oung, tech-savvy South Koreans are making coupon clipping a thing of the past and turning to their mobile phones instead.

Some of the fastest-growing mobile phone services in the country let retailers send discount coupons and users send gift certificates for anything from lattes to movie tickets through their handsets.

The merchandise vouchers have a barcode embedded in the message. Users show the coupon on the screen and retailers scan the barcode to apply the discount. […]

SK Telecom rolled out a service a little more than a year ago called a “gifticon” that allows users to send gift vouchers for items such as convenience store merchandise and pizzas via mobile phones. The sender is billed for the cost of the goods.

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“After the explosion in internet-based social networking (MySpace, Facebook) doing the same thing in real life instead of in front of a computer became an obvious next step. Much of it is already happening on a small scale as dozens of companies seek to exploit social networking on the go.”

“So how does it work? The key is the coming together of internet-connected mobile phones and location or proximity technology.” […]

“Effectively, by linking these two developments, your phone can tell if someone is near you and can access lots of information about them - the perfect ingredients for real social interaction.” […]

“One company based in Berlin has just gone live with its mobile social network. More than 3,000 young Germans have signed up to the aka-aki service in just over a month.”

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In 2005-2006, France Telecom created two structures, the Explocentre and the Technocentre, which work in close collaboration with the R&D laboratories installed all over the world, but are run by the Strategic Marketing Department, which provides the group’s orientations and knowledge of the market.

The Explocentre is an “incubator for R&D projects” and “concentrates on nurturing highly innovative concepts with strong potential, but that could be deemed too risky to be placed directly on the market”. The Explocentre determines their feasibility and potential, and tests new uses and technological breakthroughs before market launch. Interestingly, the centre works with “new methods based on co-creation with customers and partners, using design to drive innovation. Ideas for services are investigated, tested and re-worked with customers to find real value potential.”

Once explored, the most promising concepts are submitted to the Technocentre, which deals with the implementation of these “mature” projects. The Technocentre is responsible for turning them into products ready for the market, either by industrialising them for a commercial launch or by transferring to a spin-off or joint venture for development. The centre brings together around 30 teams consisting of a marketing specialist, a researcher and a network engineer.

So at the one end of France Telecom’s innovation chain there are ideas coming in from R&D, and the company’s industrial partners and employees. Those ideas with high development potential go to the exploration centre, where they are analysed and tested. The integrated strategic marketing in the innovation chain then takes over marketing the product within the technocentre. Finally, agreed projects are integrated into the Group’s Product Roadmap and 3-year plan, which is the other end of its innovation process.

Abstract
Nokia has a long history in designing for experiences, as mobile phones are very personal and experiental devices. We have established processes to take user needs and wants into account when designing new concepts, and we do various types of evaluations with real users during the development process. Experience evaluations are, however, an area we want to improve. In this paper, we describe the user experience evaluation practices in the different phases of Nokia product development process.

Download paper

(via InfoDesign)

“It is migrants, rather than geeks, who have emerged as the “most aggressive” adopters of new communications tools, says [Swisscom anthropologist Stefana] Broadbent. Dispersed families with strong ties and limited resources have taken to voice-over-internet services, IM and webcams, all of which are cheap or free. They also go online to get news or to download music from home.”

That same trend is also present in the United States, with Latinos depending on their cell phones for more services than other [major] ethnic groups, turning to it for messaging, downloading music, surfing the Web and e-mailing, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

“According to [a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey released last month], on a typical day, Latinos were more likely to use their phone to send or receive a text message, play a mobile game, send or receive e-mail, access the Internet, play music, instant message, or get a map or directions. Fifty-six percent of Latinos said they did at least one of these activities, compared with 50 percent for African Americans and 38 percent for whites.

The numbers are supported by a Forrester Research survey last year that found Latinos were more likely than other users to text, instant or picture message, send e-mail, check the weather, get news or sports updates, research entertainment, check financial accounts and receive stock quotes through their phone.”

Interestingly, “the cell phone in some cases is being used as the primary computer for Latinos, serving up e-mail and the Internet, in the process bridging what has been called the digital divide that still exists for some minority and disadvantaged groups.”

