MWC: AT&T’s CEO calls for open systems

Consumers want to view or access the same content across a number of devices, and not be restricted by the particular characteristics of an OS, device or network. This ‚openness’ was the theme of the keynote session ‚View from the top.’

This openness, according to Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, should be a powerful message for the mobile industry in terms of stimulating demand for the capabilities being deployed now by mobile operators.

‚The customer experience will be OS and device agnostic, even network agnostic,‚ said Stephenson. ‚Consumers are not concerned or preoccupied about which access medium they use – mobile, fixed or Wi-Fi. As LTE networks become available, the cloud becomes a reality and the overall technology matures, the customers’ expectation for an open and seamless environment is only going to increase.‚

However, the CEO claimed that avenues are emerging that would help facilitate an open approach. ‚The most exciting is HTML5. The beauty of this is that it’ll allow apps to be developed once and then run on multiple OSs and devices.‚

This perspective was echoed by Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile, stating that there must be encouragement to move the industry towards an open system. ‚We need to change the business model of the mobile internet, and build an ecosystem which is beneficial to the development of the industry,‚ said Wang. ‚Handset manufacturers only develop apps for their own handsets, and it’s extremely difficult to build an apps store that supports all handsets.‚

The CEO of Telefónica, César Alierta, called for greater engagement between the telecoms players and the content providers to ensure consumers received a quality experience. However, he took a more direct approach with regard to the investment needed to make this happen, and called for content providers to start contributing towards the high levels of required capex.

– Story courtesy Mobile World Congress Show Daily