Smart Pipes Enablers Initiative
Post categories: mobile
| 14:23 UK time, Wednesday, 28 October 2009
As part of my role as Controller Audio & Music & Mobile I work with the Mobile Entertainment Forum as an EMEA board member. Over the last few weeks I've participated in several events highlighting the 'Smart Pipes Enablers Initiative'.
According to M:Metrics, as of September 5.5 million people utilised BBC mobile services in some way - out of an estimated audience of 13.2M users/month using 'the mobile web'. This puts us as the 3rd highest mobile service in the UK. Of our users 80% are under the age of 45 and 15% of the users do not utilise other bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk services.
Due to our size, this puts us in a unique situation in the UK. We are able to work directly with the network carriers - Primarily O2, Orange, T-Mobile, 3 and Vodafone; but with others as well - and major handset manufacturers to customise our services to work optimally. This has worked well for us as we've launched new services, like iPlayer on Mobile, over the last year; however, as new services come to market we will have a lot of work just to keep up with the changes around us.
To this end we are working with others in the market to help define a set of standards we can all work with to grow the marketplace. From the MEF site on this initiative, here are a summary of the objectives:
The MEF Enablers Initiative would have the overarching objective of promoting the most rapid implementation of a coherent, profitable and workable model for "smart pipe" enabling services, to the benefit of the entire mobile entertainment industry. Its ultimate objectives would include:
- The implementation by operators of a coherent and market-focused set of smart-pipe enabling services, based on standards which fully recognise the needs of the content community.
- The implementation of the "smart pipes" model by the large majority of operators, to ensure that the mobile entertainment community could rely on complete operator coverage in its core markets.
- The enthusiastic uptake of newly-available enabling services by content and service providers, so as to encourage operators to implement the broadest range of enabling services.
There will undoubtedly be other enabler services for other types of content, but for the BBC we are specifically interested in:
Location Services
- Knowing where a user is so as to serve appropriate content for the location, e.g. local news/weather/traffic
- Where we have upstream content right issues we need to properly set access rights for where you are
Quality of Service
- Can the network serve video to you where you are right now?
- For your location, what data rate can be sustained? This allows us to serve the right quality of content for you.
- Can we work with the carrier to provide you with a quality of service guarantee?
Common technology challenges
- Common interfaces across multiple providers/countries so as to avoid extra software development work
- Simplify the support matrix for the numerous devices we already support
Set cost expectations
- Are you on a data tariff?
- Will this activity cost you? If so how much - have us ask you in advance
- Avoid bill shock for you, the carrier and the content provider
In the end our goal is to find a way of working with others in the market to set standards we can all work with. In the end we aim to help grow the Mobile market in the UK and to provide better products to our audience as quickly as we can.
Mark Kortekaas is Controller, A&MI and Mobile, BBC Future Media & Technology.
Comment number 1.
At 20:12 28th Oct 2009, lleyam wrote:How about learning to write a blog? WTF are smart pipes?
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Comment number 2.
At 21:15 28th Oct 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Try reading the link in the first paragraph lleyam.
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Comment number 3.
At 09:53 29th Oct 2009, TV Licence fee payer against BBC censorship wrote:2. At 9:15pm on 28 Oct 2009, NickReynolds wrote:
"Try reading the link in the first paragraph lleyam."
Sorry Nick but this blog would have won no prizes in any 'Plain English' competition! Perhaps the writer forgot that he was writing for a non trade blog, one should not need to dive into another site just to make sense of one aimed at the general public - if explanation is needed it should be here, within the article or blog, even as a (referenced) foot note.
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Comment number 4.
At 10:14 29th Oct 2009, Jeremy Harris wrote:I think it's rather a shame that we can't be a bit more courteous to the people who write things on this blog. I'm all in favour of constructive criticism, and there are some things I don't like about the blog sometimes, but there's no need to get personal or start WTFing everywhere.
Yes, this post could be improved by the addition of a brief paragraph near the top explaining the basics of the 'smart pipes' model. I've done a lot of sub-editing over the years, as a volunteer and in my career, and it's something I'd have recommended if it was my call.
However, it's hardly impossible to work this out, and a link was provided with some further information. It's worth remembering that some of the people writing here are technically-minded people who deal with this stuff every waking minute, rather than journalists or career writers who spend all their time trying to explain things simply to all.
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Comment number 5.
At 18:44 30th Oct 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Boilerplated - the blog is read by a wide variety of people some who have a great deal of technical knowledge and some who don't. Posts are written by a wide variety of BBC people on a wide variety of subjects. Some posts will be suitable for a general, non technical audience. Some will be more "hard core".
My instinct is not to over edit or smooth out individual's blog posts. They are after all their words. I would rather publish something which feels more personal (even if it may be more complex and harder to understand) than something so bland that it tells you nothing.
That's why we sometimes use links to help explain technical terms rather than having the writer spell it out.
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Comment number 6.
At 17:15 31st Oct 2009, TallNickG wrote:RE: URL link to Smart pipes Initiative : when I link to it - its just a page of adverts (firefox) ??
https://www.m-e-f.org/initiatives/enablers/
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Comment number 7.
At 11:47 1st Nov 2009, Paul Murphy wrote:# 6 TallNickG:
Looks like they might be having issues with their server - it was fine when I put the links in. There's an explanation of the Smart Pipes Initiative on the Mobile Marketing Magazine site. If they don't sort it soon I'll change the links in the piece.
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At 10:04 10th Nov 2009, Julie Adam wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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