I’m listening to IMS architect Colin Pons from KPN. Wow. An operator that gets it.
He sees IMS as a technology that (in his words) makes the Internet more important for customers. No walled garden, preserve the end-to-end principle. Deploy it as a big application-layer intelligent router that ties together value-adding services. (What he means is intelligent find-me/follow-me, next gen voicemail etc. — not trivial mapping of logical identifiers to network addresses in a desperate attempt to generate billable events). And IMS is a transitional technology to a P2P world.
Most notable is that he sees identity as being front and central to their effort. I know that he knows this is a deep and complex area, and not something that can be easily articulated in one busy slide on a panel session.
Tied with KPN’s “scorched earth” strategy for deploying fiber connectivity across the Netherlands, this proposes a radically different culture and outlook to the average operator. They have seen the light that they will only survive by delivering super-abundance to the users, and by attracting users into their world by offering compelling value, not by trying to hold them to ransom by erecting barriers to achieving their goals.
My only bone would be whether KPN is making the most efficient use of capital in evading the Dutch municipal network trend. If they follow their own logic to its conclusion, owning the network isn’t much of an advantage any more.
For US readers, this is a description of a telecom world from another planet, with races to deploy fiber and empower users.
Hopefully I can find an excuse to visit Amsterdam again, one of my favourite cities. Not that it needs an excuse. And I know a few readers who may have a more skeptical view of KPN, so the good news is comments are working again now the spam storm is over.
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I worked at a Dutch ISP in 1999-2000, and KPN was so criminally incompetent you couldn't even get POTS interconnect capacity with them because their switches and COs were maxed out, let alone more advanced data services. I have a hard time believing the same company morphed into a leader now.
Well to even things out: I'm former KPN and still worked with them in 1999-2000. Since then the company went through some profound rethinking! IMS is all about identifying your (potential) customer from a network independent service platform. As such it renews earlier Intelligent Network and personal communications services ideas, but no longer network centric, but service centric. When networks no longer matter, linking to customers remains vital, both from a supplier as well as from a services marketing point of view. A second issue relates to the image of incumbents like BT, KPN and others: competitors do not like them, but customers as a rule trust them. KPN now is capitalizing on this trust, with IMS and content management & distribution as new vehicles. The public in general even expects them to win the "multi-play" battles, e.g. with cable companies in the end. Don van Riet, mgt consultant ICT
PS: The Web is by nature open to anyone offering Web services, how open "Telco" networks are to others is still a contentious issue.
KPN isn't the issue here. Well they do have their issues yes but the biggest problem is Alcatel-Lucent. Integration costs are out of control and the solution is very immature. ALU needs to wake up because they are about to fail at KPN.
Posted by: at July 1, 2008 12:54 PM