The article mentions many reasons for this: economic (lower mean household income, so less broadband access at home), demographic (family and friends are spread out across the United States and across the border), and cultural (a higher value is placed on staying in touch with family and friends).

But even though these ethnic minorities are advanced users, mobile phone marketing companies consider them as only interested in the cheap offers: “Hendrik Schouten, director of marketing for the Hispanic segment at AT&T, said carriers assumed Latino users wanted the cheapest phones and were more likely to use prepaid plans because of limited budgets.” This now seems to be changing.

(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

A diary study of mobile information needs [abstract]
Authors: Timothy Sohn, Kevin A. Li, William G. Griswold, and James D. Hollan (UC San Diego)
Abstract: Being mobile influences not only the types of information people seek but also the ways they attempt to access it. Mobile contexts present challenges of changing location and social context, restricted time for information access, and the need to share attentional resources among concurrent activities. Understanding mobile information needs and associated interaction challenges is fundamental to improving designs for mobile phones and related devices. We conducted a two-week diary study to better understand mobile information needs and how they are addressed. Our study revealed that depending on the time and resources available, as well as the situational context, people use diverse and, at times, ingenious ways to obtain needed information. We summarize key findings and discuss design implications for mobile technology.

Accountabilities of presence: reframing location-based systems [abstract]
Authors: Emily Troshynski, Charlotte Lee and Paul Dourish (UC Irvine)
Abstract: How do mobility and presence feature as aspects of social life? Using a case study of paroled offenders tracked via Global Positioning System (GPS), we explore the ways that location-based technologies frame people’s everyday experiences of space. In particular, we focus on how access and presence are negotiated outside of traditional conceptions of “privacy.” We introduce the notion of accountabilities of presence and suggest that it is a more useful concept than “privacy” for understanding the relationship between presence and sociality.

(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

Love and authentication [abstract]
Authors: Markus Jakobsson (Palo Alto Research Center), Erik Stolterman (Indiana University), Susanne Wetzel (Stevens Institute of Technology) and Liu Yang (Stevens Institute of Technology)
Abstract: Passwords are ubiquitous, and users and service providers alike rely on them for their security. However, good passwords may sometimes be hard to remember. For years, security practitioners have battled with the dilemma of how to authenticate people who have forgotten their passwords. Existing approaches suffer from high false positive and false negative rates, where the former is often due to low entropy or public availability of information, whereas the latter often is due to unclear or changing answers, or ambiguous or fault prone entry of the same. Good security questions should be based on long-lived personal preferences and knowledge, and avoid publicly available information. We show that many of the questions used by online matchmaking services are suitable as security questions. We first describe a new user interface approach suitable to such security questions that is offering a reduced risks of incorrect entry. We then detail the findings of experiments aimed at quantifying the security of our proposed method.

Human-in-the-loop: rethinking security in mobile and pervasive systems [abstract]
Authors: Vassilis Kostakos (University of Madeira / Carnegie Mellon University) and Eamonn O’Neill (University of Bath)
Abstract: In this paper we argue that pervasive systems introduce human-driven security vulnerabilities that traditional usability design cannot address. We claim that there is a need to understand better the appropriate role of humans in the context of pervasive systems security, and to develop quantifiable and measurable concepts that describe humans and their relationship with our systems. Here, we highlight mobility and sociability as two new sources of security vulnerabilities for pervasive systems, and describe our method for developing quantifiable metrics for these concepts.

(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

Celebratory technology: new directions for food research in HCI [abstract]
Authors: Andrea Grimes (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Richard Harper (Microsoft Research)
Abstract: Food is a central part of our lives. Fundamentally, we need food to survive. Socially, food is something that brings people together-individuals interact through and around it. Culturally, food practices reflect our ethnicities and nationalities. Given the importance of food in our daily lives, it is important to understand what role technology currently plays and the roles it can be imagined to play in the future. In this paper we describe the existing and potential design space for HCI in the area of human-food interaction. We present ideas for future work on designing technologies in the area of human-food interaction that celebrate the positive interactions that people have with food as they eat and prepare foods in their everyday lives.

