“Most businesses are run like classical symphonies – long, with elaborate compositions (detailed workflows) that leave little room for interpretation. Employees are expected to follow these compositions rote.
Great stuff ! See my thoughts at the bottom of the article.
Held at the magnificent Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai on 3 & 4th November 2008, the conference and exhibition showcased the state-of-the-art for IPTV, both in the region and worldwide. The event brought together an impressive list of service providers and ISPs from across the region and beyond who are evaluating or deploying IPTV, including Etisalat, (United Arab Emirates) du (Dubai), Saudi Telecom Company (Saudi Arabia) Zain (Saudi Arabia), Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Batelco (Bahrain), KPN (Netherlands), Oman Telecom (Oman), Orascom Holdings (Egypt) Maroc Telecom, Neutel (Bahrain), Kingdom Telecom (Bahrain),TE Data (Algeria), Turk Telekom, Oger Telecom (Turkey), PTC (Pakistan), Sorush Multimedia Corp (Iran), ATV (Jordan), Kuwait Establishment Company, Takarum (Jordan), Rogers Cable (Canada), CableVision (Jordan), YahSat (United Arab Emirates), Telecom Egypt, Orbit Communications, and Qtel (Kuwait). In addition, the event also attracted a good range of content providers and networks, including City 7 TV, Showtime Arabia, Al Jazeera, CNBC Arabia, BBC World Service, Eurostar Communications, Walt Disney, MTV Arabia, Arabsat, the Arab Digital Alliance, IRIB (Japan), Dubai TV, SRPC, MBC, Shemaroo, Ten Sport and Al Aan TVThe conference had many high level speakers, but it was Paul Donay, CEO of both Turk Telecom and its holding company Oger Telecom, who attracted the biggest frenzy of media attention. Mr Donay discussed his companies’ investments in IPTV and why they believe IPTV has such a strong future.Other conference highlighting included insight from Subhra Das, Senior Vice President, Marketing at du – one of the earliest deployments of IPTV - whilst Roberto Kaufmann, du’s Head of IPTV Roll Out, commented on deployment challenges for IPTV in the local environment. From Etisalat, Mario Jorge Pino, Digital Media Strategy, discussed the requirement for operators transitioning to content delivery networks. IPTV News was active at the event, capturing interviews to give you an insight from the region and a flavour of the event. To view a video review of the event, click here or visit HYPERLINK "http://www.iptv-mea.com" www.iptv-mea.com. Watch out for further video interviews from the event to be added to IPTV News in future weeks.
via www.mfi.re.kr
Glo Mobile, Africa's fastest growing GSM network, has interconnected 547 networks around the world to enable its subscribers send and receive international Short Message Service (SMS). The networks which were signed on recently by Glo Mobile are in 152 countries in Africa, Asia, America, Australia and Europe as well as the North America non-GSM networks. With this development, Glo Mobile has become the network operator with the highest number of international SMS destinations as no other operator in the country has SMS arrangement with as many countries and networks. Glo Mobile's Chief Marketing Officer, Subhra Das, who disclosed this information, said it was part of the network's efforts at improving telecommunication services in the country. "Glo Mobile is in the forefront of efforts to eliminate obstacles to effective telecommunication services. We want to ensure that Nigerians are able to reach their loved ones and business associates anywhere they are. With the SMS access to 152 countries and 547 networks, the network has effectively covered most parts of the world," Das stated. To send an international SMS, Das said, "the subscriber should go to 'Message', scroll to 'Write Message' and entre the message body. He then entres (+) (country code) (recipient's mobile number) and presses OK." He explained that the international SMS is offered at affordable tariffs. Each message attracts N15, the same cost for local messages. Das restated Glo Mobile's philosophy of empowering Nigerians to communicate with their friends and family members as well as their business associates. Since Glo Mobile rolled out on August 29, last year, it has achieved phenomenal success. It became the first network to reach the one million subscriber mark in 9 months of operation. Glo Mobile also pioneered the Pay By the Second Tariff in Nigeria and other Value Added Services such as Text-to-E-mail, Friends and Family, Multi-media Messaging Service (MMS), Magic Plus, WAP over GP
