congress this week and rather than blog about news from Barcelona which will be admirably covered by my MIR colleagues on the ground there, I thought I’d pick up on a related subject – contactability. One of the interesting points I’ve picked up from tweets, blogs and conversations is the number of devices people are taking with them – maybe not surprising really as it’s a mobile show! Delegates are of course keen to avoid being stiffed by the mobile networks’ roaming charges and therefore many are using local Spanish SIM cards, travel SIM cards and mobile VoIP like Truphone. However with all these handsets and SIMs comes the problem of making your contacts aware of the best numbers to use at any given point in time. Plus of course there are all the other contact methods that we use.

This reminded me of an issue I faced at a billing conference I attended a few months back in Budapest. I had a number of contact methods whilst I was there – two mobile numbers, DeFi VoIP number, Truphone and of course Twitter, Skype etc. At the last minute I even acquired a Budapest number for my MAXroam SIM thanks to Pat Phelan. So what’s the solution in this situation? What I lacked was a simple method of making these numbers and IDs easily available and, as important, controlling which ones were available at any point in time. 

Of course this idea isn’t just relevant to conference visits; most of us are acquiring more and more contact methods for everyday use without even realising it; and with no consistent way of making these methods available to our friends and network

>Services like LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo don’t fulfil this role because they’re designed with different objectives in mind and don’t make simple contact data easily available. I thought about posting my contact data to my own website but that isn’t designed for easily changing contact data availability and doesn’t provide any privacy functionality. Better to use a system that’s designed for contact data management ‘out of the box’.

To test out a solution to this theory I’ve started to only give people my .tel address.

A quick check of my .tel will only show relevant contact details at that point in time and because .tel is mobile optimised my data is available very quickly and I can be contacted via simple click through. I can manage the availability of individual contact methods in real time via profiles, so for example if I’m not online I can hide my Skype details. Of course there’s an education process here but as users start handing out their .tel addresses people will increasingly start to see the benefits. Okay this solution won’t work for MWC this year because .tel doesn’t go live until towards the end of February (existing IDs like mine are part of the beta) but plan ahead for your next trip. In fact, why give out phone numbers at all – just point people to your .tel so it becomes your preferred contact method at all times. Of course some of your details will be private and not something you want to share with everyone so .tel uses a simple system of friending to protect items of data that are only available to specified people.

If you’ve got any solutions to the multiple contact method dilemma do share them here.

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero and jonathanjensen.vip.tel

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – Snow and making a drama out of a ‘crisis’!

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Last week’s extreme weather conditions made little difference to me. Although I had planned to go to London on the Monday and Tuesday I changed my meetings to conference calls and worked at home. I actually had more productive days than I was anticipating! I’m always puzzled when we’re told not to make unnecessary journeys because of bad weather. Shouldn’t we be trying to avoid making unnecessary journeys the whole time! Of course the snow and ice did have a major impact on the UK and many people and businesses struggled to cope with the impact. As ever the traditional media tended to dwell on the negative aspects (as they like to do) but I do wonder how much worse the ‘crisis’ would have been without the advances in mobile technology over the last few years. Many people are now equipped with business mobile phones and laptops; and therefore able to work remotely, keep in touch and talk to customers without having to trek into the office. Some of the more progressive organisations already encourage staff to work remotely where possible and not make unnecessary journeys to the office; for these people adverse weather should be business as usual! More organisations need to look at the benefits of mobile working and implement a technology infrastructure that supports this mode of working all the time. That way they will see ongoing benefits as well as be better prepared for the next ‘crisis’.

However, this increasing reliance on technology has also shown just how fragile that technology infrastructure is when it’s put under pressure. This week we were faced with rail information sites that collapsed, broadband speeds that ground to a halt as contention ratios bit and mobile phones that displayed ‘network busy’ when making a call. Service providers across all these businesses need to see these problems as a call to action to invest in their infrastructure. It’s not just bad weather that puts a strain on infrastructure; it can be a security alert or even kids coming home from school! My home broadband speed frequently halves around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Investment in this technology infrastructure will not only equip us for the next ‘crisis’ but also deliver a more robust infrastructure day-to-day.

Twitter again came into its own with the lack of information from official sources. MIR contributor Ben Smith implemented the excellent uktrains Twitter feed and local weather tips were swapped with friends. These showed how powerful Twitter is at conveying pertinent information when its needed.

And one more point – a WiFi account for the local coffee shop is a a must for mobile working! My local coffee shop was packed during the snow.

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero and @sevendotzero on Twitter.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – A bright future for WiFi

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Recently I’ve had several conversations with people about the future of WiFi. The debate around WiFi versus 3G data is a contentious one that frequently provokes a frank exchange of views! However this ‘either or’ debate misses the point because WiFi and 3G should be viewed as complementary, rather than competing, wireless access methods. I’m a big fan of WiFi; for example it gives me better mobile coverage at home than my 3G service provider plus very cheap roaming coverage in specific locations when I’m away. As with the App Store, the iPhone has brought many more people into contact with something that used to be the preserve of mobile geeks – mobile WiFi.