Designs on dignity: perceptions of technology among the homeless [abstract
Authors: Christopher A. Le Dantec and W. Keith Edwards (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Abstract: Technology, it is argued, has the potential to improve everyone’s life: from the workplace, to entertainment, to easing chores around the home. But what of people who have neither job nor home? We undertook a qualitative study of the homeless population in a metropolitan U.S. city to better understand what it means to be homeless and how technology–from cell phones to bus passes–affects their daily lives. The themes we identify provide an array of opportunities for technological interventions that can empower the homeless population. Our investigation also reveals the need to reexamine some of the assumptions made in HCI about the relationship people have with technology. We suggest a broader awareness of the social context of technology use as a critical component when considering design innovation for the homeless.
(See also this interview by Luca Chittaro)

It’s on my other computer!: computing with multiple devices [abstract]
Authors: David Dearman (University of Toronto) and Jeffery S. Pierce (IBM Research)
Abstract: The number of computing devices that people use is growing. To gain a better understanding of why and how people use multiple devices, we interviewed 27 people from academia and industry. From these interviews we distill four primary findings. First, associating a user’s activities with a particular device is problematic for multiple device users because many activities span multiple devices. Second, device use varies by user and circumstance; users assign different roles to devices both by choice and by constraint. Third, users in industry want to separate work and personal activities across work and personal devices, but they have difficulty doing so in practice Finally, users employ a variety of techniques for accessing information across devices, but there is room for improvement: participants reported managing information across their devices as the most challenging aspect of using multiple devices. We suggest opportunities to improve the user experience by focusing on the user rather than the applications and devices; making devices aware of their roles; and providing lighter-weight methods for transferring information, including synchronization services that engender more trust from users.

It ’s Mine, Don’t Touch!: interactions at a large multi-touch display in a city centre [abstract]
Authors: Peter Peltonen, Esko Kurvinen, Antti Salovaara, Giulio Jacucci, Tommi Ilmonen, John Evans, Antti Oulasvirta and Petri Saarikko (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology and University of Helsinki)
Abstract: We present data from detailed observations of CityWall, a large multi-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki, Finland. During eight days of installation, 1199 persons interacted with the system in various social configurations. Videos of these encounters were examined qualitatively as well as quantitatively based on human coding of events. The data convey phenomena that arise uniquely in public use: crowding, massively parallel interaction, teamwork, games, negotiations of transitions and handovers, conflict management, gestures and overt remarks to co-present people, and “marking” the display for others. We analyze how public availability is achieved through social learning and negotiation, why interaction becomes performative and, finally, how the display restructures the public space. The multi-touch feature, gesture-based interaction, and the physical display size contributed differentially to these uses. Our findings on the social organization of the use of public displays can be useful for designing such systems for urban environments.

Cultural theory and real world design: Dystopian and Utopian Outcomes [abstract]
Authors: Christine Satchell (The University of Melbourne)
Abstract: When exploring a topic as intangible as the construction of mobile social networks it is necessary to look at how relationships are formed and at the way users identify themselves through their interactions. The theoretically informed discourses within cultural theory make an ideal lens for understanding these subtle nuances of use in terms of design. This paper describes a case study where the application of abstract cultural theory concepts to the practical act of analysing qualitative data from a user study resulted in the development of The Swarm mobile phone prototypes. By signposting the intersection of cultural theory within HCI, the value of a philosophically grounded mobile phone design space is highlighted. To uncover reactions to the design we explored the blogs that sprung up critiquing an online version of The Swarm and in doing so, discovered the at times subversive values (such as the need to lie) that users place on their mobile mediated interactions.

Driving the family: empowering the family technology lead [abstract]
Authors: Matthew D. Forrest, Jr., Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman (Carnegie Mellon University)
Abstract: Advances in technology continually increase the ability, but also the complexity of consumer electronics. This is especially true when several devices must be configured to work together, such as a digital TV and satellite box. Manufacturers of consumer electronics attempt to remedy this by designing interfaces that consolidate multiple, complex user interfaces into a single, simple interface. However, the problem remains that end-users are still expected to configure and learn to operate these new interfaces on their own.
This paper addresses the problem by proposing a radically new goal in terms of user interfaces for in-home, networked consumer electronics. Instead of trying and failing to make interfaces simple enough for everyone to use, we propose making interfaces that allow a “technology lead”–the person in the family responsible for supporting the technology—to more easily administer devices in his or her own home and in the homes of other family members. In Japan, where this study is taking place, user-centered research methods show that families usually have a single technology lead who is challenged with supporting people remotely in several homes. By enabling the technology lead to remotely support family members at a distance, the natural family dynamic can be used to support users who either find the new breed of consumer electronics too difficult to learn or do not wish to invest the time to learn how they work.