That afternoon, Mr. Subhra Das was in a high spirit to talk on the performance of Glo Mobile since it rolled out some months ago. He is the Director of Marketing in the company. It was easy to see the enthusiasm in him, as his countenance was warm with smiles. He politely introduced himself. "My name is Mr. Subhra Das. I am the director of marketing of Glo Mobile and the reason why we are meeting this afternoon with you is because of a few announcement we want to make," he said. At this point, I was puzzling what that announcement could be? And he continued. "The first is the fact we have crossed the 800,000 subscriber mark and by the end of the month, we should be touching 850, 000 subscriber mark", he announced. "Some of the factors that made this possible is the network quality and the capacity of the network, and coverage capability that was done within a short time frame contributed immensely to the rapid growth. You know we launched in the principal cities in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt on 28 and 29th of September last year and to have this kind of subscriber base within this time frame makes us one of the fastest growing GSM networks in Africa," he said. He also talked about the quality of their network and what favour it has earned the network. "The quality has been very good and we got a lot of favours from our dealers and vendors that have presence all over and our teeming subscribers. We also have favour from the press as well. It has been so wonderful. The quality has remained steadily efficient and the capacity of the network supperb. An indication of our resolve to do whatever we want to do well and we do it in a larger scale. From the beginning, you find out that the number of base stations we will put in a city is more than what the other networks have put together. For instance, when we launched at Abuja, we have 26 base stations. In Ibadan when we launched, we started with 28 base stations from day one. Capacity wise, we ensure that we install first class equipment. A few days away, we are going to launch in Enugu. As I am talking to you, about 37 base stations are there which is more that what other networks have in Enugu put together," he said According to Das, Globacom does not just go and errect a base station and go on air to announce its presence. "What we do is not to go and mount one base station in a city and shout that we have launched in that city. No, when we go, we make sure that we gain a wide coverage in that city, and that explains why we scoop subscribers wherever we launch. Basically, the network quality, capacity and finally, the speed with which we spread our coverage in 49 cities in the last seven months make us the fastest roll-out GSM in Africa. We have covered eight major highways. So far, we are the only network that has covered the full stretch of Lagos-Benin Expressway and the same thing on many other expressways". Besides having a speedy coverage, the network according to him leverages on a number of mouth-watering innovations it has introduced to the market. "The certain nature of innovations we have introduced in the industry equally played a role in our growth of our subscriber base. Starting with the 'Per Second Billing' to 'Premium', then 'Talk Now' which is the one that has revolutionized the industry. Apart from that we have launched very special value added services called 'Magic Plus'. It is a very user-friendly service. 'Mobile Banking Services' which is part of 'Magic Plus' will be introduced in the next few weeks and a lot of banks will be covered in the first phase. These and many other things contributed immensely to our rapid growth. The strategy is that the people of Nigeria deserve the best, and we are poised to give them the best as far as GSM services are concerned," he said. Recently, some subscribers besieged their Adeola Odeku office in search of lines for weeks. The queues were frightening and they only dissolved when the offices were shut. Concerning this, he said, "I can tell you that since we launched, we have done about two major promotions and from our experience, we are better positioned to amend the structures we had as at then. We are so much concerned about the pains people went through in queuing up under the hot sun to get a line. What happened was that some people-turned middlemen and some touts also joined line. These set of people hijacked the whole thing. They did not let the actual users be on the queues and when these set of people buy, they go back and resell it to the real end users. At a point in time, we started rationing it, if we sold to you and you come back, we said no, we can't sell to you again until after a time. We took notice of all that and I can assure you that whenever any kind of such promotion comes up again, there would not be that kind of queues. Whenever a subscriber wants to buy our product, he/she can step out to the nearest Glo shop and buy it. We witness some sharp practices by some dealers in the last dispensations. A lot of them stockpiled the lines and then triggered off scarcity which they capitalised on to jack up the price. Since we are committed to creating conducive atmosphere for our subscribers, all those queues will soon stop," Das promised. Just like every other business, Das agreed that there are legions of challenges emerging on