New Tricks or Making Space?

New Tricks and Making Space have both been headlines for 2013 issue of Total Telecom+, but last week if you'd wanted to read the PDF's you would have struggled. The reason was an 'upgrade' by our tracking company DoubleClick - part of Google - which left us with tracked links to previous content that they couldn't / wouldn't update! So much for #BigData - we would have passed on any data if it meant readers could access our content!

Anyway, now normal service has been resumed with us updating as many of the links as possible, but if you come across one which still doesn't work, please let us know...

In the meantime, it seemed a good opportunity to update you on what you may have missed so far in 2013, so here's the issues from the ARCHIVE for the year to date:

July 2013: MAKING SPACE
Business: SK Telecom goes on the record about LTE-A.
Technology: Next-generation network rollout in AsiaPac.
Geography: Taiwan’s forthcoming 4G spectrum auction.
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=37

June 2013: NEW TRICKS
Business: We talk to EE's Mansoor Hanif about the telco's LTE strategy.
Technology: Telcos must take advantage of what they know about customers.
Geography: Consolidation on the cards in Sweden and Denmark.
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=36

May 2013: SELECTION BOX
Business: We talk to Ooredoo's Paul Salmon about modernising its networks.
Technology: Telcos opportunity to act as cloud services aggregators.
Geography: Mobile licences in Myanmar attracted some of the biggest telcos.
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=35

April 2013: CONTENTMENT
Business: We talk to AT&T's Jeff Weber about the telco's decision to differentiate in areas other than content.
Technology: CanBT become a credible pay TV challenger.
Geography: The pay TV market in the Asia Pacific region.
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=34

March 2013: FACE TIME
Business: The top 50 telecoms operator brands ranked by value.
Technology: LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation and new smartphone platforms.
Geography: Spain's mobile operators are losing subscribers but the broadband market is buoyant.
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=33

February 2013: FRESH THINKING
Technology: Lessons in LTE
Business: On the record with Nikki Flan
www.totaltele.com/plus.aspx?ID=31

11 great #telecom video's from 2012

The Total Telecom video channel, Total TeleVision is stuffed full of fantastic interviews, so we've picked out 11 of the best, produced in 2012 that you really should watch.


Addressing the opportunities in Asia: Jim Clarke - Telstra Global

Building the trust of your customers: Don Peppers - Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group

Europe has to change: Luigi Gambardella, Executive Board Chairman, ETNO

OTT is good for operators: Andreas Bernstrom is CEO of Rebtel

Telco's need to act more like internet companies - Ben Atherton, CEO, Samba Mobile

The regulatory climate in 2012 - Georg Serentschy, Chair 2012, BEREC

The switch is on - are you keeping up: Steve Gleave - VP Marketing, Metaswitch

The Top 500 Telecom Brands - David Haigh, Brand Finance

Video is everything: Storing & distributing content Lucy Dimes of Alcatel-Lucent

What do 'you' mean by customer experience - Johan Langer of Ericsson spoke to Brian Dolby at Total Telecom World

Why is Zain Jordan the "Best Place to Work" - Ahmad Al Hanandeh - CEO

Population Explosion leads to Brand Campaign Win #WCA12

One of the most visual of the categories at the World Communication Awards is always Best Brand Campaign, and this year was no exception. The deserving winner, for the second year running, was Idea Cellular Limited who won for their 3G Population Theme Campaign. 

Quite a lot has been written about Idea Cellulars campaigns by the Indian blog 'Business Strategies and Trends' and also by Dehli based marketing website afacs! who distil the Idea message to one of 'Get Idea 3G, Control Population Explosion'! - it's probably the first time procreation has resulted in a WCA win! 

You of course might prefer to settle for watching one of the great adverts that accompanied the campaign... 



Idea clearly have a talent for using brand campaigns to address specific issues of their market, winning the same category at the 2011 World Communication Awards, whilst other recent winners have included Telstra (2010), Starhub (2009), and Turkcell (2008)

View all of the 2012 winners in the press release

Next year, 2013, will be the 15th year of the World Communication Awards, so why not come and talk to us about how you can get involved!

Who will be the winner? #WVA2012

60 companies will gather for tomorrows World Vendor Awards at Jumeirah Carlton Tower. Good luck to everyone on the shortlist!

If you are Tweeting from the event or about the event, use #WVA2012

Thanks for our sponsors: Ipanema Technologies and ZTE.

Doing the double? #WVA12

The final two shortlists have just been revealed for the 2012 World Vendor Awards, bringing with them some interesting dynamics, both for CEO of the Year and for Best Brand. We'll find out who triumphs on the 26 April 2012.

First up we have three contenders for CEO of the Year. The potential double here sits with Alcatel-Lucent CEO, Ben Verwaayen. Ben has the almost unique distinction of being in the running for this gong, having been a previous winner of the top award at the WVA's larger sibling, the World Communication Awards, where in 2005 he was named Most Influential Person (forerunner to the CEO category) as CEO of BT Group.

Up against Ben we have Hans Vestberg of Ericsson, who arguably has one of the toughest jobs in telecoms having recently revealed reduced targets for the company, and  Jeff Gordon of Syniverse, who amongst other things leads a company playing in the fast growing IPX arena.

