MobHappy

Kids "Two Clicks" From Buying Mobile Porn

All the horror stories and questionable studies being pumped out by companies looking to create a problem that only their products can solve -- like all the mobile virus FUD), for instance -- are getting pretty tiresome. The latest one is about how easy it is for kids to get mobile porn, put out by a company that sells filtering products. They sent a kid in to a high-street shop in the UK, and the 16-year-old was -- gasp -- able to buy a prepaid phone without showing ID, and "walked out being able to surf the internet for porn, use chatrooms, buy knives or alcohol, without being asked for ID or offered a content filtered phone." They helpfully add that just one operator there actually defaults to having filters on their phones -- so it's likely they didn't send a kid into a Vodafone store.

They say "some operators are selling phones with access to everything on the web", inferring that the solution is to add filters. That's simply not true, as filters aren't effective at all at keeping really interested kids from finding what they want. That's another point, though, and one we've covered before.

My point here is give it a rest, people. Maybe putting out these kinds of stories and studies gives you a short term pop, but all it really does is reveal that you're full of crap.

And as far as the kid "being able to surf the internet for porn, use chatrooms, buy knives or alcohol" -- that sounds like a pretty hot phone and service. You might argue that if somebody could do all that stuff so easily on their phone, the operator's doing something right.

Key To Reducing Churn -- Moblogs?

A company's come out with a new study saying that moblogs can reduce churn by 70%. Of course, the company behind the survey sells moblogging software, so I'm a little skeptical. I can't imagine that moblogs would give people a reason to stay with a particular carrier ahead of other things like pricing, coverage or service but there's one way I can think of that moblogs could engender customer loyalty -- lock-in.

Carriers are used to locking customers to their service with measures like long-term contracts with high early-termination fees, and locked handsets. They're pretty effective, but don't always apply to prepaid users or because of regulatory restrictions. That's where these kind of "soft" lock-ins come into play. They foster loyalty not because people necessarily want to stay, but because if they leave, they'll miss out on something.

The company says the biggest barrier to operators is getting people to use the blogs. Sure it is -- because the more a person posts to their moblog, the more they've got to lose should it disappear. It's the same idea for carriers that only let users get photos off their phones by uploading them to a carrier photo-album service. If somebody stands to lose photos they care about because they want to switch carriers, they'll think twice.

It's possible to make the argument that this is a competitive differentiation, or something like that. But instead of doing it through lock-in, why not do it by offering the best open service possible? License something like Cognima Snap, or help users get Lifeblog going. Offer them an easy way to post their content to an open system; don't hold their photos, content and memories ransom.

Braking (Or Breaking) Innovation

Somebody calling themselves "Tank Girl" pointed out a quote from Anssi Vanjoki, the head of Nokia's multimedia unit, in the recent Wired cover story on MP3 phones. The article's a decent read, but there's not much new info if you've been following things here. The passage with Vanjoki's quote is pretty nice, though:

Vanjoki still has issues with the carriers, particularly those in the US. He grows agitated at the mention of Verizon Wireless, which was hit with a class-action lawsuit after bullying handset manufacturers to hobble the Bluetooth connection in their phones. (If you want to move photos from your phone to your PC, you'll just have to run up data charges on Verizon's network to do it.) Walter Mossberg railed against this sort of orifice maneuver in a recent Wall Street Journal column that compared US carriers to the Soviet bureaucracies that fought the free market. "I read that and I said, 'Spot on!'" Vanjoki recalls, dropping any vestige of Finnish reserve. "I have not seen an example in this business or any other business where braking innovation - you know, Push the brake! No innovation! - would benefit mankind. I have not seen that! But where you let innovation come to the marketplace and even help it come to the marketplace, it has always resulted in a bigger cake to be divided."

Maybe car companies was the wrong analogy...

E-Plus' MVNO Strategy

German carrier E-Plus says it will launch a new prepaid service aimed at Germany's sizable Turkish population, with calls and texts to Turkish phones costing the same as to German numbers. James Enck beat me to the punch on a few points: I can't think of another example of this sort of no-brainer MVNO (though apparently it's been available in Belgium for two years when it's a tactic providers of international calling cards have been using for a long time, and one some VoIP providers are turning to as well.

The bigger issue is how it fits in to E-Plus' overall strategy. The carrier launched two other sub-brands (are they MVNOs when they're owned by the network provider? I guess that's just semantics) earlier this year: Simyo, which only sells SIM cards online with cheap calls, and Base, which sells flat-rate voice and text plans. One thing you hear when talking about MVNOs is that they're not necessarily competition for carriers because they target a niche market that a physical carrier might not be able to adequately serve. But it looks like that's exactly what E-Plus is starting to do by identifying markets it could better serve with new sub-brands.

Mobile operators don't seem to like segmentation much, beyond perhaps positioning their prepaid and contract offerings at different age groups. But it's a viable strategy, and one they don't necessarily have to leave to outside MVNOs.

Just 17% of UK Subs Do More Than Talk and Text

160 Characters posts the results of a survey that found just 17% of UK mobile phone owners use their devices for anything other than texting and calling -- on a daily basis. Somehow that's not as surprising as the headline made it out to be. In any case, the company behind the survey says "although the services may be clearly explained in accompanying manuals, users often do not understand the purpose of additional services and therefore do not feel any need to learn how to use them."

