Three highly relevant articles I can commend to readers that I've spotted on my journey in the last 24 hours.
First is in Business 2.0 (which whoops the ass of tired Wired), with some amazing statistics on Ryanair, the ultimate no-frills airline:
Wow. There are lots of lessons for telcos here in the world of evaporating voice revenues. But if you're not wanting to work it out for yourself, you know who to call.
Next is indeed in Wired (no URL, impossible to find link), where they report a Honda dealer is handing out "Just Looking" stickers to people entering teh showroom, and the salesmen will leave them alone until they rip their sticker off. The result is a dramatic increase in sales. Telco lesson: there's lots of mileage in innovating how people purchase your product. But at the moment, all those tied vertically-integrated stores look uncannily similar (and poor). How about telling your loyal customer "people who communicate like you upgraded to the following phones". Loads of innovation potential.
Last is in The Times (note: not "of London", it's The Times). Again, no URL, despite the whole of the rest of today's edition being online -- maybe it'll be posted up later. (Search for "Crowded trains to feel the strain" -- or look at p14 if you've got some wood pulp.) It's about expected crowding of trains in the next decade in the UK as the network reaches its capacity. The industry is structued as a nationalised track infrastructure, and private franchised train operators. Usage is soaring as the roads become overcrowded. But how to transfer cash from the "application" layer down to the "infrastructure" layer to fund the modifications for double-decker trains and longer platforms? One answer they list is to avoid the problem by increased price discrimination of travel times to push people out of the 8-9am peak.
It all sounds very familiar, and contains some salutory warnings for future hybrid telecom funding approaches that unpick today's vertically integrated model.
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