Futurity Media is a content marketing agency based in London. We help some of the biggest technology brands in the business communicate with their customers and stakeholders. Our clients include Orange, Alcatel, Siemens Enterprise Communications, SITA, VMWare and Juniper.

The work we do is varied, but is always focused on producing high-quality content for our clients. We write newsletters, whitepapers, reports and web site content, manage blogs, produce infographics and support marketing campaigns.

What we are looking for

We are entering a new phase of growth and are looking for a middle-weight IT writer  & editor to help us across all of our marketing projects.

• Because our clients are in the technology space will need to demonstrate you have 2+ years experience in writing about technology, in particular telecoms
• You should have a background in B2B tech journalism or PR
• However, this is not a technical writer role, because we primarily communicate with a business audience. Most important to us is that you are able to write clearly and succinctly.
• We also play an important community management role for our clients on their blogs. This will give you the opportunity to develop your skills in new media, including blog promotion, blogger management and search engine optimization (SEO).
• You will also have the opportunity to travel as part of the role. We are often required to support our clients with live-blogging at their customer events and industry conferences such as Mobile World Congress and Le Web.
• Languages would be a useful additional skill, in particular French.

What we offer

• A competitive salary, between £25k to £38k based on experience.
• Opportunity for homeworking once established
• 25 days holiday.

As part of the recruitment process, there will be a writing & editing test.

If you are interested please email your CV and any examples of writing to info <at> futuritymedia <dot> com.  

The quest to deploy 4G LTE in the United Kingdom has been a drawn out affair, but finally it seems that major steps are underway.

Everything Everywhere – the merged business of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK – is to run the UK’s first 4G LTE trials over 1800MHz. It is due to take place in Bristol from April, subject to regulatory approval.

Building a world-class 4G-ready network for the UK

The deal is a major step forward for the UK’s telecoms & IT industry and will provide many important lessons for the future.

Keen observers will be looking to take learnings on the performance of 4G LTE over its existing 1800Mhz spectrum in both urban and suburban environments and see what effects it has on consumers.

After all, Boston Consulting Group recently declared that the internet contributes to 8.3% of the UK economy, a bigger share than for any of the other G20 major countries. The “internet economy” was worth £121bn in 2010, more than £2,000 per person, researchers said.

Operators are desperate for this new spectrum since currently mobile telephony occupies only 4% of the spectrum suitable for radio transmissions. Many, including the Internet Service Providers Association, have expressed fears that London’s 2012 Olympic Games will find it difficult to deal with a “massive hit on the infrastructure”.

The Bristol trial complements Everything Everywhere’s live customer trial of 4G technology over 800MHz spectrum in rural Cornwall, launched in September 2011 and recently extended to July 2012.

The network claims that the Cornwall trial has demonstrated that 800 MHz is optimal for the roll out of 4G LTE in rural areas.

In the recent Government budget, Chancellor George Osborne identified the 10 large cities that will get ultra-fast broadband and Wi-Fi – following his £100m commitment in his Autumn Statement. The funding will go to Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

Enterprise fears

There are however some reasons for concern. Many enterprises fear that the release of 4G spectrum could result in even more mobile data traffic – much of which will land on Wi-Fi LANs.

According to Gartner, through 2013, 35% of smartphone wireless data traffic will go through private and public Wi-Fi networks. By 2016, the investment in 4G will mean network infrastructure must be poised to support a shift in capacity from voice to data traffic that stems from cellular offload. This shift will introduce new traffic balancing and security challenges.

Phillip Redman, research vice president in Gartner Research, cautions that the changes will test network engineers and the ways they control traffic within their enterprise systems.

“Since mobile networks are based on contention, the more users that share the bandwidth, the slower the speeds. Diverting traffic to non-cellular network technology should improve system throughput. Security provisions will need to be in place to protect corporate data because most public Wi-Fi hot spots do not offer encryption technology, but will support corporate encryption methods, such as VPNs,” said Redman.

Superfast Backhaul

However, Olaf Swantee, CEO at Everything Everywhere, is less concerned. He describes the move as “a great opportunity for the UK to have the 21st Century network that it so deserves, putting the nation on a level playing field with other parts of Europe, the USA and Asia.”