Usability is a big problem, though I think they're overstating the importance of the manual -- does anybody read them anymore? The part to focus on there is "users often do not understand the purpose of additional services". Part of that's a marketing problem, where telecoms too often focus on marketing technologies rather than services, like MMS or WAP. But the real problem is that users aren't being presented with a whole lot of data services and applications they find compelling. I'll use of of Russell's favorite examples here: video calling. Video calling's failed to catch on, not because people don't understand it, but because they're not interested in it. And so it goes with many other services, particularly carrier-supported ones.

An operator should look at this figure and think, "gee, there's a whole lot of room for growth there." Then, they need to figure out how to make it happen -- by creating a better ecosystem for developers and content providers.

As an aside, to lump daily SMS use in with calling masks its widespread use for data and services. Remember, it's a platform, not just and application.

Too Many Mouths To Feed

It seems sometimes like news is very streaky. The last few weeks brought lots of stuff on mobile TV. This week it seems to be music's turn, so bear with me. Following yesterday's post on dual-delivery systems carrying dual charges as well, comes a story on MocoNews highlighting the difficulty carriers are setting up for themselves in the mobile music download space. Long story short, the carriers want to get paid from downloads, too, making it nearly impossible to compete on price with wired download stores' $1 per song. There's just too many hands grabbing for too small a piece of pie.

Operators assume that people will pay more for mobile downloads because of "convenience", by which they mean you can download songs from anywhere. I seriously doubt that's a strong enough motivation for people to overcome the inconvenience of browsing through a download shop on a handset and pay more on top of it. Think about buying a ringtone through a carrier portal or something similar, then compare that to browsing the iTunes Music Store -- because that's how consumers will think. Why go through a difficult process and pay more, when for a short wait, you can find what you want more easily and pay less at home, then just transfer it to your phone?

Well, that's assuming that you're not caught in the middle of some DRM lock-in, of course, but I think you get my point.

Dual Delivery, Dual Charge

It's been funny watching operators' ideas about mobile music change. First, in typical fashion, they assumed they'd make their music stores closed systems -- any music you listen to on your phone will be bought from us, and any music bought from us will only be listened to on your phone. While pretty much anybody could instantly recognize that wasn't going to fly, it took operators a bit to catch on. The next groundbreaking realization was that people might actually want to listen to music they already own on their mobile phones -- again, what a surprise. While there's a lot more that needs changing, least of which the problems DRM causes, I guess we can take some solace in the fact that they're learning, no matter how slowly.

One significant "innovation" was dual-delivery mobile download systems, where a user that buys a song from either a mobile or Web store gets it delivered both to their mobile device and to their PC, letting them use it both places. Sounds good enough, but some carriers still manage to find a way to mess it up.

Vodafone Germany is touting its download service, which features dual-delivery. It's already at a disadvantage to rival services -- its songs cost 1.49 euro, compared to what seems to be a relatively standard price of .99 euro. The real devil is in the details, though: "Depending on your tariff, additional connection charges may be payable for surfing in the portal and for the download." So on top of the 1.49, there's traffic charges too? That's pretty ridiculous.

This has always been a problem with third-party content, but this is on an operator's own system. Data charges are still problematic because it's hard for users to figure out exactly what things are costing them. So when downloads are already 50 euro-cents more than competitors before a mystery traffic charge, don't be surprised if they're unpopular.

The Value Of Loyalty

The girlfriend has been needing a new handset, so when we were out this weekend, we dropped by a store of our current carrier, T-Mobile, to see what they could do. Unsurprisingly, their current handset lineup was pretty poor, but she was able to find a little Nokia she liked. If you'd walked in off the street and bought the phone with no service, contract or anything, it would cost $100. Since she'd not bought a handset in quite a while, she was able to get the available new customer discount on the phone -- a whopping $30 off, via mail-in rebate. Of course, to get that price, she'd have to renew her contract for at least 1, more likely 2, years. Coming from the carrier that regularly tries to bribe me into renewing my own contract with the offer of a $20 credit, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I think it's a pretty sad indictment of the industry when their "marketing efforts" are all geared toward drawing people into long-term contracts that preclude them from having to actually compete with other carriers very hard. Operator bosses like to complain about churn, most frequently when they think it will help defeat some regulatory measure, but the fact of the matter is their businesses are set up, essentially, to encourage and benefit from user turnover. Once a user's out of contract, there's little incentive to stay with a carrier, apart from the pointless barriers in place, like the difficulty of moving contacts over to a new device, and so on.

So, in lieu of carriers actually beginning to give a monkey's about keeping their customers by improving service, maybe it's time to rethink the whole handset subsidy idea. People are attracted (perhaps even addicted) to cheap handsets, but if they could give up subsidies in exchange for not having to deal with restrictive contracts, and perhaps even subpar service, would they accept more expensive phones?

Congrats to O2

It can be too easy to focus on the mistakes operators make when you're blogging - a bit like restaurant critics usually have something to critisise with even the best meal. After all, a constant diet of "Golly gosh, it was just scrumptious and the service was fab" would be a little boring for the reader.

But operators do frequently do admirable things and it's only fair that we recognise this too.

O2 have just announced that for their forthcoming i-mode launch in the UK, they're sticking to the spirit (if not quite the percentage) of the revenue splits i-mode offered content owners in Japan. O2 will keep a more than reasonable 14%, leaving their partners with a generous 86%, if you need help with the maths.

