Innovation
The ICT sector does not seem to be short of innovative ideas. 20 years ago no-one could guess the revolution led by Internet and mobile communication services. What does the sector have in store for the next 20 years – where do you think there is more potential for development and growth?
At Belgacom, we’re excited by the rapid growth of interactive digital television and the explosion of mobile internet usage. Creative new applications like using your mobile phone to pay for parking, public transport, and micro-payments are very exciting. The future will see fixed and mobile networks being used for new forms of entertainment like online interactive gaming and mobile television but we’ll also see important social developments linked to e-health, e-government, and green initiatives like smart home energy management. At Belgacom, we’re a big believer in convergence: we see fixed and mobile services and devices being seamlessly blended. We also think the internet and television will morph into one indistinguishable product offering high growth opportunities for new services. Many professional applications will use intelligent communications networks in new ways for monitoring and managing their businesses by having machines talking to other machines via fixed and mobile intelligent networks.
At Belgacom 78% of current revenues are from products that did not exist 15 years ago. We expect the trend to continue!
Broadband
How should a balance be struck between encouraging private investment in new broadband networks and guaranteeing access to the network to safeguard competition?
First of all it should be said that encouraging investment and safeguarding competition are not contradictory principles. Investment in broadband networks is a means to safeguard competition. As you might know, in Belgium there is strong competition between infrastructures.
However a few important elements can be mentioned with respect to this question. First of all ‘regulatory certainty’. This is key to promoting efficient investment. There is a need to alleviate additional and unnecessary regulatory risk to promote large-scale private investment. Investing financial resources on the scale required for next generation networks in an uncertain business environment will entail substantial business risks. Investors need to be able to anticipate regulatory decisions over the lifecycle of the investment: regulatory principles should be clearly outlined before investment decisions are made and fully take account of their effects on regulatory risk.
A lot can also be done regarding access conditions in order to achieve the right balance between encouraging competition and providing the appropriate level of return and flexibility for operators making the investment. Network investment represents a high initial investment and a very long-term commitment for an investor and thus requires revenue streams to be profitable in the long run. Access contracts should be able to reflect these characteristics. Wholesale pricing models should be innovative so that they contribute to faster and more ubiquitous penetration of NGA networks.
Sustainability
Business performance is increasingly being measured by sustainability credentials. What role can New Generation Networks play in providing more sustainable telecoms services?
Telco’s can use NGNs to implement their high ambitions on sustainability like for instance energy efficiency , carbon reductions thanks to overall less power consumptions and synergies between fixed and mobile networks.
NGNs also allow our customers to reduce their carbon footprint thanks to for instance teleworking. Services offered via NGNs can have a positive impact on the digital divide because they should be more cost efficient, omnipresent and user friendly.
Piracy
In its recently published Digital Competitiveness Report, the European Commission estimated that online piracy accounts for 95% of music tracks and 80% of movies downloaded. Some countries, notably France, are considering laws to cut off internet access for repeat offenders. Do you think antipiracy solutions should come from regulation or can business models effectively address the issues?
On-line piracy is a reality but the debate should be focused on the development of attractive on-line content offers. Repression measures are only an aspect of the issue, not sufficient to effectively combat piracy.
Belgacom actively promotes in all marketing and sales channels the legal content services (iTunes, VoD on TV,...) and complies with all applicable legislation, especially telecom data secrecy.
Conscious of our social role, we also take some voluntary measures. For instance, we signed a collaboration protocol with the music industry (IFPI) and with the movies industry (BAF) for the blocking of some notoriously infringing newsgroups. Of course, the efficiency of such voluntary measures is limited by different factors like the technical reality of the Internet or the fact that a lot of competitors ISP do not act with the same conscience.
We think that filtering P2P in the network is not a good solution because of the legal and practical issues it raises and its lack of effectiveness. Piracy is only one kind of illegal content. Thus, fight against illegal content is a broader issue that should be tackled by the competent authorities, otherwise we risk to face a privatization and differentiation of justice. The current context push ISP to endorse a judicial role for which they have no competency.
Consumers
Is EU consumer group BEUC right to be worried about safeguarding net neutrality for consumers, so that internet service providers cannot limit their choice of content, application and services online?
No, we believe this concern is not justified. Belgacom is working hard to make sure that customers have access to the broadest and richest content offer and that they can reach everybody everywhere in the world.
A valid issue is that some large international groups like Google develop applications (like YouTube) that consume ever more bandwidth. They generate revenue from those new applications, so it is a fair question to see how they can contribute to the costs that telecommunication operators incur. But this debate should not effect consumer choice.
Next generation mobile standards
The European Commission is actively promoting and funding the development of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard for next generation mobiles, and major mobile manufacturers and operators are committed to using it. How do you see the prospects for market uptake of LTE and what advantages do you think it offers?
We are of course following this new technology closely as it is a logical next step to enhance the 3G network but no decision has been taken yet at Belgacom on the exact timing to deploy LTE.
The usage of mobile data is indeed growing but we are taking the necessary measures to increase the capacity of our 3G-network. We increase the transmission capacity between our base stations and the core-network and we also upgraded our sites with speeds up to 3.6Mbit/s and later to 7.2 Mbit/s. In future other upgrades, the so called HSPA+, are foreseen that will allow speeds up to 42 Mbit/s.
We will implement LTE when needed to increase the capacity of our network and provided that enough compatible handsets are available.