The network operator will first roll out of a nationwide HSPA+ (3.5G) network to provide 50% faster data speeds for T-Mobile and Orange mobile broadband customers and will monitor any side effects the implementation may cause.

In addition to 3.5G HSPA+ 21, trials of HSPA+ 42, which offers significantly faster data transmission than even HSPA+ 21, are due to begin in Q2 with a goal to roll out the technology to customers in Q4 2012. This will be backed by significant investment in mobile backhaul, including the introduction of Gigabit Ethernet products.

Everything Everywhere’s will not be the first commercially available 4G service in the Britain. In February, UK Broadband announced plans to wholesale coverage in London’s Southbank and Borough areas from May this year, though the network does seem to have a headstart on its mainstream rivals.

It will be interesting to see what learnings they take from this trial and how 4G makes a difference to the people of Bristol.

What would you expect from a 4G LTE signal in your region?  Happy Easter to all our readers.

(Disclaimer: One of Futurity Media’s clients is Orange Business Services)

The IP&TV World Forum came to London in March, announcing it is to be rebranded as TV Connect, to echo the evolving industry and rapidly converging TV market. The event, which is now in its eighth year, saw a number of debates around the development and the deployment of IP delivered TV with cablecos, satellite, terrestrial broadcasters, content providers and telcos all providing enhancements to their services through Internet connectivity.

Presented at the event were the results of a recent industry survey from Informa Telecoms & Media on the “Future of TV”, in which over 20% of respondents felt that social networking sites like Facebook are best-placed to build an audience for paid digital content, compared with only 16% for network operators.

Potential for the mobile ecosystem

Despite Facebook’s minimal investment in TV compared with Apple or Netflix to date, the growth of tablets and the new trend for simultaneous multiscreen consumption means that Facebook is in an ideal position to take advantage of the Social TV phenomenon.

Such themes means that portable devices offered out by telecommunications firms stand to gain from mass consumer interest, if they are exploited in the right ways.

Telcos will have a major advantage as enterprises and consumers move video services to the cloud. For those utilising services such as videoconferencing and streaming in presentations, carriers advanced in HD channels will be able to offer the biggest differentiation for their IPTV service over cable rivals.

However, critics have indicated that it is the failure of telcos to become mediacos that has previously led to a lack of understanding over the value of content. Major advancements are on the way though, including the dawn of a seamless multiscreen video service through the cloud.

The app experience that many have bemoaned on TV will become the norm on handsets/tablets and enterprises will have to be ready to adapt to this new change. After all, stakeholders stand to benefit from a deeper dialog with their consumers, provided it is two-way.

Enhancing hardware on devices

Mobile hardware is being advanced to keep up with this demand. DTS, Inc., specialists in high-definition audio, used the conference to announce a partnership with leading mobile multimedia software vendor NXP Software to integrate a suite of DTS audio technologies in their QuickPlayer and CineXPlayer smart media player solutions.

The company says that in a fragmented media world, it is difficult to deploy differentiated new media services to a broad range of connected devices. It will addresses these challenges by providing a scalable audio solution facilitating delivery of high quality audio from stereo to multi-channel for digital content.

The collaboration with NXP Software enables studios, service providers and network operators to rapidly deploy HD video services with the highest quality audio to a wide range of Android and iOS smart phones and tablets.

Cees Geel, managing director, NXP Software, says: “We believe that a high quality audio experience makes these devices much more valuable to consumers and allows them to enjoy and share a highly engaging and immersive entertainment experience.”

Brian Towne, executive vice president and chief operating officer at DTS, Inc. adds: “By adding DTS audio into LifeVibes smart player solutions such as CineXPlayer and QuickPlayer, we make it easier for studios, service providers and network operators to deploy superior audio regardless of the platform.”

Meanwhile there have also been some noticeable acquisitions of late: Cisco has bought a British digital video firm NDS for $5bn (£3.2bn)pledging to integrate mobile and social elements into the TV experience, while Vivox, developer of the VoiceEverywhere voice/video/chat platform acquired Palo Alto, Calif.-based Droplet Technology, for an undisclosed sum.

Lee Ann Lim, Head of International Video Business in Orange, has more information on the importance of video on mobile here and looks at how best to utilize mobile video here.

