Flattery will get you everywhere my granny used to tell me and she was bang on. “Attendance is via invitation only” it says on the web site. I asked to be invited and I was. There began a truly Over the Top Experience.

Let’s start with the venue - Blenheim Palace - birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill among its place in history. A beautiful late summer’s day made for such a scenic setting that very few could resist getting their phones out to snap a few quick pics.

We even had a Gala Dinner and a tour of the palace itself to make us feel really important. It really was truly splendid…

So too was the accommodation. Although previous “guests” may not have found it so comfortable, I really had no cause to complain at the standard of the Malmaison Oxford. Perhaps that isn’t quite true - the curtain blinds took a while to close - and I did talk to one delegate who made an art form out of critiquing the accommodation but I think that was just because he was hung over.

If you get the chance - and someone else is paying - do spend a night or two in this hotel which has been created in what used to be a prison. I was in solitary confinement, in the wing that used to house the real bad boys.

Then there was the conference bag - a Knomo Logan Briefcase worth nearly £200, especially inscribed for the 21st Century Global Summit. I guess the attendees liked it because, as yet, none have appeared on eBay.

Quite a Facade
None of it was real. Amdocs spent their time talking to us about the gap between the perception that the telecoms industry creates of itself and the reality that it delivers. The conference itself was a fine example of this. After all the glitz and glamour of the palace and the prison, the conference itself was held in the stables.

Once we got down to business, you could see the core theme - Over the Top - emerging. Not just in the mirage that we had been presented with in the form of the venue, but also in the discussion about the telecoms future in the 21st century.

A New Catchphrase
Over the Top is best exhibited by Apple and the iPhone. This poster child for all things good in 21st century telecoms shows how companies that run over the top of operators and use the new infrastructure to deliver their services are the ones that are winning.

Of course the consumer product is a fine piece of engineering, but what is lost on the market is that it would not have happened without some serious effort from AT&T. Apple were clearly wearing the trousers in that relationship, but here are some facts for you on AT&T’s contribution.

40,000 development hours
130,000 feature / device eligibility restrictions
25,000 test scenarios
1,029 milestones
136 new activation servers

And yet for all of its success - the iPhone marked the first time the a telco sold and activated a product as an FMCG - AT&T were still portrayed as the evil empire.

Why does this matter?
Everyone wants to be loved, but that is not why this is important. A Harris Interactive Customer Experience study highlights the problem: 40% of telecoms customers are either highly or somewhat dissatisfied.

When they do things well, the best result is that telcos go unnoticed. When they screw up, people lose their internet or their phone - they lose their lifeline. 5 nines is simply not enough. The only way to keep customers happy is 100%. Which is asking a lot, especially when you consider the matrix of vendors and channels that also contribute to things breaking.

But it is vital. Telcos are trying to carve out a role for themselves in the future that depends on them being trusted as the guardians of the platform that ties all the pipes, pods, plexes and panels together. The new 5 Ps.

Trust. How do you build a trusting relationship with your customers when the only time they care about you is when you screw up?

The Platform to the Rescue
The 5 Ps are straight from accenture, but they seemed to be describing a lot of what I have also seen but been unable to turn into such a set of buzzwords. Maybe that’s what an MBA will do for you?

The Platform is very Telco 2.0 too, so there is clearly a consensus among advisers to the industry. This consensus says that telcos need to be open to external innovation but need to add value by providing the hooks that allow content to extend beyond the limitation of devices. These same hooks also allow devices to exist outside of the boundaries of the walled gardens in which they are sometimes created.

The platform is also the guardian of the identity in this model, which fits with some of my recently published pieces. It struck me however that it may already be too late. The identity and in fact even the whole platform piece could also be where the likes of Facebook and Google play.

Another Missed Opportunity
I’m afraid my conclusion is that this is a good idea that should have been implemented 5 years ago. Now, there are other players in the space that can replicate the platform’s core features without the need for hooks into the network. For sure, the hooks would make the telco version idealistically better, but by the time telcos have all built something consistent, the networks will be redundant because we will all have moved onto other planets in the galaxy.

It is hard to see networks being able to stay open, while closing off the opportunity for software based services in the form of social networks to go over the top and steal this position. Is this yet another example of telcos shutting the door after the horse has bolted?

