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Market Insight on Presence Information
Frost & Sullivan, Sep 2006
This market insight on Presence Information will cover some of the key challenges facing its mass market adoption and provide recommendations on how operators need to introduce these services as part of its product portfolio.
This Frost & Sullivan research service titled Market Insight on Presence Information provides a detailed overview of key market trends and challenges involved in enabling Presence across various data applications. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine Presence’s unique value proposition, pricing issues and its role in convergence and IMS.
Market Overview
Presence Information to Become Horizontal Enabler for Next-generation Communication
Presence information refers to the user’s current status and the ability to receive various sorts of communication depending upon the status information. It enables subscribers to realise who is available, what would be the best mode to communicate and which client device the recipient wishes to be contacted on. Thus, Presence serves as a catalyst, filling in the gaps between the sender and the recipient within the communication portfolio.
Presence information plays a vital role in bridging communication gaps, as it enables users to convey real-time Presence information to others regarding the way in which they wish to be contacted at different intervals of time, notes the analyst of this research service. Presence will be the key horizontal enabler driving communications across various client devices, applications and technologies in use. It will become an integral part of all multimedia applications, enabling carriers to maximise the potential of new applications being introduced, eventually leading to an increase in the average revenue per user (ARPU).
Need to Ensure Consistency of User Experience across Various Terminal Handsets Essential
Despite the benefits, there are dissimilar opinions on the value of Presence’s offerings and several carriers believe that Presence can in fact, diminish their revenues. However, carriers would do well to focus on differentiating each service, rather than be concerned about how a new service such as mobile instant messaging (MIM) will cannibalise short message service (SMS) revenues. One of the key issues facing the industry today is whether Presence should be a charged or a free service. Moreover, if all contacts within the address book were powered by Presence, it will consume a considerable amount of bandwidth due to Presence signalling from the handset to the cellular network. In general, relaying real-time Presence information from the end user to the network would be in the range of 1-2 kilobits with latency less than 1 millisecond, states the analyst. However, if millions of users were connected to the network, it would be a major concern for mobile operators and reduction in the battery life of the handset is a possibility. Hence, many carriers are considering the creation of a separate Presence list with a specific number of contacts to be added to avoid degradation of the network. Prior to this, carriers will need to closely work with terminal vendors in embedding Presence clients within the handsets and fund research and development to increase the battery life of handsets.
No single technology can support many high bandwidth-consuming applications due to limitations on channel bandwidths allocated to carriers for each technology. As a result, many carriers have initially decided to consider the implementation of Presence with applications such as MIM and Push-to-Talk (PTT) and then gradually scale to other applications, depending on market demand. However, even if carriers overcome bandwidth limitations by using multimode technologies, major restructuring within the networks will be required, since currently most carriers follow a silo-based approach, with a separate operations support system/ business support system (OSS/BSS) for each application. Thus, carriers are looking to deploy a pre-IMS/IMS architecture wherein applications will move from a vertical approach to a horizontal approach. This implies that carriers will share the same OSS/BSS for new data applications and move away from the silo-based model.
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