Author: Peter Linder

I am is a 5G evangelist and Head of 5G Marketing for Ericsson in North America. My mission is to turn your mobile grey zones into black and white insights, to help you make an impact when driving 5G in your company. I share experiences gained at the intersection of tech and digital marketing.

Smartphones Supporting Sandy Struggles

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Smartphones supporting Sandy strugglers BW

Smartphones and mobile broadband networks can’t protect us against natural disasters – like Hurricane Sandy, which battered the East Coast of the US on Monday night – but it can help prepare us, making citizens as informed as possible before, during and after a crisis situation. Here are a few innovative examples of how these technologies are helping citizens on the East Coast get through one of the worst hurricanes in history.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is among many city, state and national agencies providing continuous advice and alerts to citizens via their Twitter feed (@FEMA). Citizens, who have been asked to save valuable network capacity by limiting mobile voice calls and staying in contact with loved ones through social media and SMS messages, can also use FEMA’s smartphone app, which offers safety tips, emergency meeting location information, and a map with open shelters. The Red Cross has its own Hurricane App, which offers preparedness tips, updates citizens on conditions in their area and allows them to find help.

Other mobile sites are illustrating the simple ways in which mobile technology can help citizens by offering preparatory tips, like ensuring that mobile phones were fully charged before the hurricane hit, and using flashlight apps that would help users affected by power outages. Other sites recommended forwarding landlines to cell phones, downloading weather and news apps ahead of the storm, and backing up vital data in the cloud. All of this advice is valuable but perhaps the biggest benefit provided by these mobile technologies is that we are well prepared and informed before a natural disaster hits. The most dangerous situation is one in which citizens do not heed advice and mandates from government agencies.

In a hurricane as large as Sandy, mobile networks are vulnerable because of their dependence on outdoor antennas and a continuous power supply. Let us hope that the networks will be able to withstand the harsh conditions and continue to provide support to affected citizens.

Cool Communication & Collaboration Change Corporations Completely

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cool communication

Large global corporations are using video communication between their main sites on a large scale today to cut back on global travel. Meetings that would have required a four-day between the US and Sweden just five years ago can today by conducted over a two-to-three-hour video conference. So what can we predict about our near future learning from teams that are using video conferencing between “executive phone booths” every day?

Phone conferences still play a vital business role, but the value decreases with the number of participants. A video conference is far superior for connecting two management teams. Both teams stay more alert, and can address a large number of topics in a 60-minute window. Face-to-face meetings previously conducted on a quarterly basis can now be held every month via video conferences, speeding up business progress. Innovations allowing more than two sites to be connected and the ability in multiscreen setups to dedicate one screen to shared material have proven valuable.

As video communication expands from expensive executive video rooms into regular conference rooms, so do the use cases. Use shifts from pure business review meetings to include small and mid-size team collaborations, mirroring the way we meet in real life. The video communication screen is becoming the alternative collaboration board. Seeing all team members’ contributions and sketches as well as seeing each other’s faces are both important to high-quality collaborations. The simultaneous deployment of social media and collaboration tools is pushing us all towards a more collaborative organization.

Just a few years ago we had a vision of taking this video evolution into every room and to every employee’s desk but things might turn out differently. The move towards flexible work environments and mobile devices is likely to turn tablets and phablets into the new personal-video communication/collaboration workhorses.

My predictions for the future of video communication and collaboration:

    ● Big rooms and large-team video communications remain in use for brief business progress meetings.
    ● Small rooms and small-team video collaborations become commonplace for business innovation meetings.
    ● Zero support and high availability are essential factors for expansion beyond one supported room per site. Session initialization needs to be as easy as with phone conference calls.
    ● All whiteboards can and will be replaced by “communication and collaboration boards” in all types of meeting rooms.
    ● “Executive phone booths” for video communication save time and reduce costs. Video collaboration solutions are the primary infrastructure for inter/intra-company, innovative value-creation efforts.

Coverage & Capacity Creates Carrier Cred, Cool Complements Coming!

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22. Urban Usecases Uncovered - 1610 Edited

Network performance is the most important criteria considered when purchasing broadband services. Coverage and capacity have traditionally been the main factors for measuring this performance, but now this is not enough. New requirements for Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), premium data and video over mobile broadband are also becoming vital network design criteria.

Good network coverage and capacity are achieved with multiple technologies, for example 3G for national mobile broadband coverage, 4G in urban areas, and Wi-Fi in hotspots. This will become more complex in the future, where 3G and 4G in multiple spectrum bands will be combined with Wi-Fi to enhance the user experience. This has great potential for success.

The 4G networks are the first generation of mobile networks not relying on circuit-switched voice for the basic communication service. VoLTE has rapidly become the target technology for voice over 4G, and for the evolution into multimedia communication services. The performance expectations for VoLTE are defined by 2G/3G voice, and require traffic prioritization to work in fully loaded networks.

Best effort data services, with service restriction as the primary differentiation method, will not be sufficient. Mobile data services aimed at professional users are quickly becoming an attractive proposition for boosting revenue. Prioritization of premium data services, with similar mechanisms applied to 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi, has the potential to gain acceptance as the second data standard.

