Of Reding and shindigs…
Iain Morris, currently at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, has sent in the following report:
Viviane Reding is at it again. Just months after she roped in Europe’s unruly mobile operators over their roaming charges, the EC commissioner istaking aim at the fees they extort from data customers travelling abroad. Disrupting the GSM Association’s official press conference during the Mobile World Congress, Reding told a group of journalists that if operators didn’t significantly improve their pricing behaviour she would be forced to take remedial steps. She’s given them until the summer.
Chances are Reding won’t be invited back next year - at least not as a panellist again. That would be a pity, because her outburst and uncompromising views are exactly what this event needs. Every year, the world’s mobile industry descends on Barcelona for its equivalent of the Oscars. Awards are dished out (categories include the catchy-sounding Most Innovative Wireless Device-Centric Technology and Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market), champagne is drunk, and platitudes are exchanged. Behind the scenes some hard deal-making is going on, but very little is actually said of any real substance. Most of the “breaking news” broke the day before.
While Yahoo! turned down Microsoft’s US$44.6bn bid back in Silicon Valley, Microsoft was categorically not answering questions about Yahoo! during its press conference (which, er, would have revealed that Sony Ericsson is to ship smartphones using Windows Mobile if the story hadn’t gone out that morning). Nokia talked aplenty about Ovi and unveiled handsets that look just like the N95. Rousing stuff.
Several sessions from day two are given over to mobile advertising, but it’s unlikely, that any operator will actually say how it expects to generate significant revenues from advertising when up against the likes of Google and, possibly, Microhoo. Services that attach adverts to incoming text messages sound like a promising lead for operators, but a properly “open” mobile internet would put them at a big disadvantage to the web players.
Virtually all of this will pass unnoticed to the people that matter the most - the customers. The iPhone’s proud parent, Apple, is nowhere to be seen, having already given away its secrets at its own self-congratulatory shindig. Nokia’s N95 must sound like a postcode to many. The hardest truth most operators must accept is that 3G - for all the recent hype - is far from being a mass-market service. Although data revenues are on the up, they still account for only 20% of total revenues in the most developed markets. And the people nudging them along are all here at MWC, fiddling with their HSPA data cards and USB modems. No wonder they’re so worried about VoIP.
