[IP] more on EC demands more wireless R&D
Begin forwarded message:
From: Will Morton <will.morton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 1, 2004 7:23:40 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] EC demands more wireless R&D
David Farber wrote:
<snip>
Original URL:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/01/wireless_r_and_d/>
EC demands more wireless R&D
By electricnews.net (press.releases@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Published Thursday 1st July 2004 12:21 GMT
<snip>
The Commission envisages the expansion of m-commerce to the point
where mobile users will be able to shop and pay on-line and receive a
whole range of audio-visual services such as music and video. It also
anticipates that mobile data capabilities will allow for a mobile
workforce that can easily exchange large amounts of data with its own
headquarters to improve working processes and improve efficiency.
<snip>
The problem in the mobile data space right now isn't lack of research,
it's lack of cluefulness amongst the existing operators. Not learning
the lessons of the first round of Internet businesses, they're
positioning themselves as integrated online providers rather than
mobile ISPs. Instead of lowering per-meg charges to a reasonable level,
encouraging 3rd party development of mobile-targeted websites and then
collecting for the bandwidth, they're concentrating on developing their
own (rather lame) integrated content such as Vodafone Live.
If they embraced their position as mobile ISPs, they could offer
integrated payment systems whereby a mobile user could purchase items
from websites and have the goods/services charged to their mobile bill
- actual working micropayments. Or open up their (already-existing)
location-based information to Java applets and allow 3rd party
developers to offer location-based services over the web. But no, it's
portalitis all over again.
We talked to a product manager at one of the UK mobile operators last
year, and they told us that they were anxious not to have the mobile
connectivity market "follow the Internet model". Given the speed at
which the Internet is subsuming other information networks (see the IP
post about Skype just before the one quoted above), I don't think they
have much of a choice.
Will
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