|
Broadband Access
Is There Money in Web 2.0?
ECI Explores the Service Provider Opportunity
by Iain Morris
Web 2.0 still represents a big question mark for operators
and service providers looking to generate new revenue, says
equipment vendor ECI Telecom.
Chairing a discussion on issues surrounding Web 2.0 at the
Broadband World Forum in Paris today, Ofer Reviv, deputy
general manager for ECI’s broadband access division,
believes that operators are still struggling to understand the
value proposition of Web 2.0 in the face of increasing
competition from Web-based players such as Google, Yahoo!
and MSN.
Those players have spawned a series of ‘sticky’ services that
analysts believe have created a more compelling experience
for users, and operators are looking to follow in their
footsteps.
To date, says Reviv, operators have been more focused on
expanding their network rather than their service capability
and are struggling to increase their ARPUs.
“Deutsche Telekom is investing huge amounts of money in
building infrastructure,” says Reviv. “But they have not yet
figured out how to make money out of it.”
Nor is Reviv convinced that much-touted services like IPTV
represent a substantial revenue opportunity.
“It looks more like a way of driving out competition and
preventing churn,” he says.
If they are to fully capitalise on Web 2.0, operators should be
looking to imitate the applications developed by the Web
players, says Reviv, but at the same time offer a better
quality of service -- or ‘quality of experience’ -- to differentiate
themselves.
One potential revenue-generating concept that Reviv
associates with Web 2.0 is push advertising, whereby an
operator exploits the capabilities of the network to determine
what content a particular user is accessing and then triggers
tailored promotions on the basis of that.
Reviv believes that mobility is one of the of the principal
factors driving interest in Web 2.0, encouraged by the
migration to IMS architecture and the trend of fixed-mobile
convergence.
“Originally IMS was opex-related,” says Reviv. “But if you look
at new applications emerging from Web 2.0, the new
technologies will allow operators to provide additional
services.”
|