The other shortlist to be revealed is the other industry voted category, Best Brand. A slightly different angle here, but last years Best Brand, Ericsson, are in the running again, along with the company with the most valuable hardware brand in this years Top 500 Telecom Brands, Cisco. Also in the chase are 2010 winners, Juniper Networks, Syniverse, and who could under estimate the power from the East in the shape of ZTE?

To view all the shortlists, visit www.worldvendorawards.com and make sure you book your seats to avoid disappointment on the night!

Who has the best vendor #brand in #telecoms?

In the February issue of Total Telecom+ we worked with Brand Finance to reveal the most valuable brands in telecoms. Predominantly we were focusing on the telecom operators (the full Telecom 500 is coming soon) but amongst the extra data included was the Top 5 hardware vendor brands.

This research is pretty clear cut, these are the most valuable brands, but are they the best? To get this answer, we need to include other more qualitative factors, reflecting how the industry thinks and feels about brands, and this is the role of Best Brand category at the World Vendor Awards #WVA2012, where the winner is determined by the votes of the industry.

In 2011 Ericsson were triumphant at the awards, beating off stiff competition from the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Juniper Networks (winner of the Best Brand Campaign category in 2010), and ZTE, and reflecting that you don't need to have the most valuable brand to be the industries Best Brand.

Since then, Ericsson have climbed the rankings from number three to number two most valuable brand, so will this help them win again in 2012, or will the competition be too fierce for them? Only you can determine this, by casting your vote for the Best Brand category for the 2012 World Vendor Awards.

This year 20 great telecom hardware vendor brands are currently in the running, so vote today to help determine who will be on the final shortlist, to be published at the end of April. Those in the running are:

• Alcatel-Lucent
• Amdocs
• Ciena
• Cisco
• Corning
• Ericsson
• Harris
• HP
• Huawei
• Juniper Networks
• Motorola
• NEC
• NetCracker
• Nokia Siemens Networks
• Openwave
• Qualcomm
• Syniverse
• Telcordia
• Tellabs
• ZTE

The Best Brand survey is hosted on Survey Monkey, and you can vote by following this link, or you can go to the homepage of the World Vendor Awards www.worldvendorawards.com and vote there. 

Everything Everywhere: telecom brand turmoil

Today Total Telecom publishes it's annual ranking of the top 50 operator brands (by value) in global telecommunications, and whilst Everything Everywhere doesn't feature as a brand, their influence is there for all to see.

This might be being a little unfair to EE as it is more of a case of Everything All-over-the-place as on one hand speculation mounts regarding the relative positioning of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, whilst thousands of miles away, the actions of the Indian Supreme Court in calling re-auctioning of Mobile licences will hit some major international players, such as Telenor, Etisalat, and Vodafone - see this weeks Friday Review.

The top 50 global telecom operator brands includes numerous players engulfed in turmoil, so it will be interesting to see if this impacts their brand value when we report next year, in particular whether this is another factor in play amongst the top three, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon.

>> The Brand Ranking is published in February Total Telecom+ <<

Top 10 Global #Telecom Operators

The annual Global 100 Operator report published by Total Telecom is the definitive who's who guide to the largest telecom operators in the world.


This year the Top 10 saw two go up, one go down and seven stay the same, the most significant being the rise of six places by América Móvil into the top 10.


The complete Top 10 list looks like this:

1. AT&T
2. NTT
3. Verizon
4. Deutsche Telekom
5. Telefónica
6. China Mobile
7. Vodafone
8. France Telecom
9. América Móvil
10. KDDI

You can download the entire Global 100 from Total Telecom


Of course revenue and profit is not the only measure of success, and this year we've seen different approaches rewarded, including:


AT&T (#1) CEO, Randall L Stephenson named CEO of the Year at the World Communication Awards (view his acceptance video)


BT Global Services (#15) named Best Global Operator at the 2012 World Communication Awards


Singtel (#28) named the Users Choice at the 2012 World Communication Awards (find out more about the Gap to Winner report to see how you measure up to Singtel)


Vodafone (#7) named the most valuable brand in telecom in our annual ranking of the 500 most valuable brands in telecoms.


It will be interesting to see how the winners shape up in 2012...

The Pioneer Trail

It's always nice to get noticed, and Total Telecom is doing pretty well right now! Most recently we've been nominated for the new Media Pioneer Awards to be presented at next year's Specialist Media Show.

In this instance we're being recognised for just doing what our audience expect! That's not to diminish how please we are to be nominated, but the actual reason we're on the list is because we've done and continue to do just what every business should, address the needs of our customers - whether they be readers or commercial partners, and in doing so develop our business for the years ahead.

So please do take the time to read the article on the Specialist Media Show website, or even better come and experience the reality through our digital publishing and events. Our next event is the Next Generation Cloud Services breakfast.

The Media Pioneer Awards will announce their winners next year, but much sooner are this years PPA Independent Publisher Awards. Total Telecom is shortlisted for Media Brand of the Year and Digital Brand of the Year (the category we won last year), so it's fingers crossed here to see what the results will be next Tuesday.