Are you encouraged by the progress made by telcos around the future of TV?

This week, Futurity Media was in attendance at London’s UC Expo to see what was making the industry buzz about most in 2012. The answer, it appears, is the dawn of what many are calling “the new workspaces”.

A common theme recurrent in the seminars we attended was how enterprises can deal with the consumerisation of IT as smartphones continue to proliferate and tablet sales begin to cannibalise desktop PCs.

According to a survey compiled by Bitdefender for Unified Communications Expo 2012, a majority of organisations (64%) believe nearly all or at least three quarters or half of their employees want to use their personal devices for business purposes – aka the phenomenon known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

The survey, which gathered the attitudes and opinions of over 100 business leaders attending the show, found the main reason employees want to use their own device for work – such as a laptop, tablet or smartphone – is because it is more convenient to use the same device for both personal and business use. This is closely followed by the fact that employees prefer the look and feel of their personal phone/device.

As Richard Edwards, Principal Analyst at Ovum put it: “Employees are bringing requirements and expectation levels to the workplace that is based on their experiences in the consumer world. They want to use their own devices, and cannot understand why they can’t collaborate, search and connect to business applications whilst on the move. Delivering on such expectations is difficult.”

The show survey confirms that most employers (62%) are under more pressure to introduce mobile or flexible working practices than they were five years ago. Furthermore, the research shows that businesses are under prepared to handle the implications of BYOD with 56% not having policies, procedures or systems in place to manage employees’ personal devices for work purposes.

Whilst the key advantages for implementing BYOD are seen as improving employee satisfaction, productivity and reducing costs, the greatest concern is security, particularly when it comes to allowing remote access to the corporate network (57%).

So what was the solution offered out? Well, no-one seemed to have a concrete answer to this dilemma, but everyone had a sales pitch to be made – as you’d expect from a trade show.

It was evident that the market is still relatively immature at dealing with this situation though advances were being made. The Microsoft Lync solution was one that was particularly making a conscious bid to help out enterprise customers with a number of stalls and a series of themed sessions to match.

Its new mobile partner, Nokia, was showcasing its latest Lumia range straight out of Mobile World Congress, and attempted to position them as being enterprise-friendly.

Adrian Williams, Director B2B Sales in Europe for Nokia, told a seminar that using the handsets, enterprises can choose to allow, contain, block or embrace mobility in the workspace.

Those companies that show acceptance for consumerisation will see productivity increase, satisfaction enhanced and the company earning a better recruitment and retention of employee’s rate.

Combining Nokia and Microsoft’s business expertise means that enterprises are able to take responsibility and be accountable – something that has been a tough ask to date, Williams claims.

Indeed, the breadth of devices continuously being unveiled with new configurations  is a major challenge for enterprises. Learning how to manage and process actions for each device takes time and even the best device management system needs time to prepare the relevant update to accompany each operating system upgrade. Loyalty to one brand may be a way around this, but employees rarely do all agree on one brand or operating system.

Aside from this ever-growing dilemma, collaboration was also a strong point emphasised at the show.

Research highlighted by Dell showed that 80% of enterprises see international call fees and data roaming charges as their biggest cellular expenditure claims.

Firms such as Shell talked about how they are working around this. Thy switched to a Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) system to cut out said fees, due to employees working in various locations at any given time.

In his keynote, Johan Krebbers, Shell Group IT Architect, said that by switching its entire workforce to a softphone system it has saved on call fees and has greater company visibility. Headsets used by employees now work electronically with MS OCS/R2, Tandbag, Cisco Telepresence and voicemail via MS Exchange 2010 and staff behaviour has noticeably changed with the system change (in a positive way).

These are fundamental shifts to make work as efficient as possible. They drive the collaborative nature of people working and businesses should expand this to allow for more effectiveness.

In the words of one seminar speaker, “we are experiencing a communications revolution”.