So if you're a content owner in the UK, guess which operator is now first on your wish list?

This comes a mere few weeks after O2 showed that they were listening to their customers, as well as bloggers, and changed the way they delivered MMS.

Anyway, this is great news for the UK content industry and a hearty congrats to O2 for getting it right. Let's hope the other operators follow your lead in due course, though this might be a bit too much to wish for right now.

I Want That One

An article in New Media Age says that "only one in 20 business people understand the difference between Wi-Fi, 3G and GPRS technologies" according to some new study. I'm stuck trying to figure out why that's important. It's an indictment of carriers' marketing and service failures more than a sign of user ignorance.

There's no reason an average user should have to, or be expected to, navigate all these acronyms and technical terms, either in marketing or as part of the user experience. The marketing part is pretty easy -- quit selling technology and start selling services (ie picture messaging, not MMS and the Internet, not GPRS). Perhaps the user experience is a little trickier, but I'd venture that the only time a normal user would run into these terms would be when something goes wrong and they've got to fix (or try to fix) something. While maybe that's not preventable, it could be handled better.

WAP, 3G, GPRS, MMS -- these are all meaningless terms. What concerns a user is what their phone can do, rather than how it does it. Do they care if it's 2G versus 3G? The likely response is "what's a G?"

It's one of Russell's favorite rants to decry (and rightly so) the fiasco of getting handsets set up properly for MMS, so I won't cover that ground again. But the point is still valid: a customer shouldn't have to do this stuff, or have any technical knowledge to make this stuff work.

Is it too much to ask for users to be able to walk into a shop, go "I want that one" and walk out with a phone that can properly access the services they're interested in and can clearly understand, at an easily digested tariff?

SMS Back Up

Following on from Carlo's post yesterday about finding easy ways to transfer data from one phone to another (usually old phone to new phone), I thought I'd my Euro 1.64 to this one.

Carlo mainly focused on transferring contacts, which is a no brainer, as he suggests. But just as important are messages - sms mainly, as not many people send mms.

Many, many people, and especially kids, treasure some of the sms they receive, from friends and lovers alike. The idea of junking them with their old phone is pretty hard for them, as they'll lose their "Sweeeeetie bunnikins luvs soosie xxxooo" messages that have a special place in their hearts.

Professor Richard Harper, who's done a lot of observation analysis about how we use phones, was writing about this 4 years or so ago. Even then, many kids were citing not losing old sms as a real reason for not upgrading.

Since then, we've had at least one commercial service launched to provide this, Treasure My Text, that backed up centrally and subsequently, launched a product to save sms on your iPod. I haven't heard how they're doing, but my guess is that they'd be limited by finite marketing budgets from making the service a rip-roaring success. And also that many kids would resent paying for a service that they think the operator should be providing - and preferably free.

How difficult would it to automatically store the last 20 or so sms you sent, accessible via the web, giving you the option for longer storage if you want? It could even be a revenue source, but it's far better looked at simply as a way of improving customer service for minimal investment.

As the industry gallops into commoditisation, such small things are going to make a big difference between success and failure for operators.

Why? Because, it'll show who is customer-centric and listening to their customers and who's paying lip service to their customers' issues and continuing to focus of the technology and infrastructure - the key issues of the past.

The age of the customer is upon us - never have they been quite so powerful, had so much access to information and been capable of quickly self-organising into active and important communities if they're not listened to.

Operators need to start taking this on board and looking at the minutae of their service and asking how they can make it better for their customers. This dies require a change in mindset in many case (in fairness, some have started to listen), but failing to do so means failing as a business in the longer term.

Removing Obstacles

I was talking to a friend the other week who'd just switched mobile carriers, mainly because he got a new job. In addition to the screwups that seem to be par for the course when porting a number, the biggest problem he had was figuring out how to easily transfer all his contacts from the old phone to the new. Every simple method wouldn't work: saving them to the SIM was out since the phones were locked to different carriers; one phone only had Bluetooth while the other only had infrared; one would sync fine with his computer, the other couldn't, and so on. I think he eventually had to just re-enter them all by hand.

Sure, this isn't a big deal, but it's symptomatic of an attitude in the mobile industry that thinks it's okay to leave pointless obstacles for customers. Just as application and service developers need to take things a step futher, operators and handset vendors need to be about removing those obstacles. In an industry that's synonymous with poor service, anybody that can straighten these things out will enjoy a tremendous competitive advantage.

Let's go back to the contacts example. If a carrier wants to attract users to switch from its rivals, it needs to make the process as simple as possible. Having to key in all your contacts in by hand might require enough effort to dissuade some people from jumping ship -- so why don't carriers offer to take the contacts from their old phone and transfer them to the new one? Technology for this exists already, so why not implement it? The same goes to handset vendors. Again, this is a small issue -- but that means it (and sync in general) should have been solved long ago!

I saw news this week that a Portuguese operator is offering a backup service to its users, which saves contacts, messages and photos. That's a no-brainer: operators keep contacts synced to the network (like on the Danger Hiptop), so if a device gets lost or broken, they can be easily and immediately downloaded. Adding a web interface also makes it easy to add contacts from a computer.

It's these types of things that need to be happening. Has nobody at an operator ever lost their phone and had to re-enter their contacts? Have execs of handset vendors never tried to use PC sync software and seen what a mess it is? I find it hard to believe that people could be so out of touch with their own products and customers.

