This year I want....

Dear CEO of my Mobile Network,

It has been a great year and I have bene a very good boy. I have stayed loyal to you and when I did upgrade my handset I did so direct rather than accept the wonderful offers from the Upgrade Centre.

So can I ask for just a few things at this time of year?

Firstly I will like you to spend some of your budget on improving the network coverage for you 3G service. I am starting to get upset by the fact that those around me with the same handset get a better signal on their network when I have no coverage. What is the solution? Could it be that you share basestations in order to overcome planning permission issues. I would be happy to place a pico cell on to my broadband connection at home if that means that my phone works at home and if others want to take advantage for the improved coverage that's fine by me!

Next can I ask that you look at Customer Service within your business, the fact that when I have had to call I end up having to send your EA an email in order to get something makes me think that you are more interested in dumb customers than high spending individuals. When I joined your network you had a reputation for excellent customer service but over the last few years you seem to have given up. Perhaps it is time to once engage engage with those of us that have taken out a contract with you. I am sure that the money invested in changing a few process will pay dividends when it comes to ARPU and if we the customer are spending more you will not have to engage in a cost cutting program.

Finally can you stop trying to control my content when it comes to mobile data? Standing in one of your stores a few months ago the hip geek said that he would install Opera Mini on my device so that I could use my handset just as I do my laptop. I use another software add on so that I can once again send the high quality pictures on my phone to my blog; something that SE thought I would do as I have a 3G handset but you decided to remove when you customised the OS.

What chance that my wishes will come true?















Well lets just say that as I am fat enough to play Santa and in a few more years all the hair on my head will be Grey and so I know the truth about how my three girls get all they ask for on Christmas day.

Operators Unite To Build New Mobile Market

Today a GSM Association Press Release tells us that 40% of the Mobile Networks have come together to work on NFC as the solution for Mobile Payments alongside the Equipment manufacturers. My first reaction was NOOOOOOOOOOOO. What about the fact that the last time we saw Mobile Networks work on an interoperable standard we got the failure to launch service that was SIMPAY!

A few shots of coffee later, and I have become a little calmer. This is something under the remit of the trade association and at the moment they are just looking at standards to make the service work. One of the key goals is to build on a secure billing and identity relations that operators have with their customers through the SIM card. I guess this is going to be one of the hardest elements to crack in the development of standards as the system will have to work with the complex relationships between a number of software platforms.

Just hope that Vodafone will see the service for something other than Mobile Ticketing as it has already done in Germany with RMV earlier this year.

Carnival of the Mobilists 53 is Out

This week it is the turn Of C Enrique Ortiz to edit the Carnival, and he has been kind enough to include my post last week about MobIle Monday's 1st birthday in London. I wonder if this means that I might get some answers to what is Voice2.0?

Anyway click on the title and go and read some of the best writing on mobile on the web over the last seven days.

allAfrica.com: Kenya: Safaricom to Revolutionise Microfinance

Vodafone Kenya has joined the money transfer trend in M-Payments. The Mobile payment solutions in South Africa and the Philipines see the majority of large payments being made at the expense of Western Union.

I wonder if we will see the same increase in banking uptake as Standard Bank has seen in South Africa. The Economist reported that the launch of payments by MTN has seen over 700,000 people have joined the banking system. It will be interesting to see if once again it will be the mobile phone that extends the middle class in the emerging markets.

MoMo London is One year old

Last night I attended my fourth MoMo London event, it was also the groups first birthday and one of the three previous I had attended was the launch at Vodafone's offices last November.

Over the last year via MoMo I have made a number of new contacts as well as refreshed a number of others made from the dot com boom days at the turn of the century when I was active in Digital People. Interestingly the quality of MoMo is higher than a number of networks, in that a number of senior industry players attend not just to speak but also to listen, for which great qudos has to go to the band of five behind the group.

Last night we had a number of presentations from Bloggers some I knew and others I had only read thanks to Carnival of the Mobilists etc. All had something of interest to say to lesser or greater extents, but guys why do you need to use powerpoint? The last speak was Paul Goode from m:metrics who had a ton of interesting nuggets gained from the companies research. The soundbite from the night for me is that the average balance on a prepaid phone is less than £4, this goes someway to show just why mobile data services are slow to launch. I guess we can put those plans for mobile2.0 back in the draw for a few more years if thats what we are wishing to retire on.

They question I would have liked to ask but did not get the opportunity to was this, Should we not forget that what we have in our hands is a telephone and as such what will VOICE2.0 look like?

Looking forward to attending some of the events for 2007. Have to say that Shannon Maher and his team at Google London did yet another excellent job in hosting, its just a shame that someone from Orange/T-Mobile/O2/Nokia/Ericsson/Qualcomm does not have the ability to throw open the doors the way he has twice in the last year!

