Telco 2.0 readers will be well aware that we're very keen on any application that uses telco capabilities to remove friction and inefficiency from the wider world of business - perhaps the fundamental insight in the 2-sided business model is that the telco doesn't only sell telephone calls as a [...]

In our Voice & Messaging 2.0 Report we listed over 70 new services we'd come across in our travels. One that's come to our notice since publication is SMS GupShup. Whilst there were many 'me too' Internet messaging services we reviewed, this US/Indian start-up is noteworthy for its business model. [...]

The big news in mobile this week is that Nokia has bought Symbian, the mobile operating system provider, so that it can give it away. In the first article on this news we looked at the deal from the view of the shareholders and competitive threats. In this second article [...]

The recent purchase of Symbian by Nokia highlights the tensions around running a consortium-owned platform business. Obviously, Nokia believes that making the software royalty-free and open source is the key to future mass adoption. The team at Telco 2.0 disagree and believe the creation of the Symbian Foundation will cure [...]

We were asked to present on a panel at the private marketing innovation conference of a UK mobile carrier last week. The subject was the "Need for Speed": what are the real drivers for network capacity and speed, and thus where should an operator focus its investments? Since our answers [...]

Following the popular article last week on FTTH prospects for the UK, Benoit Felton of Fibrevolution sent us some excellent material looking at the issues from a more international perspective. He says: In April this year I attended a very interesting conference in Stavänger, Norway, organised by the OECD on [...]

So, with two major US carriers rolling out fibre to the home, a string of European cities doing the municipal-fibre thing, Iliad fibreing-up their own network in France, and Japan and Korea having long started wiring up whole apartment buildings, how soon will the UK get cracking? Telco 2.0 went [...]

Amygdalin may sound like a Star Wars character, but in fact it's a precursor to cyanide found in apple pips. And your daily Gala, Fuji, or Cox's Orange Pippin isn't the only fruity offering with a potentially harmful ingredient inside. The Apple iPhone might just look to some like a [...]

Last month, Qualcomm purchased at auction 40MHz of spectrum (1452-1492 MHz, known as 'The L-Band') for £8.3m ($16m). Since then there has much speculation about Qualcomm's motives and the services that they will deploy, focussing upon Mobile TV. The answer tells us a lot about how new platforms and intermediaries [...]

The Telco 2.0 team is supporting an interesting afternoon seminar next Wed (25th June) run by Convergys called "Telecoms & Media - The Retail Imperative". It's taking place from 2-7pm inside St Pauls Cathedral in London, in the spectacular Wren Suite. There's no cost to come but places are limited [...]

This is the first of a series of articles celebrating two years of Telco 2.0 blogging, and focused on our favourite hot topic, two-sided markets. In this first article we'll be going into some depth exploring what two-sided markets are. (For a shorter high-level introduction, look here). Later, we'll explore [...]

A key Telco 2.0 theme is getting more value out of customer data. Nearly all of that data remains locked up inside the telco, with a few side businesses around paper and online directories. Could operators suffer from an 'over the top' problem with their data assets in addition to [...]

"exaflood" of data with bad consequences for the telecoms industry. We've got a different point of view to most observers on the matter: video doesn't 'kill the Internet', but it does kill the traditional stand-alone ISP business model. To see what's happening, though, you don't need probes in Internet backbones, [...]

Oi is a Brasilian GSM operator with over 1m customers using their Paggo service, which is a direct competitor to credit card networks such as Visa & Mastercard. It is the perfect example of an operator moving into an adjacent field, building a complete vertically integrated solution, leveraging the advantages [...]

This is a 'Use Case' taken from our 2-Sided Business Models report, which is out now (10% discount to readers of this blog). We have chosen Rolls-Royce as an example of both the type of target business model (mixing services with products) and a specific B2B VAS (Value Added Service) [...]

The UK's Broadband Stakeholder Group is having an event in London next Monday, and it looks like it could get quite Telco 2.0. They're going to launch two new research reports, one on the 'social and economic value of next-generation broadband', and one on 'models for efficient public sector investment'. [...]

Lars Godell, Telenor's VP of Group Strategy, is one of the earliest Telco 2.0 thinkers - his work on this goes right back to his Forrester Research paper on The Rebirth of European Telecoms in 2001. So it should come as no great surprise that he was speaking at the [...]

As there's a change in leadership occurring at Vodafone, it's a good time to reflect on the direction of the large convoy of opcos and investments being led by the good ship Newbury. Arun Sarin has stepped out of his asbestos business suit, albeit scorched by the flames of investors [...]