Telus’ experts disagree on business need for speed

Telus Corp. believes that organizations will eagerly sign up for its new HSPA Plus data network, which offers a maximum speed that’s seven times faster than its old network.

However, at a roundtable last week to convince industry reporters, a business school professor acknowledged that many businesses wonder what the need is.

“That’s a question I still don’t have the answer to,” admitted Dr. Michael Wade of York University’s Schulich School of Business.

“I still don’t see the killer app,” said Wade, who was produced by the telco along with U.S. wireless consultant Andrew Seybold for reporters to question. Wade noted that business staff can e-mail and text message with Telus’ CDMA-based network, which is still in use and has a maximum speed under ideal conditions of 3.5 Megabits per second compared to the HSPA Plus network’s 21 Mpbs.

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For some organizations the opportunity to do certain things faster will be “revolutionary”, he said, allowing them to compete against bigger enterprises. If HSPA Plus service is expanded to rural areas that now only get dial-up Internet connectivity, the difference will be “huge” for users, he added.

But for most, Wade said, it will be “evolutionary” change.

“It’s a challenge to the Teluses of the world to come up with applications and uses for that extra bandwidth so a justification can be made to organizations why they should ante up to get the [faster] devices,” he said.

Seybold said high speed data networks in the U.S. are allowing businesses to extend graphic-heavy applications to mobile devices that otherwise would have had to be re-written.

He agreed with Wade that high-speed is “the thing that makes small businesses as big as big business because it gives them the same access to information all the time.”

But even Seybold acknowledged that initially American businesses were cool to faster 3G networks. However, once their staff and consumers picked up on it for personal use, organizations saw the light.

That’s one reason why Seybold isn’t critical of Canadian wireless carriers moving to HSPA later than their U.S. counterparts. Now that the business market is taking off, he said, Canadians carriers will benefit.

Jim Senko, Telus’ vice-president of mobility solutions, has no doubt many businesses will subscribe or upgrade to the new network.

Faster wireless access on laptops means staff can work on the road or at home at the same speeds they’d seen in an office, he said, especially downloading data or using collaboration tools.

Another advantage Telus has is the ability to offer three networks with devices to match the needs of customers: An IDEN network for those who want handsets with two-way capabilities, the CDMA network for light data use or remote equipment and vehicle monitoring, and the HSPA Plus network for road warriors.

The speed differential between the CDMA and HSPA Plus networks is closer to 10 times for average throughput, he added.

However, Wade cautioned that the numbers aren’t that important.

 “It’s not the size of the Internet stick that matters,” he said, “it’s how you use it.”

Comments (5)

brian keedwell

by brian keedwell 12/9/2009 2:11:51 PM

Dr. Michael Wade of York University’s Schulich School of Business said it all:

But “now that we have this extra bandwidth, what are we going to use it for?” he asked.

RIGHT ON!

Users NEED one thing and one thing only: EFFECTIVE (E) BUSINESS PROCESS which is a function of QUALITY (Q) (what the process 'delivers' and PRODUCTIVITY (P) reciprocal of what the process costs to execute. E = f(Q,P) is invariable S-curve shaped and without process re-engineering it's a trade off along the S-curve. To increase E the curve MUST be shifted.

Mobitex, twenty years ago was, and still is - even with some advantages - was adequate already in the early 1990 in well over 90% of existing mobile processes (I think especially of SELLING and FIELD SERVICE). GPRS that became available around 2000 gave a few more advantages but hardly enough to chand EFFECTIVENESS (E). Everybody said that when 3G came Enterprise Mobility would take off. IT HASN'T. Why? Because it's still the old generic processes. I have published extensively on MPS - Mobile Process Service that is based on M2M distributed databases. THAT IS THE FLEXIBLE AND GLOBALLY SCALABLE FUTURE COMBINED WITH SYSTEMIV INNOVATION TO SHIFT THOSE S-CURVES.....but beware, it is complex - as I have published! Sincerely Brian (alias Sir George the Dragon Slayer, knighted in Toronto Dragons Den and broadcasted 28 October on CBC).

mike hughes

by mike hughes 12/9/2009 6:58:18 PM

While I would hate to disagree with anyone who would quote a formula in a blog, I do.

Telus, you just go ahead and deliver that high speed network at a reasonable price and rural and mobile businesses will find a way to exploit the new bandwidth to grow the digital economy. In defference to dragon slayer, one of the reasons it hasn't happened already is the network is too slow to make it worthwhile to reinvent the old processes and write the killer apps to enable their innovation.

It will be business, not academics who shift the curves, or invent new ones.

brian keedwell

by brian keedwell 12/10/2009 6:45:07 AM

Thanks Mike - let's get the dialogue going!

Your acknowledgment of the need to shift those S-curves was the first step.

Please explain now how Functional Requirements can be upgraded with this 10 x speed enhancement with respect to the two aspects of process Effectivess. Please comment first on how QUALITY of either Selling and Delivering processes can be changed more than in a miniscule way. Please comment on the same for reduction of cost (PRODUCTIVITY) of the processes.

If you look at cost for network services in the total equation for effect on bottom line it is absolutely peanuts. You speak only of the 'data service' component. 'Software-as-a-service' is a step up but still far, far, far from providing a MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE in which one iterates all the way form Customer Needs (CN), to Functional Requirements (FR), to Design Parameters (DP) to Process Variables (PV) in the end-to-end production of the Mobile Process Service.

Start at square #1 by describing Customer Needs!

I remember delevoping a CRM system for Sandvik, the world's leading cutting tool company, twenty years ago. We redefined CUSTOMER NEEDS from how many boxes of drilling inserts the customer 'needed' to what holes the customer had to drill. It's a paradigm shift.

As Yourdin once said "If you don't know what the customer NEEDS it doesn't matter how you program it."

I do agree that when new technolegy becomes available one should think inductivly ...."OK, how can we use that now?" But to ramp up speed indiscriminately and say "Let the customer figure out how to use it" is hardly inspiring the customer. The Innovation Gap will remain for ever.

Brian

brian keedwell

by brian keedwell 12/11/2009 1:18:35 AM

I want to comment further on this rematrk in the article:

"He agreed with Wade that high-speed is “the thing that makes small businesses as big as big business because it gives them the same access to information all the time.”

The big problem today is data integration. Small companies do not have the IT competence to integrate fied data and 'back-office' (such as ERP). Field personnel cannot be given open access to ERP because of both security and inability to learn navigation through several applications. Field personnel need one user interface and that can be done only by pre-integration of the data required by the field user.

Brian