Vasyl Latsanych, VP, Group Marketing, at MTS, on how to go beyond voice. Vasyl tells Martyn Warwick that the Russian operator has become 'a total network company' and sees itself, amongst other things, as the best bridge between Microsoft and its customers.

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Talking to each other is steadily becoming a smaller part of our total communications output.  But what does this mean for the business of arranging telephone calls? Does the call remain as it is? Transmogrify into something else? Or eventually just disappear?  Jeremy Green of research firm Ovum, talks to Martyn Warwick about his new report on the Future of Voice and why operators aren't doing more to add value when news of the 'death of voice' has clearly been exaggerated.

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Listen to Ron Littlefield, Mayor of Chattanooga (Tenn., US) talking about the growing demand in his city for broadband communications services and electricity. Bringing fiber-optic cable all the way to the user provides new, enhanced services — smart grid, video, voice, data and more. Ron Littlefield is proud to talk about his city telling it's a clean and green city, attracting a lot of people and businesses. Thanks to Alcatel-Lucent smart grid infrastructure, Chattanooga is attacking the future in a unique and positive way.

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Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis on why an OTT network "n'est pas une dumb pipe". Yes, Facebook and Google could soon be doing over the top (OTT) voice services in competition with telcos. But, he argues, so could Vodafone! (for example).

In his recently-published report, Telco-OTT Strategies Dean outlines why OTT is not about becoming a dumb pipe, it's about remaining a smart business. Only through embracing an OTT approach, he tells Ian Scales, can telcos compete properly with each other and with their increasingly powerful Internet-based rivals.

Connectivity over the top is a huge opportunity, he says, so instead of casting OTT as the evil bogeyman, telcos should stop talking out of both sides of their mouths, take advantage of LTE as a 'reset' button, and start innovating end-to-end services across each others' infrastructure.

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Giles Corbett, Head of ON at Orange Vallée, loves technology. But what he really finds fascinating are the business models behind it.  My angle, he says, is what disrupts it. How is it that you can take a 1.3 trillion dollar industry and completely change it?  

Giles and his unit's role within Orange is to develop focused products outside the normal scope of the organisation and the broad mission is to explore 'over the top' business models.  Are they only a threat?  Or are they an opportunity?  Giles tells Ian Scales that he thinks OTT is the biggest opportunity that the industry has come across in a long time. 

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Ericsson sees the next 20 years as being focused around the networked society, when we start using networks in a noticeably different way and reap the benefits of total connectivity. But for this to become a reality, the ICT industry needs to be innovative and listen to stakeholders from other industries to discover how society will actually use this new technology.

Featuring: Hans Vestberg, CEO, Ericsson

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