 Mr. Jeremy Foster, thank you so much for taking the time for this interview and welcome me to Doha and to the Telecom and Media Conference, the forum, and we'd like first to know, based on your speech today, the value chain for content providers, how do you envision it and what stages does it have? Yeah, I mean I think I hardly have an exhaustive model for you in terms of the value chain but if you start with a consumer at the end it's probably a good place to start and what is the outcome that they're looking for themselves. They're either trying to improve their business or they're trying to improve their private life. Now when it comes to the business they're trying to earn more money, spend less money, or differentiate themselves against their own competition. These are kind of the three main reasons why you ever make any change to business. From a private point of view they're trying to have a better quality of life and depending on if they're older or younger, if they're you know traveling or students or working or whatever that might be, I think this is the place where we start to consider what does this value, what is the outcome of this value of the service that we provide to those consumers and then that's when you start working backwards and thinking well if someone is accessing information to help them you know provide a better value to their own customers, how does that information come to them? Where do they source it? Who is involved in bringing it? And of course at the moment wherever you and I go we usually have our mobile phone with us and we're quite used to the idea that our mobile will be with us no matter where we go and this starts to become part of the mechanisms for delivering us this information and what are we paying for in all the different parts? At the moment we pay some money to our operators of course. Maybe we start to subscribe to news or it was mentioned today that salesforce.com which is a sales application, this is on the internet so we could actually pay a subscription to the internet and then that would be part of the value equation and so if the operator, the internet-based company and me as a consumer if maybe if these things are part of the value proposition, who is getting paid for delivering what and I think this is a good place to stop and really leave all the listeners or the people who are viewing this interview to consider for themselves who am I? Am I a consumer? Am I an operator? Am I creating a service perhaps on the internet or some other way? How does the service deliver value to my consumer so that they'll buy it, they'll enjoy it, they'll value it, they'll keep coming back and what role do I think I should play in terms of that delivering value and you know it can be done in so many different ways not just delivering the technology but it could be refining the website or a portal or an application so it does a better job. There are many different roles to be played and this probably as much of a sound bite we should probably talk about that part now and then people can start think for themselves. What does it mean for me? When we speak of broadband demand, how do you envision the relationship between operator service providers and the regulators from one side from two sides and the consumer? Consumers are really thirsty for more but how do you think service providers and regulators should go with that? Sure, you know the interesting thing is that we work so hard as an industry to hide all of the technology. We hide the cell sites, we hide the the five-drip cables. If we walked outside right now and we looked at the window I would have to carefully point out to you where a base station might be but I can tell you that there is a lot of infrastructure out there and from a consumer point of view we think that maybe my email turns up you know why should it be so expensive? Why should my internet be so expensive? Well actually it's pretty hard. It's pretty hard to roll out infrastructure in order to deliver to no matter where we want to go especially from a mobile point of view wherever we go there's this term called ubiquitous and this comes from the Latin word uberquay and uberquay means everywhere and everywhere is a lot of places you know it's wherever I might go even where we're sitting in this hotel making sure coverage all these things work is not an easy job. To answer your question I think that the value of broadband is consumers they really get it it makes such a difference to their day they can connect to their friends in a way they never could before through Facebook they can find information through things like Wikipedia or Google they can run their businesses more effectively via email or sales portals they see enormous amount of value but over the years we've kind of hidden you know protected them from seeing all the all the all the infrastructure. I think one thing that we do see is that the amount of data being being eaten up by applications like YouTube for example like MySpace and Flickr this is creating a lot of a lot of data which our operators have to carry and and so and how much revenue might an operator be able to earn from carrying all of this data it's less and less and so I rather than say which role the regulator should play well one thing I will say I think they should get involved in the discussion about trying to imagine ourselves five or ten years in the future about you know what what is kind of a where we headed so that we can then work together to try and get there and it's no surprise that all of the equipment that we as as as Ericsson as an industry as vendors that we deliver it's expensive you know it's not cheap stuff so the operators will be looking to make some kind of return on their investment which of course they should yeah and but some of the benefits that will come from this broadband will be from adjacent industries from telecoms it'll be things like transport and logistics petroleum it'll be professional services real estate tourism and the growth in all of these will create a benefit to the country which actually the government will be the the single point of gravity you can see all those benefits and then and then so that that we can see the country has benefited from this broadband and so one thing I would encourage and I see this happening you know across the region is that regulators are working and it's not just regulators it's actually government is working with operators to make sure that the needs of their people are continuing to be met and that innovation can continue to happen and that the right investments are going to continue happening so that from a you know a regional point of view we can continue to ensure that Qatar can you know for example compete on the regional level on an international level okay you've been discussing the use of text messaging as advertising means how do you think this is an effective marketing strategy you know for me text messaging there's no question it's a it's a killer application the interesting thing about this term killer application there's been many definitions but one definition I like is that application which killed the previous way of doing that thing so for example no one really sends a telegram anymore we send an email no one really uses a typewriter anymore we use a word processor like Microsoft Word for example text