Futurity Media have spent the first half of the week soaking up the wealth of material coming out of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Anthony & Stewart have been working from the Fira Montjuïc with a team of professional bloggers, monitoring the very latest developments from the show on behalf of the Orange Live blog. Here’s a snippet of some of their postings on http://live.orange.com/category/high_tech/conference/mwc2012/:

Road test: using LTE mobile broadband for blogging at #MWC

From a radio perspective, Mobile World Congress is one to the noisiest places on earth. Almost every stand has Wi-Fi, causing huge interference problems to the extent that visitors are more likely to get good connectivity with their 3G mobile broadband. We were very lucky to get the opportunity to try out 4G, the next iteration of mobile broadband. Alcatel-Lucent peppered the Fira with LTE macro and metrocells. They brought along 200 LTE Android handsets, tablets and Mi-Fi devices for key executives and bloggers to try out. The Orange blogger team were among them.

Check out the performance in the words of Stewart: http://live.orange.com/road-test-using-lte-mobile-broadband-for-blogging-at-mwc/

welcome to the mobile shopping revolution

Mobile technology is revolutionizing consumer behavior during shopping and the next few years will see ever more radical changes to the shopping experience. This is what the speakers at a keynote at Mobile World Congress from the different worlds of retail, ecommerce and advertising believe. Mobility will drive more changes in the retail and payments in the next five years than we have seen in the last 20. This remarkable claim comes from John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay, which through its ecommerce site and associated payment company PayPal has already done more than most companies to revolutionize our retail experience.

Find out more from Anthony: http://live.orange.com/welcome-to-the-mobile-shopping-revolution/

your phone is a game console, tablet and a laptop #MWC12

Stewart explains how when he blogs, he has an array of devices – each with a different function. The laptop has the all-round functionality, the tablet the portability and the handset has the pocketability.

Find out more: http://live.orange.com/your-phone-is-a-game-console-tablet-and-a-laptop-mwc12/

Anthony & Stewart were part of a top blogging team for Orange:  http://live.orange.com/top-blogging-team-at-mobile-world-congress-for-live-orange-blog/

For full MWC coverage – including all the press events & keynote speeches, please see: http://live.orange.com/category/high_tech/conference/mwc2012

————

Meanwhile, back in London, Joe has been working on ensuring that Orange Enterprising Business Blog – (http://blogs.orange-business.com/enterprising-business/) readers also got a daily dose of MWC information and what it could mean for them. Here are some extracts:

device management shines in Barcelona for BYOD-focused enterprises

Device management appeared to be making a big noise on the opening day of Mobile World Congress. As the likes of Nokia, LG, HTC and Sony unveiled their new smartphones, enterprises were carefully watching SAP and Symantec who unveiled upgraded mobility strategies.

According to Symantec’s State of Mobility Survey – released at the Congress – 67% of enterprises are concerned with malware attacks spreading from mobile devices to internal networks and 65% cited data loss as one of their top concerns for mobile adoption.

Find out more here: http://blogs.orange-business.com/enterprising-business/2012/02/device-management-shines-in-barcelona-for-byod-focused-enterprises.html

will Facebook strike gold with a new community group?

Facebook is working with mobile operators to make phone-based payments easier and has launched an effort to standardize HTML5 to help developers write applications for more mobile handsets, its chief technology officer announced on Monday (27 February) at Mobile World Congress.

After the talk, Orange announced that it is working with Facebook and other industry leaders on initiatives to “create new and compelling mobile web applications and experiences for our customers”. The development could eventually help to make the mobile web become a fusion of the physical world and the digital world, changing the way consumers and enterprises engage with social media.

Find out more here: http://blogs.orange-business.com/enterprising-business/2012/02/will-facebook-strike-gold-with-a-new-community-group.html

NFC set to take over the world

Your mobile is your new wallet. That’s been a key message running for at least a year now, but adoption has still been crawling at a snail’s pace. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it seems that the tech world and the financial world are looking to reawaken things. Will these announcements have an impact?

Arguably the biggest announcement in the world of Near Field Communications (NFC) is the newly formed strategic alliance between Intel and Visa.

Find out more here: http://blogs.orange-business.com/enterprising-business/2012/02/nfc-set-to-take-over-the-world.html

keeping the dream of upward mobility above

Eric Schmidt’s appearance at Mobile World Congress was arguably the most hotly anticipated session of the event. So what lessons has he offered for the enterprise community? In a speech focused on the future, he emphasised to the audience that “Developers are the builders of human freedom”.

