Comms Dealer

The future for the MVNO market is bright but traditional models must evolve for long-term sustainability, according to research released by Piran Consulting.

According to the report's authors a relentless focus on understanding the customer, a strong distribution capability and a means of creating true loyalty, allied to a network partnership model, are the critical factors for success.

Since the launch of the first mobile virtual network - Virgin Mobile in December 1999 - UK MVNOs have taken an ever increasing market share.

In its report, Piran estimates that 15.6% of the mobile market is now served by some 248 MVNOs, accounting for 12.4% of the UK's £15.9bn mobile revenues.

While one in four MVNO entrants fail, the last three years has seen an upsurge in the number of B2B-focused MVNOs, international long-distance MVNOs (such as Lebara and Lycamobile) and machine-to-machine MVNOs. And Piran believes the market, now more than ever, is ripe for growth and unlocking new revenue streams.

Traditionally sought after by bigger brands that are looking to scale and diversify by entering the telecoms market, it is the B2B arena that is currently seeing the most growth in MVNO, as large enterprises now invest in dedicated mobile phones for their employees.

And prompted by the advent of fixed mobile convergence, unified communications (as typified by Microsoft's Lync product) and tablet computing, businesses are increasingly seeking providers who can provide a complete single source service at a lower cost.
In addition, opportunities have been identified in the shift from Pay-As-You-Go to post-pay, providing the challenge of thin or poor credit history can be overcome, as well as those MVNOs promoting richer, multi-media, multi-channel propositions.

With over a million customers estimated to be rejected every year having failed mobile operators' credit checks, high street retailers with MVNO operations have been pinpointed as best placed to expand into this market and exploit new revenue streams, alongside historic underperformers which have been tipped for a resurgence through transition to triple and quad-play offers.

Erick O'Connor, Director, Piran Consulting, said: "MVNOs that have stood the test of time have done so by continuing to evolve their service offers and by maintaining reputations that are centred round value, customer service, and rewarding loyalty, and also by diversifying the breadth of their offering through a movement to bundled products.

"Undoubtedly it is the strong, those equipped to adapt to the quickly evolving consumer demands, that will thrive and grow and as the market evolves towards high speed data and unlimited tariffs the traditional MVNO model will need to evolve to be sustainable businesses.

"A supportive mobile network operator partner is also key but ultimately having a simple proposition that solves customer needs is what counts, backed by a strong distribution capability and excellent customer service."

A new study released by O2 and the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr) suggests public sector organisations are missing out on crucial savings due to inefficiencies caused by poor staff connectivity and digital technology on the move.

The findings reveal public sector organisations in local communities are still facing challenges when it comes to embracing technology. This is in spite of the Government's ambition for a public sector that is 'Digital by Default'.

With these departments remaining under pressure to improve efficiencies, while increasing savings, the report identifies three clear opportunities to improve support for frontline workers:

Empowering frontline community workers to work remotely - poor access to the right tools and connectivity is leading to a lack of information on the move, for example when meeting citizens in the local community. This is resulting in an average loss of 53 hours a year per employee, equating to £2.2bn, which could be reinvested in other services

Boosting productivity - employees, such as community healthcare workers, could on average reduce the time taken to complete follow up tasks after home visits by as much as 30% with better connectivity. This would allow them to file real-time reports and update patient records without having to travel back and forth to the office

Improving work-life balance for employees - employers believe that with the right tools and technology in place, employees could choose to spend another 22 days a year working from home, equating to a 90% increase in current levels

Billy D'Arcy, Managing Director of Public Sector Business, O2 commented: "As the UK economy starts to show signs of recovery, pressure remains on public services to look for efficiencies to cut the remaining deficit.

"Alongside this, there is a growing demand from the public for better services and access to information delivered through new channels, such as mobile apps. With smartphone penetration expected to reach 80% by January 2015, this demand is only set to increase.

"The report findings highlight the crucial role technology has to play in supporting these organisations, both in terms of cost savings and delivery of services and in care to local communities.

"I believe the right investment in digital technology can have a real impact on social value, for example providing frontline staff with devices to empower them to work more flexibly, or giving doctors the technology to deliver remote diagnosis to patients that need help. Government and businesses urgently need to work closely together to make sure that these crucial public services - which we rely upon every day - are fit for the future."

Andy Burton has been appointed as the Non Executive Chairman of Concorde Solutions, a software developer and service provider delivering business analytics for managing software compliance, optimisation and governance across complex IT estates for Enterprises and Public Sector organisations.

The appointment follows the recent announcement that the company had secured a multi-million dollar investment.

