And the Oscar Goes To: Our Analysts Wrap Up Mobile World Congress

The GSMA’s Mobile World Congress (MWC - formerly 3GSM) took place this year from February 11 through February 14 in Barcelona, Spain. As with last year, attendance reportedly topped 55,000 people with more than 1,500 companies exhibiting. And, as with last year, Current Analysis had analysts on site focused on various parts of the mobile ecosystem: mobile devices, mobile infrastructure, consumer services and business services.

While the major trends and announcements of the world’s largest mobile-focused trade show have been addressed in various show updates and advisories, the following podcast discusses the impact of these trends and announcements as they cut across multiple practice areas – taking them out of the context of any one specific area and putting them into the context of a broader wireless and telecom market. To bring together diverse insights from across Current Analysis’ wireless coverage, four analysts discuss the impact of these trends and announcements as they cut across multiple practice areas, taking them out of the context of any one specific area and putting them into the context of a broader wireless and telecom market.

To frame the discussion, several questions guided the investigation into our analysis of this year’s MWC, each generating different responses from each specific practice area:

• ► What were the key trends coming out of MWC?
• ► What announcements or trends were encouraging?
• ► What announcements or trends were discouraging?
• ► What were your best briefings or conference sessions?

Not surprisingly, given the focus of the show and our analysts, various trends and technologies were treated, ranging from the obvious to the obscure:

• ► “Green” Telecom
• ► 4G, including WiMAX and LTE
• ► Consumer FMC, including Femtocells and UMA
• ► Enterprise FMC
• ► Device User Interface Diversity

Click here to read listen to the Podcast and read the full Competitive Intelligence Highlight with more analysis including Recommended Vendor Actions.

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Belgacom Catches the Scarlet Pimpernel

On February 15th Belgian incumbent Belgacom announced it will buy Scarlet Telecom, a fixed-line alternative service provider covering Belgium, the Netherlands and the Dutch Antilles. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, which is a key issue, as Belgacom is the Belgian incumbent and Scarlet one of the more prominent altnets in the region.

Analytical Summary

► Current Perspective: Positive on Belgacom’s expected acquisition of Scarlet Telecom, as the deal gives the Belgian incumbent access to new market sectors both in Belgium and in the Dutch market. Scarlet acquired much of KPN’s infrastructure in Belgium in the early years of the new century, including 1,300 km of fibre, and it plans to offer ADSL 2+ to 75% of the Belgian population. Scarlet is a solid company at present, with diverse products and bundled offerings, including mobile and fixed telephony and data and TV products. Belgacom dwarfs Scarlet in terms of staff; the former boasts over 17,000 employees, while Scarlet is far leaner at 550 staff as of summer 2007.

► Vendor Importance: Very high to Belgacom, as the purchase of Scarlet will allow it to plug a gap in its consumer product set as well as win the firm more customers outside its core market in Belgium, something the company needs to do. The deal is also significant because it will attract the attention of the EU’s competition regulators; it marks the first time since Viviane Reding’s critical report published last year that an incumbent has purchased a competitor. The outcome will signal whether incumbents can acquire when competing against diversified players and companies from different market sectors.

► Market Impact: Very high on the service provider market in the Benelux, as the deal could have far-reaching effects on pricing and competition in the region. While KPN has moved to separate its infrastructure and access businesses in the same way that BT has separated Openreach from the rest of its UK operations, Belgacom has made no such move, giving it both an edge over the competition and a big red target for regulators to aim at.

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Telecom Italia Announces Open Access Network Separation

On February 13th Telecom Italia created a new division, ‘Open Access,’ complying with recommendations from the local regulator, AGCOM. Open Access is a separated network operation that will transparently serve both internal customers from Telecom Italia’s commercial activities and alternative providers. The new division includes four sub-divisions, namely: Open Access (network development and maintenance), Network (technical innovation), Information Technology and Technical Infrastructures.

Recommended Competitive Responses

► Competitors need to be communicating their own views on a reasonable wholesale access framework to AGCOM and Telecom Italia, including suggested product ranges (i.e., LLU, line rental, number pre-selection and bit-rates), pricing structures and terms and conditions (i.e., SLAs, provisioning times, compensation for outages, monitoring and repair/troubleshooting).

► Any past unfair treatment by Telecom Italia, such as delayed LLU provisioning, should be highlighted with the request in place to prevent future repeat cases. Now is the time for competitors to make their voices heard to assist with the process of defining Open Access’ portfolio.

► This is good news overall for the alternative providers in Italy, because one of Telecom Italia’s main competitive advantages (i.e., ownership of the PSTN) is being removed. However, competitors will still need to think outside the box to develop and launch aggressive products using innovation and NGN investments to gain an upper hand.

► Telecom Italia still has the advantages of operational scale, brand and market share, but in fact, its sheer size can be used to the advantage of the smaller, more nimble new market entrant to identify and execute either into niche markets or into emerging technologies (e.g. FTTx, FMC and unified communications).

► Competitors are warned that Telecom Italia will have greater market freedom to launch products with less pressure coming from AGCOM and the EU. Therefore, Italian alternative players should be embracing quadruple play, FMC, unified communications and Web 3.0, to make an attack ahead of the former PTT’s retail operations.

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