(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

A bright green perspective on sustainable choices [abstract]
Authors: Allison Woodruff (Intel Research), Jay Hasbrouck (Intel) and Sally Augustin (PlaceCoach, Inc.)
Abstract: We present a qualitative study of 35 United States households whose occupants have made significant accommodations to their homes and behaviors in order to be more environmentally responsible. Our goal is to inform the design of future sustainable technologies through an exploration of existing “green” lifestyles. We describe the motivations, practices, and experiences of the participants. The participants had diverse motivations ranging from caring for the Earth to frugal minimalism, and most participants also evidenced a desire to be unique. Most participants actively and consciously managed their homes and their daily practices to optimize their environmental responsibility. Their efforts to be environmentally responsible typically required significant dedication of time, attention, and other resources. As this level of commitment and desire to be unique may not generalize readily to the broader population, we discuss the importance of interactive technologies that influence surrounding infrastructure and circumstances in order to facilitate environmental responsibility.

Breaking the disposable technology paradigm: opportunities for sustainable interaction design for mobile phones [abstract]
Authors: Elaine M. Huang (RWTH Aachen University, Motorola Labs) and Khai N. Truong (University of Toronto)
Abstract: We present a qualitative study of mobile phone ownership, replacement and disposal practices geared towards identifying design opportunities towards sustainable mobile phone interfaces. Our work investigates how people understand the lifespan of their phones, what factors, such as style, service contracts, and functionality, affect how they attribute value to their phones, and their awareness and actions regarding mobile phone sustainability. Our findings reveal the complexity of the actions and decision-making processes involved in phone ownership and replacement. We use these findings to present open areas for sustainable interaction design and generate seed ideas for designs and services to provoke thought and further exploration towards more sustainable mobile phone interfaces and practices.

Sustainable millennials: attitudes towards sustainability and the material effects of interactive technologies [abstract]
Authors: Kristin Hanks, William Odom, David Roedl and Eli Blevis (Indiana University at Bloomington)
Abstract: This paper describes the design and interprets the results of a survey of 435 undergraduate students concerning the attitudes of this mainly millennial population towards sustainability apropos of the material effects of information technologies. This survey follows from earlier work on notions of Sustainable Interaction Design (SID)—that is the perspective that sustainability can and should be a central focus within HCI. In so doing it advances to some degree the empirical resources needed to scaffold an understanding of the theory and principles of SID. The interpretations offered yield key insights about understanding different notions of what it means to be successful in a material sense to this population and specific design principles for creating interactive designs differently such that more sustainable behaviors are palatable to individuals of varying attitudes.
(See also this interview by Luca Chittaro)

Ecovillages, values, and information technology: balancing sustainability with daily life in 21st century America [abstract]
Authors: Lisa Nathan (University of Washington)
Abstract: This project seeks to provide a rich account of the adaptive process that occurs as individuals with explicit value commitments interact with information technology. Specifically, ethnographic methods are being used to investigate the information technology adaptive process as it unfolds in the daily life of two ecovillages, communities made up of individuals striving to balance their use of technology with a lifestyle that is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. Anticipated research outcomes include: (1) an analytic description of information technology adaptive process; (2) a categorization of technological functionalities which support or constrain certain values, (3) an empirical extension of Value Sensitive Design, and (4) an analysis of the negotiation around tensions which emerge as a community’s values influence the use of information technology features and, reciprocally, as information technology features influence a community’s values. Most broadly this work contributes to our larger understanding of how the information technology adaptive process influences the human experience.

“China Mobile, Softbank and Vodafone have agreed to establish a Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) to promote the development of new mobile technologies, applications and services. The three companies expect the initiative will help to accelerate the commercial deployment of mobile internet services.

