Expanding Service Providers' reach with WebRTC

Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC
- “Quickly brush up the old and focus on the new”
- “WebRTC is much more than a technology for operators”
- “Proper enablers are more important than fully standardized services”
- “Just do it – it’s easier than ever to innovate!”

Presented at the 14th Annual Broadband World Forum (BBWF) 2014 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Transcript

1. 10/22/2014 – strictly confidential, confidential, internal, public – 1 EXPANDING PROVIDERS’ REACH WITH WEBRTC SEBASTIAN SCHUMANN, SLOVAK TELEKOM 22. October 2014. Amsterdam, The Netherlands FUTURE DISRUPTION
2. SCOPE Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC  “Quickly brush up the old and focus on the new”  “WebRTC is much more than a technology for operators”  “Proper enablers are more important than fully standardized services”  “Just do it – it’s easier than ever to innovate!” October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 2 @s_schumann Feedback is welcome, get in touch during/after the event!
3. SLOVAK TELEKOM  Former fixed & mobile incumbent (merger in 2010), Zoznam, Posam, DIGI  Diverse service portfolio (fixed/mobile network and communications services, Internet access + content, data services, CPE, ICT services (data center + cloud), radio/TV broadcasting, call center services, …) The major shareholder is Deutsche Telekom AG. Successful deployments in SEE as well as in DT group:  One of the biggest national-wide deployment of NGN technology in Europe in 2004, whole city migrated to all-IP NGN in 2007  Fixed network IMS migration to be finished in 2014  Leader in IPTV, offering hybrid sat TV (s. 2009) & OTT app (s. 2012)  Extensive FTTx deployments (360k households)  First nation-wide 4G/LTE network (s. 2013) October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 3 Slovak Telekom Group is the telecoms market leader in Slovakia
4. “Quickly brush up the old and focus on the new” October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 4
5. WEBRTC “OPTIONS” –EVOLVE AND INNOVATE WHAT CAN THE TECHNOLOGY BE USED FOR? October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 5 IntegrationOptions Adding “RTC” to the “Web” Adding the “Web” to “RTC” WebRTC WebRTC ? ?
6. “WebRTC is much more than a technology for operators” October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 6
7. SO WHAT IS WEBRTC FOR OPERATORS?  For many, “adding WebRTC” means adding voice/video to a service and have this service in the browser  Due to Telecom’s business’ history “communications” = “telephony”  Is it important?  Yes, because it comes with certain presumptions for the service and also in discussions  It comes with less defined constraints than VoLTE/RCS, operators sometimes forget that!  When WebRTC is discussed within operator units, they are almost always discussed with legacy assumptions in mind  WebRTC is much more  Comparison with legacy services (IMS/RCS/VoLTE/OTT) needs to answer what they actually are  Technologies, services, concepts, ways of thinking?  “VoLTE is just telephony”  Telephony in the browser  “It’s a technology, not a service” often cited, deductions from that statement are in fact an iceberg October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 7
8. DEVELOPING OPERATOR STRATEGIES  WebRTC can be one of the technologies to accelerate development and decrease costs, if operators want to build “OTT services” services that are:  Access independent/network independent/location independent  Use a software front-end (app/web)  Completely new experience in how they deliver voice in the application  A separate “OTT strategy” does not make sense  Is has to be elaborated per service how it should be exposed, delivered, and made accessible  Current “new” operator services such as VoLTE and RCS are “old Telco services ”  Stand-alone services, no initial and easy integration considered, QoS over QoE, etc.  New thinking needs to come with building things on the web, not yet clear everywhere! October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 8 WebRTC
9. “Proper enablers are more important than fully standardized services” October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 9
10. THE IMPORTANCE OF APPROACHING SERVICES CORRECTLY  Important to affect current planning and new services. Do not think about new communications services, but  evolve existing communications services and innovate on UX/QoE  embed features in new services (own, partnering)  Service updates can include “modernized interfaces”, but need to go beyond  Adding “Web” to existing products means they are defined, and mostly limited  Integration where it makes sense is more important than a “pure web dialer”  The WebRTC paradigm introduces a new "way of thinking“ that has often not even started  The "front-end design/functions” defines services now  The back-end is completely irrelevant October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 10 Interfaces/services need to be built flexibly and deployed capabilities need to be reusable and added quickly and frequently to different products.
