French telecom firm Alcatel has unveiled its vision of user-centric broadband services in the Asia-Pacific region to meet the increasing diversified demands of both individual customers and corporate users.

"User-centric broadband isn't somewhere over the horizon, it's here today," said Christian Reinaudo, Alcatel's executive vice-president and president of the firm's Asia-Pacific region.

User-centric broadband means customers share a "unified experience," using a single identity to get different services, no matter whether they use fixed or mobile devices, and enjoy convergence at the network.

"Today, people want more than unrelated broadband services. They want a unified experience that evolves around their needs and their identity, and that personalizes across any device they user," Reinaudo said.

These conclusions are based on the company's recent surveys that people expect new services that are powerful and unified, but simple to use, he said.

Three separate studies over the past three months included an online survey of 2,779 telecommunications users across 12 Asia-Pacific markets, a survey of 1,901 readers of the Far Eastern Economic Review from across the region and four focus groups of youths, young professionals and parents in Beijing and Seoul.

The online survey showed that between 68 percent and 88 percent of users in all surveyed markets would be willing to adopt user-centric broadband applications.

About half of these would adopt certain popular applications and would be willing to pay extra for them.

Far Eastern Economic Review survey respondents and focus group participants were also enthusiastic about applications such as video telephony and mobile video.

All three research reports showed widespread interest in convergent applications and the advantages of user-centric broadband.

"The results show how quickly the needs of Asian telecommunications users are evolving. The growth of the user-centric broadband market creates new opportunities for telecommunications service providers," he said.

Alcatel's research showed that key user-centric applications can be premium services that create new revenue streams and increase average revenue per users.

Reinaudo said telecommunications operators should consider how to bring those services to the enterprises and consumer customers.

He said that user-centric broadband services and applications service providers will differentiate their offerings in a competitive marketplace with customized service bundles that can attract new consumer and corporate users, reduce churn, and increase revenue.

In fact, Alcatel is already working with telecommunications service providers across Asia to cash in on the user-centric broadband development.

Reinaudo expected an increasing share of Alcatel Asia-Pacific's revenue to come from these projects over the next few years.

Alcatel is currently driving several user-centric broadband related projects across the region.

For example, Alcatel's flagship Chinese company, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, was recently awarded a contract by China Netcom to provide a next-generation-network in the Jiangsu Province that will provide up to 500,000 subscribers with user-centric services such as Find-me Follow-me.

In the meantime, Alcatel Shanghai Bell partnered with Shanghai Media Group in June, one of the most powerful Chinese media groups, to integrate TV and video application with 3G and digital subscriber line broadband networks, to provider users-centric services wherever users want.

(China Daily October 18, 2004)