Burton, who has been a Non Executive Director with the firm for the last two years, brings relevant experience having previously held CEO roles at Centennial Software (now part of FrontRange), Content Technologies and most recently Web and Cloud Services provider, Fasthosts Internet Group.

He is also the Chief Revenue Officer of innovative UK hybrid cloud ISV, Zynstra, a Non Executive Director of both FAST and Outsourcery plc, and the Founder and a Director of the Cloud Industry Forum.

Martin Prendergast, CEO of Concorde Solutions, stated: "Andy has established a solid reputation as a passionate advocate of new technology innovation and adoption that fits perfectly with Concorde's plans."

Burton added: "Most Enterprises today work in an environment that encompasses on-premise through to Cloud based IT services, and the traditional endpoints of desktops have expanded under the adoption of BYOD.

"The challenge in such a shifting landscape is how best to optimise investment, maintain controls and ensure risks are mitigated."

The company recently raised $2.5 million in new investment led by new investor, JMI Services, LLC, and included follow-on participation from Panoramic Growth Equity and Elderstreet, both of whom were existing investors.

Concorde will use this additional capital to further expand its geographic coverage, go-to-market programs and core product investment.

Plantronics has appointed Paul Clark to the role of VP, General Manager North Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia & Sub-Saharan Africa.

Clark was formerly UK and Ireland MD and Regional Director in the Nordics, Holland and Belgium, and will now also be responsible for expanding the company's business in Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Eastern Europe.

He has already launched Plantronics' Connect Partner Programme in the Russian and Eastern European markets.

Over 170 partners have graduated from Plantronics' partner training programme across Europe since its launch last year.

Clark joined Plantronics in 1994 as the company's EMEA Marketing Director, a role which he held until 2003. During this period, he helped Plantronics boost headset adoption across global business markets and strategically launched the company into the consumer space. Paul then became Plantronics' EMEA Director of Product Management before taking on a commercial role managing sales operations in the UK and Ireland in 2007.

Clark said: "I'm pleased to have the opportunity expand on the success Plantronics has experienced in Russia and Eastern Europe. I looking forward to driving further growth in the region by providing added support to our local channel partners, and to seeing a growing number of users experience the benefits of Plantronics programmes and products."

Philip Vanhoutte, Senior VP & MD, Europe and Africa at Plantronics, added: "Paul has been instrumental in building Plantronics' global presence over the years, both with our business partners and consumers.

"His extensive knowledge of our products and dedication to our core values make him an ideal candidate to grow our presence in key Eastern European and Russian markets, and we expect him to continue delivering great results in his new role."

British UC vendor ipcortex has been selected by Google as their winner at TADhack, the Telecoms Application Developer Hackathon.

The event, held in Madrid, hosted a live development competition to celebrate and promote the use of APIs and other technologies used to create apps in the telecoms space.

Over 60 development teams from all over the world submitted their entries both directly and via six satellite events across America, Europe and Asia. Prizes went to the most innovative and compelling applications developed during the course of the event.

The ipcortex entry, RTC Emergency, is a proof of concept app that adds value to emergency service calls using only the base software on an Android phone with no special application or network support.

An emergency call, initiated via the normal telephone network was augmented by RTC Emergency to pass location information accurate to within a few metres directly to the operator and allow them to view a real time video feed of an unfolding emergency via the caller's smartphone.

With 'eyes on the scene' call centre operators would more effectively engage response teams. It even allowed paramedics en route to an incident to view the same feed to allow them to arrive fully prepared.

For example, paramedics would triage or dispense advice while making their way to the incident, from their passenger seat in the ambulance. Functioning on any smartphone with a suitably up to date web browser, all the caller needs to do is click a link sent by text message to activate the feed; there is no need to install any application and the emergency call is not affected.

The application was based on the use of the WebRTC protocol, an open standard spearheaded by a group of companies including Google, who selected ipcortex as a winner. It allows web browsers to set up audio, visual and data connections without third party programmes.

Rob Pickering, ipcortex CEO, said: "Participating in TADHack was illuminating and anyone who still doubts the effect that emergent telecommunications APIs will have in setting the future direction of UC should take a look at some of the entries.

"Our winning RTC Emergency application was a crude proof of concept, developed in a few man days of effort, but the fact that it was even possible demonstrates how the stage is set for new solutions to real world problems which merge traditional telecommunications and rapid web based development.

"We've been working on WebRTC applications since 2012 to implement functionality that will feed into our mainstream VoIPCortex UC platform. For now, though, RTC Emergency was just a way of illustrating how WebRTC will allow a re-think of well-established services and processes and we're delighted that Google recognised our efforts at TADHack."