The three companies will use the JIL as a platform to develop mobile services and drive innovation and synergy in the industry to the benefit of their combined global customer base. The JIL will launch projects based on emerging technologies and market demand.

The JIL will focus on the rapidly growing areas of mobile internet services, such as mobile widgets. Initially, the JIL plans to develop a platform for mobile widgets to encourage the development of innovative new services that can leverage mobile operators’ unique capabilities.

This move is expected to enable different widgets and applications to run seamlessly on different handset platforms and operating systems across different mobile operators, while safeguarding customer security, data privacy and billing systems. The development of a widget platform is expected to benefit both developers and users. The JIL also welcomes the co-operation of vendors and developers in the creation of new applications and services.”

Marc Laperrouza (of LIFT) comments:

“So is this the signal that the two operators are finally coming out of the woods and prepared to use their huge subscriber base to drive the future of the mobile industry? For sure, cooperation will be useful to speed the roll-out of mobile internet services. It will also allow them to better face the upcoming battle with Google and Yahoo - who are also keen to occupy the mobile space. It is also interesting for China Mobile - and China in general - since it will be one of the first attempt to approach standardization in a bottom-up fashion - from the market - rather than top-down - from the government. We may be witnessing China Mobile’s first steps into becoming a global mobile operator…”

“Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia has begun experimenting with user-generated innovation. That’s the premise behind Nokia Beta Labs, a Web site where the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they can help make the mobile Internet more useful.

“Beta Labs is part of a broader push by Nokia to harness customers and partners in the service of innovation. At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. And over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones. By yearend, more than half the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas, so to exploit this mega-trend Nokia’s researchers visited shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana.”

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Nokia’s advanced design team today shared “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices. The team is exploring specific environmental and social issues including recycling, energy and how to make the benefits of mobile technology available to more people.

The project is being run by the same team who created Remade – a concept first shown at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year and that explores how recycled materials may be used in the future to make mobile devices. At today’s event in Nokia’s London design studio the team showed for the first time some of the other concept they are working on. These are:

• Zero Waste Charger concept - this explores ways to reduce the energy that is wasted when chargers are unplugged from a mobile device but left plugged into a live mains socket.
   
• People First concept – this concept takes three human universals of the way people think about communication – time, lists, and people – to inspire and examine new user interface ideas.
   
• Wears in, not out concept – as more services become available on our mobile devices this concept explores how people could potentially upgrade their devices digitally rather than physically in the future, giving people an additional choice on how they use and update their mobile phones.

The design team developing these concepts works on a time frame of looking three to five years out into the future. By sharing some of these ideas and stimulating a discussion they hope to develop innovative new ideas that can be used both within Nokia’s own business but also more broadly to drive environmental improvements.

- Photos of the concepts
- A beautiful presentation by Rhys Newman (pdf)
- Further background by team members Julian Bleecker and Raphael Grignani and on Nokia Conversations

A deep dive, ethnographic approach was taken including a series of in-home interviews, going out and about with people, diary keeping and a torture test whereby PC browsing was banned for five days in order to assess the true potential of the mobile.

Although, there is a whole website dedicated to the project, I still have no idea what the real research results are. Here is what the press release says:

The main results of a qualitative study commissioned by Buongiorno are:

• Embracers versus Pragmatists: in the mobile internet scenario, two key attitudes towards mobile phones and browsing were revealed
• Mobile browsing depends mainly on four reasons: socialising; searching for information or entertainment; continuing actions started on the PC/internet; content downloading (music, video, games)
• Virtuous, or Vicious? Confidence with technology determines the relationship with the medium and the use of related services
• The impact of convergence: there is still a long way to go!

At the 10th anniversary commemoration of IBM’s India Research Lab, the company this week unveiled a new initiative to bring even more features and functions to mobile devices as they continue to rival the PC as the primary tool for Web-based business, education, communication, entertainment and more.

The new IBM Research program will entail a number of efforts to bring simple, easy-to-use services to the millions of people in the world who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing technology, and are instead using their mobile phone to access the web, conduct financial transactions, entertain themselves, shop and more.

