Beyond the Bit Pipes- ICIN 2009

ICIN brings together visionary ideas and perspectives on the application of intelligence in web and network technologies. It is the ideal industry forum to explore the interplay between web and telecom technologies, services, and players. ICIN 2008 continued the ICIN tradition of sharing ideas and experiences amongst experts at the forefront of business as well as technical developments in telco services.

Conclusions from ICIN 2008 are that processes and tools for estimating the business value of new services and applications are maturing; tools for predicting the end-to-end user experience are being developed; and the value of the end user experience is being monetized.

The conference highlighted emerging areas for new services and applications. These included real prototypes on SIP usage beyond simulation/emulation of legacy telephony services as well as many concrete ideas combining intelligence from web servers, terminal devices and telco resources. A key message is that telcos can take advantage of the user data in their databases to create new business models.

New business models include brokering to connect to new services and to expose internal and imported APIs and services quickly, profitably and globally. It is clear that partnerships will become even more important, allowing network operators to give their partners a differentiated delivery to the end user. Opening interfaces to third parties could lead to substantial growth.

Opening SMS, MMS and PushWAP to third parties has already proven profitable for mobile network operators. Other areas of potential growth include user profile data / statistics; location and presence; mobile commerce, payment and banking.

These conclusions form a firm foundation for business models that take telcos beyond the bit pipes – a theme which will be explored in detail at ICIN 2009 scheduled for 26-29 October 2009 in Bordeaux.