Chess has completed the acquisition of Herts-based O2 and EE airtime distributor Avenir Telecom. The deal adds £22m (£1.6m EBITDA) to Chess' annual turnover of £44m-plus (2013 figures) along with a 500 dealer base, a 30,000 B2B connection base and 55 staff who remain stationed at the distributor's Borehamwood HQ. The deal strengthens the mobile and partner services division of Chess.

Chess CEO, David Pollock said: "We are delighted to welcome the Avenir people to Chess. It provides a complete end-to-end processing and support service to partners wanting to offer mobile and fixed line telecom services. They've been very successful over the past 25 years and we're delighted to add their knowledge and expertise to our Partner Services business." 

Following the acquisition, Andy Tow, Avenir's MD, becomes MD of the newly formed Chess Partner Services division.

He stated: "This is a fantastic opportunity to continue developing the airtime business, building on our established mutual successes and working towards our shared vision, continuing to deliver a great service to all of our partners."

Richard Btesh, Director of Chess, added "Over the years we have often been approached by sellers of mobile customer bases, but this is the first opportunity we've had to acquire a solid market leader that gives Chess a real opportunity for partner and mobile growth.

"Being a great place to be a customer is the key to our success, this acquisition strengthens our proposition with such a strong synergy between our core values and culture."

Chess has completed over 80 deals in the last eight years. Avenir is the latest in a string of strategic acquisitions including The CRM Business, Microsoft's leading European partner for CRM Online; and eBillz, one of the UK's top telecom billing providers and Integra ICT.

Union Street Technologies has confirmed that its WLR3 Portal will be ready to support Openreach's R2600 software update scheduled for release on 19 July.

As part of Openreach's Business 2+ commercial initiative, the R2600 update will notably withdraw care level 2 for premium single lines in favour of a newly introduced care level of 2.5.

Although level 2 will continue to be available for residential lines, Level 2.5 will become the new entry level for business use going forward. Following release of this update, Openreach will immediately begin upgrading existing premium single lines from level 2 to 2.5. Once all premium single lines have been upgraded this new care level will be activated and available for use.

Level 2.5 will adhere to the same service level agreements currently provided by level 2 but, in order to provide an expedited service more suitable for business requirements, faults reported on level 2.5 will be given priority over level 2 faults. This new care level will however be chargeable and could therefore have significant cost implications for communication providers.

Vincent Disneur, Head of Sales at Union Street, said: "R2600 is likely to be the most user impacting update Openreach has introduced for quite some time, and many of our clients have expressed to us their quite understandable concern regarding the impact that the associated costs will have on their business.

"As a software vendor our priority is to ensure we maintain full compatibility with Openreach following the update and in this regard we foresee no problems. Updates for our WLR3 module will be rolled out to our clients automatically so our clients will experience no disruption of service."

C4L's coreTX network is now deployed and fully live at its first 25 locations.

The 1-100Gb MPLS network which connects data centres across the UK has been deployed in parallel to the existing network and C4L has announced that it is ready to accept both new orders and existing customer migrations and upgrades.

The first phase of 25 sites is focused on the data centre hotspots of Docklands, Central & West London and Manchester, it also includes C4L's own data centre located in Bournemouth.

C4L's high performance MPLS network, coreTX, is constructed with privately owned dark fibre and spans PoPs across the UK.

Matt Hawkins, Chairman & Founder of C4L, said: "We embarked on this project because we realised that the UK has been served by inadequate data centre network infrastructure and poor delivery times for too long.

"We have made this multi-million pound investment because we believe that UK businesses need to be better served to enable them to compete both domestically and internationally.

"coreTX meets this need, offering a competitive advantage to all sectors, especially in markets like Financial services, Media, Content and Cloud platform delivery."

There were fewer servers in EMEA in Q1 this year than last year, but the price was higher. HP remains top dog, with IBM and Dell falling back.

Vendor revenue in the EMEA server market hit $2.9bn in 1Q14, $44m more than in 2013 (+1.5% yr/yr), says IDC. According to the tracker, 537,800 units were shipped in 1Q14 -3.9% fewer than in 1Q13. IDC puts this down to due to the rise in virtualisation and integrated systems.

The quarter-on-quarter performance in the EMEA region between 4Q13 and 1Q14 highlighted an overall negative trend, with a 20.3% decrease in vendor revenue and a 10.8% decrease in units shipped. The strong disparity between the corresponding quarters and quarter-on-quarter figures can be attributed to the very seasonal nature of the server market in EMEA, where many deals take place at the end of the calendar year.

"Units shipped in EMEA over the past three years have continued along the same consistent contraction trend, with 3Q11 the last quarter to see clearly positive unit growth in the region," said Giorgio Nebuloni, research manager, Enterprise Server Group, IDC EMEA.