Is it me or does this happen a lot? It seems that telecoms is forever trying to ride the last wave, rather than looking for the next one. We don’t seem to take developments seriously until they are mass market, by which time it is too late. This year it is Facebook, last year it was IPTV. Prior to that we had Google, VoIP, IM, etc…

Innovation - Google Style
It is worthwhile looking at how Google operates and contrast that with how telecoms companies do product innovation. Google bought 77 companies last year. Some, we may never hear of again while others will become features in Google’s product set of the future.

There is of course a risk in buying companies before they have proved themselves. There may be no market, their plan may be crap, the technology may be flawed, but if one of these ugly grey creatures does turn out be a beautiful swan, the bad eggs can be forgotten.

Cisco did the same to build itself into the monolith it is now, and in both cases, the act of buying immature entities has meant that monopoly concerns rarely arise. How is a $100m acquisition going to flip Google into a monopoly position? Simple: it isn’t - for a few years, until it grows by which time regulators cannot block the purchase.

Innovation - Telco Style
What innovation? Perhaps this is unfair to many of the people who work in R&D and Product Development, but in the big scheme of things, telco innovation happens mainly in the marketing and pricing departments - not in technology. Gone are the days when Bell Labs and Martlesham led the way in device and optics development because those components were parts of the core network. Innovation now occurs over the top of these now mature entities.

I just don’t think telco transformation is possible because the telecoms service provision market is so fragmented by artificial competition. This is where there is a huge difference between Google and even an enlightened telco.

Google operates globally, a telco operator has a small market in a restricted geographic niche. Because so much of the new platform requirement centres on ubiquity, telcos are horribly constrained in their ability to provide what developers need.

Which developer is going to build 4 different platform interfaces per country? They aren’t are they? So the idea that a standard telco platform can be created is, I’m afraid, fanciful. Some of these companies can’t agree on the day of the week, let alone a standard service delivery platform model.

Are Telcos Dead?
This is a bleak picture that I am painting. Telcos can’t innovate and they can’t consolidate. Other industries can - notably software developers - so it is inevitable that others will win the battle for hearts and minds. Telcos will forever be the bad guys because the only time you care about them is when something breaks or you see a cheaper offer.

Oh dear, time for the last rites… But that is to ignore the simple fact that none of this exists without the network. Can Google exist without networks? Can Facebook? No, of course not - don’t be daft, Jeremy - take away the networks and Google would have to build a replacement or they too would be nothing.

A Necessary Evil
There is a stigma associated with becoming a commodity that telecoms has been fighting ever since the industry was born. This is propagated by the people inside who think something along the lines of “there is more to life than bits and bytes. My brain is too big for such mundanities”.

Whether it is job protectionism or something more altruistic, I don’t know, but it seems to me that perhaps what is required is an acceptance that this is exactly what networks are.

It is not just the networks though. I always find it hard to sit through a Cisco slideshow because I find it very hard to map the presentation to the reality.

Really, Cisco make routers. I’m sure they do: every time I have bought one, it has been because they are cheaper and offer better throughput that Juniper or someone else. And yet the slides talk of management, features and service layers and blah blah blah. I know price and performance are boring - but cut the crap and cut the cost.

I’m not picking on Cisco. Sun are the same and soon enough even the Web 2.0 application providers will fall into the same camp. We all grow old, but it seems that telcos are increasingly like some 1970s refugee that cannot shrug off the effects of Woodstock.

Conclusion
We are all a means to an end and that end is getting ever further away. My clearest conclusion from such an over the top experience was that the value from our efforts is being created at least one and increasingly two steps beyond the traditional broadband value chain.

Once upon a time, getting onto the internet was value in and of itself because of the new things that you could do with email. Telcos could realise that by charging for access to email. Job done.

Now though, the value comes in being able to choose which car to buy without having to leave your house. It comes in being able to live in a beautiful and yet cheap setting and work from home instead of commuting. How does the monetary value of that flow back through the broadband value chain to pay for the networks that make it all possible?

It needs to - somehow - because the networks need to be paid for or they won’t get built. We tried that once before and have used the get out of jail free card already.

But is there light in this very dark picture. Telecoms companies offer interconnection and routing. These skills are needed - on the networks of course - but also to manage the flow of money through the value chain. Route the packets, route the money. Result?