Future of Voice - Next Generation Service Platforms & WebRTC Conference 2014

The Future of Voice Services
Beyond the Phone Call
Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
IIR NextGen Service Platforms & WebRTC
Munich, June 2014
dean.bubley@disruptive-analysis.com @disruptivedean

About Disruptive Analysis
 London-based analyst house & strategic consulting firm
 Advisor to telcos, vendors, regulators & investors
 Covering VoIP since 1997 & 3G/4G mVoIP since 2007
 Published report on “Telco-OTT Strategies”, 2012
 Full report & updates on WebRTC, Feb/Jun/Oct’13 & Mar’14
 Non-Neutral Mobile Broadband Report, June 2014
 Workshops on Future of Voice & TelcoOTT
Twitter @disruptivedean Blog: disruptivewireless.blogspot.com
Copyright Disruptive Analysis Ltd 2014June 2014

Telecoms industry in a nutshell
Flat/falling telephony
Declining SMS
Direct/Internet competition
Substitutes & alternatives
Costly infrastructure
Regulatory impact
Data still growing
Digital content
Verticals
Telco-OTT
APIs & partnerships
Better segmentation

The big problem for the mobile industry…
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Voice telephony
VAS / digital
Internet/data access
SMS/MMS
$bn – Global Mobile
Operator Revenue
?
New/partner services?
Voice/video-based?
Verticals?
Source: Disruptive Analysis

Demand & elasticity for core telecom services
Time
Demand
Unconstrained
demand
Price-constrained
demand
Behaviour changes,
alternatives emerge: peak
theoretical demand
Price-elasticity takes
time to catch up
Peak
Telephony /
Messaging

SMS volumes & revenues falling off a cliff
Source; BNetzA
Growing A2P volumes isn’t going to help much

RCS/joyn isn’t going to rescue messaging either
Attribution (Creative Commons): https://www.flickr.com/photos/dhollister/2596483147

Net/Not neutrality won’t stop data flattening too
Data connectivity will soon saturate in developed markets
Source: Disruptive Analysis Non-Neutral MBB Report

The bad news: we’re past “peak telephony”
Total German telephony minutes fell 1.5% in 2013
Mobile minutes grew just 1% (Source: BNetzA)
More supply, flat/lower demand = Price & value erosion

2 problems: competition & substitution
Price, functionality,
integration, coolness etc –
but still a voice app
More effective ways to
perform tasks than a phone
call or voice interaction

Old distant voice [Tele-phone]
>100 years ago
Pretty good for the 19th century...
But apart from mobility, not
much has changed

The question telco execs can never answer
Why do people make phone
calls, or use other voice
capabilities, anyway?
And can we encourage them to do it more?

Two charts you’ll never see…
Calls by purpose
Gossip
Meeting up
Flirting
B2C Cust Svc
B2B internal
Spam
Showing off
Work
Wasting time
Must
have
Nice to
have
Meh. I
want
free
I'll call
back
Importance of QoS, % calls
Diagrams are illustrative, not actual data
Telecom industry doesn’t understand demand for its core product
Makes it impossible to defend vs. competition & substitution

For some users, Quality = “cuteness” not QoS

Voice: From Telephony to “Rich Voice” & VAS
 Basic standalone telephony “voice transport”
 Sustained demand for basic “calls” although volume & value will fall
 Success needs feature, quality, convenience etc
 New forms of standalone communication eg ephemeral
 Unlikely to be standards-based or interoperable
 Contextual voice in apps, websites, processes
 APIs, plug-ins, mashups etc
 Some can use telephony as a “raw ingredient”, but not all
 Voice processing, analytics etc. on top of transport
 Recording, translation, sentiment, concierge, agents etc
 Also non-voice audio, video, other realtime comms
All need understanding of “purpose” and platforms

Standards & interoperability aren’t everything
Standard &
interoperable
Silo or
proprietary
Transport
(calls)
Value-adds
(conferencing
, 1-800 etc)
Transport
Value-adds (Cloud,
context, analytics etc)
Much (not all) future voice value derived
from silos or proprietary implementations

Future 4G telephony standards & approaches
GSM /
SS7
LTE
CSFB
VoLTE
NGN-VoIP
Wholesale
VoIP
BYOV
8 out of 290 networks
Huge complexity
Only ToLTE anyway
Business case?
Good enough

Hypervoice
Voice as
two-way
audio
Voice as
information
AUDIO DATA ONLY FULL CONTEXTUAL DATA
TRANSMISSION STORAGE & PROCESSING

Telco-OTT voice/messaging applications
+ also TelcoOTT content, cloud, advanced
comms, TV, developer platforms…
Orange Libon Swisscom iO NTT 050 plus Comcast Xfinity Connect
China Mobile JegoTelefonica Tuenti (WebRTC) Rogers One-Number

The vision: voice & video comms everywhere

Service
e.g. SMS, Telephony
Product
e.g. Viber, Uberconference
Feature
e.g. In-game chat
Function
Voice/video moving from service to function
Cloud Voice
Platforms & APIs

WebRTC on >4bn devices by 2016
Source: Disruptive Analysis WebRTC Strategy Report update April 2014
Lack of explicit
MS & Apple
browser support
less important
than some
believe

Lead WebRTC use-cases
Copyright Disruptive Analysis Ltd 2014Source: Disruptive Analysis WebRTC report update April 2014
Customer service &
developer platforms
Consumer web apps &
enterprise UC
Live &
commercial
Verticals, CDNs, full
conferencing
Pilots / pre-
commercial
Trials &
demos
Telco IMS,
entertainment,
M2M

For telcos WebRTC is really a magnifier/catalyst
Copyright Disruptive Analysis Ltd 2014April 2014
Now
With WebRTC
Bigger opportunities
Worse threats
Faster speed

Comms ubiquity is dead. And that’s a good thing.
Why do I want to do it?:
Management by rolling about.
What do I want to do?
“Make a video call”

www.disruptive-analysis.com
disruptivewireless.blogspot.com
@disruptivedean
information@disruptive-analysis.com
Stay for the WebRTC
workshop, Tuesday
6.30pm

Future of Voice - Next Generation Service Platforms & WebRTC Conference 2014

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Future of Voice - Next Generation Service Platforms & WebRTC Conference 2014