daily basis. He said that proffering solutions to them marks out the caliber of staff in the company. "There are many challenges coming from different fronts almost on daily basis. They include building base stations, and both maintaining and guiding them. Although, some of these problems are uniform to other operators such as power generating for the base stations. We have two generation sets to every base station and you can imagine how many generators we have installed. That is a basic problem on the roll out side. "Another challenge is the artificial scarcity the dealers caused. They bought these lines in large quantities, hoarded them and jacked the price upwards. That is part of the challenges we faced. At that time, we saw that so many lines have been bought and the number of the activated lines were far much lower. When we discovered that, we came up with a policy that every promotion has a deadline in which every sold line must be activated and after that day, the person would forgo the inactivated ones. Those are some of the key challenges we have faced so far and we are taking the right measures to curtail them," said Das. With the passion he had answered questions, one could discern the Nigerian spirit in him, even though he is not one but his company is. The pace the company is going on impresses him. He said: "Yes, really there is every sense of fulfillment in what we are doing. But again there is this awareness of what lies ahead. I mean what we have outlined for ourselves to achieve within a given period of time. There are many things to be done. Since we first launched months back, we have not experienced any major breakdown, while minor hitches in loading of recharge cards have been resolved since. I was reading one of the dailies the other day and I saw where we were rated as the best in terms of call drops. It is not prevalent on our network. We don't do any thing in a hurry. We take a lot of time strategizing and planning. After we got our licence, it took us almost one year to roll out, and every thing we have done has a dint of hard work and dedication. We studied networks of other countries and we engaged the partnership of many consultants to fashion out the better ways to serve the country better. We have our own business plan and things have been working our way". It appeared what Glo Mobile is trying to do is to remain in the list of GSM providers and not to be the market leader. But Das didn't agree with that impression. He said that from day one, their target is to be on top. "No, our vision from day one is to become the market leader in providing world class GSM in Nigeria. If we had wanted to play along, we may have probably have 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers by now. But the drive in us is to clinch the market leadership within a short while and hold on to it. We have the required technology to do it. " We have the people to do it; Come to think of it, the orientation is there. I think one of the success factors that have been giving us edge over our competitors is the stuff of human capital that we have. We try to get and retain the best professionals you can get in the country. The cream of the people you get in the marketing department is probably the best you can get in the industry. Again we have a thorough combination of people who are experienced in this kind of job. They have worked and gained experience in some parts of the globe as far as GSM is concerned. There is a lot of enthusiasm and drive to deliver. In some cases, some people spend nights to make sure that a work is done and done well. Sometimes, I am the one that will remind them to go home. They still come back early the next day and continue with their work. Not only in marketing, it happens like that company-wide. "On the issue of incentive, we have lots of rewards for them. The reward they look forward to is not only monetary, but also a sense of fulfillment. It is one of the highest paying company in the industry today and it shall continue like that. We have it all the requisites," he said. Does Das get irritated if things are not going his way? " What defines a professional is that he hardly gets emotional or gets frustrated in his course of work. Any job that you do, there must be challenges and as a professional, one should not see them as personal problems rather as professional challenges that needed solutions. I think the good thing about this company is that we work collectively as a team and no challenge is personal and we have the ability to design solutions collectively," he said. One wanted to know how Das relaxes after work. "After work I personally do a lot of exercise to keep fit. I have established good friends in Nigeria whom I spend some time with along with my family. I also try to play squash at Ikoyi Club. I think in the beginning, one was so much occupied. But as we began to launch, the pressures began to cool down bit by bit, " he explained.
