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Networks & Infrastructure
SOFNET 08: The consumer now sets the telco agenda
BT strategy director: "We need to free them up"
by Kendrick Struthers-Watson
The director of strategy for BT design, Matt Beal, is adamant that
the role of the telco has fundamentally changed with power
increasingly switching to the consumer.
“We must give them the choice to go where they want — we need to free
them up from the constraints we have placed upon them in the past.”
Speaking at the SOFNET 08 Exhibition in London, Beal indicated his
support for consumers of telecoms services to set their own
thresholds, together with helping them to move through whatever
networks and application providers they wish. “But, we have to ensure
they can move safely when we enable this.”
This notion of not restricting the consumer implies open networks
— both hardware and software. Commenting on this, Beal believes
that there will be a requirement to understand where the consumer is
within the network and what they are doing.
“Today, it’s an experiment to gain subscriber intelligence, and there
is the need for a powerful solution to track consumer data points.
This could be achieved using and analyzing consumer data produced from
our own system combined with information from someone like Google. But
we must ‘follow’ the individual, otherwise we’ll fail.”
Moving to how consumers might want to browse the network, Beal
maintained that the supermarket concept does hold some value. This
idea is based upon the network becoming the virtual supermarket while
other providers supplied the products and perhaps a third group
"stacked the shelves."
Beal claims that the value for the telco, in this particular
situation, is the design of the supermarket, and, importantly,
ensuring the consumer has the right to choose.
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