Emerging trends from 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Observations of emerging trends identified at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona included:
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Mobile broadband sector – while it well documented that many operators are moving to HSPA, the key issue with moving to HSPA+ is access to spectrum; see Global – Mobile Data – HSPA & IMS;
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Voice: introduction of true HD voice on mobiles;
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Indosat has started to segment its subscribers based on speed – this is expected to become more common (allows them charge a premium);
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Operators have started to open APIs for access by 3rd party developers (rather than try to develop everything in-house: following Apple model);
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New battle ground emerging around the home gateway for the connected home (Internode & TiVo alliance; Telstra with their T-Box in a soft launch);
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Cloud storage: a killer app is cross device synchronisation (not yet possible), so can have content on all 3 screens (TV, computer, phone);
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Banks investigating whether it makes business sense for them to offer secure storage facilities for customers’ electronic data;
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LTE Advanced is expected to be standardised by 2015. It can be implemented on existing LTE hardware with a software upgrade. LTE Advanced will offer 1Gb/s. Unfortunately it requires 100MHz of spectrum, but fortunately this does not need to be contiguous – virtual aggregation used;
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Femto cells – generally felt to be a poor business model / implementation. Can use to offload in the home but need to partner with fixed line operators; or can be used to increase network capacity;
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Interest around energy efficiency / carbon neutral activities set to continue – and interest in smart cities continues to grow.
For further information, see separate report: Global – Industry – Key Telecoms Statistics & Trends at a Glance.
Tagged in: Global
