If you’re going to hold an Asia Pacific broadband conference these days then there are few countries with better credentials to host the event than Singapore which within a couple of years will be the first country in the world to be a truly Gigabit nation as the Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN) reaches completion. Eat your heart out Japan and Korea.
Sure, as David Storrie, CEO of Nucleus Connect told delegates at Broadband World Forum Asia 2014 at the Suntec Convention Centre – not far from the famous Raffles Hotel – the local NGNBN has had some teething issues but with fibre take-up still going so strong it won’t be long until the end-goal is reached.
The question that Storrie did not address – and to be fair as a network guy it really is not his problem – is now that all this bandwidth is available for telcos what on earth do they do with it? How can they monetise it?
Big Data Arrives
After all, as Mock Pak Lum, CTO of local operator StarHub, acknowledged to delegates the world in which operators are finally delivering services over the NGNBN is completely different to that in which the network was originally designed.
That is to say that way back in 2006 when the government started planning the NGNBN nobody knew what on earth an Over-the-Top (OTT) provider was – You Tube itself was only launched in late 2005 – and everyone assumed that the operators like StarHub and SingTel would be calling all the shots. But it did not turn out like that.
Whilst StarHub remains unhappy about some of the implications of this new world – particularly the fact that rival operators such as My Republic are offering VPN services that allow subscribers to access OTT content from all over the world – the firm is pushing ahead with trying to develop new services.
In his keynote presentation Pak Lum detailed how StarHub is in the early stages of using its extraordinary range of subscriber location and usage data to try and drive new revenues – and displayed some impressive graphics which showed how StarHub is able to track exactly where its subscribers are and even where they are headed.
Pak Lum said that the firm is now trying to engage with the retail sector – with shopping centres being an early focus – to try and persuade them of the significant value that this data could bring to them in terms of being able to better attract these subscribers to their businesses.
StarHub was by far from the only company to talk about the huge possibilities offered by data analytics with executives from other firms – including IT giant Oracle – waxing lyrical about the possibilities offered by ‘Big Data’to create new revenue streams for operators.
For his part Pak Lum said that StarHub could be generating around 10% of total revenues from data analytics over the next three to five years if it were able to market services effectively to retailers, transport companies and others.
Google – Create a Fanbase
Meanwhile, putting his head very much into “enemy territory” Gautam Anand, Senior Director for You Tube Partnerships Asia Pacific at Google, told the assembled telco and pay TV delegates that they needed to start changing their thinking about the markets they were serving.
Anand reminded delegates that with the traditional linear-channel viewing model fast eroding that content providers needed to create “fan bases and not audiences” but warned them that “fan bases ignored time-slots” and would access content in a very different way.
Commenting that the Internet era would lead to the creation of “thousands of channels” – many of which were already being built up on the You Tube platform – Anand said that “fan bases” would follow these channels across device platforms.
FMC 2.0 – Here at last
From the vendor perspective Daniel Tang, CTO of the Fixed Network Business Unit at Huawei, talked up the possibilities of what he called FMC 2.0 – that is to say the second attempt of the telecoms industry to properly define and implement Fixed Mobile Convergence.
Tang told delegates that FMC 1.0 had really been about telcos trying to create a converged platform for fixed-mobile voice calls – a task in which they dismally failed – and said that from Huawei’s perspective FMC2.0 was all about creating a converged – and seamless – broadband experience.
Giving an example Tang said that an operator with an overloaded DSL network might want to consider deploying dual-mode DSL-LTE home-gateways thereby enabling LTE to ‘take over’ if the DSL line performance started to struggle and also said that the ultra-fast upload speeds on offer from LTE could be very attractive for DSL subscribers when using applications like social media.
In addition, both Tang and Zhu Hong, Huawei’s senior marketing manager for access products, talked up the potential for Huawei’s DSL acceleration products even going so far – this is where FTTH advocates should avert their gaze – that “copper will be good for another 100 years.”
Both Tang and Hong were very enthusiastic about the potential for G.Fast – pointing out that Huawei has already conducted successful trials with BT and Teliasonera – and said that Huawei now had its sights set on 5Gbps broadband over short copper lengths using a Fiber-to-the-Door technology deployment.
A sobering reminder
Whilst operators in the developed world like StarHub get access to 1Gbps networks in pristine conditions executives from operators in developing markets gave delegates a useful reminder of the huge challenges faced by operators in developing markets.
Asad Naveed, General Manager at Pakistani incumbent PTCL, delivered a very sobering presentation in which he showed how an operator like PTCL had to find a way to provide services despite the fact that natural disasters like floods would regularly wipe out significant portions of its network infrastructure.
Moreover, Naveed said that PTCL also had to cope with an acute energy shortage in which there was a “big gap between electricity demand and generation” which resulted in fast rising power prices which, in turn, had big implications for PTCL on the opex side.
Interestingly, on a panel session later in the day both Naveed and executives from other developing markets such as East Timor and Vietnam, commented that whilst putting the ‘building blocks’ of broadband down in terms of fixed-network deployment was important that it was also important in developing markets to create a local ‘Internet culture’ to try and drive take-up and usage of services.
