Telcos at W3C (TPAC 2014 breakout session)

<scribe> scribe: Francois

<scribe> scribenick: tidoust

Dom: Welcome. Will discuss telcos needs at W3C. A few volunteers for presentations. We'll start with that. This is part of a new effort that W3C has started to focus on vertical industries.
... The telcos industry is certainly the biggest of these verticals so far at W3C, and I'm the "champion" in this area.

Orange input

Mohammed's slides

Mohammed: Short presentation. Starting point: the Web has taken an essential role in our services. We started to use a lot of stuff in our services. Happy to give examples later on if interested.
... Most of our management is convinced that we need to contribute to ongoing standards efforts, to ensure that there are no negative impact on our products.
... We need to ensure interoperability between exsting products and new ones (legacy aspect)
... We know how to operate a network in terms of quality, security, stability, etc.
... Efforts in W3C are complementary here, we need to continue that joint effort.
... But it's not always to push telco view within W3C.
... Ref our priorities in W3C, we're not in a position to invest as many resources as before, so we need to focus on priorities.
... 3 levels: working groups to which we actively contribute (list displayed on slide), then groups we monitor (we're interested but no active participation) and only send comments to when needed, and groups we investigate.
... Lists get updated as priorities evolve.
... The conclusion of these slides is that we think W3C work impacts our existing business and our future one. We think operators need to contribute more to W3C. If you're not visible, you're not being heard. We'd like Orange to contribute more, taking active roles such as editors or chairs roles.
... For that to happen, W3C needs to support our effort. Operator recognized for their competencies and values.
... Input equally valued.

Telecom Italia input

Telecom Italia slides

Claudio: I agree with what Mohammed just said in terms of engagement from telcos industry.
... We are trying to sell bandwidth, of course, trying to expand that.
... We're looking at applications cases for that.
... We are looking forward to new methods to disseminate content and new tools for developers to create contents.
... First application case is devoted to investigating how to move content around: eCousin.
... We developed a prototype, a way to connect UPnP devices by way of discovering the relationship between people through social networks.
... We would like to connect the houses.
... Other example about giving tools to developers
... With LTE, sometimes we can reach several Mbps, so we need some way for developers to create portable applications.
... This is carried on in a couple of EU projects, FI-CORE and NUBOMEDIA.
... In general, WebRTC is not implemented well across platforms so far. Most of the use cases and efforts have been concentrated on the client side.
... Focusing on the cloud.
... We are endorsing Kurento, that strongly relies on WebRTC by means of connecting clients but also providing transport capabilities for augmented reality and other purpose.
... [showing a demo]
... Here, I'm sending my camera stream to my house, the server is recognizing my head and updating the stream accordingly.
... It's a way to take advantage of the available bandwidth.

AT&T input

Bryan's slides (archived copy)

Bryan: Not much to present on slides. The notion of telco is very unidimensional thing. We not only do phone calls. We provide super fast data and video, we explore the world of wearable devices, connected cars, WebRTC and so on in a lot of different ways.
... We touch on a number of topics.
... Everything that telcos do is coming to the Web.
... We have these terms such as "over the top" that seems to differentiate, but it's just a way to say that it will be handled in the future.
... Everything will be connected.
... We're going to make anything programmable. There will be APIs for everything. Also everything will be up for virtualization.
... The Web allows to put the net in everyone's pocket.
... All the standards that came from the Operator world are based on the Web. Everything that has been done was done in the interest of W3C efforts in the area.
... We were able to use the Web to break free of heavy controlled world.
... Over the past 7 years, the Web has been a great equalizer, allowing to do common things across devices.

Telefonica input

DKA: No slides to present, but coming here reminded me of 10 years ago when I was working for Vodafone. I remember entering a room to convince people I did not know to join W3C.
... Now, I'm working for Telefonica.
... The question is "what industry do you think you're in?"
... Basically, we're all in the same industry.
... Telcos play a great role in that ecosystem.
... WebRTC is definitely a great technology for our use cases.
... Build up the HTML5 ecosystem is very important. Developing content across all kinds of devices, OSes, vertical silos, breaking down these silos.
... Our work with Mozilla on FirefoxOS has been a great example of how we can achieve that.
... We tried to get demos on board and come up with a story for developers to tell them that the app will work everywhere.
... That's provable, you can show that in the markup.
... The publication of HTML5 as Recommendation is going to help that story a lot.
... Encryption, privacy and emerging topics such as Web of things are all key topics that directly relate to our core business.

NTT input

Jay: First, I'd like to thank you for supporting me for the AB.

<dka> Some examples of what I’m talking about : https://purl-app.com (webrtc-based desktop video conferencing, based on Telefónica technology - Opentok).

Jay: I'd like to talk about AB discussions. Also, from a telco perspective, things have been regulated by governments. Now things are moving to TCP/IP with open standards, so W3C is very important for us in that sense.
... Telcos should change their mind. We used to be able to control everything. Now, each customer can control the key functions of their network.

<dka> Firefox OS - which we are launching in various countries: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/movistar-argentina-to-launch-firefox-smartphone-by-end-2014--1042171

Discussion

Jay: What kind of role should telcos have?
... Telecom Italia mentioned WebRTC. In Japan, we are investigating 4K/8K deployment using broadband connection. The capacity needed is huge.
... Content is huge. Hard to know what kind of DRM to use.
... On a different front, we have to think of the governance of the Internet. [Mentioning ICANN]

Dom: Thanks for the presentation. I noted themes to discuss. Any comment to start with?