Exclusive Deals Could Hold Back Mobile Music

British pop star Robbie Williams has signed an exclusive 18-month deal with T-Mobile where the operator will offer exclusive content, some of it embedded in handsets it sells. Williams is undoubtedly popular around the world -- he's sold 51 million albums -- but are these kinds of exclusive deals what's really going to make people believers in mobile music? It's doubtful.

While some die-hard fans may be convinced to switch to T-Mobile for the exclusive content, the vast majority of people won't care. When Apple launched iTunes, or Napster started, they weren't built around a single artist, and that's why they succeeded. There's an implication in these sorts of single-star-centric promos that unless you're a fan of this one particular person, that there's nothing in the offering for you -- and the number of potential users alienated by that far outweighs the number that will be attracted by it.

Cross-posted to The Mobile Music Blog.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Just as we're finally getting MMS interconnect here in the US, O2 over in the UK has figured out yet another way to screw up MMS, says the indefatigable Alfie Dennen. The carrier used to send MMS to email addresses with the image simply attached, but has now reverted to the old "here's a link to a Web page" message instead -- a method I thought had been ditched some time ago (even here in the states). The result is that users of Alfie's moblogUK UK service on O2 now can't use MMS to send pictures to their blogs.

What's the point? Just to make more money? To deliver the photo in such a way that there's an opportunity for O2 to advertise? To try to encourage people to use its own photo-sharing service instead of an outside one? The answers to any of those really don't seem sufficient. All users will see is a broken service, and a reason to switch carriers.

Every time it seems like some progress is being made to get operators to understand that throwing up obstacles for their users never works, we're reminded that sadly, there are plenty of companies out there that just don't get it.

Prepay Data Card: No Good, Either

Jupiter analyst Julie Ask (she of the ringback tone trial saga) pointed out a new prepaid data card offering from Vodafone UK, saying the pricing model might help it compete with hotspots for business users' access -- if for no other reason than there aren't many people that can justify the high monthly cost of mobile data access to their employer.

But the new offer doesn't escape a typical pitfall of prepaid data in the consumer arena -- the ridiculous price premium over contract tariffs. The Vodafone card costs 200 pounds, with data at 3 pounds per meg in the UK and 9 pounds per meg when roaming. That price isn't likely to win over many hotspot users.

So, then, if operators feel like hotspots are costing them mobile data customers, how to move forward? The current plan seems to be to open up hotspots of their own, then charge exorbitant fees. Perhaps the only benefit of those is you don't need a $350 card before you can even get started. But why not just make cut prices? I'm not saying to give things away, but at least make them reasonable.

Part of the reason people don't want to use mobile data is because so many tariffs take the worst part of voice tariffs -- overage charges -- and implement them on a grander scale via an unclear metering method. Say your first MB costs $5, then it's $3 per MB after that: it's pretty easy to tell when I've been talking on the phone for an hour, but what the hell constitutes a megabyte? And my example data charges are pretty low, particularly for some European carriers. It's an issue for business users as well as consumers -- how do you explain to your boss that getting Rick's bloated Powerpoint presentation, with all its nifty animations, cost you $50? Reasonable flat-rate pricing makes sense here: if a company knows they're going to pay X per month for mobile data for each employee, regardless of use, it's much easier to go for than something with a cost that can skyrocket very easily.

Proponents of metered pricing build their argument on a couple red herrings. First, they assume that with flat-rate, unlimited pricing comes abuse by users sharing connections and so forth. That's not the case: if prices drop to a reasonable level, operators can lessen the incentive to "steal" service. Second, they assume that on flat-rate plans, usage will leap up and cause network issues. This, too, isn't necessarily true. Revenues and usage are two separate metrics that aren't necessarily related. For example, I pay T-Mobile $20 per month for an unlimited Wi-Fi subscription I rarely use. I don't really need it, but it's come in handy quite a bit, and the $20 per month rate is low enough that I don't mind paying every month so when I do use it, I'm not hit with the 10 cents a minute or $10 per day fee. Bringing mobile data pricing down to this level will catch a lot more users, but won't necessarily deliver an equal uptick in usage.

Price elasticity of demand is an interesting thing -- and it's hard to believe that operators haven't heard of it. It's similarly hard to believe that $80 per month is the spot where they think they can maximize their revenues.

Picture from Wikipedia.

Segmentation Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Over at Techdirt, I posted something about an absolutely atrocious survey done by Vodafone Germany on how women use mobile phones. It's hard to know where to begin talking about it -- it's unbelievably patronizing and just plain stupid. I don't understand how a survey company could be so clueless as to put this together, and how a company like Vodafone could pay for it and attach its name to it.

The press release implies a certain level of surprise that women know anything about mobile phones, and as Digital Lifestyles points out, also that women aren't clamoring for pink, jewel-encrusted handsets. The bottom line is that -- unsurprisingly -- women have an awful lot in common with men when it comes to mobile phones.

I've been trying to understand the motivation for this survey, and can't come up with a reasonable answer. I thought maybe at first it was just one of those PRs companies put out for no good reason (something at which Verizon Wireless is the champ in my book), but surely, somebody somewhere inside Vodafone -- either the German unit or at the corporate level -- could realize how bad this sounds. After all, isn't that part of a PR person's job?

