MEF Global Forum and Future of Mobile Summit 2024: Key Takeaways
The MEF Global Forum and Future of Mobile Summit were, once again, excellent events that looked in detail at some of the challenges and opportunities facing telcos in 2024.
MEF (the Mobile Ecosystem Forum) recently held its annual Global Forum and Future of Mobile Summit in Barcelona. Numerous topics were debated over the three days of the two events, which started with a preview of the latest annual MEF Global Consumer Trust Survey.
Now in its tenth year, the survey has been expanded from 10 to 15 markets. The full report will be available later in the year, but early data from three countries has already uncovered some interesting findings and presents a mixed picture of consumer trust.
The key takeaways so far:
A growth in usage of services is not necessarily matched by improved trust
There is a possible negative correlation emerging between free speech and the ability to trust online content. This needs to be further explored
‘Data abstinence’ remains a primary coping mechanism for consumers
AI regulation is now on the consumer radar
Indeed, trust was a central theme throughout the event, alongside privacy and security. As expected, the rise of AI dominated a lot of discussions, while the growth of RCS was perhaps one of the other main key takeaways.
A Question of Trust
Turning to trust first, in one session Andrew Bud, the Founder & CEO of iProov, made the point that businesses must take the problem of trust seriously in order for the whole ecosystem to thrive. He said they should adopt a cloud-based approach to ensure they can study and learn about any attackers, but that complacency among vendors will be the potential Achilles heel.
As for consumers, in an ideal scenario they would look to their national government to underwrite the trust of their digital identity. However, in reality many are more likely to default to their smartphone provider platform given the lack of knowledge they have in this area. He also noted that there is an accelerating trend towards decentralised structures and the need for large-scale investment in technologies such as cloud-based biometrics and anti-spoofing.
Bud predicted:
Everyone will have one or more ID wallets with credentials
No more SMS OTP: content and service providers will rely on individuals’ wallets instead
Users will authenticate their own wallets
Biometrics will underpin identities and will be heavily attacked
Rapid change and systemic trust will need collaboration in the ecosystem
AI to the Fore
AI featured prominently. Marina Petrova, Head of GenAI Business at GMS gave a refreshing perspective on the technology, saying it is important to teach AI everything you’d like it to know in the first place. This in turn provides the scale of AI-led services never seen before.
For now, she has the identified the following top use cases of how customer experiences are being reinvented with AI:
Data monetisation
Improved customer support by retiring script-based chatbots
Knowledge retrieval — mostly for operational efficiencies, but also CX
Marketing in every single aspect, from content creation to social listening
Data insights with audience analytics at unprecedented scale
Conversational AI with AI chatbots and conversational commerce
Custom use cases specific to existing pain points and workflows
On a separate panel, Petrova and other speakers discussed the role of AI as part of a more inclusive future. AI promises to be a real game changer in terms of accessibility, for example being able to read the context of a picture and describe it in the style a partially-sighted user may want.
With this in mind, Yaiza Rubio Viñuela, Chief Metaverse Officer, Telefonica, said that design is everything and it is important to place accessibility and inclusivity at the core of AI development. Interestingly, AI should also allow consumers to finally have the hyper-personalisation of services that they have desired and has been promised. Vinod Samarawickrama, Manager Network Infrastructure and Ecosystem, Meta, did add a caveat that we need numerous elements to work together for this to happen. This includes device ecosystems, content creators, platforms, and the connectivity to deliver these new AI-powered services.
However, as seen with other developments elsewhere, the emergence of on-device AI is starting to remove the need for always-on connectivity.
Trust and Phone Services
Another aspect of trust that panelists felt is not getting enough attention is trust in phone services. Extending beyond unknown callers, this now includes unsolicited text and WhatsApp messages.
Telcos are starting to take fraud very seriously, partly because the GSMA Open Gateway initiative has opened up the prospect of revenue-generating APIs, which have already launched in Spain. One measure that Adri Loloci, Senior Global Product Manager at Vodafone Identity Hub discussed, was a way for telcos to become more proactive by using the power of mobile network intelligence. This can empower banks and businesses to protect their customers in real-time by rebuilding trust and security in the mobile ecosystem through collaborative innovation.
RCS Gains Traction
Perhaps the second biggest takeaway from the three days was the huge increase in awareness and corresponding growth of RCS (Rich Communication Services) in the past year. During numerous panel discussions, speakers noted what a difference a year has made, citing an impressive expansion in RCS users and messages. There is excitement that this will continue to grow, thanks to the consumer need for deep conversational engagement, and scale, thanks in part to Apple’s forthcoming support.
Some key data points:
At the end of 2023, Google announced 1bn active RCS users
Inderpal Mumick, CEO, Dotgo: Traffic doubled every quarter in 2023, reaching over 1bn business messages in Q4. On track to cross 2bn in Q1 2024
Deshbandhu Bansal, Chief Operating Officer, Comviva: More telcos enabling RBM (RCS Business Messaging) this year; telcos to sell directly to enterprises (working with aggregators)
Current RCS forecasts suggest a potential user base of between 2.5-3bn by December 2024, and 10-15bn messages a month
While some challenges still remain in terms of pricing and to ensure that the right automated billing systems are in place, the future for RCS does seem to be rosy, for now at least.
There were some novel demonstrations of how RCS made boosting customer engagement easy. One of the examples was Picard’s collaboration with Sinch below.
IoT, VoLTE, Gaming, and more
Roaming still represents a cash cow for telcos, though it has been impacted by social media. VoLTE (Voice over LTE) potentially is a disruptive force in the voice market to reclaim market share.
Hyperscalers continue to lead in the area of IoT, though this segment has stalled due to the lack of progress in the 5G rollout. With connectivity improving and the arrival of AI, however, there will be new revenue generating opportunities opening up. Previously, providers were primarily reactive. Now, they can take a more proactive approach and provide actionable insights, even preempt issues from arising which would otherwise have led to losses. Security still remains an ongoing concern, but forthcoming regulation seeks to address this with greater visibility into the device and software BOM.
There was a fascinating session looking at the disruptive rollout of VoLTE. Voice continues to be a core revenue driver for numerous telcos, but they have been slow moving to VoLTE, perhaps in part to protect their core revenue streams. The process of switching off legacy networks (2G and 3G) is forcing them to accelerate the rollout of VoLTE, though, which then becomes the sole method for delivering mobile voice calling. This is creating new challenges for operators to deal with, including the security of their customers and their networks, as well as the potential of lost revenue to big tech with their own channels.
The games genre remains hot. No other ecosystem has such plentiful payment models catering for users’ requirements. There seems to be an ongoing realisation that cloud gaming and eSports represent major growth areas, especially for telcos given the importance of high-bandwidth and low latency connectivity.
Beyond these areas, there were also insightful sessions bringing together some of the broader themes I covered at MWC 2024, which included those I labelled as belonging to the ‘Show Me The Money’ category. These included the growing importance of NaaS, MEC, and APIs for the future of the interoperable mobile edge.
More Coverage & Analysis
It has been a busy start to the year, with both CES and MWC major events showcasing technological innovation that, in the case of AI in particular, is going to be extremely disruptive to all industries.
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