Particularly talking about enterprises, he said that the benefits of technology to small businesses, was that it was “Keeping the dream of upward mobility above. [It’s] more than collective of machines, it is a collective of minds.” So how can you take the best out of these short motivational sentiments and apply them to your work?

Find out more here: http://blogs.orange-business.com/enterprising-business/2012/02/keeping-the-dream-of-upward-mobility-above.html

Our recruitment campaign has finished and we have hired a new writer at Futurity Media. We had some great applications both from social media and SourceThatJob, so thanks for all your efforts. Joe will be a valuable member of our team working across all of our clients and will be based in our Islington offices.

Joe Fernandez joins Futurity Media after a career in trade journalism working for publishers including TechTarget, Centaur Media, Reuters and E-Health Media. He was an editor looking after networking for Computer Weekly and Microscope magazines. He also worked as a deputy editor for Marketing Week’s sister title Pitch covering online marketing and social media developments and looking after the Telecoms & IT sectors, after a period writing for Marketing Week magazine.

He trained in IT journalism after graduating in 2006 with Reuters and headed up news coverage for E-Health Insider shortly after, uncovering key developments in the ill-fated National Programme for IT. Joe has also appeared in titles including New Media Age, Guardian Computing, Computing Magazine, The Inquirer and Mobile Magazine.

Joe can be reached at: joe <at> futuritymedia.com and on twitter @joe_m_fernandez

This is an infographic we created for Orange. It might be a little text heavy for some, but we like it.  Unified communications is going to be a key tech theme in 2012 as both execs and consumers struggle to cope the weight of communications noise, exacerbated by a plethora of social media feeds. More on that in my next post, from Le Web 11 in Paris.

Feel free to share,  but please link to the original at: http://blogs.orange-business.com/unified-communications/2011/12/infographic-unified-communications-collaboration-in-the-workplace.html. It’s a great blog, you should follow it.

If you would like Futurity to help you create an infographic, drop us a line.

We created this infographic for Orange Business Services because there is so much confusion around the term Cloud computing: to some people its apps, to others its servers, to others it just means “on demand”.

The truth is that is all these things and more.

The boffins in Orange Labs see a multitude of Clouds emerging so we want to show this vision, but also trace it’s history.  Cloud computing is not a revolution as such as you can trace emergence back to the first days of the internet. It’s really a story about how IT has evolved.

It was first published on the Orange Business Live blog here and there is a really cool version on Slideshare here. It interesting to compare the two formats.

Thanks to the designers who worked on the different formats, Rose Zgodzinski and Mark Jaeckel.

Femtocells, small cells, pico cells, metro cells…whatever you call them, we write about them. We’ve been contributing to a key femtocell blog for over two years, and probably know more about femtocells than most.  We think they are a pretty impressive technology that will be fundamental to how the mobile network is constructed in the future. And just to prove that we eat our own dogfood, as they say, I use a Vodafone Sure Signal femtocell at home, and it really does give me five bar coverage. When it’s unplugged from the router, my signal quality drops off a cliff.

Just as a taster of our femto market commentary, here’s a piece that my colleague Paul Golden recently wrote for Wilson Street….

A combination of more data-hungry devices and higher service expectations on the part of users has created a ‘perfect storm’ for mobile broadband providers, who are likely to look to small cells to address some of their network coverage and congestion issues.

According to the International Telecommunication Union, there were 872 million active mobile broadband subscriptions last year. Based on growth rates for the previous 12 months it is reasonable to assume that there are now more than one billion users worldwide.

The pressure this growth is placing on networks has been well documented. A survey conducted by YouGov found that 77% of mobile broadband users in the UK encountered some form of quality of experience issue over the last 12 months. More than half complained of slow speeds and 42% reported connection problems.

The survey suggests that the availability of time sensitive, data-heavy applications and services has created a generation of more demanding users, but this does not mean that coverage and broadband speeds are not a legitimate cause for concern. UK regulator Ofcom’s research into mobile broadband speeds published earlier this year found that network availability and performance varied significantly – even within small geographic areas.

