Coming to MWC this year I was not sure what to expect in terms of attendance under the cloud of recession. When I arrived on Monday morning at 9am, there were no queues for registration – a first for me and not doubt an indicator of lighter than usual attendance. Yesterday things seemed to pick up, but not to the same levels of the recent past.

The mood in MWC seemed conservatively optimistic, with its requisite hype-children: LTE, femto-cells, backhaul, application storefronts and open access devices to name a few.

LTE: It is anticipated that today Dick Lynch will announce Verizon’s vendor selection for its LTE rollout. Verizon have done a good job playing their cards close to their chest in terms of the vendor selection, so I imagine Dick’s presentation will be packed. Clearly LTE is taking hold more rapidly in North America than here in Europe, largely because of green field AWS and 700MHz spectrum availability. T-Mobile has been bullish regarding LTE but it is unclear to me how it will avail adequate spectrum resources until new spectrum in the 2.6GHz band is licensed. In some European markets, 2.6GHz licenses have been issued, but in many markets we anticipate protracted timelines, which plays into the favor of HSPA and HSPA+.

Femto-cells: We have seen growing interest in femto-cells at the MWC congress events over the last couple of years. This year there are meaningful service provider trials to talk about, with players like picoChip, Cisco and Ubquisys having pretty consistent feedback from their early market initiatives. We believe that while the Femto Forum and the industry as a whole has done a great deal in bringing femtos to market, there is still a lot that needs to be done. In particular there is the need to validate the scalability and manageability of the femto solutions, and appropriate business models for service provider use to distribute and provision femtos in the market place. I am currently working on a report with Nate Dyer to provide a status update on the femto-cell market.

Backhaul: All the tier 1 infrastructure vendors that I have spoken to over the last couple of days at MWC have a mobile backhaul story to tell. Much of the emphasis is focused on Layer 2 and Layer 3, such as ensuring that Ethernet can synchronize and that there is a smooth migration path to MPLS-TP etc. As I look at the various solutions there does not seem to be a great deal of differentiation. However a technology that is emerging and seems very promising is offered by companies like E-Band Communications, who I met at the show. E-Band touts a solution that offers transparent Gigabit Ethernet capabilities using 70/80GHz operating frequency. Certainly a compelling prospect that we believe service providers should investigate.

Although recessionary pressures are slowing capital investments, it is clear that the industry is still vibrant, albeit with significant transformation challenges. As the MWC stands fill with new entrants peddling application storefront and open access network strategies, we are seeing a heightened sense of urgency from the mainstay providers in the industry, irrespective of the recession.

As a Monty Python fan, the current challenges of the communications industry reminds me of the “Bridge of Death” scene in the “Holy Grail”. In this scene, King Arthur and his Knights must answer three questions to cross the “Bridge of Death”, if they get any answer wrong they are “Cast into the gorge of eternal peril”

It is clear that the communications industry is at a cross roads and under the grip of major disruption. Recently I relented to popular demand and purchased a Nintendo Wii. Aside from the epidemic of repetitive strain injuries and semi-permanent scars of hypo-competition amongst my kids and those throughout the neighborhood, it is clear to me that the device has the potential to be disruptive. There it sits between my Verizon set top box and Slingbox. It has an Internet connection, phenomenal user interface (at least for gaming) and plenty of processing power and SD and USB expansion slots for storage. My understanding is that Nintendo is subsidizing much of the functionality in the box, which is no surprise to me.

To me the Wii and for that matter the Slingbox is an illustration of the heightened disruption that the communications industry faces. Service providers are quickly waking up to the fact that they cannot control the wave of innovation that this new age is bringing. At Yankee Group we refer to this wave of innovation as Anywhere. From the standpoint of the Anywhere Network, the innovation can be best described through the lens of convergence amongst Internet, media, mobility, communications and the machine. This is a scary prospect for many of our service provider clients.

As service providers struggle with the notion of Anywhere, there is a lot at stake, and massive upside for those players who get it right. In a similar vain to the three questions at the Bridge of Death, we believe that there are three lines of business that service providers must pursue under a single strategy
1) Open access integration of “best-of-breed” services
2) Harvest and federation of popular third party applications
3) Federate and incubate the long tail of applications and services

It is clear to us that service providers must aggressively pursue the holy grail of Anywhere with these three lines of business under the umbrella of a single strategy, or face the prospects of being “Cast in the Gorge of Eternal Peril”.

Take a look at a recent Framework report entitled “Transforming Service Providers to Anywhere Providers” which I co-authored with Benoit Felten. This framework report forms the basis of the Anywhere Network research that Yankee Group analysts will conduct in 2009. Here is a video where I discuss the findings of the report and a Podcast (mp3) where Benoit Felten and I discuss service provider transformation strategies.

The Anywhere Network is Yankee Group’s vision of a seamless, always-accessible, high-capacity, intelligent infrastructure that will provide connections for everyone to everything from anywhere. It anticipates the convergence of the internet, communications, media, mobility and device.

This webinar introduces Yankee Group’s independent framework to assess service providers’ ability to address and anticipate the demands emerging from the Anywhere Network. It highlights the initial results from our research that evaluates relative service provider positioning and strategies, and identifies leaders and laggards in the context of the Anywhere Network. The scorecard features analysis of the following key attributes:

• The core and transport network economics
• Organizational alignment
• Ecosystem and service distribution wealth
• Access network performance
• Financial strength and addressable market scale
• Business and operational support system alignment

The webinar runs just under an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).