From the commanding heights of the Globacom Towers at the Ahmadu Bello Way, the entire Victoria Island, Lagos, lay prostrate in its splendour and squalour. You could hear a pin drop as Subhra Das, the organisation’s boyishly handsome Group Marketing and Strategy Director, took the full house of journalists and stakeholders through the highlights of Globacom’s first one year. Since August 29, 2003, when Globacom commenced operations in Nigeria with the launch of its GSM services, the company has garnered an unbelievable 1.9 million subscribers, nationwide. The feat has made the network the fastest growing GSM network in Africa. But that is all just as at the last count – what is yet on paper! With the speed of the dreaded AIDS pandemic, the emerald glow of Nigeria’s second national carrier has beamed its way through the nooks and crannies of this massive country and rubbed off its peculiar green on 157 cities and towns, yet. More settlements are catching the glow, per second-per second. An hour earlier, the famous Glo Documentary and commercials had lit up the sombre hall and tantalised the mostly media audience with images of the company’s potentialities. A colleague actually wondered aloud if “all this stuff being dished out from documents and slide projectors are actually on the ground”. True, in applying sales gimmicks, a marketer would say anything. Indeed, part of Globacom’s success in the past one year has been part expertise in marketing strategies. But it has also been largely due to the ability to match their words with action. Trust the Globacom people. In a couple of hours, the full house of media people, in company of some of the organisation’s officials, would hit the road on tour of the company’s installations, nationwide – by bus. That was the schedule. After all, seeing is believing. “This journey is going to stretch us thin,” remarked my friend, Adewole Ojo, of New Age newspapers. “I agree with you entirely,” said I, now beginning to panic at the thought of what would become of my joints after an encounter with my old foe, arthritis. Suddenly, Fela’s legendary song began to echo in my head: “When trouble sleep, yanga go wake am…” Then, I fixed my own addendum: “You wan’ see Globacom, Glooo, you go see, Glooo, you go see tire…” One tiny voice in my head commanded me to banish that cowardly thought immediately and face the lecturer in front of me. These people“get big-big plans”, as they would say, in downtown Warri. For instance, it took a consortium of several groups to put together a submarine cable to service their trans-continental gateways, elsewhere on the continent. But Globacom is going it all alone, with plans to invest about $170 million in a high-capacity 32 ST M64 trans-Atlantic fibre-optic submarine cable for direct connectivity, to land right in the United Kingdom. Work has already commenced on this project and would last between 12 and 14 months. This infrastructure would connect with a maze of all kinds of complicated gadgets. There are three transit exchanges (TEX) to serve as international switch and interconnect switch for Glofix and these have already been installed in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. These have adequate capacity to handle all international and national transit calls. Of the three gateways, Lagos and Abuja are already in operation and the gateways can carry over 1.5 million calls per day. As a first of its kind in this area, Globacom already has Point-of-Presence switches installed in London and New York, for termination and origination of its traffic. Construction is also ongoing in other locations in France, Germany and Asia. By the way, Globacom is the only network in Nigeria that operates the 2.5G network, which supports full Multimedia Messaging (MMS). This means, for instance, that if a baby were to be born right now, you could record his birth on any of the sophisticated camera-phones presently in vogue and send the entire video recording, complete with the baby’s first cry, to his father in faraway New York! The Globacom network supports much more, including sending and receiving e-mail from your cell phone. Besides, the equipment being installed by the company around the country are already 3G (Third Generation) compliant. A whole lot of gear whose technical details are tongue-twisting challenges by themselves are already fully installed and in operation, nationwide. As Mr. Das and his colleagues reeled out these technicalese, someone in the hall let out a rather noisy yawn. On my own, my head was beginning to reel from bombardment, with all the technical stuff. And not a few people were beginning to sneak a long, hard stare way across the hall, to where refreshments were kept. The grammar was beginning to take its toll on us all and just then, it appeared that even the lecturers had got the message. Time to take a break! The journey was to begin right after lunch. Already, some of the technical jargon picked up at the lectures by my colleagues and I had begun to find their way into our lexicon. As we made our way to the bus, someone spoke in passing about activating his “cell sites” as soon as we got to Benin where it was scheduled we would spend the night. In the days ahead, it was to be an eye-opening roller-coaster of learning, of jokes and experiences, some fun, some not so funny. But it was, most importantly, a revelation of the courage of one hell of a revolutionary who is determined to make telephone available to the ordinary Nigerian. Out-to-see!
My thoughts on Jazz improvisation & Business Innovation: Jazz improvisation is an intense creative journey triggered by a common understanding of a simple musical idea among the participating artists. It requires participating artists to deliver creative ideas instantly and improvise on-the-spot during every part of the musical exercise/journey.Read below for more.
So we have to wonder about the estimates from Merrill Lynch, which is estimating the cloud computing market to reach $160 billion by 2011.The estimate includes $95 billion in business and productivity applications.
http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html
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Senior Vice President, Marketing, du ; UAE's new telecom operator
