Weekly Newsletter
+ Reef Point introduces a versatile FMC convergence
gateway
+ Reef Point introduces a versatile FMC convergence
gateway
+ News Roundup
+ Interview with Miranda Wong, CEO,
BroadBand Phone
+ Fixed-Mobile convergence for India
If the underlying FMC technology is independent
of the network type, service providers with varied networks and users can start
such services. Reef Point claims that its convergence gateway, UCG, can enable
control over any network that a carrier has or intends to use. It gives
flexibility to carriers besides lowering the investments in
infrastructure.
Providing carriers with access control from a single
gateway compared to deploying separate solutions for each level of control is
significant for the residential side where carriers have exhausted almost all
the possible networks and have already made huge investments into
infrastructure. Comparatively enterprise FMC is a less mature market and there
are limited network technologies deployed in that segment.
Reef Point has
traditionally been a carrier security solutions provider. The UCG is primarily a
security device that has added Session Border Controller like functionalities
complementing the security functions embedded in the product. Since the Reef
Point product is a multi-functional product, the company expects competition on
many fronts. The major ones would be the SBC vendors and the traditional
security gateway vendors. However, the company feels that the level of
scalability UCG has would definitely be the factor enabling them to compete with
SBC vendors like Acme Packets, Nextone, etc.
Similarly, the lack of VoIP
and SIP intelligence in the existing security gateways would be the area where
it could emerge out from competition with vendors like Cisco, Juniper,
etc.
As an FMC enabler Reef Point would be competing with both
convergence gateway and convergence server vendors like Ericsson and Nokia since
it has both application as well as media part in the solution.
At this
point, Alcatel is the primary partner of Reef Point with Alcatel offering Reef
Point components within its FMC solution. Another significant partner is an
undisclosed Asian vendor.
Both the convergence gateway and convergence
server markets are not doing much right now. The actual take off is expected to
be in the year 2007.
+ Interview with Miranda Wong, CEO, BroadBand Phone
Broadband Phone seems to be doing many things. What is
the underlying business model?
Broadband Phone is a technology
company based in Australia. We started to work on VoIP with Vocaltec in 1997 in
the area of call termination. That was the period when Australia was going
through major telecommunications revamp and VoIP technology had taken off. We
saw many favorable changes happening since. Mass adoption took place and VoIP
started developing. By the end of 2004, we saw the last mile VoIP
starting.
As far as our business is concerned, we have offered VoIP
services at various stages of market development here in Australia. Right now,
we are VoIP enablers for telecom service providers and e-commerce companies.
You also have retail VoIP service for residential
consumers?
Yes. We have a significant part of our business that comes
from retail offerings.
Can you tell us a bit about your enterprise
offering?
We offer enterprise services under the brand ‘Simply Said’.
We are trying to help small business migrate from traditional key telephony
system over to IP based telephony. And we offer both CPE type solutions as well
as hosted PBX functionality.
We have been successful in minimizing the
risk of migration for an enterprise. If an enterprise wants to go for VoIP but
is not 100% sure about it, we provide the backup solution or we facilitate
limited transition from the current system to the new IP one. This way an
enterprise can implement VoIP in stages or according to business requirements.
If all they want to do is save costs on their international calls we put a
gateway on premises. In such hybrid scenarios, if there is any failure with the
IP network they can go back to their traditional KTS.
Which
hardware companies do you work with for CPE?
We partner with many
vendors for supplying such equipment. But the major ones are Netgear and
Vegastream.
Do you do business in Australia only?
Our
home-base is Australia and New Zealand. But that does not confine us to these
countries only. Our clientele is quite global. Most of our host customers are
from other countries. Besides we have some call center customers in
India.
Whom do you see as your immediate competitors and where do
you stand amongst them?
I do not think there are a lot of VoIP
companies here. Of course companies llike Engin, Freshtel, etc are a few to
name. But we are not in direct competition with them.
How do you
price your services?
We have two pricing models for residential
customer segment. One that is very similar to Skype which is the prepaid model.
For Australian and New Zealand users we charge very little for calls within
these countries to mobile as well as fixed networks. It is similar to the
residential offering of Engin. In terms of our enterprise solution it is based
on a very traditional IP-PBX or a Key Telephone System pricing of a monthly fee
per handset.
Any special marketing techniques that you
use?