Claudio: It would be nice if you could explain what W3C is expecting from operators.

Dom: From my perspective, we've seen operators involved in W3C for some time, and more and more recently. We'd like that to continue. I liked Dan's point that this is only one industry.
... Moving from a world where operators control everything to a world where users have more control is a very interesting theme.

Bryan: The discussion on Data API is a perfect example of why telcos need to be active at W3C.
... The cost of sending the bits of a video is very complex for instance. Dialog is needed to talk about the feasibility of different topics.

Claudio: From a concrete perspective, I got the impression that the community is sometimes reluctant to expose APIs that are relevant to the network.

Dom: It has certainly been very true.
... One of the difficulties is that I've seen operators deploy services that you could only use provided that you had specific contracts with the operator. Once you do that, you break the nice interop story.
... So we need to think on how to bring that former 2 industry view to a 1 industry world.
... On the surface, it's easy to say that the network will give everything, whereas in practice, it's much harder than that, I agree with Bryan.

Shin: We're building WebRTC solutions to enable WebRTC. The input from this group would be useful to ensure we're building the right thing. User experience. We do collaborate closely with W3C and IETF on that front.

Bryan: WebRTC is a good example of the partnership that happens at W3C.
... The Push API is a good example of the difficulty to build a common ground. Started a few years ago, but browser vendors were not really interested at the time.
... Not a big deal, we can start on the side. Sometimes, we have to put short-term needs on the side.

Shin: Glad that you mentioned Push API. From user experience, you're looking at consistent experience. Discussed in WebApps

Dan_Romascanu: From Avaya. You mentioned partnership. How to see that partnership occur in practice?
... What is the way to do it through W3C?

Dom: One of the things that I have been discussing with some of you is the possibility to create a task force or an IG to alleviate these communication difficulties.
... Certainly something I'm interested in hearing feedback.
... The more I think about it, the more I think a dedicated Interest Group would be better.
... Limiting operators to mobile would be a false dichotomy.

Bryan: With partnership, I was referring to a way to work together.
... In the past 10 years or so, we've seen many things come up based on reverse way to do things done.
... Much more collaborative way.
... Everyone shares the experience of their experiment.

Dan_Romascanu: I dare say the word that you did not say: "open source".
... Relating to the open source world is key.

Shuma: From China Mobile.
... We develop a lot of applications. Web view can be used for regular Web apps and native apps.

<mdadas> Jun_Ma is Jun Ma

Shuma: Just from the pure view of browser, in China, 90% is done by apps instead of browsers.

Jun_Ma: The key thing we want is to use the mobile Web. From the user experience, it fails, otherwise. How do we promote the use of the browser in the mobile world?
... We want the user to have a unique widespread experience.
... How do we promote the Web use?
... I know there are good things happening for the app manifest and app stores.

Dom: Commenting quickly on this. Apps vs. Web apps is certainly relevant. The way we approached this so far is to try to make the Web experience as good as native experience, enforcing privacy on top of other things.
... It should be a self-promoting virtuous cycle but we're not quite there yet.
... We can use all the help here.
... The question of app stores is one that comes back frequently. I haven't seen anyone pushing for a concrete proposal. The app manifest is one part of it, but only a part of it.

DKA: One of the things that we see as a kind of evidence from the Firefox OS project. We're trying to blur the differences between apps and Web apps.
... In the latest version, apps and Web apps are the exact same thing, the tabs are merged in their browser. Same context.
... I think that shows the way forward in terms of the evolution of the Web on mobile.
... Not only something that is in the browser.
... Hybrid experience that learns a little from how users use applications, hiding the URL sometimes.

Ilya: Working for Google.

scribe: The location does not matter so much in practice. Hiding it changes the experience dramatically.
... Working from a performance perspective, it's very hard to engage with telcos. First of all, there are so many of you, finding the right contact points is next to impossible.
... We want to do a lot of good things in Chrome, playing with the radio for instance. We could do better video delivery if we has access to the radio. But we cannot replicate that across networks.

DKA: If it's something that can be done in the public sphere, it makes sense to do that collaboration in the Mobile and Web IG.
... Otherwise, GSMA has a good series of success points recently to get companies to collaborate on different topics.
... Might be interesting for GSMA to take a role.

Istan_Lajtos: Working for GSMA
... We're an Association. My colleague Natasha co-chairs the Web and Mobile IG. We're looking at emerging technologies.

DKA: Telcos people might get a bit nervous on IPR and confidentiality. One of the difficulties in W3C is that you know that things are going to be public. If confidentiality is needed, GSMA is a good place.

Istan_Lajtos: We have a number of other companies engaged, chip vendors, device manufacturers, etc. Not only telco focus.
... Happy to discuss that.

Bryan: You mentioned optimizations. An area where we have a good opportunity with solutions that are ubiquitous through W3C, IETF, Apache, etc.
... The way the data flow on the network is a very complex problem.

<gludi> ??? = Istan Lajtos

Bryan: Hopefully, through open source, this could be replicated.

Next steps

Dom: Wondering about creating a new dedicated IG

DKA: in what way would that be different from the Mobile Web IG?

Dom: Not restricted to mobile only.

DKA: I would not support that, because I do not want to create a telcos silo.

Dieter: Maybe we could rename the IG.

Dom: OK, so next step would be to continue discussions in the Web and Mobile IG.
... Thank you all for presentations and discussions.