http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/01/the-democratization-of-mobile-telecommunication/ Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:32:43 +0200 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/01/the-democratization-of-mobile-telecommunication/comment-page-1/#comment-48 Marco Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:21:14 +0000 http://www.mocom2020.com/?p=157#comment-48 What can be learned from other countries, what should be done to make the mobile internet a success? From what I have seen and learned in the last 8 years here in Japan are two key things: 1. Built a working ecosystem (I mentioned that before in my post) and what is also very very important: 2.Don't be too greedy. Make sure you can offer a fair deal for all parties involved. I often see the tendency in the West to launch a service or a technology and to go for the so called "quick wins". Take MMS as a good example or the carriers revenue share models with the content providers. In both examples the carriers try to squeeze as much money as possible out of either the users or the content provider. While this might be a not too bad idea in the short term, it can kill a service in the long term. Same goes for mobile internet usage fees. In the beginning it was simply too expensive to use it. Think back of the days we all had dial up internet connections for our PCs. The clock was always ticking each minute we were online. Now we have DSL flat rates and the router keeps us online 24/7. The same will happen to the mobile internet. We have seen this here in Japan, I can see this in Germany for services like the "Bild Mobil" MVNO: once you don't have to pay for the data to access a certain service (like the Bild Mobil pages) then the usage increases. So my mantra would be "don't be greedy, think long term, think with the user in mind and think beyond a voice/mail communication device" What can be learned from other countries, what should be done to make the mobile internet a success? From what I have seen and learned in the last 8 years here in Japan are two key things: 1. Built a working ecosystem (I mentioned that before in my post) and what is also very very important: 2.Don’t be too greedy. Make sure you can offer a fair deal for all parties involved. I often see the tendency in the West to launch a service or a technology and to go for the so called “quick wins”. Take MMS as a good example or the carriers revenue share models with the content providers. In both examples the carriers try to squeeze as much money as possible out of either the users or the content provider. While this might be a not too bad idea in the short term, it can kill a service in the long term. Same goes for mobile internet usage fees. In the beginning it was simply too expensive to use it. Think back of the days we all had dial up internet connections for our PCs. The clock was always ticking each minute we were online. Now we have DSL flat rates and the router keeps us online 24/7. The same will happen to the mobile internet. We have seen this here in Japan, I can see this in Germany for services like the “Bild Mobil” MVNO: once you don’t have to pay for the data to access a certain service (like the Bild Mobil pages) then the usage increases. So my mantra would be “don’t be greedy, think long term, think with the user in mind and think beyond a voice/mail communication device”

]]> http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/01/the-democratization-of-mobile-telecommunication/comment-page-1/#comment-35 Mark Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:30:44 +0000 http://www.mocom2020.com/?p=157#comment-35 In my opinion we are still at the very first beginning of the democratization of mobile telecommunications. If we really want the mass to use their phones more with their eyes instead of their ears, we need affordable iPhone like devices for everybody incl. real data flat rates. So no exceptions anymore like: "All you can eat" but not valid for VoIP or IM. This would of course damage the cash cow SMS, but democratization efforts always have been painful :-) In my opinion we are still at the very first beginning of the democratization of mobile telecommunications. If we really want the mass to use their phones more with their eyes instead of their ears, we need affordable iPhone like devices for everybody incl. real data flat rates. So no exceptions anymore like: “All you can eat” but not valid for VoIP or IM. This would of course damage the cash cow SMS, but democratization efforts always have been painful

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