Access problems everywhere

Access speeds are a concern in many other parts of the world. According to Pyramid Research, wireless networks in the US are already operating at 80% capacity and a new report by Strategy Analytics has found that mobile broadband speeds can have a major impact on consumers’ choice of service provider. Three quarters of smartphone users surveyed were attracted by faster browsing and download speeds according to the firm, which examined the advertising techniques and services adopted by network operators in the US and Europe and predicted that pricing innovations would accelerate as more LTE products become available.

YouGov recommends that mobile operators compete on service quality of experience to improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn. Yet one of the UK’s largest mobile broadband operators has claimed that without acquiring additional spectrum it could run out of network capacity in urban areas as early as next year.

An obvious solution is wider use of small cells. There is evidence that a more flexible approach to network development incorporating femtocells could ease congestion in towns and cities. A number of reports have identified the metro market as one of the driving factors in femtocell growth as operators use femtocells to provide fill-in coverage for congested metro areas and Ofcom has referred to the need for mobile networks to be designed intelligently, which is expected to translate into greater use of small cells to meet demand in specific areas.

Operators will have to work hard to manage customer expectations if the findings of speed tests conducted by broadband comparison service Broadband Genie are anything to go by. The data indicates that advances in download speeds have slowed, with most service providers struggling to reach 2Mb and speeds rising little over the last 12 months.

The UK government has pledged to improve access to mobile services by committing £150 million to install new phone masts in areas of poor or limited coverage. The procurement process will commence in 2012 and is planned to bring access to 99% of the UK. In the meantime, concerns remain over the roll out of LTE services. Spectrum auctions are scheduled to take place in mid-2012, but speculation is rife that operators will challenge the process and regulator Ofcom is likely to allow operators five years to reach 95% geographical coverage.

This article, written by Futurity writer Paul Golden, first appeared on Wilson Street, a femtocell blog from Alcatel-Lucent. To read more about femtocells, visit www.wilson-street.com

At Futurity we frequently write case studies, for clients including SITA, which provides technology for the air transport industry – encompassing airports, airlines and associated services. Below is an extract of a case study we worked on with the local marketing team based in Latin America to cover SITA’s work in Mexico. The case study involved speaking to people in multiple languages in multiple countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Switzerland – both from the airports and SITA. 

With technology solutions ranging from automated check-in to resource management, SITA works with airports across Mexico to help them compete for airline traffic, maximize efficiencies and improve customer service.

Mexico is the 11th most populous country in the world with an airport infrastructure to match. There are 35 major airports across the country and Mexico is a significant player in the international air transport industry (ATI). The country’s Mexico City airport is the largest in Latin America and moves in excess of 24 million passengers every year.

SITA has played an important role in helping airports across Mexico attract airlines and make their operations more efficient, with solutions ranging from CUTE (Common Use Terminal Equipment) and CUSS (Common Use Self Service) shared check-in infrastructure to airport management solutions (AMS) to optimize airport resources and operations.

SITA has been working with Mexico’s airports since 1993 and has successfully executed a number of high-profile projects in significant tourist destinations such as Cancun and Puerto Vallarta, and business travel locations such as Guadalajara and Mexico City.

Solutions deployed include an airport operational database (AODB) to automatically track movements for more accurate billing and reporting, a resource management system (RMS) to optimize the allocation of expensive airport resources, flight information display systems (FIDS) to improve customer service, and common-use check-in systems (ie, CUTE) to speed up passenger and baggage processing.

The success seen by SITA in Mexico has been driven by its proven results and presence on the ground, as Norbert Steiger, Sales VP, Latin America & Caribbean, SITA explains:

“We have a good track record in important locations such as Cancun, offer a good level of service, have dedicated people and proven capabilities,” said Steiger.

“Delivery of our services is handled by SITA Global Services, which is evolving into a unified services team with a global helpdesk. We also have people on the ground to help with project implementation, such as technicians in all the large airports.”

Industry picking up

After a challenging couple of years in the wake of the influenza epidemic and economic downturn, the Mexican ATI is picking up again, according to the latest figures. Over 24 million passengers travelled in Mexico domestically in 2010 and the country also had 22.4 million international visitors in the same year, served by both international and national carriers.

Read the case study in full at: http://www.sita.aero/content/mexico-airports