The scarier alternative, though, is that this is the misguided basis for an attempt at customer segmentation. Let's hope it isn't the case that Vodafone is this out of touch with women. Surely there have to be some women working there that could clue them in that, hey, women are people too? Segmentation is based on knowledge of customers, not the stereotypes surrounding them, or what some guy picked up from Sex and the City. And offers can't be patronizing, or interpreted as such, otherwise they do more harm than good.

Vodafone Germany this week also launched its copycat of O2's Genion, where users get discounts on calls made within 2km of their home. Frankly, I'm surprised they don't offer an additional discount to women making calls from the kitchen, too.

And Another Thing...

Following my previous post on unhappy mobile subscribers, I saw a story on RCR a bunch of changes to plans US carriers are making -- and all unbelievably and needlessly complex.

They tend to focus on one major point of complaints by US users, the per-minute charges operators levy when a subscriber goes over their allotted minutes in a month. Cingular has the gold standard here, letting users "rollover" unused minutes (ie if they pay for 500 minutes a month, but only use 400, 100 would rollover) and save them to cover future overage. Unsurprisingly, the plan's been very successful for them. Now, among other initiatives, T-Mobile's got a new "feature" where users pay $5 per month to get an SMS when they get close to their monthly allotment, then get cut off when they hit it. They can then go buy prepaid cards to add credit to their account at a rate of 10 cents per minute. Keep in mind these are contract customers.

Instead of forcing customers to jump through hoops, particularly if they only occasionally need extra airtime, why not just reduce the overage charges to a reasonable level so people didn't get so upset when they have to pay them? Here's to MVNOs...

Making Money From Unhappy Users

It seems to be a fact of life that nobody really likes their mobile operator, at least in the US. Like so many things, it's often a case of choosing the operator that's the least worst, rather than the best, and accepting mediocre service is the rule rather than the exception. Things aren't helped by the dominance of postpaid service here, reinforced by the long-term contracts carriers force customers to sign, with two-year contracts becoming the norm. Upgrading a handset or often even just changing plans isn't possible without renewing a contract, so when service goes south, users can either suck it up, or pay an early-termination fee (usually between $200 and $400) to break the contract.

Now, a group of people is hoping to make some money from these unhappy users by setting up a Web site where, for $20, people can list the plan and contract they want to get out of in hopes that some other user will want to take it over, allowing them to essentially break the contract for free. While it's a mildly interesting proposition, I think it's doomed to failure for a variety of reasons -- but it does highlight just how many unhappy users there are out there.

First, the service is attempting to charge $20 for what's been going on informally on enthusiast sites for some time, for free. Second, it's unclear how operators feel about these sorts of transfers, and also how number portability would fit into the scheme (it's unlikely a number using this service would be able to take their phone number with them if they switched to another carrier. The biggest problem, though, is the marketplace is likely to be flooded with unfavorable plans that nobody wants. It's reminiscent of CD-trading sites that popped up years ago -- they became overrun with everybody trying to get rid of their New Kids on the Block CDs and the like.

In any case, clearly these guys feel there's enough annoyed customers out there that there's a market for the service. They're probably right, at least about the number of unhappy users, if not the viability of their service. With the introduction of number portability, carriers' customer-loyalty efforts (intentional or not) are at a low. Consumers are somewhat damned by their dependence on handset subsidies, which makes carriers feel like it's okay to tie them in to long-term contracts. But what's the deal with bad service that makes people want to jump ship -- is it simply too expensive to serve customers well?

Never Mind The (Lack Of) Interest: Mobile TV Marches On

Announcements about mobile TV continue apace this week: Nokia announced another DVB-H trial, this one in Spain; Belgian operator Mobistar signed a deal with a broadcaster to start a pilot channel over its network later this year; and US wireless tower giant Crown Castle says it wants to use its holdings a nationwide DVB network akin to Qualcomm's MediaFLO plans.

So it looks like the industry is about to head into another mess -- just like 3G, just like WAP, just like MMS -- where technology outpaces thinking through service offerings or business models and results in a disappointingly slow uptake. Also this week, researchers Forrester released a report pointing out some of these pitfalls. The top takeaway being that it's found little consumer "enthusiasm or demand" for mobile TV, an unwillingness to pay for it and low desire to see mobile TV functionality in forthcoming devices. But that won't slow down companies pushing the technology to market -- never mind they don't have any real services beyond live TV on their minds yet.

Forrester says, "The unique attributes of the mobile environment will render decades of consumer TV viewing data irrelevant. While operators and content owners think snippets of regular TV's broadcasted news, sports and weather are necessary, they are far from sufficient - and no one knows what will be." The company's too keen on short clips as the answer for my taste, but the point remains: there's got to be something more than live simulcasts.

It's the same thing here as with mobile music. One main thrust is platform irrelevance: the idea that users can access their content (video and TV in this case) on any platform or device. But the second thrust is new services: how can mobile connectivity come into play to create more useful and compelling services?

Like I said above, the mobile industry's track record at this sort of thing doesn't instill much confidence. WAP was like the Web, only in your pocket. MMS was like SMS, but with pictures. 3G was like 2G, only faster. You'd think that vendors and operators would have learned by now that consumers don't buy into technology when it comes to mobiles. There's two fundamentally different questions on the table here. New services are too often based around the "what can it do?" question -- which is concerned with the functionality of the technology. But what consumers want to know is "what can I do?" -- that's about services.

