MEF Executive Questionnaire #9: James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus at O2 Telefonica

MEF continues to seek new ways to profile its members and promote the thought-leadership of the senior executives within these companies. We are pleased to launch the MEF Executive Questionnaire to reveal the real people behind the industry in an informal and entertaining manner.

This will be a regular feature of the MEF blog, so make sure you subscribe via email or RSS. If you are a senior executive from one of our member companies and would like to be featured then please contact MEF Marketing Director, Stephen Jenkins.

The ninth in the series is from James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus at O2 Telefonica.

1. Please describe briefly your main company activities and your role within that organisation
Telefonica is a global Mobile and Fixed Line Operator. I run Telefonica’s Developer marketing activities

2. Without necessarily revealing any confidential information, please outline the principal business models your company uses
We come up with services that people are willing to part with their hard earned money for. Communications being our heritage, but we are venturing into new areas, for example with O2 Money.

3. What has been your company’s greatest achievement to-date?
At a macro level, a really smart acquisition strategy. Examples being the acquisition of O2, and more recently recognising the need for innovation by acquiring JaJah. At a local UK micro level, refocusing the company to be marketing led, starting with a total obsession on customer experience and customer satisfaction.

4. What is your company currently working on that is going to move the industry forward?
There are some really innovative propositions in development across the company, however it’s not just about new technology, there is an equal focus on providing a consistently outstanding experience from our network and our customer service – the basics that too many companies lose sight of.

5. What is exciting you most in 2010 (either personally or professionally)?
Professionally, that a company with the scale of Telefonica has recognised the potential value in the 3rd party developer market, and is making the necessary investment to capitalise on this opportunity during 2010. I’m very excited at running the global marketing team responsible for bringing this to life.

Personally, nothing as I turn 40 this year so I don’t want to think about it!

6. What is the most important piece of technology in your life?
I’m a total gadget freak, so that is like asking me to pick my favourite child! To avoid upsetting one of them I’ll pick connectivity, because I live online and if I’m not plugged into the net I feel lost!

7. What mobile device(s) do you use?
I swap a lot, but at the moment I’m using a Palm Pre and a Blackberry Bold

8. What’s your favourite application?
Again hard to pick one, but I couldn’t live without Napster To Go as I’m a music obsessive. If that doesn’t quite meet the “app” criteria, then Tweed, Evernote, foursquare, Sky Sports Football Centre are all up there...

9. What’s your ringtone?
Neverland (A Fragment) by The Sisters of Mercy

10. Which mobile industry blogs do you regularly read and why?
Alan Quayle, Telco 2.0, Mashable, VisionMobile, Mobile Industry Review, Venture Beat. Why? So they all buy me a drink the next time they see me ;)

11. What is the biggest mobile content issue that is likely to affect the industry within the next?

Turning Apps from “dumb” to “smart” – read my personal ramblings for more info!

12. Which other MEF member organisation do you most admire?
You have a lot of great member companies, but Getjar leaps off the page – great product and great management team.

O2 Litmus add to their APIs

Following on from our previous post on Vodafone’s promise to mobile application builders to create a dedicated channel to market and a billing system for their services, we’ve heard the news that O2 Litmus has released four new APIs that will allow developer to query everything from the users location, through to what type of device a customer is using, down to whether they have an ‘all you can eat’ mobile data bolt on provisioned on their account.

Rather than cloud the APIs meaning from consumers, O2 Litmus has used "Enabler" as a jargon free name for an API and explained in simple terms how the Enablers provide access to features of the O2 UK network and infrastructure in a secure and managed way. This allows consumers and the content industry to be better educated about what Smartpipe Enablers are the positive potential that they carry. Their jargon-free description of Enablers is as follows:

“Think of Enablers like "plugs" into the O2 UK network. With your permission, App Developers can use these Enablers to retrieve information that helps them to make more compelling services that are tailored to you.”

They then go on to list example uses for types of information an app could retrieve to customise the user experience. As with the Vodafone framework, this openness and transparency is welcome, as success is intimately dependent upon the quality – reliability and simplicity – of the user experience.

MEF will be publishing the results from its Smart Pipe Enablers Market Survey this summer and this will be followed by the first of several White Papers outlining the agreed Service Definitions for Enablers such as bulk SMS, premium billing, short code rental, age-verification, identity authentication and location look-ups amongst many others to work towards a coherent and co-ordinated approach to enablers that delivers cross-operator alignment, sustainable commercial models and regulation of smart pipe enabling services.