Following on from my recent “Mobile Internet’ posting, a message (some would say ’vision’) - that the future is mobile – is one that the wireless industry has been on about for about four or five years now. It’s only recently that there are signs in Australia of the promise coming to fruition. But there are two distinct offerings at play.
3G operators like ‘3′ and Virgin offer mobile broadband dongles (modems) for as little as $20 month for 1GB (upload + download). Just plug the modem into your PC or laptop and away you go – just like fixed network broadband access. There is an article in today’s The Age about the high demand for this form of wireless broadband in preference to fixed-line broadband. What’s more, the networks seem to have plenty of capacity to make these offerings – acting to stimulate demand rather than building more capacity (as the fixed line networks must do) in response to demand.
Meanwhile, 3G operators continue to offer mobile phone plans including voice, video/TV and data services…oh, and the mobile Internet.
The distinction is that mobile phone plans are run over the GSM cellular ecosystem (i.e. integrating service access, addressing and billing systems). This operating systems enables carriers to charge for every transaction, differentiating based on what the traffic is. It’s that charging capacity that carriers want to take forward to the brave new world of 4G with the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standard. That appears to be the issue of so much concern to Joi Ito.
Virgin’s advertising captures this interplay between the two offerings well in its blurb ”The Internet should be free”. Get their mobile modem for no charge….as long as you purchase the bundling home or mobile phone package.
In summary, there are two ‘mobile Internet’ offerings available – one that may well have content and voice service provision tethered to the network and one that is just another broadband internet access service (but one that is mobile). The broadband internet accesss offer resembles a commoditised utility service. The mobile phone plan offering is consistent with the more familiar telecommunications offering of any-to-any connectivity for voice, video, messaging and some data.