Advice to Operators #5 - P2P Credits

Anyone who's ever used a prepay phone (which probably excludes most people who work for an operator, funnily enough) knows what a real pain it is when you run out of credits. Just as your battery runs out in the middle of a critical call, your credits fail you just when you really need a mobile.

I know it makes sense to have back up credits. But all that normally happens is you buy two cards and then buy two more then the second one has run out.

Many kids and teens have prepay phones, as we know. Not only are they always running out of credits, but they don't necessarily have the cash to immediately buy new ones or have a backup supply either.

OK, I know that the perennial excuse of "Sorry, Mum, I was out of credits" is often used instead of saying that the kid forgot to make an important call. But it's still an issue.

Now, what happens when someone is out of credits? Stating the bleeding obvious, they have to stop using their phone until they get topped up. This means there's a potential revenue loss, as calls that would have been made and and messages that would have been sent, never happen.

Sure, some of these will merely be delayed, but a good proportion (maybe 70%? - this is a wild guess) have been lost forever.

When this is applied across the board, the resulting loss could be pretty significant. As an example, here's some rounded up, ballpark stats. In the UK, there's 50 million mobiles, of which say, 60% are prepay. Let's say that ARPU is in the region of £130 ($236) for prepay customers. Let's say then that the average prepay customer runs out of credits once a month and that 70% of those calls/messages are lost for ever.

I reckon that indicates a potential loss to the industry of around £90 million - which, even for the huge telecoms industry, is no small change. And clearly, the figures could be higher than that.

So, what's the advice then? Well simply allow P2P transfers of credits. When Teddy Teen has run out of credits, his good old Mum can send him new ones. Or he can borrow some off his mate and return them when he has got some of his own.

This wouldn't just have the effect of increasing revenue. It would also be great for customer service and if implemented by one network, might allow them to steal a march on the others for a while.

Once a P2P system was up and running, it would be both proof of concept and a great platform to launch a mobile payments system, with real cash.

I was reminded of this today, when re-looking at G-Cash in the Phillipines. This is hardly a low key project and is very successful, to boot. So why the reluctance in other markets to take on this great idea?

Another operator mystery. If I've missed something, be sure to leave a comment and put me right.

Mobile Phone Support - Advice to Operators #4

Here's another of my occasional columns on Advice to Operators. If you're an operator, they're not meant to be annoying (honest) just a look at some issues from the point of view of someone who doesn't work in one. Hopefully, this at last gives a fresh perspective on things.

This piece of advice isn't actually mine at all, but I read it and thought "what a great idea, I'll have that". Paul Golding is one of the brightest technical minds in telecommunications. His deep technical knowledge is combined with a clear passion for seeing applications from the user's point of view and his thinking is always worth listening to.

Paul's blog is Wireless Wonders and is certainly worth a look if you're interested in the mobile space (and if you're not, you're in the wrong place). One of his themes is to generate 100 ideas to do with mobile phones. Number 63, in particular caught my eye.

He calls for all the operators to get together to enforce a common format for all mobile phone manuals. These would then be available in one central place, as well as on each operator's site.

Once you think of it, you just can't believe it isn't done. Instead, manuals are buried (if available at all) and you usually have to hunt around the handset manufacturer's site, at length.

But wait - that's not all.

Furthermore, the repository should also be usable as a resource for developers to allow them to compare phone features and specifications easily, which means that it should be searchable. Simple enquiries like "tell me all phones with tri-band support" should be possible, or "tell me all phones with MIDP 2.0"...all those questions that developers frequently post to various fora.

Would it be too much to ask that operators also give a clue as to which phones are currently being sold by them, which phones are the most popular, and how many of each (at least in percentage terms) are in circulation on their networks?

How difficult would this be (clue: not difficult) to sort out? And how much easier it would make things for the two vital components of the value chain; the developer and the customer.

There could, of course, be another way. Many of the features Paul is looking for already exist, albeit in slightly embryonic stage at The Mobile Phone Directory - a fantastic resource for developers and the knowledgeable phone user. All UK handsets are listed, complete with comprehensive specifications and features. Known bugs and solutions are noted. And they even give personal advice if you ask for it.

OK, they stop short of stocking all manuals and they don't currently have the such an intuitive search function that Paul would like. Also missing is penetration of different handsets, but this isn't publically available data for some reason. It can hardly be that commercially sensitive, could it? Especially if released in aggregate form like the Mobile Data Association releases SMS and WAP information.

But they're already doing 80% of the job, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to make Paul's vision a reality.

All it needs now is for all the operators to sponsor the site, link to it and we have a solution to a very real issue.

Now, about my world peace idea.

Pic from Aha Jokes.

3G and Downloading Content - Advice to Operators #3

Steve Jones of the excellent 3G Portal sent me a very interesting article - "Don't we have the best of 3G already?".

He developed the argument in 2002 (ie before 3G launches) that if people were already quite happy downloading mobile content via their PC's and synching/transferring to their phones, why would they download the same content direct to phone over 3G?

I have to say, this is very much my belief and indeed, my personal behaviour is exactly that. I regularly download images and ringtones from the net and Bluetooth or Infrared them to my phone. Not only is the content significantly cheaper (or even free in some cases), but you avoid incurring the data costs charged by the operator.

This isn't to say that I'm especially mean, I just hate getting ripped off and that's my perception of data charges and the double-bubble cost structure of operator content. I've made the comparison before; if I walk into a watch shop and buy a watch for $50, I'd be a little astounded to be charged a delivery cost for handing it over the counter.