3G mobile data (and its developments) is good but suffers from issues like flaky coverage, cell capacity constraints and backhaul bottlenecks. Public WiFi has coverage limitations but where it does work it generally delivers decent speeds and consistent service. The lack of roaming agreements between the big service providers is a frustration and I’d like to see a move towards ubiquitous coverage via more service provider co-operation, i.e. if you can find a signal you know you can use it, with service differentiation based around price, and value-adds.

Devicescape recently undertook some research into their user base to understand what WiFi users want from service providers and how people use WiFi. Key findings from the report showed:

  • An overwhelming number of WiFi users expect WiFi while on the road (91%)
  • Most respondents want citywide WiFi (84%) and many are willing to pay for it (56%)
  • When travelling, the most popular device for accessing WiFi was the smartphone, such as an iPhone (vs.laptops)
  • The overwhelming majority of smartphone users (81%) prefer using WiFi over 3G for browsing Web sites, downloading data, Google searches and sending e-mail
  • 86% of respondents want manufacturers to build WiFi into their handsets
  • 82% of respondents want the service provider to provide an overall 3G/WiFi data package

Whilst this research is focused on existing WiFi users it does show that people who already use WiFi don’t see 3G as an alternative wireless access method but as complementary to WiFi. I’ve blogged about Devicescape before; what they do is make WiFi access simple. Devicescape Easy Wi-Fi automates the hotspot login process to create a seamless user experience. Increasingly, this means Devicescape is hidden from the user and the service provider’s software uses Devicescape to manage the WiFi login process. DeFi Mobile uses this model and makes the hotspot login process fast and automatic. This simplicity addresses what has always been a barrier to simple WiFi use – the login process.

The next step for service providers is to create a completely seamless user experience across both 3G and WiFi. Users should not have to decide themselves which wireless access technology to use. The software should determine whether 3G or WiFi is appropriate. For the 3G service providers it makes sense to ship traffic via WiFi where they can, in order to preserve cell capacity for non WiFi users.

Mobile VoIP is an interesting but potentially very confusing (especially for Normobs) part of the WiFi market, so it’s good to see LowCostMob bringing some clarity here. Comparing mobile VoIP is a bit of a black art because each service provider has a slightly different take on the market and it’s not just a simple matter of comparing tariffs. Users need to compare functionality and features as well as prices to determine which service provider to use. Some clarity here will help to drive progress in this part of the WiFi market.

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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Jonathan Jensen on Thursday – BillMonitor and 47,220 mobile tariffs

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Last week I met with Rebecca Jackson from BillMonitor. BillMonitor has been launched to address the key issue faced by all mobile users; which is the best tariff for me? There are already a number of price comparison tools on the web available from the usual price comparison websites; so what makes BillMonitor different? The team behind BillMonitor include statistics professors from Oxford University so it’s leveraging the combined intellect of some very smart people! This team has used mathematics to develop an algorithm that uses behavioural forecasts to predict future usage. BillMonitor analyses over 47,000 mobile tariff variants to make recommendations based on the data entered by a user. These recommendations involve the algorithm taking pragmatic decisions about predicted usage to arrive at suggestions that should offer good value for the next six months. BillMonitor takes the view that certainty is key for mobile users and therefore it is preferable to pay a little more each month to ensure you don’t get seriously stung when you occasionally exceed your bundle, rather than identify a tariff that may on some occasions be inadequate. The results can be enhanced by the bill tracking feature that looks at your actual mobile usage via your online account. Searching can be improved by selecting specific variables like contract length, operator and roaming. When I first looked at BillMonitor I expected it to be more relevant to Normobs but having seen the power behind it, I think it’s got something to offer all mobile users.

At the moment only the big operators are included in the tariff analysis but the virtual operators like Virgin, Tesco and Lebara will be included in a couple of months. BillMonitor will also shortly be launching a business version for the SME market which will include multi handset business tariffs. I was keen to try out the monthly bill tracking feature but at the moment it only covers Vodafone, Orange and O2. I’m on 3 so I’ll have to wait for an update to the site. However I did a quick calculation of what I need, based on the last half a dozen bills, fed it into the tariff analyser, and discovered I’d be better switching to O2 on a 30 day contract if I don’t need a bundled handset. If I want a handset then 3 is still the best network for me.

BillMonitor is free of charge to consumers and will remain so. Monetising the service is likely to come from managing the more sophisticated requirements of business users, on top of the existing referral fees when a user clicks through and makes a purchase from an operator. Referral fees in no way influence the results and BillMonitor is currently undergoing the Ofcom price comparison certification process which guarantees impartiality.

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

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