Management World Americas 2012: “Co-opetition” in the Mobile Market

By Marc Lippe, Director, Worldwide Field and Corporate Marketing, InfoVista

This week marks TM Forum’s annual conference in Orlando, Management World Americas. This year, the event examines digital services (including how to enable, assure and bill for them), customer experience management and many other issues associated with the ever-changing connected world.

Tuesday’s keynote presenters provided a comprehensive overview of what the digital landscape looks like today, setting the stage for conversations throughout the coming week about how the industry can keep current momentum, particularly in regards to mobile.

After TM Forum CEO Martin Creaner’s welcome address, Fari Ebrahimi, SVP and CIO at Verizon, and Robert Hacki, SVP of channel management at T-Mobile, discussed the global mobile market, as it relates to their respective company’s strategic investments. I found Ebrahimi’s points to be especially interesting, which examined how mobile network traffic is growing in context with Verizon’s investments in four areas: mobile, fiber, global IP and cloud platforms.

The consumerization of IT is driving change in how we approach business, Ebrahimi explained. Capacity is increasing, consumers and businesses alike are demanding mobile data and video, and the enterprise is moving more and more core practices into cloud environments.

One particularly impactful statistic from this presentation was the fact that the average household has seven connected devices. That includes game consoles, Blu-ray DVD players, tablets, computers, smartphones, etc. Not surprisingly, these devices are absorbing an incredible amount of data, clogging current network capacity. To enable the connectivity of all those devices and ensure proper capacity levels, Verizon alone has implemented so much fiber around the world that it could wrap around the Earth 20 times.

Looking into the future, both Verizon and T-Mobile cited the need for “co-opetition” within the mobile industry. Big players like Google are consuming a bigger and bigger share of the value chain, and thus have the opportunity to dictate the terms of how services are offered, delivered and consumed. With that, it is increasingly difficult for the “other guy” to win back that market share. Instead, mobile operators must collaborate to deliver high-performing digital services, not necessarily winning back the whole slic