How to involve Telcos in W3C (TPAC breaktout)

GangLiang: Huawei, focused on standards work

Kepeng Li: Huawei

Dom: W3C

Igarashi Tatsuya: Sony

Sam: W3C BizDev

LingCheng: Microsoft China Team

QiulingPan: Huawei; W3C AB
... before W3C, I've been involved in 3GPP, IETF, OMA
... want to share today our thoughts how telecos can work with Web technologies
... We still have some unclear areas how vendors and telcos can work in W3C

Ryoichi Kawada: KDDI, visiting researcher in Keio University

InGeeKim: SK telecom (in Korea)

RuinanSun: Huawei AC Rep

GangLiang slides

GangLiang: [present slides]
... both operators and network equipment providers have gotten involved in W3C
... that's a clear sign they see the importance of the Web to their business
... internet economy extends to the real economy
... everything is moving to digital
... Web technology have been and will be widely used everywhere, every time
... more and more people use their mobile to access the network
... I think this will be the main trend in the future
... Web technologies have affected telecoms
... social networks provide services similar to telecoms, e.g. audio/video call, file transfer, messaging
... telcos revenues have been falling year over year
... (diagrams illustrating how OTT are increasing while revenues of telecos are decreasing)
... the global mobile 3G subscribers is growing very quickly
... up from 1.1B to 1.59B last year (globally)
... another trend is the increasing share of smartphone usage, with their underlying platforms (e.g. android, tizen)
... increasingly mobile phones are used to access internet
... mobile traffic represents 10% of total internet traffic
... openness is very important to telecom — a lot of operators open their ecosystem to 3rd parties, users
... OMA has developed RESTful APIs to provide standards interfaces for that
... including an open connection manager API, and a Web Runtime API
... these make it easier for Web developers to get access to these services
... European operators and some from China have opened up their platforms using these APIs
... Operators have also telecom quality of service imperatives
... they have to manage how bandwidth is spread across users depending on theirs needs
... via load balancing, congestion control
... What are the advantages of telecom they can use?
... a large base of subscribers
... mobility is extremely popular
... we have already an open platform that can be reused and offered via APIs
... QoS is another asset
... The topic we wanted to raise today are:
... * how telecom should get involved in W3C?
... almost all mobile companies, incl network vendors and operators, have to bring influence in requirements
... we need browsers to support considerations around service priority, congestion control, etc
... W3C has ongoing important work relevant to us, WebRTC, WebTV; it's important that operators look at what kind of APIs they can bring to the table

Dom: Payments sounds like a pretty good match for operators

Qiuling: not only operators can provide service here; internet companies have a strong role

Dom: clearly operators will be in a competition with other systems
... they have to rely on their assets (strong billing system, large subscriber base)

<Ruinan> taobao pay

<BoYang> www.taobao.com

Qiugling: taobaoo is a very popular internet based solution in China
... will be difficult for operators to compete with it

LingCheng: operators have a strong system to charge on mobile
... Another advantage in China, China operators have a strong advantage in their connection with banks
... Either China Mobile or China Unicom have an agreement with a bank to enable NFC-based payment

BoYang: we can enable payments via cell phone without a credit card
... we require developers to be certified before they can access this payment system
... Part of our difficulties is actually to get agreements with each or every bank
... we don't have an advantage in this

Ruinan: it's hard for operators to support many business model
... they would need to use very different billing systems

DKA: in Europe, operators are regulated into what they can use their billing system to pay for
... forbidden to e.g. pay a cup of coffee
... there were even worries about extending it to e.g. mobile apps
... Paypal can do what ever they want
... We have a program deployed in Spain on Google Market and Microsoft app store, and in UK on Microsoft app store
... you can pay with your mobile phone number in a very seamless manner
... (they don't have to enter their PIN codes)
... available for low cost operations
... program also available in Mexico
... Google e.g. was very eager to get access to the operator system payment, as this removes a barrier to people buying apps

Qiuling: how much changes were needed in your billing system to enable this?

DKA: some, but mostly small, and mostly in the middleware system

Tatsuy_Sony: did that need to ship with special software?

DKA: the client is shipped by Google / Microsoft
... and then there is server integration
... currently not standardized; this is close to what GSMA had suggested in OneAPI, but we haven't seen much commercial adoption of that API
... Standardization would be useful, but most of the time, the API being used is imposed by the partner (e.g. Google)

RyochiKawada: can you clarify the goals of listing operator advantages here? is it for people to join W3C?

