By Lukasz Mendyk and Piotr Piatosa

The advent of the mobile internet has been a great success, but it also appears to have opened Pandora’s box. The problem is that the surge in data consumed by users is not compensated for by an adequate growth in revenue. This is mostly due to the fact that in order to promote the mobile internet CSPs have introduced flat rates. The tension is even greater because the real beneficiaries are over-the-top players like Google, whilst CSPs seem to have been cast the role of ‘dumb pipe’ providers. As a result, CSPs are seeking a way out, in order to be able to fill the gap between increasing costs and flat revenues. As a remedy, a concept has emerged that exposes service delivery platforms to third parties, including the community of developers, has emerged. The concept is closely related to the idea of operator application stores.

Critics of this approach argue that telco operators lack the competences to provide a platform for developers, and that the API provided is too limited to be attractive to developers. Moreover, the problem is that the only platform which really holds any significance for developers is the Web itself.

From an end-user perspective we might say that problems encountered by CSPs are exactly that: their problems. However, this belief is slightly naive as it is always the customers who finally pay the costs. When looking more closely at the surge of data consumed by end-users, it turns out that the majority of data is consumed by relatively small user groups. These groups are either peer- to-peer application riders, YouTube addicts or alike. What does this mean for the average user who probably only needs email access or basic web browsing services when he/she is on the go? Well, it is likely that they will pay extra to cover the costs generated

means that the majority of users pay more, so high data usage users can pay less. Suffering from a poor QoS is even more evident, as inevitably, when accessing the internet, each of us has recognized that the real bandwidth is far smaller than advertised by the CSPs.

The solution, which is expected to solve both CSP and end-user problems, is shifting the role of telco operators. Instead of selling Mbps, operators will be able to sell service and application enablement. This means that application connectivity with the appropriate QoS is tuned to a service. From the end-user perspective it is the services and application, with embedded connectivity, which are purchased. Embedded should mean that connectivity costs are included in the price for the service/application. For the end-user it enables maintaining unconstrained access to their most favored applications/services without the need to count minutes or kilobytes. For CSPs it enables receiving compensation for network costs