11. NEW ARCHITECTURAL REQUIREMENTS  The WebRTC paradigm introduces the need for new architectural requirements, also for operators  Every service or integration going beyond telephony or not requiring the full subset of its features should have a prior discussion about proper architecture (back-end enabler)  Telephony: IMS/MMTel/VoLTE vs. lightweight open-source alternatives – almost exclusively SIP  Non-telephony: Own backend, libraries, protocol alternatives (XMPP, REST/JSON)  Case-by-case decision, not just use because it is there (efficiency, suitability)  For everything that is not telephony, alternatives most likely much more suitable  The discussion about WebRTC & IMS should not be at the beginning, but the end of any consideration  Get a gateway if legacy is important (incl. identity, integration etc.), if not chose depending on your resources  Choose your vendor wisely, WebRTC often comes with the IMS and that will have impact on your creativity  Good open-source products available, client-side JavaScript knowledge often enough to get started! October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 11
12. “Just do it – it’s easier than ever to innovate!” October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 12
13. USE IN-HOUSE RESOURCES –HOWEVER LITTLE YOU HAVE  Use cases or prototypes can be developed so much faster than before  Support for building instead of talking, especially for the “renegades” , trying to inflict change for the better  Especially useful to proof that IMS is not always needed if the use case does not justify it  Much easier to show what WebRTC is at first hand  I once did a presentation from Joburg to Bratislava via Amsterdam (approx. > 10000 km, phys. delay approx. 50 ms)  People will be stunned to perceive it themselves if they all of a sudden know the people that built it  Prototyping means learning  We have developed various prototypes and every single challenge was also a lesson learned (some shared today)  Use NT and IT resources, both are needed. Expect also innovations from purely IT side October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 13
14. PRACTICAL BACKUP: WE ARE DOOGFOODING  Slovak Telekom has implemented a PoC not connected to legacy telephony, actively used by employees  A WebRTC gateway RfQ on IMS and show telephony would be easy, but doesn’t have much value yet  We developed a (simple but yet) contextual web application  Sent E-mails contain signature to web portal (address built using E-mail as identifier), contact employees  People can be contacted and also notified out-of-band using various channels, owner/guest not equal  No telephony dial-out: Faster, easy b/c no legacy boundaries such as billing, integration, approval  No complex account setup: Address confirmation using received hash/token for mapping  No one-size-fits-all: Many features consciously omitted (directory, collaboration, conferencing)  One application doing one thing well and which contains only those features required October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 14
15. SUMMARY  It is important to understand our heritage and acknowledge who pays the bills for now  Main business still legacy  IMS architecture often “a given”  Telephony and “boring use cases” need to be on board  Modernization of current voice service important  This is a pretty straight forward path, many obstacles are being worked on (as Victor presented)  Most of the operator voice back-end is IP based now, but simply attaching “a WebRTC front-end” won’t do  Less ubiquitous, but more targeted applications will replace telephony general purpose communications use case by use case  Flexible re-useable capabilities exposed through simple APIs are tremendously important  Standardized core technologies (HTML/CSS/JS, Objective-C, Java), but not services  Standardized interfaces (REST API w/ doc/SDK is enough) trumps complex E2E scenarios October 2014, Amsterdam, NL Sebastian Schumann: “Expanding Service Providers’ Reach With WebRTC”, 14th BBWF 15
16. THANK YOU. Sebastian Schumann Application & Platform Innovation | Slovak Telekom, a.s.  Sebastian.Schumann@telekom.sk @s_schumann  +421 903 419 345
17. ATTRIBUTION Refresh designed by Alex Auda Samora from the Noun Project House designed by James Christopher from the Noun Project 17