messaging has become very prevalent and even though there was no previous way of doing things doing this thing this short you know communication I think we can all argue that it's become a killer application everyone uses it I think one of the challenges we have when you mention advertising using text messages is that how do we make sure that the context of the text turning up really makes sense for a for the person who receives it and what I see around the world is operators such as Vodafone and I'm sure there's many others but it's one that I've worked with Vodafone and I know they have very strict policies around things like when I can as a consumer I can opt in that I would like to receive text advertising and it could be related to movies or fast moving consumer goods or sale items or whatever I also see other operators not having such a an approach not being disciplined about making sure that this text delivers value to the end users and what I see some operators doing is simply selling a bulk of texts and then you can just send it whatever you like and I think the real challenge with that is that you know sometimes I get text advertising for washing machines and it doesn't it doesn't doesn't help me I don't enjoy it and in fact you know I actually get annoyed as a consumer to the operator I don't even think of the of the company that's advertising to me I don't I'm not gonna buy a washing machine either but I'm annoyed that the operator hasn't thought about me a little bit more yeah that I know how to turn on the washing machine yeah but I don't really buy washing machines that often you know yeah and so I would encourage all operators everywhere to consider their strategies around using text messaging as a medium very carefully so that their consumers you know satisfied that who they were as individuals was taken care of when that text turned up okay so related to that is your value theory that you spoke about so how does it work yeah what what I talked about was this idea that in the when I first joined this industry about 14 years ago we imagined that one day you would walk past a hamburger shop and they would send you a picture or a text of a hamburger would you like a cheap hamburger and the problem with that is that and we've never ever seen exactly the scenario be successful ever in the world anywhere now the reason why this scenario hasn't been successful is that you need three pieces of information before that that notification is useful okay yes I know we are but are you hungry and have you got any money now if you're starving and you're broke and someone sends you a picture of a nice hamburger you're not gonna be happy sure and so the lesson here for me was that what we need to do is make sure we consider the context of the person before we deliver them anything and one of the big tipping points that I've or tipping technologies we've been talking about today is actually 700 years old hard to believe that something 700 years old would make a difference to us today but you see in some of the in the latest iPhone and we see in some models of Japanese phones which already have you know fast broadband nice TVs nice screen cameras for imaging positioning via GPS or some other positioning we start to see them coming with a compass and the interesting thing about a compass is that now it's not just the system knows where I am it also knows what I'm looking at because you can geospatially record all these elements inside a city for example or in a shopping mall or whatever and now I know where you are if I know where you're looking I can then filter out all of the information which is not context dual to you and so if you imagine for those maths geeks in your audience if you filter out 355 degrees of your 360 and you only just give someone five degrees of that that's 98% of information you just don't even present now what that means is is that as you move around you can start to create some context and what we see in places like Japan for example is that they're actually mixing the idea of the camera you know the viewfinder image with your position the direction you're looking at and so as I look at you know this this image of wherever I might be standing yeah because the system knows where I am knows what I'm looking at it can start to give me virtual information on top of the camera image that I can see now if I'm hungry and I'm hungry quite a bit so I might press the button you know feed me so now when I hold my phone up as I start to look around I use it to start to pop up all these you know icons or adverts or pictures on top of my what I'm looking through with all the restaurants that I might be interested in buying from and of course those restaurants will need to buy advertising rights to be popping up but also the interesting thing is that when I create the context when I give them permission because I said I'm hungry I press the button I'm hungry feed me and so now by definition I'm hungry and I've got money so now you can give me all the information you like and it's the term is it's called augmented reality and I think this will be you know when we when we think of you and I we don't have to be technically savvy for this to really add value to my day and it's like using the virtual world to click on the real world because as soon as you start to see some icon come up over a particular restaurant then you could easily click on that and start to pull some information you could even then say take me there and now your device because it's got a compass it can then tell you which direction turn left turn right go this way go that way because it might be you might say I'm happy to go within five kilometers from here what's around you know and or what's in this direction I'm heading that direction what's in this direction so the value the idea of making sure that the information is is valuable just need to make sure it's delivered in context and I really believe that this combination of these four technologies will and with the compass to help filter out all of that noise and just give us something that's just what am I looking at right now yeah I think that this is going to be a tipping point around how mobile devices will add a lot more value than they've ever done already in the past so is it true that the Arab world is always on the receiving end when it comes to innovation or do you think otherwise I think that the Arab world has two challenges to overcome okay two major challenges the first challenge is that fuel is not expensive mm-hmm the second challenge is that labor is not expensive mm-hmm and if you think about what telecoms telecommunications as an industry does it's not so interesting to think about you know how we change for ourselves it's the impact we have in every other industry yeah and in every other industry we usually have assets and fuel and people and real estate and sales forces and marketing departments all of these things and of course that creates a cost base for our business and we have to earn some money we have to spend some money and the difference is the profit mm-hmm so everything we try and do is we try and reduce our costs and we try and increase our revenue mm-hmm because you have to earn more money than you spend to go to business yeah now some of the expensive things that we have in in the Western world certainly where I