Wednesday marked the end of Broadband World Forum Europe. The industry has been humbled by the economic downturn, and the hype of last year (femtocells) has died away. This is also reflected in our on-going research on operator strategies for the home gateway and services market. Although the show lacked a general buzz word, opex reductions (mainly focusing cost of customer care and retention), multi-device service delivery and APIs for operator infrastructure (mainly on set top boxes). Although this is evolving the telecoms industry in more sensible directions, what was lacking was a commercial sense.
As usual, the Forum was filled to the rim with technologies and talk about possible technology solutions, however few were willing to talk about any commercial aspects.
If there is one thing that the managed video (IPTV) venture should have taught the industry is that new services, applications and solutions need to be deeply founded on a sound business plan with clear commercial goals, and not be executed solely because technologies enables operators to enter a given market. This is even more disappointing in a business environment were operators feel the pains of the global downturn.
