Comments on: There’s no real innovation in telecom

By: Maarten

Maarten — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:56:15 +0000

I agree with the fact that telecom operators have brought few real innovations after mobile voice. SMS was a surprise to them. MMS never got close. However in the world there are a lot of telecom innovations: iphone, android, twilio, tropo, etc. Perhaps the problem is that telecom operators donÂ´t know how to do telecom innovation because of their focus on saving costs.

By: Tom Jacoby

Tom Jacoby — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:37:38 +0000

Not so sure why you’re so surprised. $Bs in profit each quarter are enough justification for the telco’s to try anything and everything to hold on to their cash cows. And we’ve made massive inroads in lower prices over the past 30 years – back when it was $’s/m to call a few miles away. and that was real $’s then. LandLine subscriptions are shrinking fast, so Cellular is the last hope for the telco’s (and Enterprise business customers). The signs are on the horizon – just few $100B/yr firms in the way first 😉 Too bad Wifi isn’t going to be the technology that takes out cellular, and it’ll be at least another product cycle.

Not just SMS, but the $’s for ring-tones is amazing – hardly innovation.

The “early adopters” can do most of what you’re looking for today for free: FWD, Skype… Eventually basic voice services will be bundled as free for all. and you’ll have the choice of self-support or $ for a helpdesk.

Do kids these days even care about voice? Mine seem to be IM with Live or in different game platforms (or augmented with Ventrilo/Teamspeak). There’s a good chance phone numbers will be obsolete by the time they’ll be out of school.

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:40:53 +0000

UPDATE: Om Malik has suggested that the real benefit of VoIP is adding voice to other people's applications and I tend to agree. This is certainly what will indicate a brighter future for services like Lypp and VOXEO. However, even Call Centres (who've had this capability for years) have been slow to take these app integration features up.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:46:20 +0000

Well at that conversion rate let’s wait until you do some funnel optimization before scheduling the celebrity deathmatch!

😀

By: Sean O'Mahony

Sean O'Mahony — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:53:34 +0000

There is absolutely nothing dubious about our cost savings whatsoever. Ask me for any two legs and I’ll give you the savings we offer our customers.

1,500 customers and 10-15 new customers a day can’t be wrong. What is also interesting is that 28% of all customers are now topping up regularly.

As for the NYT piece. No irreversible damage either. I’m actually a little sad it’s all over. It meant massive hits to the site and we consistently convert 2.5% of hits to sales. We did then and we do now.

Tell me to bugger off or something Ian. I need a bit of controversy. Gotta get those hits up again 😉

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:23:00 +0000

If y'all are too lazy to follow all the links, note that I found a study well-worth the visit that reveals that SMS alone is bigger than the music and movie industries. Big Telco is alive and well, thankyouverymuch. As for Cubic, well.. anyone reading the archived NYTimes article is directed to the controversy through a very nasty correction. So I'm positive they reached their target audience, though not quite with the right message. It's almost impossible for Cubic to quote reliable rates on calling to mobile phones (which they obviously do) as the carriers are pretty good at shifting those sands. At any rate it's tough to render a consistent message such as flat-rate or one-price calling, which is what you want to achieve when you're marketing a "cheaper calling service."

By: Daniel Gibbons

Daniel Gibbons — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:10:17 +0000

I think that’s a little bit of an unfair assessment of Cubic’s PR difficulties. The reality is that the blogosphere is full of people who troll around in the comment threads salivating over these kinds of slip-ups (check out the comments on the three NYT pieces, and the various other usual suspects stirring the pot to see what I mean), but would never be real customers for anything anyway. Except perhaps Internet porn and rogaine.

The mainstream business traveler, which I think is Cubic’s core audience, will have no visibility into this ‘crisis’ so I’m not sure it will affect their business plan in the long term.

That said, I’m sympathetic to the overall premise of your piece, and I think real innovation is going to be a couple of degrees removed from the business of serving up minutes to customers who are frustrated with the incumbents. For me that means call control, presence and other applications that make the ‘dumb pipes’ a little more intelligent.