By Michael Lai, CEO, P1.
I was at the Broadband World Forum Asia 2012 Conference held in Kuala Lumpur recently. This is my second time presenting at this prestigious and insightful conference. If you were there to witness my presentations, I thank you for the support.
It is always delightful to meet with local and foreign friends who are visiting Malaysia. We never fail to exchange views and delve into the latest updates on one of the fastest and dynamic industry – telecommunications.
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| Michael Lai shares about the four Great Shifts in the world of communications. |
During my keynote, I presented three key messages for the audience to digest. The first was the story of an Underdog, followed by the Great Shifts in Communications and finally the Het Net World phenomena.
This story of an Underdog is portrayed through an image of a kid versus champion Sumo wrestler which signified the journey of P1 starting from zero in year 2008; against the strong incumbent telco who seemed unshakable.
Building a site at a time; acquiring a customer at a time; step by step, P1 today covers 53% of the population with over 400,000 subscribers. The journey so far has been exciting and fulfilling transforming P1 from zero to a Global Malaysian Brand in the world of 4G.
In the second chapter, I stated that in order to provide faster broadband in this new data world, we have to realize the phenomena and impact of the Great Shifts that are taking place.
The first Great Shift is from voice to data. This is a fact that many of us may not realize.
Today, many of us are spending more time reading than talking on our handsets.
The pace of this Great Shift from voice to data will only get faster and faster.
The second Great Shift takes place in the multi-screen world.
There used to be a time when having a black and white television set is considered a luxury for the home.
How times have changed. The common scenario of a typical household today is likely to have one television set, two desktops, three notebooks, four tablets and five smartphones.
It is quite likely also that each individual would own at least one television set, a personal desktop or notebook, one tablet and one or more smartphones.
The generation X and Y today are used to listening to songs from an MP3 player; at the same time playing games on a tablet; while leaving the TV on and simultaneously accessing their online social-networking account via the laptop.
Every screen is likely to be using different service providers for Internet access for it can be fiber, 3G, 4G and/or WiFi.
The third Great Shift I shared is Cloud in the Air; Applications (Apps) in your Hand.
Cloud computing is not a new concept but due to the lack of fast broadband connectivity in the past, cloud used to be well, cloudy.
But today, with the many choices of connectivity, cloud computing is becoming more pervasive for various reasons.
Why? It is just too slow to access cloud computing using dial-up internet.
The fourth Great Shift is the Internet of Things including machine to machine communication.
The evolution of communications can be largely summarized to three groups of M-to-M (M2M) beginning with man to man that’s mainly taking place today. This is followed by man to machine and ultimately machine to machine communication.
Imagine the future of machine to machine communication whereby every street light or public utility is intelligently connected via smart grid connectivity. Imagine also the day when every electrical appliance we use is intelligently connected, what amount of cost and ecological savings would that amount to?
Presently, P1 customers consume an average of 17GB of data every month.
That’s equivalent to 3400 (assuming 5MB per song) songs or 17 DVD-quality movies downloaded monthly.
When P1 was first launched back in 2008, the average P1 user consumed 7GB of data monthly.
This phenomenon of perpetual data tsunami will continue to storm the world in the years to come. In fact, Informa Telecoms and Media forecasted that Asia Pacific’s average Internet traffic per user per month is likely to exceed 30GB by 2015.
The third and final chapter of my keynote dwelled upon the inevitable need for a heterogeneous network environment in the future dubbed the Het Net World.
In order to cater for the perpetual data tsunami and faster broadband growth in Malaysia and the world, a single network cannot do the job.
The world needs a plethora of technologies – 4G, fiber, WiFi, LTE and 3G.
In bracing the perpetual data tsunami and the necessary Het Net World, P1 has taken progressive steps to be a member of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) as the next-generation 4G proponent. In addition, P1 has collaborated with our national service carrier to offer fiber broadband to customers. This initiative allows P1 to offer the best of cutting-edge network technologies with 4G in the air and fiber on the ground to our customers.
While the telecommunications industry is a highly competitive one, I believe in Coop-petition (cooperation and competition), meaning compete when necessary, collaborate when required.
In the end, it is all about providing the best Internet experience to our customers at the best value.
To sum up my keynote, I posed an interesting food for thought to the audience.
The balance of power in the DNA (device, network and applications) of telecommunications is shifting.
In the past, supposedly whoever owns the billing relationship, owns the customer. But today, do network providers like AT&T and Verizon own the customers, or is it device players like Apple and Samsung; or applications giants like Google and FaceBook who have more affinity with end-users? This may be a rude awakening to some network service providers but it is a reality. The answer lies in whoever engages users most, will ultimately have the most influence on the users.
When 65% to 70% of the total revenue for most telcos is still derived from voice services, the great shift from voice to data mentioned earlier is likely to push the revenue stream of the said telcos to be severely under pressure.
Voice service providers not only are they constantly at logger heads with each other for the revenue pie but also with new Internet voice players like Skype; are making the competition stiffer than ever. Furthermore, handset players are already getting into the game of bundling free online voice and SMS applications like Viber, WhatsApp and FaceTime.
This imminent shift in the DNA power renders service providers albeit reluctant; to start relooking at other business model to sustain their revenue stream in the coming years.
Lest we forget, if we don’t eat our own lunch, someone else will.