It's a wrap! Awards and Conference complete

The 13th annual World Communication Awards and first ever Total Telecom World conference are over for another year, so time to take a deep breath and relax. No chance, it's time to start working on Total Telecom Wireless World for June 2012!


Eighteen categories were awarded, with the highlights being the emergence of UPC Austria as the winner in two categories, Team of the Year and Best Customer Care, and the naming of Randall L. Stephenson of AT&T as CEO of the Year. Randall unfortunately was unable to make the awards, but did send us personal video message.

There is great press coverage of the awards this year, in particular the BBC were very quick off the mark to cover BT's win of Project of the Year for Superfast Cornwall.




Almost 500 people attended this years awards dinner at the London Hilton on Park Lane where Andrew Neil demonstrated just what makes him such a popular commentator and presenter with his unique blend of topical, humourous, and the slightly cutting - especially if you happen to work for Orange.  You can view all the winners and highly commended companies on the website at www.worldcommsawards.com 


Many of those who attended the awards also participated in the inaugural Total Telecom World conference where they were moved and inspired by Karim Khoja's story of telecoms in Afghanistan, as well as getting great insight from Ed Richards, CEO of Ofcom and the opportunity to hear first hand from Nigel Stagg, the new CEO of BT Wholesale in his first conference presentation.


Panel discussions in particular were lively with candid views expressed by the likes of Jeremy Boardman of Rothschild (Any new UK fibre investors would be 'certifiable'), whilst David Haigh of Brand Finance was described by one participant as making the other panellists 'squirm'!


An eventful two days, when all's said and done...

Why #marketing matters to #telecom

Why do we have a brand expert on the speaker list for Total Telecom World? Here's why. The speaker in question is David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance, the company that compiles our annual Brand Ranking for the telecom industry


But there is a deeper reason than the simple partnership; brand and marketing has an incredible impact on the telecom industry, it impacts the value of the companies involved and dictates how credible their propositions to the market are.

No company demonstrates this more clearly than the current predicament now faced by the one-time untouchable brand of Research in Motion (RIM). Their plight has been well documented over the last few months, but is epitomised not by a telecom commentator, but by a marketeer, the acclaimed Mark Ritson writing in Marketing Week. His article "Nothing smart about RIM’s aimless strategy" demonstrates the perils for telecoms of ignoring marketing and brand.

For more brand / marketing stories on Total Telecom, use this search

To hear more from David Haigh, come to Total Telecom World www.totaltele.com/world

NSN Sponsor iPad App

We're really excited to have Nokia Siemens Networks as the launch sponsor for the new Total Telecom+ iPad app.

Numbers of users aren't huge yet, but growing rapidly and the feedback from happy readers is great.

If you can get your hands on an iPad, check out the App - search Total Telecom or visit the App Store for more information.

Total Telecom+ is truly becoming a monthly analysis product for today's telecom professionals with more than 14,000 monthly users across Digital Edition, PDF, and now iPad!

Find out more about the March issue with our exclusive telecom Brand Finance ranking here.

Everything Everywhere or Orange somewhere?

Brand Republic reports that Everything Everywhere has set out it's brand strategies for Orange and T-Mobile.

Interestingly it's all about differentiating the brand and what they stand for. So having spent years turning everything Orange, France Telecom forms a JV with DT, creating a new brand and then sets about differentiating the Orange brand from T-Mobile.

I can't help feeling this has echos of large professional services firms a few years ago seperating their auditing and consultancy businesses and then launching consultancy arms of their audit business.

Hopefully the eventual result will be more successful than the infamous 'Monday' saga, but since the company newsroom currently has two consecutive posts proclaiming differnt stores to be the first high street store branded Everything Everywhere, you can't help questioning the likely success...

Appy to be reading Total Telecom+

We've just launched our monthly analytical title, Total Telecom+, on the iPad and we're getting great response from people who think it looks good and are really enjoying the reading environment. If expressions of excitement turn into readers we will soon add a great number of readers to the 14,000-plus people who already download TT+ as digital page turner or PDF.

If you've yet to try the iPad experience, beg, borrow or steal to get your hands on one - it's no doubt one of the reasons why Apple have just entered this years Telecoms 500 at number 15!

To try Total Telecom+ on the iPad, search Total Telecom on the App store of visit our information page.

Gracious in defeat

OK, so we didn't win at this years Digital Publishing Awards, so congratulations to @flightglobal - we'll beat you next time!

But at least we made the shortlist for Digital Service of the Year - which is more than any other comms sector website did, and we weren't embarrassed against some very big publishing names: Incisive, Reed Business, UBM et al.

Still PPA Independent Publishers Awards next month and Total Telecom is on the shortlist for two categories - hopefully holding onto ouor crown as Online Brand of the Year.

As seen on TV

At the recent World Telecoms Council meeting in June, we rolled out the camera crew from Total TeleVision. They spoke to a number of the participants, including Michael Rocha from our colleagues at Brand Finance - who helped us put together the Brand 500 for the launch issue of Total Telecom Plus.

The clip below is via the Total TeleVision channel on YouTube, but you can also view all the content at www.totaltele.tv