3G or not 3G: that is the question
I am still perplexed about 3G. I was thrown off by this statistics on which I have elaborated in my previous post.
Is 3G really adding or is it nothing? This time I would like to argue PRO. Because…
1) The statistics showing that 70% of mobile Internet is used at home may just be showing the ease of Internet use from mobile devices as well as that users usually… are at home. The first observation speaks favorably for 3G adoption whereas the second really casts doubt as to whether 3G is unnecessary.
2) I just came back from Altai where Internet isn’t that great. There I have all possible Internet connections (though I go there, as my superior correctly suggested, to “meditate” (also without quotes)) — Satellite+GPRS and DSL (+WiFi). This time I had guests — RAs for my wife’s project — and they all invested in HSDPA modems. That made sense, I thought — the aforementioned alternatives are marginally better in speed, too cumbersome to implement, and unreliable at best.
3) The person behind first largest Russian Internet massmedia (Anton Nossik) has recently visited our modest town for a talk show. His idea was that WiFi will be taken over by WiMAX and WiMAX will be taken over by 3G (I think WiMAX is a good alternative to 3G, especially if there will be mobile Internet phones). For him and others 3G would have been a benefit because breaking GPRS made it nearly impossible for them to toy with their iPhones.
The other news is that if we have mobile Internet, a lot more people can start using it, apart from the big cities’ 33 million users — people in rural areas have good phones as a rule, but they all lack good Internet.
3G obviously will be first build-out in large areas where its usefulness is indeed limited. Although I am not the target audience, as marketing people like myself would say, but I don’t really need it — I use it at work and home at good speeds and in-between I prefer to transit on the real and not information highway (well, except for audio books which I get beforehand — speaking of which I recommend The New New Thing — what a story, also very relevant for our — post-bubble — economic times).
USSD, Customer Care, and Self-Care
It was interesting to do a little investigation when Google Alerts brought to my attention the following news about USSD:
http://ecommconf.com/blog/2009/02/origins-of-voxeo.html
It’s an interesting interview but skip down to…
“…close to Voxeo, is what we’re calling unified self-service… You’re just starting to see companies do more and more SMS-based self-service, especially the mobile carriers, or USSD-based self-service. USSD is a technology I had never heard of until two months ago…”
Wait, I have read about Voxeo recently… Yes! A backlink from http://www.24100.net/2009/02/returning-from-call-center-world/ which linked to How USSD looks on iPhone post on this blog. Ralf Rottmann, author of backlinking resource 24100.net, wrote about his impressions about Call Center World 2009. It was fun to read about Bildschirmtext which is, in some sense and by a comparison of Ralf, a prototype of USSD, only being developed for fixed lines some 25 years ago in Germany. Apart from ridiculing USSD, Ralf’s summary of his visit to Call Center World 2009 was to keep a eye on Voxeo.
But back to Voxeo’s CEO… USSD is not known at all in the developed world! (And by the likes of Ralf not appreciated either.)
But why USSD is COMING BACK?
We are finding the answer in Voxeo’s press-release:
“on average, live agent calls cost $5.00 to provide, IVR systems cost $.50 per customer served and text-driven self-service costs only $.05 per task”
Moreover,
“The USSD solution … is available to practically every popular customer device. The application is as easy for customers to operate as popular SMS text-messaging services. USSD-based customer services are characterized … by very fast response times and … they are suitable as initial service levels…”
One-line summary:
USSD is a great companion for a good customer care solution, or better to say it is a great Self-Care solution.
As to innovation so much praised by operators and early adopters, sometimes it just does not pick up like this 25 years old story about Bildschirmtext or… 3G.
I don’t know much about successful 3G uptake but it was interesting to find out that only 6 percent use mobile Internet while outdoors whereas 70 percent use it at home.
What a minute. AT HOME? At home? Does it make sense to provide 3G then? Who really needs the true mobility?
(As a side note, check out in the cited report what users say about services they want and still lack on mobile phones… Ready? Airtime transfers (34% of answers) — and ONLY in South Africa this service is provided. Take a note — the service is called ChargeBack and it is done through a simple USSD command like *112*phonenumber*amount# — that simple and useful!
And you can buy one from us.
There is no technological mystery about customer service. It’s effectiveness and cost are prime motivators for adoption.
And USSD just does it better for mobile phones.
MTS and Vodafone are "Brothers Forever"?
Vodafone has decided to partner with MTS which is called in the news the forth largest operator in the world. MTS will get an offcial Vodafone partner status and can receive Vodafone’s services and help in 3G deployment. I hope it will be a better friendship than with Apple for which resellers of iPhone had to hire actors to imitate lines of people waiting to buy iPhone which is ridiculously priced at more than $700 for a $200 model in the US, EU and elsewhere.
Read the news at Vodafone site.
"Inside Man" Inside Mobile
Spike Lee will be judging UGC (user-generated content) that Nokia is solidifying for review.
As a result, in the fall we will see a three-part movie made by the renowned director, reports The New York Times.
Skylink and RuTube Mobile Video Network
Found at http://telecom.cnews.ru/, 26 Mar 2008
Skylink and RuTube developed mobile video network by providing direct access to mobile portal RuTube.ru from Skylink mobile phones. For the first time video clips stored on the web can be viewed on mobile phones utilizing high-speed mobile internet technology EV-DO.
Access to RuTube.ru is supported by a Skylink mobile phone Ubiquam U-520 with installed OpenWave browser. To gain access to the portal, RuTube link should be activated on a Sky Mobile portal.
Trafficland Launches Mobile Media Broadcasting
Source: http://telecom.cnews.ru/, 25 Mar 2008
Trafficland and MIKS, first Russian Center for Mobile Media Broadcasting, have launched a mobile broadcasting service in Skylink’s CDMA-450 network. Read more
European 3g Penetration Passes 10%
The penetration of 3G services in Europe’s connection base reached 10% in the latter part of October 2007… amounted to 85.7%, compared to an underlying rate in the GSM base which fell to 8.2%
More data on cellular-news.com
What is Travel 3.0 ?
Source here.
two definitions for Web 3.0:
1. Web-Everywhere Technology – Always connected portable technology
2. Total Immersion Web – Virtual worlds and MMOGs
Web 1.0 was the static, expert knowledge web. Web 2.0 is the interactive, user knowledge web. So these definitions of Web 3.0 as an always connected technology and total environment knowledge web make sense to me.
And either way, the significance for travel and tourism is enormous. An everywhere web is a traveling web. It means being connected when you travel locally to work, to the grocery store, to the gym, as well as on business trips and family holidays. The Web 2.0 tools that I review on this website are among the leaders into this everywhere web space, which I predict will move toward greater convergence in the coming decades.
I have personally not bought into the the Second Life virtual world phenomenon, which I think is far from ready for prime time. In the long run, however, I think that online virtual worlds will become an important way of communicating with other people, initially, and with distant environments, ultimately. The newly emerging Web 2.0 sites that have video tours of hotels and destination are important baby steps in this directions — even more so than the experimental hotel building in Second Life because they are more accessible for the masses.
Travel 3.0 is clearly not here, yet. However, because we can conceptualize it — imagine what it will be like — it is an important force shaping the visions of todays Travel 2.0 engineers and entrepreneurs.
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UPDATE: Check out the Sunverse.net blog, which is “All about Virtual Worlds and the Tourism Industry”. The site mostly focuses on the development of real world tourism destinations in Second Life.
