| About InfoWorld : Advertise : Subscribe : Contact Us : Awards : Events : Store |
 |
||||
|
||||
 |
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
||||
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 COLUMN
Service providers' profit motives rule content at wireless customers' expense Business is all about leveraging your power. Does that mean that what the customer wants is of secondary importance? I'm not sure, but why is it that every time a marketing person at the ABC Wireless company tells me the customer comes first, I feel like I've been knifed with a thin sharp stiletto?
Here's the question: Is a walled garden just the way it has to be due to the limitations of technology, or are the service providers hindering easier access for bigger profits at the consumer's expense? Content providers are more than willing to pay service providers to be on their platform because they need to gain access to potential customers. If Microsoft tried this, Bill Gates would probably be in jail by now, but because there are numerous services providers -- all doing the same thing, I might add -- it appears to be perfectly legal. Isn't there such a thing as de facto abuse of monopoly-like powers? Content providers leaving the largest donations at the altar of service providers these days include Amazon, America Online, Fidelity, and Yahoo, to name some top payers. Unlike the desktop environment where the home page of my choice pops up when I connect to the World Wide Web, no matter who my ISP is, the mobile service provider dictates what I see. Even beyond that, customizing a cell phone with my own selections by bookmarking is a tiresome task requiring numerous steps. Make one mistake and you have to start all over again. This is why those first ten preassigned sites become so important to content providers. For all of the new possibilities opened up by the Internet, what it also has done is bring our patience level down to zero. So, if your site is not readily accessible, it may never be accessed by users who don't want the hassle. But is the walled garden a result of poor technology that will not allow the cellular service providers to offer easy access? Unlikely. Here's how it works. Each telecomm wireless provider chooses its own implementation of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), for example, which they then "customize" further by creating a WAP gateway built to their own requirements. So if you are Amazon and you want to be on Sprint's service, you need to deploy their proprietary gateway. If you are Amazon and want to be on AT&T's service, you pay for access to yet another gateway. If you as a user want to go to a site not on the list, your chances of getting an error message increases because either the site is not WAP-enabled -- not the cellular service providers fault -- or because the content provider is not paying to be on the service providers gateway. Users only will have an open garden if all of the service providers used the same gateway and same version of WAP. Then you would be able to access any WAP-enabled service via any WAP cell phone using any cell phone service provider. The truth is that cellular service providers want to be more than a dumb pipe, but users don't want a walled garden. Although the wall is not crumbling, there are some indications that gaps are opening up. AT&T Wireless, sources tell me, will open up access to a limited degree later this year by partnering with other portal sites. So, for example, at the moment I can select either AT&T or Excite with either portal offering a different top ten list. AT&T will partner soon with other portals, each offering more services on their own lists. It's a bit of the long way 'round the garden wall, but it allows AT&T to continue to be a part of the value chain, and for users there will be more choices. There won't always be a home desk, but it depends on how much control the carrier wants to relinquish on that deck before it gets better. For businesses wanting to deploy their own internal wireless applications on a cell phone, what they would need to do is be able to redirect the cell phones to their own gateway. This can be done by working with the service provider, and I am sure there is a fee involved. Telecom power corrupts By the way, lest you think the big telecom providers don't like wielding their weight, here's what happened about four weeks ago. My American Express bill had three separate charges for AT&T WorldNet Service all in the same month. I called American Express and asked them to check into it. I did not hear back from AmEx, but the next time I tried to use AT&T WorldNet Service, I received an error message. I called AT&T customer service and was told that because I questioned the bill, my service was suspended. Hard to believe? I called AT&T public relations to ask them to see if this was company policy. "Well, I can't believe that is our policy," I was told. "We will get right back to you." That was three weeks ago. You know, Kmart offers a free ISP service at www.bluelight.com. I think I'll give that a try. If you believe the wireless service providers should do right by their customers first and their pocketbooks second, or not, e-mail me your opinion at ephraim_schwartz@infoworld.com. InfoWorld Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz is based in San Francisco. MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
SPONSORED LINKS
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