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PCs weren’t necessarily designed for end users in the early days. They were designed for developers to create applications, or corporations to make their workers more productive. But mobile computers, whether they are smartphones, mobile Internet devices, or whatever, are fundamentally different; they’re with us at all times and are used on the go, not as stationary, sedentary terminals. And they are used as social devices, whether that’s planning a get-together with friends, taking pictures at the party, or as the ultimate arbiter of extremely important barroom arguments such as who had the most home runs for the 1993 New York Mets (Bobby Bonilla).

Card focused on the look and feel of the software that accompanies smartphones. He used Apple’s iPhone as his example, and examined how the iPhone was designed according to four different human factors: social, rational, cognitive, and biological. […]

“Mobile computing is much more intimately tied to a user’s life. You need to design simultaneously on at least four levels, and functional design is not the only requirement,” Card said.

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He thinks the “world is going to see a transformation through the convergence of four factors: people-driven processes, change for the rest of us, human-centered science, and emerging methods”.

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Julian and (LIFT conference’s) Nicolas Nova are the co-founders of the Near Future Laboratory where client work focuses on developing emerging and conceptual design-technology for new interactive experiences. Jan Chipchase and Duncan Burns are his colleagues in the studio.

In a long post on his blog, he explains why he made this decision:

“Time for the next chapter. Shortly, I’ll be officially joining a fantastic little studio within Nokia Design called Design Strategic Projects. It’s a studio of very clever, insightful and thoughtful designers and researchers. It’s a playground of big ideas, and plenty of support to work them through. There are some big questions and even bigger opportunities to continue the work I’ve been doing in the gaps between creative practices, technology and critical analytic thinking.”

Julian was recently in Turin, Italy, as a guest of the Bruce Sterling curated Share Festival, and I met him at a small party organised by the Turin-based participatory planning firm Avventura Urbana.

In his post, Julian also gives some background on the Studio:

The studio was formerly called Insight and Innovation. The work they did in that guise is pretty much exactly the sort of work I should be involved in. It combines analysis, visual storytelling, probes about new interaction paradigms, and speculative near future inquiries into new interaction rituals. One project that recently bubbled up to the public spotlight is called Remade, a phone made entirely from upcycled and recycled materials. It’s actually one central theme in a larger network of principled design projects that are incredibly exciting. What’s more, we’re going beyond talking the talk — appearance models and styling are well and good, but this is a design studio that will be making objects that function, turning their design principles and theory and coupling it tightly to everyday practice. There’s been some recent press about the studio and its people if you want some more insight. In the near future, there’ll be more of a public voice to the studio’s work. This was one of my central discussion points when we started late last summer chatting about my joining the studio, and every rung of the ladder up the leadership, across several international borders has indicated that this is indeed part of the mission.”

Nokia’s user anthropologist Jan Chipchase is becoming very popular. Just a day after the Economist, now one of the world’s top newspapers has published a 6,000 word feature on him, in its highly regarded Magazine of all places.

“Chipchase is 38, a rangy native of Britain whose broad forehead and high-slung brows combine to give him the air of someone who is quick to be amazed, which in his line of work is something of an asset. For the last seven years, he has worked for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia as a “human-behavior researcher.” He’s also sometimes referred to as a “user anthropologist.” To an outsider, the job can seem decidedly oblique. His mission, broadly defined, is to peer into the lives of other people, accumulating as much knowledge as possible about human behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to the company — to the squads of designers and technologists and marketing people who may never have set foot in a Vietnamese barbershop but who would appreciate it greatly if that barber someday were to buy a Nokia.”

Jan, congratulations!

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The video is part of The Economist special report on mobility and “digital nomads”.

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Consumers “want to access all of their content on all three of the screens with the same user experience, the same interface, and the same quality of service,” Didier Lombard, chairman and chief executive officer of France Telecom (FTE), told an audience of TV and film producers on Apr. 9 at MIPTV, an international audiovisual conference in Cannes. […]

In his Apr. 9 keynote speech—the first ever given by a telecom CEO to the assembled TV and media executives in Cannes—he asserted that without their content, his network risked becoming a “dumb pipe” that merely carries traffic for other people who skim off the profits. At the same time, he said, “I am certain that my network can give far greater value to your content.” The telecom infrastructure, he said, is better suited than alternatives such as cable or satellite to respond to the increasingly personalized and interactive expectations of customers.

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