Due to equipment obsolesce fixed operators around the world have been investing in next generation IP based network infrastructure. Despite the size of these investments, however, customers are primarily concerned about the services they subscribe to and experience. While the internet has created many popular services and useful applications over IP on the PC platform, the race is still on as to what combination of services, devices and access will win customers and create significant business opportunities. In terms of user adoption, the battlefield have also moved from the PC to the more popular devices : televisions and mobile phones. These devices were originally created for specific purposes of entertainment and communications respectively but now has taken on more roles. For example, we have found TV content delivery over broadband help stabilize customer base and increase revenue (nowTV; also experienced by many operators around the world) so moved on to add interactive services on the TV platform. With the launch of 3G, multimedia are more prevalent on mobile phones so mobile TV was also included. However, not all these developments have spawned further success because of customer behavior differences on different devices and (access) environment. People that are enjoying a movie on TV is probably not likely to interact and find out the information about the actors and actress online, while people on the mobile phone will not enjoy watching a Hollywood movie for its full duration due to the small screen size.
There is no question that we have entered into an environment in which seamless, connected services across networks can be realized economically but the content, applications and services must fit the customer behavior and habits. This is a problem that integrated or triple/quad play operators must address in order to compete in the future ecosystem. Here we’ll present some work in the digital home and e-health areas to highlight our strategy (“Connected Living”), by which rich services at home are made accessible or controllable anywhere, which help to create new values and flexibilities to the end users. For example, our casual e-health service use TV as the primary user interface for biometric measurements while a mobile phone act as a complementary ubiquitous reminder and recommendation component. (see http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BC05D3CCF1001D39)
These new ideas also exemplify the new business that Quad play has opened up by linking services on the TV and mobile phone, and how it creates some in-roads to the growing and untapped markets of personalized entertainment, social networking, e-health and elderly services and more.
Dr Geoffrey Yuen is currently VP, Emerging Technology, at PCCW, looking after new business opportunities and development based on emerging technologies. In the past Geoff was involved with creating the Network-of-the-World (NOW) for Asia and starting the business support system (BSS) re-platform initiative for PCCW. His more recent work relates to the commercialization of fixed mobile convergence, digital home and e-health. Before joining PCCW in 2000, Geoff worked for several companies in Chicago and Hong Kong in internet development, including Morningstar.com, saleshound.com and renren.com. In 1999 he helped Morningstar to capture the online retirement market by creating the world’s first commercial web-based B2B retirement planning web service with major customer wins. Geoff graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 1992 and have conducted research for the ONR and NIH. His personal hobbies are in music, swimming and windsurfing.
Professor Joseph Hui received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. Degrees from MIT in
1981, 1981, and 1983. He specialized in Information Theory then and produced
a Ph.D. thesis on the theoretical foundation of multiple accessing
communications that is applicable to CDMA, GSM, and Ultra-WideBand
communications.
He then worked at Bell Lab Murray Hills and Bellcore Morristown from 1983 to
1989. He contributed to the fundamental understanding of broadband switching
which culmulated in the first textbook on the subject. For his works on
multiple accessing and broadband switching, he was recognized as an IEEE
Fellow in 1995. One of his paper on multiple accessing received the Charles
Bennet Prize Paper award.
Since 1986, he has held various teaching positions at Columbia University,
Rutgers University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and for the past 10
years at Arizona State University. During this time, he was recognized as
NSF Presidential Young Investigator and Henry Rutgers Research Fellow, He
received numerous grants from NSF, the Hong Kong Industry Department, and
the telecommunication industiries.
From these research efforts, he has founded many companies, including
IXTech, 4Blox, and recently Nuon and its subsidiary Virtuon and Etherion.
The focus of Nuon is network and IO virtualization. The subsidiary Etherion
focuses on green switching. The subsidiary Virtuon focuses on advance cloud
computing.
