Categories
Conferences Technology

The Vision of TelcoVision 2013

[Editor’s Note; For more great insight from Kshitij about “Big Data” and other topics , please go to his website at http://www.kshitijkumar.com/]

A portrait of Big Data guru, Kshitij Kumar.
Kshitij Kumar

TelcoVision (formerly TelcoTV) was held in Las Vegas, NV Oct 23-25 this year. While the name has changed, much else was similar to previous years. The intent with the name change, of course, was to reflect that the sessions and audience interest is not just in TV, but all services provided by Telcos. Content this year was progressive, attendance and exhibits were pretty steady and the hallway chatter was interesting.

Amongst a plethora of interesting topics, the three main trends of discussion at TelcoVision could be summarized as OTT/IP/Multiscreen, new revenue opportunities via Telemedicine, Wireless, etc. and Big-Data/Analytics.

The multiscreen/OTT sessions were well attended and the ecosystem surrounding OTT was visible at almost every booth in the exhibit hall. IP-based delivery to devices beyond the traditional set-top-box was a topic debated in several sessions, as well as in hallway conversations. Topics ranged from the delivery of on-demand versus live content on iPads and other tablets to the streaming technology requirements to the issue of content rights for streaming to all these devices. One issue that was discussed in a couple of panels related to the advertising possibilities on such devices – while it came up on a couple of panels, the situation appears far from clear, at least from the point of view of rural Telcos and overbuilders.

Several sessions covered new revenue opportunities – collaboration with health institutions has long been part of the local focused strategy for Telcos, and Telemedicine seems to be generating a lot of interest, both with its requirements for high quality, high-capacity transport and the ability to improve the quality of life for Telco customers. Wireless services (free local WiFi as well as traditional Wireless) were both debated on panels.

One new area of interest was Big Data and Analytics. Network analytics was the topic of discussion at several sessions and garnered interest across the board. The analytics sessions were fairly well attended.

The Social and Web analytics session, on which this author spoke, was interesting from the aspect of lively audience interaction after the individual presentations, despite it being one of the last sessions of the conference, just before the closing keynotes. It goes to show how much Telcos care about their customer sentiment, interests and revenue opportunities from the same. This being a topic that the larger service providers are still grappling with, it’s good to see rural Telcos being interested in getting involved at the cutting edge of these technologies.

Overall, it was a pretty useful show – TelcoVision is off to a good start.

Author Kshitij Kumar, Contributing Editor

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.