The Mobile & Broadband Forum is an invitation-only, closed door event for senior executives from the global telecommunications industry, including the operator, media, Internet, advertising, and solutions sectors. The theme of the event is “building the new ecosystem for media and telecommunications,” and its mission is to enable participants to discuss and debate what their customers want and how the ecosystem can best collaborate to meet those needs.
 
The mobile and broadband ecosystems are undergoing a period of dramatic growth and change with the emergence of meaningful new services and players and the transformation of legacy industry business models and roles. This current condition is further complicated by the immediate macroeconomic climate, with a global recession fueling uncertainties and clouding decision-making. In this context, understanding customers’ needs, identifying partnering opportunities and executing successful relationships are critical to building a near- and long-term competitive advantage.

The Mobile & Broadband Forum is a closed-door event that excludes members of the press and financial analysts. Additional design principles for the event include exclusivity and seniority of participation, which is achieved through the invitation-only process; the diversity of speakers and audience members across carrier, media, Internet, advertising, and solutions sectors; and the interactivity of session formats without the use of presentations and with a focus on practical and actionable takeaways. The purpose of these design principles is to foster an environment for collaborative and open dialogue and to ensure a valuable networking community for all participants.

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Mobile Apps, Devices, and Platforms—The New World Order

The world of mobile applications, devices and platforms—one traditionally designed by service providers—is now being driven by an ecosystem of carriers, device manufacturers, platform providers and application developers. Not surprisingly, this new order has spawned new business models, partnerships, customer acquisition and management strategies and revenue sharing agreements, all while creating a more fragmented space with disparate devices, standards, stores and technologies competing for market share. Further questions arise from the comparison to and precedent from the broadband Internet world, in which growth led to arguably disproportionate shifts in value creation and influence. This diverse panel of carrier, Internet, and platform executives will examine how mobile industry members should form and leverage new types of partnerships and business models, with an emphasis on lessons from the broadband Internet world, to develop scalable and profitable mobile businesses.
 
CIO Roundtable—From the Office, to the Home and in the Field

Broadband and mobility have opened the door for another generation of enterprise IT capabilities that extend beyond the workplace, from mobile asset management and mobile workforce applications to mobile broadband laptops and unified communications. While these capabilities have the potential to change the way many enterprises do business, enterprise IT executives need to balance making investments with managing budget constraints, ensuring business returns and mitigating technology change risks. Further, enterprise IT executives continue to explore—and place—new and increasing technology requirements for the home and mobile environments. This session will focus on enterprise end customers and what CIOs want from advancements in communications, computing, and networking to more effectively and efficiently achieve their business and technology objectives.
 
The Shrinking Consumer Wallet—Where Are the Dollars Going?

The economic crisis of 2008 had a strong and multifaceted effect on consumer confidence and spending, as consumers are not only tightening their budgets but also reallocating dollars from certain services to others. Multiple viewpoints exist on the elasticity of communications and content to the economic downturn. Within wireless, many analysts predict that consumers will downgrade from expensive wireless plans, delay new handset upgrades and/or substitute wireless for wireline at an increasing rate. Overall within media and communications, many analysts foresee consumers scaling back from subscriptions and/or seeking more affordable bundles of voice, video, data and mobile. All of these dynamics raise questions for carriers and content providers on how to best package and market services to consumers. In the session, a group of market research, information analytic and retailing experts will put the theories to test by sharing their insights and learnings from real customer data and experiences.
 
Music, Video, and Games—Making Money (Finally?) in Digital and Mobile

The advent of digital and mobile media has attracted millions of consumer “eyes” and “ears” from their TVs and radios and to their computers. In the process, new companies the likes of YouTube, Hulu.com and Pandora have created significant popular and business hype. However, the hype has been accompanied with a mixed set of business results and success. Although several areas are making money, many others—such as online and mobile video and online and mobile music—have struggled with monetization and remain in a wait-and-see mode. This panel of media executives, including media conglomerates, music labels, games publishers, wireless carriers and advertising agencies, will look at how the ecosystem of participants should adjust and innovate their approaches to make money in the online and mobile content businesses.

Closing Keynote Discussion
The day will conclude with a broad ranging conversation with senior cable, telecom, and technology leaders. Operators’ roles in the ecosystem are changing drastically with telcos and cable operators fighting for subscribers across multiple services, screens, and technologies. Furthermore, significant and untapped opportunities exist for both sides around Internet and mobile video, e-commerce and mobile shopping, location, advertising, and on demand and app stores, among others. The final panel will feature senior executives across cable, telecom, and technology firms a) how mobility and broadband will continue to evolve as industries and as part of consumers’ and enterprises’ daily lives and operations, b) how operators are viewing, engaging, and innovating in convergence, and c) how the ecosystem of operator, content, infrastructure, device, and silicon suppliers can better collaborate to drive industry success.