The marketing departments of cellular carriers are about to hit an interesting problem. Up until now the great unwashed of the general public have not really had to understand the difference between the Internet and the Web. Most people probably have an intuitive feeling that they aren't one and the same (after all, we have two different words), but couldn't really explain if asked.
Why the sudden problem? Well, the first generation of data-enabled handsets only supported WAP and its brethren. So there was no difference to explain. Everything looks webby. IP connectivity and Java followed in the next wave on GPRS, EDGE and CDMA 1xRTT networks. But the Java applications were very limited in their multimedia and networking capabilities -- always-off in an always-on world, weak audio I/O processing, feeble CPU power. The applications themselves tended to be only available from carrier-approved sources. Some phones could also be plugged into your laptop using a special USB cable and used as a wireless modem, at the risk of your service being terminated or getting a sudden and unexpectedly large bill for "abuse of service". All in all, the network demands weren't too great. You could give everyone the run of the Internet house at Web prices without too much revenue leakage.
Now suddenly Bluetooth is pushing the issue. It's really easy to get a Bluetooth phone to act as a modem or hub. It's a common out-of-the-box feature you can hardly expect users to ignore. (Plus the native applications on Symbian and MS Smartphones are getting pretty nifty too.) The low-priced all-you-can-eat data plan targeted at the casual wireless web surfer looks unbelievably cheap to the laptop and data-intensive crowd. And even for native handset applications the potential to disintermediate carrier services like MMS becomes very high. Why pay the carrier toll when you can download a client messaging application that does all you want for free? So the open-network Bluetooth phone has to be priced onto a laptop-like plan. Ouch. And Bluetooth (or a future look-alike technology) will increasingly become standard issue.
This means we're approaching a fork in the road. Carriers either have to start walling in the garden and charging a premium for access outside their verdant plantations (to the extent maybe of cutting off such access entirely to ordinary handsets). Or they have to explain why the better Internet-capable phone doesn't work with the cheaper Web-only plan. Total control enabling uniform pricing but a PR nightmare, or variable pricing depending on carrier control and a confusing market message.
There are times when I'm glad I'm not in marketing.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:06 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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