Reader Forum: What wireless carriers looking at Europe can learn from ‘Flappy Bird’

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
In May 2013, an obscure, simple little app called “Flappy Bird” appeared in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. There was no marketing, no fancy advertising campaign and barely any promotion from the developer himself.
But through a combination of tweets, iTunes reviews and YouTube videos, the game found a sudden spike of popularity and launched to number one in app stores. Shortly after that, at the peak of his success, developer Dong Nguyen notified users in a tweet that he “[couldn’t] take this anymore” and completely withdrew the app from circulation. The sudden and explosive growth of the “Flappy Bird” app was just too much for him to handle.
There’s a lesson here for mobile service providers and mobile network operators: growth of any kind of mobile services can be viral-like, scaling quickly and unpredictably. There is no way to predict meteoric success in the mobile space, as Flappy Bird and its similarly feathered predecessor, “Angry Birds,” have shown in the last half-decade.
Mobile service providers and mobile network operators need to be prepared to support massive growth and scalability, especially as they expand into new markets. This includes supporting consumer demand for faster connections and better access, as well as additional players entering and competing in the space – whether it’s a mobile advertiser, mobile payments processing service or mobile media provider. Gartner expects the mobile ad market alone will reach $18 billion this year and grow to $41.7 billion by 2017. Because mobile-centric service providers are never sure when or how solutions could take off, they need the backing of local IT infrastructure to support rapid growth and expand in line with market demand. After all, in the instant and mobile world, delays in service could push end users to another mobile service provider.
Going mobile in Europe: one continent, many options
Europe is considered a prime location for mobile-centric companies looking to broaden the reach of their services. The continent’s smartphone penetration rate is around 57% and the average smartphone is expected to produce 2.7 gigabytes of data traffic in 2018, which is five-times higher than the current figure. Not only will connected devices reach more users, but consumers will also use these for a broader range of activities.
But with many options for growth come great responsibility and mobile companies must learn to adapt to the nuanced European market in order to capitalize on its opportunities. For instance, as apps and mobile browsing become more sophisticated and data-heavy, the connectivity infrastructure and coverage that mobile service providers need becomes increasingly important to ensure a seamless user experience. Mobile users are increasingly accustomed to real-time performance and will not accept latency or lapses.
Security should also be top of mind for players in the mobile community, as ING International reported that half of Europeans age 25 to 34 are using some form of mobile banking. Mobile users must trust that their sensitive data is being sufficiently protected by mobile service providers. European countries also have different laws when it comes to data privacy and compliance, particularly in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance. As companies expand into Europe, they’ll need to consider various jurisdictions of data and understand what their assets are subjected to, based on where the data is stored. Many mobile service providers will find that deploying a hybrid infrastructure ensures they can protect important customer data while also complying with regulation.
When mobile service providers make their initial foray into the European market, of course, they must first embrace its fragmentation. If the infrastructure for the service is located in one country, it could mean latency and second-rate performance in another; however, certain infrastructure deployments like well-connected data centers ensure optimal application and network response times.
Ultimately, to guarantee a smooth rollout of a mobile service across multiple countries simultaneously, mobile providers should deploy their IT infrastructure in multiple data centers across Europe. When mobile providers are looking into Europe, they don’t want to deploy the service to just one country –they want to test it in certain regions and then move on to others. This is why having access to multiple data centers in or close to city centers across Europe is so important. It guarantees scalability, optimal service continuity and a seamless transition when mobile providers are ready to expand.
A co-located community
To overcome challenges in fragmentation and security, mobile entrants to the European market are choosing to host their network infrastructure and systems with providers that offer unified services across Europe, with multiple facilities to support them. In addition to offering multi-layered security and power with built-in redundancy to quickly scale and support new business growth, mobile players that colocate infrastructure in carrier-neutral data centers, for instance, benefit from close proximity to other carriers, ISPs and connectivity providers that form connectivity hubs for the thriving mobile community. It’s through these communities of interest that mobile service providers are able to optimize content delivery to customers.
At the same time, communities of interest help mobile companies create new revenue opportunities and leverage cross-connects in order to provide a higher quality of service and low-latency connections to suppliers and end users. Much more than just data center operators, carrier-neutral providers become objective consultants and business partners, too, offering advice on marketing, technical specifications and regional nuances. For instance, a provider with data centers across Europe will have knowledge about cultural differences in specific regions and can answer questions ranging from the regulations in Spain to the most effective strategy for deploying in Central and Eastern European markets.
Another benefit? Carrier-neutral facilities by their very nature guarantee that connectivity will run as efficiently as possible, at all times. Even when demand is volatile, carrier-neutral facilities are able to provide flexible, cost-effective services without sacrificing security or performance. For example, if one carrier experiences service disruptions, the mobile provider can easily switch to another carrier to ensure uninterrupted service to its end user.
What’s more, carriers introduce their newest services in colocation facilities first, which means as residents of that data center, mobile service providers benefit from the newest innovative services not yet on the market.
And given the rapid success of Flappy Bird, innovation is exactly what mobile-centric providers need to grow rapidly and meet massively expanding demand.