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 By Keith Mumford – The GSMA’s Rich Communications Services (RCS) platform provides mobile operators with a standardized architecture for enabling richer services, such as instant messaging and content sharing between two or more mobile subscribers, anywhere in the world.  To date, the GSMA approach has been to encourage simultaneous adoption of the technology within each operator in a single market, although with somewhat limited success so far.  This methodology makes sense as a high percentage of inter-personal, mobile communications take place between participants that subscribe to one of the top three or four operators in the country and, therefore, the promise of RCS as a ubiquitous platform is more easily realized.  Similarly, the marketing impact from a combined, in-country launch will be much greater than that of any individual operator, leading to greater awareness of the service amongst the user community.   However, the process of cooperation between multiple entities that…

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By Keith Mumford – Mobile operators often ask: “Why should we go with a downloadable app model for delivering RCS services rather than waiting for handset OEMs to provide us with a native, embedded RCS client?” Aside from the obvious point that there are not that many native implementations on the market at the time of writing, the question holds even for when they do start to become more generally available. There are certainly reasons why it may make sense to wait for embedded solutions from smartphone manufacturers, but Kineto believes that there is a compelling case to be made for preferring the downloadable, or pre-loaded, app route. Here’s our list of the top 10 reasons to deliver RCS-based services using a downloadable, app store model. 1. Brand and Image 2. The Installed Base 3. Consistent User Experience 4. Extensibility 5. Responsiveness 6. Monetization 7. Phones Supplied Through Other Retail…

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By Keith Mumford – Mobile operators must be able to clearly delineate regulated telephony and unregulated VoIP communications services to their customers. In the world of regulated communications, voice calling is generally considered to refer to the ‘telephony’ service. Telephony has been around for over 100 years, ample time for just about any interested government committee or other agency to have surrounded the service with numerous rules and regulations. And there are plenty of regulations, each of which must be taken into account when either launching a new telephony service or extending an existing service to keep pace with technology. In itself, this is not intrinsically a bad thing. The objectives of regulation are to help uphold antitrust laws and to ensure that real competition is in place between providers, leading to an improved service at a price that at least reflects the notion of public interest under which such…

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“As OTT players continue to eat into traditional communications revenues, operators have a choice,” noted Peter Jarich, VP of Consumer and Infrastructure research at Current Analysis. “They can ignore the threat or fight back. Yet, as many have already learned, fighting back isn’t easy. Even though technologies like RCS provide a solid foundation, crafting a compelling user interface, building a brand around existing communications services and incorporating differentiating communications features are challenges that most operators simply haven’t had to grapple with in the past.” The industry is quickly moving toward IP-based communications, and OTT service providers are starting to have a real impact on mobile operators near term revenues and longer term relevance as providers of communications services. It’s time for operators to fight back. That’s why we’ve announced Smart Comms, a new application for mobile operators. Using standard RCS technology, it enhances current telephony and SMS/MMS services while giving…

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By Keith Mumford – To better compete with OTT service providers, mobile operators should consider branding their mainstream voice and messaging services. Take a stroll down the aisle of any major supermarket in the UK or US and you’ll find the same pattern: more expensive products from exclusive brands at the top of each rack, well-recognized brands in the medium price range in the middle tiers and, located on the very bottom shelf, you’ll come across the lower-priced options targeted at those shoppers on a tighter budget. A decade or so ago, the cheaper goods would be from a variety of different manufacturers all hoping to attract the consumers that pro-actively shun more recognizable brand-name products, either through parsimony or by necessity. Step forward to today and, almost without exception, those same bottom shelves will be stacked with goods labelled and recognizably packaged under the retailer’s own ‘value’ brand. These…

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