O2: A wannabe BT?
Converging on FMC...
O2 has revealed plans that could see it lining up to compete with the likes of BT and NTL as it moves increasingly towards fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), broadband and various flavours of telly and advertising.
Speaking in London today, Peter Erskine, CEO of O2, revealed the mobile operator will be seeking to capitalise on the convergence trend with new technologies.
It's a trend O2's rivals have all sought to capitalise on, with mobile operators such as Vodafone moving into offering broadband, broadband players such as NTL acquiring a mobile arm and assorted others jumping on the free broadband wagon.
"Everyone is having to poke a stick in the other guy's backyard," Erskine noted.
One of the backyards Erskine has got his poking stick prepped for is broadband.
As part of its convergence plan, O2 will be ramping up the coverage of Be, the ADSL2+ ISP it bought earlier this year. Currently 15 per cent of the UK's population is able to get broadband service from Be. O2 is planning to raise that to 60 or 70 per cent within the next 12 months.
But, it seems, the company is unlikely to go down the 'free' broadband route, as Sky and Orange have, with the latter struggling to get consumers to buy the idea.
O2's UK CEO Matthew Key put in the glory kick, saying: "We stood and watched the market opportunity when operator after operator after operator did free broadband. What we're starting to see is customers push back [when they realise] after all it's not free, there's some scam. We'll come to the market when we're ready."
Silicon.com's A to Z of Broadband
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A is for ADSL
B is for BT
C is for Cable & Wireless
D is for Dial-up
E is for Education
F is for Fibre
G is for Goonhilly
H is for HSDPA
I is for In-flight
J is for Janet
K is for Kingston
L is for Landlines
M is for Murdoch
N is for Next generation
O is for Ofcom
P is for Power lines
Q is for Quad-play
R is for Remote working
S is for Satellite phones
T is for Trains
U is for Unbundling
V is for VoIP
W is for WiMax
X is for Xbox
Y is for YouTube
Z is for Zombies
Along with a face-off over ADSL2+, O2 is squaring up to BT by launching its own digital back-up service, My Blue Book, which allows consumers to keep all their personal content, such as photos, on O2's servers. BT launched a similar service last month.
However, O2 is looking to take a different route to its rival BT in FMC, where one device is used to accept both mobile and fixed-line calls, using either cellular or IP networks. Unlike BT, which is using wi-fi to route calls over a broadband connection, O2 fancies the idea of a mini-GSM reverse-engineered base station instead - the thinking being that the user won't need to upgrade to a new dual-mode device.
O2's Erskine declined to give a date on when an enterprise FMC service would launch.
The operator is eyeing the TV market, having launched pay TV in one of its territories, the Czech Republic, but is unlikely to repeat the move in the UK.
O2 seems to be taking an equally reserved attitude to mobile TV, which it has been trialling with Nokia using the DVB-H standard.
"If we don't get UHF frequency, it won't be viable," the company's CTO Dave Williams said. "If we do, we'll get one, possibly two networks in each country." O2 is continuing its pilot regardless and is testing interactivity and advertising.
The possibilities of advertising have already hit Vodafone's radar with the announcement yesterday of a partnership with Yahoo!. O2 revealed today it is now running trials using three or four different types of advertising.