come from fuel and people they're very expensive things mm-hmm and and so you know some of the initial innovations that you start to see I believe around the world as things that can make more out of someone mm-hmm get them to meet more customers or you know be able to get more working time in their day or maybe it's fuel consumption mm-hmm I'd like my trucks I have a fleet of trucks they need to you know use less fuel mm-hmm because it's very expensive and maybe I'll implement some GPS tracking solution or some routing solution so so these these major costs in the in the Western world and you know in Asia Pacific where I come from in New Zealand these things start to get people thinking hmm how can I use telecommunications to save me money here mm-hmm and and so I think what happens is is that they start to you know focus on these on these costs to try and reduce them mm-hmm and our our region here is blessed and cursed depending on your point of view yeah every sword is a double edge sure but ultimately they're blessed with amazing natural resources mm-hmm and and I believe that if necessity is the mother of innovation mm-hmm if we take away some of the necessities then we take away some of the innovation mm-hmm and the obvious ones for me are people in fuel and you know the one of the big advantages that the that the this regional region has over the rest of the world is that it's a very powerful strategy to be following and watch out for what everyone else all the mistakes they made and I think that but also as technology evolves you don't need to invest in technology that made sense 10 15 years ago you can invest you can actually leap frog yeah the technology that must that you know made sense before today so I don't think that there is no such thing as a bad a good or a bad thing okay it is the reality and I think ultimately what we'll find is that you know this region will be able to pick up technology so fast mm-hmm because they won't have to climb the difficult stairways that the rest of us have had to climb they will be able to choose what is best and then implement it and the people that I meet as I travel all around they're very very innovative but usually they're innovative to overcome challenges which I don't have to normally face back home the good thing is as you implement technology and they have a need man they can implement it quickly and so I think it will still be exciting to see how this region decides to you know invest in technology and take itself forward but you know being a follower is not such a bad thing mm-hmm so my final question would be net neutrality that's a very hot topic and for those who don't know what net neutrality is can you give us your definition of it how you your take on it yeah I mean net neutrality is a fascinating discussion and you know Erickson's stake in this whole business is that when operators buy infrastructure from vendors like ourselves they cost a lot of money and it's used to carry a lot of data and the metaphor if you like is if you imagine that someone built a six lane highway and it was pretty empty and we would enjoy the highway we would drive our cars and we would get where we want to go and someone decided to put a truck on that highway and and earn some money from that and that doesn't sound so bad and and we didn't think that there was any big deal with that at all okay now what we find is that the amount of data being shifted from for example the the YouTubes and the flickers and the myspaces and you know there's very compelling internet applications and the Googles and so on some of them are monetizing that earning money from it and some aren't but something that we all agree on is that that data has to be carried somehow and the idea of net neutrality is that at the moment the the operators in the world are bearing all of that traffic they bought the equipment some of it they bought from us some of it they bought from someone else and but nevertheless it got paid for and the idea is that all of these internet players they would like because they haven't been charged over and above their own basic access to the internet and their own basic hosting for their servers they haven't been charged for you know when you and I access it wherever we might be and all of the hops between me and them those hops the stuff in the middle that doesn't get paid for by the the application provider of the internet site and of course they would like that everything would keep that happening just like that the net should be neutral it should belong to everyone but unfortunately the laws of economics still reply apply you have to you know earn more money than you spend you got a business someone has to pay there's nothing no such thing as a free lunch and and so the the discussion if you like is between those operators and and the industry who pays for the infrastructure and and as the dramatic I mean it's explosive and we can think of all the words that you can imagine to make it even bigger still the demand and broadband is just so enormous that you know I think that our industry is struggling to keep up and certainly if you throw in the the value proposition of actually earning money I think there's a real question mark over that it's very difficult to be able to shift all this data yeah so meanwhile the these internet sites are basically benefiting from the the network that exists and and and they would like to continue benefiting as if they had now taken our six lane highway and filled it up completely with trucks and and maybe you know you and I get one lane to share with our little cars and and meanwhile these trucks are dominating this this late six lane highway well I believe we're going to start to get to the points of congestion and you know operators are continuing to invest in capacity and we're developing technology to make that cheaper but I believe that the consumption of data is just so enormous that that I think we're all struggling to keep up and so net neutrality is about who should pay should should Google get sent a bill for example yeah because someone accessed a Google site in the United Arab Emirates and the local hub was somewhere else in the world and all of the hops between that should should Google be charged for that as an example and who would be the jurisdiction over such a thing this is a point raised today of course all of our regulators and government they can only have jurisdiction inside their own countries so it's it's not obvious who has an overall jurisdiction of the internet so it's it's it's very a fascinating times and you know from for me there's no black-and-white answer there's always gray everywhere but we're the Ericsson feel that this net neutrality pretending that everything can continue to be free I think that that's unrealistic at best and nonsense at worst someone will have to pay and you know again we're continuing to invest in technology to make it cheaper to shift all those all that data but installing implementing maintaining that equipment will cost money and and that will have to come from somewhere and I think there'll be lots of discussion from here and in as to what is fair and reasonable and there's a very subjective ideas and it should be interesting to see the discussion unfold thank you so much for this lovely interview you welcome you again to do thank you very much