Open Source Mobility Test Lab

Telecom operators provide VAS (Value Added Services) in partnership with individual application developers and small to medium ISV (Independent Software Vendors). DoKoMo for example has Open Platform strategy, and therefore it generates 40% of its ARPU from data services. It keeps just 9% of the revenue collected from the end-user and passes the rest to the VAS application developer.

Contrast this with the present (2009) VAS revenue share model, where anywhere between 15% to 30% is passed to the VAS Developer while 70% is retained by the Telecoms Operators.

This game is likely to change in near future, as NTT DoKoMo has acquired a 26% stake in Tata Teleservices (TTSL) and it will help TTSL to increase VAS revenue!

As the rules of revenue share change, the VAS game will change too. Operators will need to recruit more independent developrs and also provide standards based value added Services Delivery Platform (SDP). Open Source can drive down costs as well as barrier to entry.

What is a Mobility Test Lab?

A Mobility Test Lab, is a Quality Assurance (QA) and Certification: Aptest for example provides server side QA, whereas Device Anywhere proives mobile client side test facilities.

Mobility Lab can be an independent entity, like the two examples given above or can be a part of a Telecom Oerator's VAS delivery platform.

Such labs help assure quality as well as ensure that the stated application meets compatiability and scalability criteria and is safe to deploy in an production environment.

Open Standards and Open Source

Telecom operations are standards driven and open source drives down costs. The Project Destination provides a prrof of concept for an end-to-end open source SDP architecture.

There are two types of Mobility Applications, server side and client side (mobile hosted). Even for complex applications that have both client and server side components, we can treat them as two seperate applications, by virtue of standards based API (Application Provider Interface)

From the application developer's presepective server side applications need to adhere to these set of protocols/standards based API.

SMPP (Short Message Peer to Peer), Logica provides an Open Source implementation.

Parlay provides a set of Web Services (Parlay-X) and UML based models. While Parlay-X API are web services, which can be generated through automated tools like JAXB. While the java APIs for Parlay/OSA can be generated from Rulebook (UML to IDL to Java).

The Schematic Blocks