What is a Mobile Message?
by Ewan Spence
What is a mobile message? It’s a question that has no easily defined answer (after all, it’s a moving target we’re continuing to talk about on this site), but a simple summary would be along the lines of ‘one person passing information to another.’ How does this loose idea transfer to the network operators and the mobile users?
Rather fragmented, it appears. With so many classes of messages arriving at your handset - SMS, MMS, Wap-Push, a network based ‘instant’ message, a Skype text message, not to mention the plethora of email services, such as Google alerts, RSS to Email digests, your Mum asking when you’ll be coming over for dinner, etc), with each one potentially carrying a different charge, the simplicity that would benefit the customer is not there.
This could well be one of the biggest challenges facing the networks – how does the torrent of messages get condensed into a form that the handset user can not only work efficiently with, but that they will have the confidence to use – not just in practical terms, but also in financial terms – one ‘surprise’ monthly bill for a few hundred pounds can seriously damage a good customer relationship.
Throw into this mix the desire of the operators to be seen ‘adding value’ to the chain (we are more than a simple pipe for your data) and the solution is going to be one of compromise. And it’s this compromise that will determine which carriers will move forward in the 2.0 world.
