Where telco’s could go
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Uncategorized
Telecommunications companies are known for their horrid customer service, yet necessity to modern life. It’s a love hate relationship, where very few are truly ‘happy’ with their provider, yet would be pained to survive a day without the service they offer, the service of connecting you with other human beings.
I had an interesting think over the past few days about telcos, the role they play, and what the future may hold for them as a business. With internet hotspots increasingly being used as a value-add for so many other businesses (coffee shops, hotels, fast food), it’s not unreasonable to argue that one day in near future, the abundance of internet connectivity would allow a user to be near constantly connected to the net, and make it possible for them to route all their conversations through Skype or any other VoIP service.
The obvious place for telcos to go is into the financial provider space, as we carry our mobile phones with us everywhere, and use it for so many other forms of transaction, it makes perfect sense to combine small payments into the mix (obviously, this is already quite successful in places such as Japan and South Korea).
But let’s say, whatever the reason, telcos in Australia decide not to follow that path, what then? Do they continue to fight in an already over-saturated market and just churn customers over from one another? It hardly seems productive to incrementally grow market share by fighting price wars while staying parity on features and service offer.
So here’s my idea to the telcos that they can feel free to use (attribution would be nice though =P).
You’ve got the backbone, you’ve got the network, you’ve got pretty damn good almost-everywhere coverage to the internet. Start building your SIM-cards into more things. Start working with OEMs and Brand-name manufacturers to get your service into more devices and expand your market.
The year is 2009 going on 2010. Why the hell every single digital camera doesn’t have a SIM card slot is beyond me. I should be able to have 10 Optus SIM cards with my plan that I can chuck into multiple devices. One in my phone, one in my camera, so all my photos get auto-uploaded to the net from wherever I am. One for my car, so that I have mapping, traffic and news information live to my vehicle (and status reports sent back). One for my laptop (rather than that silly USB dongle), one for my PVR or DVD player. One for any device that is portable and can have a good excuse to connect to the net.
They should be working together with manufacturers to expand the range of devices that are connected up, and move away from being a provider of “mobile phones” and to essentially that of a internet provider with more availability and flexibility than a traditional ISP.
Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but it just seems silly that they haven’t started getting SIM card slots as standard items on everything yet. Imagine how wide they could open their market.
February 24th, 2010 at 9:46 am
I agree, and it's happening. Amazon Kindle and iPad are leading the charge — you can bet there will be more.
The big problem is that each and every 3G broadband account is currently such a pain in the backside that it wouldn't be worth it. I don't want to have to worry about busting the quota on my digital camera and incurring thousands in excess charges.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:43 am
maybe it's simply that the mobile phone manufacturers are trying to make mobile phones all of the above; digital cameras, gps, traffic updaters, web-browsers etc.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Agreed – no doubt they are trying to attach as much functionality as they can into the devices, but there are some things a mobile will never be able to do. It will never be a microwave for example. Or a toaster. =P (not that I'm saying I want my toast net-enabled, thought it would be cool if my to-do list could be toasted into my bread every morning).