Mobile banking in South Africa

The Economist has a feature on how Mobile's have ment that most South Africans now have bank accounts. In just over a year 500,000 people have signed up for a Bank Account. These people are not the traditional middle class who were enfranchised this is the half of the population who do not have a bank account.

My observation is that with more and more people now using mobiles for banking when are we going to see a useable service on our handsets here in Western Europe? M-Pay has to be about more than just buying content off a portal. When will Orange let me pay for my film tickets rather than send me a voucher to get a second ticket for free?

Carphone told it must change to stay on top!

The Sunday Times Business Section has a detailed article on how Vodafone's cancellation of its contract might be good for the retailer. Having interviewed a number of "senior executives" Paul Durman has done a good job in analyzing the fact that CPW's success has come at the expense of friction with their suppliers, its just a shame that he seems unable to get anyone to go on the record.

I surpass the question is will Charles Dunstone understand that the last 17 years worth of success has been a result of the fact that his customers have been the mobile networks rather than the "punters" who walk into one of his 700+ stores? Or will he be able to find others desperate to take over the Vodafone contracts on his customer database as they become available at the end of the 12 month contract terms?

The article out lines that Virgin Mobile are "keen" on getting their hands on Vodafone's former contract customers. I wonder if the Vodafone customers are keen to experience the "customer" service of NTL?

Chiltern Railways trials SMS mobile phone tickets - Retail

Chiltern Railways have started a trial of e-ticketing sent to passengers' mobiles. I hope to be able to try this service over the next few weeks as Chiltern Railways provide the trains that run almost to time when I have to go into London rather than LUs' Met Line.

The only issue seems to be that you pirchase the tick online, but I guess phase two might allow M-Payment. Then again looking how expensive a train ticket is my ARPU figures would go through the roof if Orange were to allow me to pay via my contract.

Watch this space I'll post an update when I have tested the system.

Operators must cut costs!!!!!!

Mark Newman justifies his Thought Leader title over at Informa Group. With a well argued feature on what were the drivers behind the Vodafone CPW split.

He states that the issue in a market in which everyone who wants a phone has one is churn and the high cost of SACs. Over the last few months conversations with other Consultants has shown that the networks are currently running at SACs of €6 billion in the larger markets in Europe BEFORE advertising. Hence the networks current efforts to get as many as possible onto a contract at that contract to last as long as possible.

The new mantra is CLV when it comes to judging the value of a customer. It is no longer about my ARPU or MOU as with margins falling these metrics are not likely to give a network a view on my value.

The issue that I have with the cost reduction strategy currently in play. What will hold back the drive to cut costs is that fact that Vodafone is a twenty plus year old business and as such has a vast legacy system. It is this legacy anchor that is stopping networks moving forward.

What stopped O2 from following the others leaders in the UK towards the adoption of 3G services? It was not the fact that the Executive did not have a desire to jump into broadband wireless services. It's the fact that its billing system is a basket case and as such its has forced the Executives to manage the assets better than rivals!

I am sure that Vodafone has the same issues when it comes to legacy systems holding back the delivery of services that might just cause customers to increase spending.

With Orange and T-Mobile the businesses are only teenagers but as a parent I know too well what that means in terms of growing pains.

So my question to those working in the Networks is this, what are you going to do to remove the issue of legacy systems? In talking to some of the brighter guys, the issue does not seem to be IMS because that will take too long to come to market but rather SDP. The Network at present with the benchmark for SDP seems to be TurkCell who have something that a large number of others can only wish for when it comes to a blackbox that makes all the new and old stuff work.

For the rest out there I guess what the CEO needs to start talking about at investor presentations is the need to resolve the "legacy anchor" with a Y2K type approach that says we have to stop rushing forward to new technology and do some housekeeping if we are to become more than just a dumb pipe because if we keep going on at this rate thats all we will be able to do. Now which of the Networks has a CEO brave enough to tell the truth?

Why MMS is struggling worldwide

i-mode Business Strategy asks why has MMS failed to take off. The post has a few things that ring true with me and my experiences with my K800i and Orange.

The issue is if I sellect a handset that is aimed at heavy photo users what makes the network think I am going to cut them down just to send them to people who cannot open the file and if they do its two small to see.

If you look at what happened in the days when photography was done on film rather than digital. The user took paper copies of the photos and passed them around friends over a coffee. Now how does a mobile network think that MMS replicates such a service?

I guess that MMS might start to take off if what you are sharring is video. In this week when the kids are on half term holidays from school I am getting short films from them sent via wifi shot with my Nokia N93. This is a time shift service that allows me to be in two places at once. The success of YouTube has shown that others also see the point of sharing video. Who knows as the mobile networks get more people with 3G handsets they might just manage to relaunch MMS as they have managed to turn round the poor perception of mobile data services over the last few years.