Yet that's exactly what operators try to get away with. They charge for the content and then charge a delivery charge. So, my advice to operators this week is; stop it please. It's unfair, short term and greedy :-)

Steve's theory is not so much a cost one though, but that if people know how to do something and it works, are they going to be bothered to learn a new set of behaviors for a small or unappreciated benefit? And this is especially the case if the new way costs much more than the old way.

My example would be the iPhone that has been turned down by all operators in the US. This is because it uses "the download to the PC and sych with the phone" model. But this cuts the operator out of the picture altogether.

This was undoubtedly a gross oversight by Motorola - they should have known that this would happen. But it's also naive for operators to think that they can stop iTunes spreading to the phone, especially with the launch of iTunes Mobile 1.0. Moreover, that users will pay three times ($3) as much to use their service direct-to-phone as if they download to their PC and sych with their Java phone ($1).

Extending this argument to all 3G content, this is very worrying for operators. One of the key reasons for investing all those billions in 3G is that data use and therefore revenues, would increase in a market where voice revenues were flat or decreasing. If that's not the case, they have a big problem.

So, what can the operators do about it? The only thing they can do is to make the new way overwhelmingly easier, more convenient and cheaper to use starting now. Every day they delay will lead to new users learning the old ways of doing things, making the old ways more entrenched than ever.

Already my 12 year old son gets all his content this way, as he's learned it from me. Most of his class do too, as guess what? They've learned it from him. Only when he points out to me that there's a better and cheaper way of doing it, will either of us change.

So, my recommendation is a flat rate for all data on a fair use policy, make sure that the phones work right out of the box (yes, that old chestnut) and make the content itself easy to find and navigate via the phone - but that, as they say, is another story.

Advice to Operators #2

This is the second of an occasional theme, where I give some respectful advice to our operator friends, from the point of view of a bemused outsider who can take a look at the forest, without worrying too much about the trees.

This week's theme is an old bug bear - making box fresh mobile phones have the right settings for MMS and WAP.

I remember going to an O2 developer conference in 2002 in the UK, where they were talking about the imminent launch of MMS.

The event was memorable for me for two reasons. The first was when the MMS Marketing Manager was asked what would happen if an MMS was sent cross-network ie from O2 to say, Orange in the UK. This would seem a pretty reasonable question and the marketing manager said, with commendable honesty:

"We don't know."

There was a bit of a shocked silence from the attendees, as we tried to figure out why anyone would want to send a message to a friend or colleague and have no idea if it would ever arrive or if it could be read when it did get there.

This meant that MMS could only possibly be used within networks ie O2 customer to O2 customer. Yes, we knew if our friends had mobile phones. We might even know the handset type. But I don't know anyone's network, apart from perhaps, if they have a 3 phone.

So again, the operators hadn't seemed to have learned the lessons of cross-network compatibility. SMS only took off when cross network compatibility happened. Would say, email have ever happened at all if you could only send one to people who had the same ISP? That's a pretty good example of a "rhetorical question", by the way.

Anyway, when I picked my jaw off the floor, the same marketing chappie started to present the findings of all the research that O2 had done in support of the business case for MMS. One of the findings was that it was really important that the phones worked straight out of the box, without the user having to figure out and configure settings.

I was pleased to note this, having recently spent several days trying to sort out the right settings for my phone. But was very happy that the operators were now aware of the importance of the issue and would clearly correct it, given how crucial it was to data traffic.

I couldn't help feeling however, that it was odd that users had to tell the researchers that they wanted their new phones to work properly. It was like car drivers telling car makers that they'd like to have the wheels and a chassis included, when they purchased a car.

Anyway, fast forward to 2005. I don't believe there are any published figures about how many phones come with the right settings, but it's still an awful lot. Since most people won't know how to fix this, that means an awful lot of people aren't even in danger of using WAP and MMS.

To me, this is a real scandal for the industry and I can't understand why no one takes it seriously enough to sort it out. Supposing new cookers came with two out of four gas rings broken? Or new houses with no stairs up to the upper floors? That's the kind of fundamental issue that operators aren't fixing.

Operators point to retailers as the culprits, saying the phones that they (operators) supply work out of the box. Hmmm, well, that's not my experience, but maybe they have put their own houses in order.

But why can't they sort the retailers out? It's not in the retailers' interests to sell product that doesn't work properly, either. And at it's most basic, you could shove a bunch of students into retailers to test the phones before they are allowed out of the door. They could double as after-sales consultants, showing the proud new owner how to get the most out of their new toy.

I suspect the real reason is that there's no one in operators whose direct responsibility is making the settings work on every phone. It's the indirect responsibility of many people. As an example, the MMS people benefit from when phone settings are configured correctly, but it's not their direct responsibility as they don't deal with retailers.

So Operators, here's my advice; Appoint a heavy hitter at senior/board level with the title of Doing-Whatever-It-Takes-to-Get-Our-Phones-to-Work-Properly-When-They-Are-Sold, with-Special-Emphasis-on-MMS-and-WAP-Settings-being-Correctly-Configured. And then make then make that person deliver.

Someone has to take this initiative, or data traffic is simply never going to fulfil its true potential.

Advice to Operators #1

I wrote yesterday that I was starting a series of posts called Advice to Operators. Here's the first one.

