Spectrum of Greed

If you are a wireless executive, this guy is VERY scary!

It is that time of year when everyone starts to think about spooky things, so who can blame Charles Golvin for making the comment that headlines this article?  Golvin is principal analyst with Forrester Research, and he made that remark regarding the reaction of wireless companies to the FCC’s current plan to extend Net Neutrality rules to include wireless providers.  The gentleman to our left here is not the star of the new “Saw” movie, or Halloween 57, or Friday the Thirteenth, part 34 - he is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.  And he is the really, really spooky dude who is causing the big bad wireless providers to seriously reconsider how safe it is to go out and loot the general public with their standard trick or treat activities.  The New York Times talked about it a month ago, and just today the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Net Neutrality.  This is to those who are advocates for Net Neutrality a day to celebrate, not a day to fear!  Check out the joyous coverage at Savetheinternet.

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Wireless Revenue Juggernaut

It is past April fools, but I couldn’t resist.  AOL isn’t really charging per IM - but cell phone providers are.  As a means to grasp what is going on in the text messaging world, downloading the song Complication by Nine Inch Nails would cost $9,512.50…if you paid current text message rates of .24 per 140 characters of text sent.  That’s right - IMing on a cell phone generates big bucks!  SMS, or text messaging, is the fastest growing part of the cell phone providers product portfolio, and the least costly to provide.  Compared to downloading music or video, the little text messages barely make a blip on the traffic monitors of internet service providers.  This means BIG margins for those that provide text messaging services.  This explains why in America’s toughest economy in more than a decade, cell phone provider profits were up substantially.  Maybe AIG isn’t the only place that a little outrage should be directed.

Gregg Christofferson, who’s 13 year old daughter Dena sent 10,000 texts to friends in the course of a month and received a similar number, received a shocking bill for $4,756.25.  The total amount of data that was moved by the wireless ISP for this charge?  2.67 Megabytes.  If Comcast or another wired ISP charged this for people using IM, the nation would be outraged.  Dad was understandably outraged, and took his frustration out on his daughters cell phone.  Great headlines for the media to play with, but shouldn’t we look a little harder at these incidents?  (continue reading…)

I love this picture.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  I think some points should be awarded here for creativity.  If you want to cut down the opposition at a hearing that could threaten your revenue stream, there aren’t too many better ways to do it than enlisting the disinterested to replace the passionate.  Many of the ills that befall us in today’s society are a direct result of apathy.  When a company can find a way to make apathy work for them, you have to give them a little credit, don’t you? (continue reading…)

Craigs List for a cell phone - Coming to Kenya first!

According to FastCompany’s most recent article highlighting wireless innovation beginning on the Serengeti before it does in New York or Boston, trickle up is a new innovation phenomenon that will sweep the planet. Not so fast. The conclusions are incorrect for the wireless marketplace. There is a much more important reason why innovation MUST occur outside the US and then perhaps one day (if we are lucky) find it’s way here. It isn’t user choice as the article hints at with the quick references to two obscure wireless companies, insinuating they just couldn’t get customers interested.

In the US, we have a walled garden where the wireless gatekeepers don’t let innovators in because it would jeopardize a rich revenue stream for them. If they don’t get a significant cut of the pie, you can’t play ball, and they would rather just do it themselves. See a recent article from ARSTechnica on Canadian reaction to these restrictions. (continue reading…)