However I think that none of these services will take off until you see data bundles sold as part of the main contract. E-Mail also needs to be rolled out in a similar manner to that which we see from Vodafone in Spain using Visto as the tool that gets the users to experience the data services.

Now you can go shopping with your mobile phone

The Guardian technology section has this story on how soon I will be able to replace my Oyster card with a new mobile phone.

The writter does not ask if the solution will work across all the Mobile Networks or will I have to hope that Orange as the only "London" based operator wins the contract?

Last year I met with a Chinese firm that had technology that was being used in China it hoped would be of interest to TfL and the operators. So it might after some 18 months now being set up for a trial.

Some of the handset guys are starting to talk about NFC in something more than roadmap terms, which means that they see a market for this. Google says that one of the lead projects for its mobile service is the integration of checkout solutions in an attempt to make shopping easier on your phone.

Just wonder if the network get how/why payments are important. The failure to launch SIMPAY, the small size of the M-Payments market compared to e-commerce both make me think that it will be the operators that are the major block on this. For the last two years I have worked with a number of people in the payments industry who were/are looking for mobile adoption. Most of them have become less interested in the area in terms of developed economies thanks to the Mobile Networks not wishing to enter the payments market.

I guess we will have to see what happens when the mobile replaces the credit card in terms of micro payments. at worse it might just speed up the que at Starbucks if the retail banks are happy to allow such services.

Goobile tells us about ASK's new service

Over the last few weeks I have stood at mobile events and listend to Google's view on the Mobile Search market. Whilst some of what Google was happy to reveal in "lifting its skirt" has meant I want to ask for more detail, which they are not prepared to do.

In catching up on blogs today I saw Walter Adamson's post on what ASK is doing to make mobile serch work. What looks like something that works well on a small screen and provides fast results gets my vote. Only question is that it's at present an American solution, how soon before it causes problems for Google and Nokia in the mobile search world in Europe?

I guess what ASK are experiencing is the fact that the brand does not necessarily lead consumers to think that they are innovators in the search space and so only look at the site after bigger brands have failed. This is all well and good in the fixed space, but when you are mobile your ability to refine and test serch requests is very short, especially when its raining and you are standing in the street!

Another VoIP hype story

TheIndependent has a small article on fring's mobile VoIP service. I guess Nic Fildes like myself was at the Symbian Smartphone show at the start of the week and thought that this was the best PR spin he had all week.

Having worked for a few mobile VoIP start-ups I have to say that what stops most is that the Mobile Networks are finding way to offer ever increasing bundels which mean that you no longer need to find a way to cut costs. The tell tale sign that this is another technology solution that the market does not need is the opening paragraph that says it works on 3G handset. Take a look at the way such phones are sold and I would say it is almost impossible to use all of the minutes you had to buy in order to get the handset for free, so why do you wish to make free calls?

The last paragraph says that the company is considering generating revenues from advertising; this is just such a winner! So because I am a cheapskate and want to save money on my phone bill, I need to buy the latest handset and then accept spam to fund my free calls. Guess I should get over to the companies VCs because it looks like they might just need someone capable of adding sense to the due dilligence process.

The Beeb and its digital future

DAB a dud? asked the magazine programme You and Yours today on Radio 4 at lunchtime. Following on from The Guardians Media feature on Monday the BBC, one of the biggest Evangelists for Digital Radio, asked have we been short changed.

You can listen again to the debate about how we have been trying to live with a technology based on MP2 standards and need to move towads the AAC+ standard if we are to get the digital quality we could have. For me the interesting factiods are the stalled development of DAB across Europe.

The Driving back from my meeting I again was listening to the Radio, this time Simon Mayo on Radio Five and his guest was Paul Abbot the writer of some of the biggest successes on British TV over the past five years. The take away was that before the Broadcasters start looking at technology they need to invest in the talent. The Networks in the UK are not investing in training writers and before they do talk of Mobile TV would be a waste of time.

I wonder if anyone from the Management of BBC Broadcast or ITV will download the interview and take note using the Listen Again service. I would suggest that it could be worth the 30 minutes before they start talking about how Mobile will be an important element of Broadcast TV.

Cost of a free handset

Was lucky to spend some time with the Head of Product, Research and Communication at Sony Ericsson who in talking about the development of the product range showed me a number of features that SE had put into the K800i. As a user of the K800i some of what Sony Ericsson have down with the software is excellent. For example when you take a photo with the Camera the first thing it ask is do you want to upload to Blogger?

 

Only problem is that on my Orange handset the upload feature has been removed because the network wants me to send it as an expensive MMS or email it. This has the effect of me keeping the photo on my phone as little more than a note because it does not do what I want.

