BT Will Rival Mobile Operators for Enterprise Wireless
By Tony Cripps
Telecoms incumbents are in pole position to take the lion's share of enterprise wireless data traffic from mobile operators, according to the mobility boss of BT Retail's corporate accounts.
Speaking exclusively to ComputerWire, John Wright, general manager mobility for BT Retail's major business accounts, said that decades of hard-won experience with business customers in fixed-line environments have given traditional telcos a significant edge over their mobile counterparts in providing wireless services.
"Wired carriers have the breadth and depth of experience over the last 20 years that mobile operators now [find themselves lacking]. For major business there are very few companies that can provide the breadth of knowledge and skills of BT. Multiple devices, disparate networks, connectivity. There's no better organization to provide all this than BT."
According to Wright, mobile operators have been embroiled in a battle to undercut each other on voice call pricing at the expense of better understanding customers' business needs. That, he said, is a mistake in an age when different forms of connectivity, whether fixed or wireless, are merely bearers for moving data around.
About 85% of UK mobile operator revenues are currently derived from voice services while most of their data revenues come from consumer use of SMS text messages.
"BT is not about voice minutes. In the 90s all the wire-line operators struggled to get on to the desktop. We have learned from that," said Wright. "Mobile is about communication and the delivery of information. People want information delivered wherever and whenever they want. I believe fixed-line carriers have a golden opportunity to become key players in mobile when mobile covers everything: traditional mobile, WiFi, WiMax, across all devices."
With many of those pieces of the jigsaw now in place, BT is looking forward to a highly profitable future as a supplier of mobile data services to both the enterprise and SME markets, aided and abetted by its BT Global Services consulting and systems integration arm.
This might sound far-fetched to those that remember the spin-out of mobile operator mmO2 in November 2001 in a move to increase shareholder value in an otherwise relatively stagnant business.
BT's efforts to reinvent itself as a dynamic and relevant company for the 21st century have gone largely unnoticed to the world at large. However, under the leadership of Pierre Danon on the retail side and Paul Reynold for the wholesale business, BT is barely recognizable from the organization it was prior to their arrival in late 2001.
Wright said BT was the largest hirer of IT staff in the UK last year, with over 150 senior-level appointments. The culture of the firm has also changed, with senior executives now actively encouraged to gain hands-on experience with employees at all levels throughout the organization.
Although he was not present at the time of the mmO2 sell-off, Wright said the loss has not been the mistake many had predicted. Instead, it has left BT in a strong position to negotiate favorable deals with mobile network operators. The company currently works with its offspring for mobile network access, although that deal is currently being renegotiated. Wright gave no indication as to whether BT will continue to work with O2 or will move its traffic to another network.
BT is also the UK's largest provider of wireless LAN hotspots, through its Openzone initiative, and continues to own the fixed-line network over which the majority of the country's broadband traffic is carried. The company is also a front-line supporter of the WiMax "super hotspot" technology, which will further blur the distinction between mobile and fixed-line operators in the next few years.
According to Wright, BT Retail is currently working on an update to its Mobile Office remote access offering that will make handoff between different types of networks automatic, although users will also be able to manually select a particular type of network where several are available. While such systems are being developed by specialists such as Birdstep Technologies, they are not yet widespread. Back To Top PRINT FRIENDLY
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