COMPLIMENTARY ADVISORY REPORT

The New Mantra for Operators:
The Network is the Phone

| Sep 8, 2009 | IP Services Infrastructure | Advisory Report

| Analyst: Joe McGarvey, Principal Analyst, IP Services Infrastructure

If ever there was a case to be made for the superiority of intelligent end points in a communications system, it is the Apple iPhone. It’s virtually impossible to attend a public event without spying a hand, belonging to anyone from 16 to 60, clutched around an iPhone or manipulating one of the several thousand applications the platform now supports. In telecommunications circles, it’s the first gotta-have gadget of the 21st century.

While many industry observers claim the coming of the iPhone and other smart end-user devices portend the end of the decades-old debate over where computing intelligence and control should reside in a communications network, the reality is that operators should emulate rather than surrender to the iPhone/App Store business model. By slightly altering an aphorism from the early days of the Internet as a commercial platform – “the network is the computer” – mobile and fixed operators have the opportunity to provide all of the subscribers attached to their networks, regardless of the end devices they use, with an iPhone-like experience.

For “the network is the phone” model to gain traction, however, operators will need to open up their infrastructures to a degree in which accessing the functions and resources in a carrier network is as easy as building iPhone applications.

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