GangLiang: goals is to understand what we come in the market with and how W3C can help us use these advantages

DKA: I think the perspective you've presented is closer to the "traditional" view of operators business
... One thing that Telefonica Digital is trying to push another approach to this
... e.g. our collaboration with Firefox on FirefoxOS
... or TokBox that uses WebRTC
... Telecom companies are shifting their model to incorporate more internet services
... and/or combine them with telco services
... For these, WebRTC, SysApps, WebApps, Web Payments, Data on the Web are very important

Ruinan: so the idea is to reuse internet technologies to provide them the end user
... what is the benefit to integrate them with existing systems?

DKA: we have an app available in the UK, soon in Argentina, called Tugo

<BoYang> Tugo?

DKA: it's a voip application that incorporates messaging and voice
... it uses WebRTC
... but it's not a pure voip solution : it integrates in our corenetwork
... it uses the internet to integrate to my operator network even when I'm not connected to my operator network
... applicable to roaming situations, underground disconnectivity, multi-devices usage
... an additional advantage is that it even reduces our bandwidth usage
... it's an example of hybrid application of teleco/internet services

<BoYang> same fee for voip and cs call?

DKA: we want to extend that to other examples (e.g. video)

Dom: this shows that phone number is also a big assets operaetors have

LingChen: huge opportunity here for operators
... IMS gateway to WebRTC

Ruinan: W3C has many internet players, but harder to find momentum behind operators proposals
... Push API has been proposed by operators but have lacked adoption

DKA: Firefox will implement it
... hopefully with the PAG now being resolved, others will follow suite

Dom: Push API is a pretty advantage for operators if they manage to bring other players in this space
... Safari has been shipping a similar API for their desktop which shows the need is broader than just telecos

GangLiang: how would you deploy Push on your network? (@@@ not sure)

DKA: big debate on the future of RCS; lots of disagreement in this space
... Telefonica's approach is to have a foot in both camps
... We have tugo for WebRTC, and Joyn for RCS

Ruinan: W3C focus has been on the client side
... Operators have traditionally focused on the network side of standardization
... For instance, Push API is only defining the API used by the browser, not what's the underlying system used to Push

DKA: by design; it's something configurable and get configured when the device gets shipped
... it's a user configurable

LingChen: W3C works on the API
... IETF looks at the protocol layer
... Assuming W3C stays focused on APIs, what is the opportunity for operators to look at that layer?

BoYang: we need a unified API across vendors
... it's important for us to have compatibility across browsers
... we don't care about the details of the API, as long as it matches our requirements
... (for WebRTC)

LingChen: Imagine Baidu develops an OTT application on top of Firefox
... how would you compete with them with a Firefox app?

BoYang: we would let the market choose what work best for users
... Even if Baidu does it, that doesn't mean we should not provide a solution

LingChen: I guess the key is for operators is to find what unique advantages operators have that they can push into W3C work

BoYang: we do want to make the best app out there
... but it's clear we can't assume we will win by being the only providers
... it used to be geolocation was something only operators could provide via cell towers
... now there are many other ways to get the same

Qiuling: operators are no longer the only one in position to provide a service
... they have to compete on the market

BoYang: for instance, we can provide a much better customer service

Qiuling: but this becomes harder are things are moving to the service layer

Ruinan: internet companies have shown their abilities to deploy new services much more quickly

DKA: that's why operators have moving to similar approaches as OTT companies
... e.g. Telefonica digital
... although plugging into legacy systems remain always long and difficult$
... but once you've plugged it, it opens a lot of new possibilities in terms of services and applications

Ryoichi: I think operators are more focused on the network side

KepengLi: operators can also integrate with existing OTT services to create new business opps
... we discussed advantages in payments
... others include possibly geolocation; Web identity
... part of the discussions is what advantages we can exploit more quickly

Tatsuya: I think we need to look at this at a higher level
... there are two layers we can look at
... @@@
... and APIs to access hardware feature
... Should W3C also focus on APIs that build on operators advantage?

KepengLi: the TTML Working Group is looking at a simplified profile for mobile

Dom: My goal with the Web and Mobile IG was to enable that kind of discussion