We use no special marketing techniques. Like others we spend on
sales and marketing kits. For marketing of our retail brand BBP Global we use
web-based marketing. One advantage we have is that our customers are ISPs who
introduce us to resellers. So for us snowball marketing plays an important
roll.
What can we expect from BroadBand Phone to include in its
bouquet of services?
For now we have bunch of residential, wholesale
and enterprise offerings. The next thing we would be looking into is hosted PBX
services. Besides we would like to venture into peering solutions for Medium and
Large enterprises. For now I think we will be adding these
ones.
Traditional telephony providers have always perceived VoIP as a
threat, particularly the incumbents. In your view how has Telstra and other
major players responded to VoIP/VoBB?
I think what your statement
about incumbents being worried about VoIP is very correct. In Australia
incumbents are not only worried about VoIP companies but even about System
Integrators and IT companies. So to counter companies like us, telecom
incumbents like Telstra are going beyond voice and have started offering data
and in some cases video together with it.
ACMA, the regulator propagates self regulatory
environment for all telephony services including VoIP. As a service provider are
you happy with its regulations on VoIP or do you want something more from
them?
I am very pleased to see that in Australia the regulator is not
just a regulator but they are also educating public. I really appreciate ACMA’s
role in facilitating the overall telecommunication growth. For technologies like
VoIP or VoBB I would like ACMA to aggressively educate people about it. Only
their recommendations about a technology can be taken authentic and serious by
the public and in turn it will help VoIP or VoBB to flourish.
+ Fixed-Mobile convergence for India
In India the
telecom market has seen a complete overhaul. In the recent past a POTS line was
considered a status symbol. After liberalization telecommunications in India
witnessed many structural changes with the entry of private operators. The
incumbent operators were given a freehand by the government. This resulted in
the rapid increase of telecom users with new services being launched. Besides
the development of ordinary fixed telephony services, cellular services also
took off - perhaps in a higher than expected mode. Concurrently, Internet and
its offshoots like VoIP also got embedded in Indian telecommunications picture.
As in other countries, mobile service providers are giving tough time to
fixed telephony service providers resulting in loss of revenue and subscriber
base. To counter the threat fixed operators in India are offering mobile
services as well, which helps in limiting the customer churn from fixed
networks. Cellular operators also want to enter into enterprise
telecommunications market by supporting features like PBX. Recent numbers reveal
that out of total 150 million telephony subscribers in India, over 100 million
are on cellular network. There has been some appreciable reduction in fixed line
subscribers though. As per the figures there was a decline of 110,000 fixed
subscribers during April-May 2006.
In the global context, Fixed-Mobile
convergence is helping operators retain their customers on their networks.
The problem with implementing FMC in India is that the past TDM-based
FMC solutions have proven to be unstable. FMC is being enabled via VoIP now, and
India does not have a lot of VoIP network fabric out there. The fixed part of
FMC, which usually is a VoBB flavour, is completely missing in India. That VoIP
is the underlying technology facilitating smooth and efficient Fixed-Mobile
convergence, has been proven world over. As such in order to go a level up to
FMC, experts in the industry opine that it necessitates that VoIP be given due
attention and encouragement by the regulator.
In India, VoIP has not
developed beyond PC-to-phone services. Regulations make it mandatory that an IP
call should originate from a PC. The other flavor allowing no interconnection
with PSTN has facilitated enterprise VoIP services but we see very few actually
going for that offering.
Operators like Bharti, Reliance, and smaller
ones like Net4India want the regulator in India to do more in this regard. With
cheap broadband services growing at 5% per month services like Skype, Yahoo
Voice, and Windows Live are a potential threat to NLD and ILD players. This
could be affecting revenues of cellular operators more as fixed operators would
be able to compensate the loss in revenue of voice services from broadband usage
charges (GPRS services have not taken off so well in India). But it won’t be a
total recovery for fixed operators either.
Issues like interconnection,
interoperability, numbering, emergency services have not been adequately
addressed by TRAI (the regulator) in the area of VoIP services. Even the much
hyped unified licensing has not been made a reality yet.
To support their
arguments operators in India say that the success story of Indian cellular world
has much to do with the supportive approach of the regulator. It enabled birth
of competitive cellular market which made India join the elite 100 million
cellular subscribers group within a decade. For FMC to take roots in India, TRAI
has to let VoIP take roots first.