I would stress that this process isn't meant to be an operator bashing rant, but an attempt to ask questions, identify issues and propose ideas outside the accepted industry way of doing things. I would also really love this to be a two-way process, rather than me just scribbling away. What do you think? I'd especially like to hear from some of the operators I know who read this blog.

The first area I'd like to look at is that classic issue; how to drive innovation in the market.

The mobile telecoms industry needs innovation now, more than at any time since Mr Bell uttered the words "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."

Shareholders have been told time and again that future growth will come from data, not voice, and the operators now need to deliver that promise. In some instances, it's case of "deliver or die", but more likely "deliver or senior management takes the rap".

This delivery process requires new products and services coming to market in record numbers. This means products and services created with the customer in mind, in classic user-driven, innovative product development methodologies.

Let's face it. These innovative products and services won't be invented by operators. This type of innovation is simply not what they're they're good at. Products like Shazam or The Dozens have less chance of being invented and bought to market by an operator, than Mickey Mouse winning the next election.

And what have they invested in? MMS? Video calling? Even the big successes happened in spite of them. SMS was discovered by users. And so was WAP eventually, once the operators had stopped promoting it.

As I have stressed, this isn't an "all operators are crap" rant, by any means. Just an honest plea to look themselves in the mirror and take a good hard look at some core competencies (brilliant engineering, great operations management, very effective brand communication, for instance) and some very glaring weaknesses. Innovation is one of them - a weakness, if I'm not making myself clear.

So how should operators inject innovation into their businesses?

One way would be to try to change the corporate culture and make it creative and customer-centric. But, by any measure, that would be incredibly hard to do, not to mention a major, long term initiative.

So, as far as I'm concerned, there's a pretty simple answer. Innovation will come from the independent development community and entrepreneurs (often the same animal actually) who are also power users on new mobile applications.

While it's true that most operators have developer programmes, most just pay lip service to the concept. "We're an operator, that means we need a developer programme. That's that box ticked. Now what's next? Oh yes, CRM". The good programmes give a lot of practical advice, run cool conferences and allow the developer community to network to solve their own technical problems. This is certainly better than nothing.

However, what developers and entrepreneurs generally need is money, which the operators have an awful lot of. Funds are particularly scarce in the Mobile industry, which unlike the early days of the web, has had very little VC money injected into it - especially start-up/seed stage investment. Funds are starting to flow into the mobile games industry, but it's a question of putting our kids to work as chimney sweeps for the rest of us.

So why don't operators give the developers financial support?

I don't mean writing cheques out willy nilly.

But perhaps give innovation grants on a select basis.

And here's a radical approach. Why not pay developers for their time to develop ideas to take to market, instead of relying on unfairly weighted revenue share deals, with developers taking all the risk?

Is it such an outrageous concept? Why not treat them like any creative industry (like recording artists and authors)? Pay them an advance, recoupable against future payments. At least share the risk.

This will allow them to truly focus on the future and big ideas, not just having to pay their staff at the end of the month.

How about starting a "venture" fund managed by someone who understands mobile development and real customer-focused product development, rather than a died-in-the-wool operator manager? Unlike traditional venturing, its investments don't need to be the next billion dollar company. Just make money, drive innovation and data revenues. So it doesn't need a financially focused VC either.

Vodafone was estimated to spend a cool £100 million on their 3G portal launch alone. Just 10% of that would create an awful lot of innovation, which would pay for itself many, many times over.

UPDATE: I wrote that developers are also power users and early adopters of new mobile applications - if you doubt that, hang around Mobitopia for a while. A new study by 3M supports my argument about that's where innovations will come from:

..product ideas from lead users generated eight times the sales of ideas generated internally - $146 million versus $18 million a year - in part because lead users were more likely to come up with ideas for entire new product lines rather than minor improvements. Link The Daniel Hurie Project.

See what I mean?

Advice to Operators

I've been thinking for a while about the wisdom of starting a series of occasional posts entitled "Advice to Operators". While concluding it's probably not very wise, I've decided to give it a go anyway :-)

I do want to say however, that this isn't as arrogant as it seem.

Clearly, the people who work in operators are among the brightest minds in the corporate world. I'm not suggesting for a moment that I know their business better than them - indeed, I can't possibly do so. I have never worked at an operators (though I have worked with quite a few now) and don't have as fine a grasp of the minutae and nuances of the problems and challenges they face.

I also think they do certain things brilliantly. Corporate branding/marketing is world class, without question. Financial/acquisition strategy ditto (I'm thinking especially of Vodafone there). Technical ability and infrastructure management is superb. I could go on, but let's just say that operators are more than worthy of great respect.

However, they certainly have areas to improve on and I've written about many of these in the past.

The idea behind this series is that I hope to provide them with an alternative view of the way they go about certain things. It's much easier for an outsider to sometimes see what the real issues are. As a million consultants start nodding madly in agreement, I'm not talking about the process driven "we tell you what you've told us" consulting style.

This idea is much more a kind of high level approach, where by ignoring the status quo and the thousands of reasons something can't be done, perhaps we can come up with some blindingly obvious insights, that are simply overlooked by the people immersed in the day-to-day.

Let's see where it goes. And if you have any ideas about this, let me know with a comment or a private email russell AT mobhappy DOT com. I'm happy to maintain your anonymity if you like.

I'd be particularly interested to hear from people from operators themselves who might want to share some personal frustrations about the industry they work in.