The Network Effect: A Thought after CTIA
by Ewan Spence
To me, coming from a number of European Conferences, CTIA was a bit of an eye-opener. Not because of the location (it’s hard to find fault with Moscone South in San Francisco), nor with the scheduled presentations and round tables put on by the organisers and attending companies at the event. The eye opener was the influence that the US networks have over their networks, the infrastructure, and the handsets available.
Every network, naturally, has to look out for the bottom line; but at the same time there should be a certain amount of respect for customer, developers, and handset manufacturers… basically the entire chain of the system. American networks, in my view were incredibly authoritarian – but I suspected that part of that was due to the distance I am from the US. After sitting through a number of presentations, and walking the show floor taking to every part of the chain, I have to wonder what the future of mobile messaging will be?
A quick example – the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile smartphone that I’ve been spending some time with - has the usual set of applications and features onboard. But when I try to use the Instant Messaging client, I’m told that connecting via the built-in WiFi client is not allowed… why not connect over the air and use your cellphone’s data plan? You’re happy for IE to use Wifi but not the IM?
I’m sure the carriers will have a nice PR friendly answer as to why, but I’m also sure that the answer will come down to ‘we don’t want to loose a single cent from our SMS revenues.†And I think this ‘must… not… cannibalize…’ is going to be a big problem for any innovation that may occur in the space. When (not if) the next step comes along, I’m worried that it’s going to completely pass us by because it’s not going to be financially acceptable to a few companies with massive leverage on the system.
Twitter, driven by SMS, should be embraced. Where’s my option of a $5/month all you can twitter on top of a regular SMS package? Why, after being around for 18 months, and in the heavily trafficked world of widely adopted Web 2.0 services since Feb/March of this year, is this not available? I mean it does nothing to impact the network code, it’s just SMS, and it drives more traffic for the networks? It’s one isolated example, but I’m sure you can all come up with more. Maybe you can even come up with a service that has been amplified by the networks?
I think mobile messaging has a future, and I think that we will see a new form in the future. But in my opinion it will be in spite of the networks, not because of them.