"Despite a strong push for additional capacity in megadatacenter customers and renewed focus on tower and rack volumes by the largest OEMs, the macro-trend in the x86 market continues to point to value as the only real growth opportunity. Vendors with a strong focus on attach rates and profitability are the best positioned to win in this market."

The increase in vendor revenue between 1Q13 and 1Q14 can be attributed to the positive growth in EMEA's two largest product types, with rack-optimised and blade servers seeing 2.8% and 5.0% growth in revenue respectively. These two products contributed 76.1% to overall EMEA vendor revenue and saw a combined 3.4% increase compared with 1Q13, though their unit shipments continued to decrease. This has resulted in an increase in ASPs for rack-optimised and blade servers - an increase of around $357, according to IDC's quarterly tracker.

"The EMEA blade market has seen strong growth in the higher-end market," said Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst, IDC EMEA Enterprise Server Group. "This targeting of higher-end blade systems is allowing vendors to offset the drop in units shipped with higher average selling prices. This has made it possible for vendors in the EMEA market to generate positive dollar revenue growth despite a decrease in units. Blade servers have also seen increased traction in integrated systems and datacenters-in-a-box, a segment that over the past year has seen strong double-digit growth in the region. We expect this to remain a constant in 2014, as blades become part of broader integrated solutions."

x86 server market revenue for 1Q14 totalled $1.72bn, and accounted for 81% of the total value (an increase of 6 points on the previous quarter and equal to that of 1Q13). x86 servers in EMEA grew 2.2% in dollar revenue terms, despite the continued decline in units shipped (down 3.7%).

Non-x86 vendor revenue accounted for $541m and 3,810 units in the EMEA region, a decline of 1.3% and 27.2% respectively compared with 1Q13. Quarter-on-quarter non-x86 servers declined 39% in revenue and contracted by 2,368 units (down 38.3%).

"All Western European markets bounced back to growth this quarter, except Ireland, France, and Spain, which experienced double-digit declines in vendor revenues," said Andreas Olah, research analyst, Enterprise Server Group, IDC EMEA. "The Irish market is severely impacted by the slowdown in mega data centre expansion by cloud providers there that are expected to focus more on building new facilities in Continental Europe within the next year in order to serve major markets from local datavcenters. Government spending remains an inhibitor for growth in France and Spain, while investments continue to pick up in Germany and the UK.

"Most notably, the Italian server market grew 33.9% year on year, mainly down to a large legacy systems project this quarter. At the same time a moderate decline was experienced on the x86 side there, which is still affected by the current climate of economic and political uncertainty. In contrast, the Dutch x86 market picked up substantially by 25.7% due to a combination of improving economic conditions, a well-established hosting community, and investments by cloud service providers."

Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) server revenue continued to decline, decreasing 2.8% year over year to $673.72m in 1Q14. Sales of x86 servers recorded a marginal increase, driven by demand for blade and rack-optimised servers, while non-x86 servers continued in negative trend.

"The Central and Eastern Europe [CEE] subregion was down 5.7% to $335.70 million," said Jiri Helebrand, research manager, IDC CEMA. "Investments in datacenter expansion from Internet and cloud service providers drove demand for x86 rack servers, keeping overall x86 server revenue afloat. In contrast, non-x86 server revenue declined 29.7% year over year.

Windows had 56.1% revenue share, generating vendor revenue in 1Q14 of $1.6bn, up 1.9% on 1Q13. Second spot was taken by Linux operating systems with 24.3% of the market and vendor revenue of $707m

A Top Gear style Anglo-French charity driving Twin Town Challenge extravaganza has raised over £105,000 for Oxfordshire charity SpecialEffect, which helps people with disabilities benefit from the fun and inclusion of video games.

Fifty teams provided and drove their own car, costing no more than £500, from Witney in Oxfordshire to Le Touquet in France, including spells on the iconic race circuits of Brands Hatch, Le Mans and Croix En Ternois en route.

The challenge, which ran from 23-26 May 2014, was organised by Brendon Cross, MD of Witney-based STL Communications, who enthused: "Around 250 people took part in the weekend having a whole lot of fun as the cars travelled through England and France undertaking a number of points based challenges on the way including 'Blind Driving' and 'Car Booty', not to mention a tyre change against the clock!"

The teams experienced a VIP send-off from Cornbury Park in Charlbury, a civic reception in Le Touquet and an 'unforgettable' finish line celebration event in Witney.

"Companies have recognised that this type of event is a perfect team-builder and networking opportunity," added Cross.

www.specialeffect.org.uk/twin-town