So while coverage and capacity will remain critical when it comes to purchasing broadband services, the increased performance requirements represent a new challenge for the industry. I expect over the next three years, we will see a holistic approach emerge, which will be solutions with multiple network technologies working together.

 

Mobile Multimedia Makes Mail Marketing Mediocre

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24. Mobile Multimedia Makes Mail Marketing Mediocre - 1610 edited

Householders’ physical mailboxes still receive large volumes of mass-marketing material. However, as mobile and online marketing rapidly develops, the value of the paper pushed into the mailbox comes in to question.

Online marketing offers a number of valuable new options. The marketing can be targeted to your personal interests, or even your physical whereabouts through the use of location-based applications. New marketing business models, where advertisers pay per actual reader, are also critical in advancing online consumer marketing. Some consumer brands representing premium products and services have already abandoned paper marketing. The last bastion in paper marketing to mailboxes seems to be discount coupons. Coupons have played an important role in offering discounts to consumers, especially in grocery stores. But in many markets, coupons have already vanished, and in the remaining markets it is highly likely that they will become networked through apps like Yowza, Coupon Sherpa, Grocery iQ and CoupSmart. With smartphone penetration in advanced markets widespread, networked-only coupons could soon be a reality. Another step in e-marketing is through an onslaught of e-mails, triggering your interest to re-visit a store you’ve already been to. If you are on the mailing list, new messages seem to come at two-to-four week intervals. Some stores introduce a few new products in each newsletter to attract customers’ attention. Others are repeating general store discounts at their outlet branch, week after week. My predictions for online/mobile marketing: * Innovative companies are embracing online/mobile marketing, eliminating the need for them to deliver marketing material to a physical mailbox. * Mobile coupon marketing is gaining traction and is being applied to new business scenarios, where coupons have been limited to date. * Staying away from networked marketing is not an option. The question today is for how long you run paper marketing in parallel.

Music Makers Manage Multiple Multimedia Models

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© Peter Linder – All Rights Reserved
© Peter Linder – All Rights Reserved

Long gone are the days when a record label would set a launch date, have the video played nonstop on MTV, and enjoy a clear path to record sales. The world changed irrevocably with digital video distribution and the advent of MP3 stores. So let’s see what we can learn about the future of mobile music by looking at the launch of rock star Rick Springfield’s latest record this week.

The music industry has become very creative in combining different live and multimedia innovations to create buzz for their artist. The traditional website has been customized with content targeting three different devices types: tablets, laptops/desktops and smartphones.

They have also come up with savvy ways of enticing customers to purchase the physical CDs. Music retailers will get additional promotional support by selling a special version of Rick’s new record, with four bonus songs not for sale anywhere online. Rick’s new physical album cover is also connected through an interactive application. You just download the app to your phone or tablet, and then point it at the cover to get bonus digital content on your device. The album comes with four different album covers, all with different songs and bonus content.

Last but not least, the week-long record launch in New York was made more exciting with a variety of events. Rick sang his hit “Jessie’s Girl” to New Yorkers during their morning commute on October 10 at Penn Station. The aging rocker was surrounded by commuters holding not just their take away coffees, but also their video-recording smartphones to capture the moment.

My predictions about the future of mobile music in the Networked Society:

• Mobile devices shape how music is consumed

• Comprehensive multimedia approaches with multiple innovations fundamental to creating buzz

• Live element is and will remain key in driving music revenues because live experience is impossible to bring online

• Younger generations might not understand “record” concept, but launching a collection of songs will always be a key moment for music lovers

 

Sophisticated Stations Serve Scrambling Suburban Settlers

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More than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, a figure that will grow to as much as 70 percent by 2050, according to our report on the future life in the megacities. This huge surge will bring 630 million people to the 40 largest metropolitan areas by 2025 – and ensuring that there is enough mobile data capacity to cover all bus, subway and train stations will be even more vital than it is today.

A central question in this development of megacities is how the availability of mobile data services will change and support commuters traveling to and from work. The time spent commuting is already very long, and growing cities will not be able to reduce this. So it becomes critical that people can use this time to be productive, and accomplish important private and personal business.

Commuters carry their digital devices everywhere, and their ability to use them along commuting routes is a major need to address. Some use their devices on the bus/train/subway, but most pull out their devices at stations when they transit. The demand for coverage and capacity at stations is now growing quickly, and it is the new data applications driving the demand.

There are very unique business challenges, however, in equipping all stations in a heterogeneous network. There is not an immediate revenue upside but a negative downside from commuter churn if the stations are underserved. But the majority of the Distributed Antenna Systems and Small Cells about to be deployed will be justified through the opportunities for churn reduction and the high value to society. Just imagine the stress on a 21st century professional commuting to and from the city if he or she could not use the time in a constructive way.

My predictions for the future of connectivity at train, metro and bus stations:
• Network coverage and capacity for commuters is vital in enabling projected megacity growth
• Stations will be equipped with powerful 3G/4G/WiFi solutions to serve commuters
• New business models and solutions will change the business case substantially, enabling gains both for commuters and operators
• Failure to meet commuters demand is likely to be a significant driver for churn.