 

As the handset is a free upgrade Orange feel that in paying the €400 SonyEricsson charge they can control just what is and is not on my device. When T-Mobile did this with my N70 upgrade I just went online and downloaded the features that I wanted and have continued to add software I find that matches my needs. The Mobile Networks need to understand that we the users do not usually have the knowledge to optimize our phones for mobile data, however when we do we use more data. If you provide me with an experience that limits my enjoyment I am unlikely to continue using it and have no wish to endorse it.

Vizrea a mobile web2.0 start-up

Last week I was invited to the European launch of Vizrea. This is a Seattle based start-up that has an impressive management team draw from Microsoft and Tivo among others. They have built a service that is more than just another photo upload play this is something that gives a two way connection and so a user can pull down other content to the handset. In the demo I was shown streaming video and music from a PC in the room and in the US which was converted on the fly and played back to me in a basement bar. Tagging and distribution of pictures was also every easy compared with other services. Looking on the web I have found the presentation they did at 2006 Demo at the start of the year if yoy want to get a flavour of what they are doing.

Only question I have is how would I have discovered the company without the kind invitation? How can Vizrea scale, the service is something that the networks will resist because it turns the mobile phone into no more that a fat pipe.

I will play with the service in the same way I have with others such as ShoZu, Litefeeds and WeeMe and see if it is something I keep on my handset or delete.

Orange gets inside the mind to push 'magic numbers'

Mother have created another sixty seconds of wonder for Orange with its new portal advert for the Magic Numbers service.

Now I know that Orange has form on adverts that entertain but tell the consummer nothing but this one just shows what happens when creatives do just that. I have to say that I would rather have adverts that get people to talk rather than show us a phone and say use it, and it's way better than "Hard Nosed Business Man". Guess I will have to wait until I next see one of my creative friends from media like Ged who can try and explain just how this short film gets over the fact that Orange will let me talk to one number for as long as I want for free as a reward for staying with them, and every six months I can add another number if I stay.

EMI and T-Mobile partner for ad-backed download trial

EMI and T-Mobile partner for ad-backed download trial repoprts Brand Republic. In an effort to test the waters, EMI has decided to use the mobile network it prefers to do exclussive deals with to test a service that could rival iTunes.

The only problems as a fat forty year old bloke is that I am not sure that I want to watch a video from Lilly Allen, The Kooks or Robbie Williams even if its free.

The story also says that the advertisers already signed up are, Coco-Cola Zero, General Motors, Gillette, Land Rover, Microsoft, Nike and Toyota. Are these really the brands that young music fans associates with Lilly Allen? I guess that we will just have to see how it will work. The good news is that in the days of One2One they would have got Pearl & Dean to sell location based adverts ;-)

We will have to wait and see how this plays out, but all I can say is at least its a trial and thus not expected to be a mega success.

Vodafone DSL Deal: More Questions than Answers

Keith Mcmahon got up a lot earier than I did this morning judging by his prompt responce to the announcement that Vodafone have jumped in feet first to the DSL market.

Dean thinks its a good deal for Vodafone but I am not sure that what the company needs right now is to be in a fight that will destroy so much value. Just look at how much BT retail is spending in subsidies to retain/acquire customers to BT Home Hub.

I have to ask, who will be the losers in all this? Over in Italy Telecom Italia have decided that savings cannot be made in the converged world and are considering selling its network and/or its mobile arm. As an economist I have to say that at some stage the consumer must pay a reasonable price or the business goes bust, this being the case, we also have to expect to pay a mobility premium for a few more years.

European vs. American mobile phone use

Mike Mace has written an excellent article on different attitudes to mobile phones on either side of the Atlantic.

I would say that one of the differences is that in the states they have a network with the same quality as we had in Europe about ten years ago in terms of coverage. The other factor is that Mobile Data to an American is the Blackberry for E-Mail, and whilst SMS/MMS are starting to happen they are also "supported" by advertising.

I guess when both countries are using the same standards for phones we can look at both areas and see how the two markets can converge. Most of my European work mates call their phone a "Handy" and that is just what it is to them, it is the device that allows Wireless Foundry to compete with bigger firms because we are available directly rather than clients getting lost in voicemail hell.

What I would say is that Europe does have the same geographic differences as America. Talking to executives in Germany they say that too many users keep their phones switched off using it only when they have an "emergency". Thus the key performance metric for the networks is now the rather rough measure of Minutes of Use rather than ARPU. When you talk to Italian Networks they will speak of the need to migrate customers from Pay As You Go to Contracts in a country that is fast becoming one in which most people own more than one handset and fashion means that they change handsets as often as the update their wardrobe.

The post has got me thinking and time permitting I will try and write a longer piece myself on national differences to mobile use. On one of my first trips to Japan what I noticed was that talking in public on the phone is a social faux par, which I guess explains why they have such high data useage rates.