Now, it’s possible for them to upgrade to a different CMS — but that’s going to be serious, serious effort.

Are there any other solutions that you can ‘bolt on’ to mobilise their site? That was the question.

My immediate response was ‘yeah, I’m sure something like Mippin would do this from your RSS feeds’.

Having had a quick look again at the Mippin site, it looks precisely like the sort of thing they’d be able to help with. I especially like the fact they’ll give you a native app on each platform for £500 each too.

However I wondered what else is out there. Have you come across anything I should recommend to this chap?

Apparently, as Squawkbox points out, this is the site that’s causing a substantial amount of pain for a lot of Vodafone’s Glasgow customers. (Dive in and have a read of the issues here).

From what I can glean from the Vodafone eForum team’s responses, it seems that this particular cell site is due an upgrade ‘later this month’ that ‘should improve matters’.

I do feel for the eForum team in this instance. Normally they can fix stuff right-away, especially if it’s a billing issue, a handset delivery problem and so on. However when it comes to infrastructure? Well, I suspect ‘Networks’ probably don’t talk to customer service that much. Indeed, if Vodafone is anything like some of the other UK operators, the chances are that customer services are the last people to know there’s a problem and when there’s a fix.

The fact that the poor eForum team are reduced to having to issue rather tenuous statements because there’s no information for them to supply customers.

You’d think that if this site was due an upgrade, somebody in the Networks team might — you know — happen to have an idea when this would take place, so that the eForum team can pass on the data?

Why isn’t there a live status update system that everyone can check to see the progress of enhancements to a particular cell? I don’t think Vodafone customers mind about the occasional network niggle, or even seriously poor service — provided it feels temporary, provided it feels like something is being done.

Instead, it’s the eForum chaps who get it in the neck from the customers. And, well, the customers have a point. Just look at some of the complaints on the page.

Unfortunately Wayne from the eForum team has got the pressure cooker of annoyed Glasgow Vodafone customers moved up to the next notch. How? Well he pointed out that:

I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to give you any credits at this point as you are still able to use 2G. Calls on 2G seem to be unaffected by this issue so you can still use your phone for its purpose (making calls).

Warning bells started ringing for me at that point. Especially given Vodafone’s current marketing about having the most reliable/outstanding network.

Wayne, alas, when it comes to defining the ‘purpose’ of a smartphone, the ability to make 2G calls is most probably a secondary or tertiary consideration, especially when the 3G data isn’t working.

MIR reader Squawkbox wasn’t having any of it:

That response would have been suitable if it was perhaps at the start of 2005 but not today. Consumers come to vodafone with smartphones take contracts out for multiple purposes, not just to make calls as you suggest above. I entered into the agreement with Vodafone to provide both circuit switched services (calls and SMS) and packet switched services (data). As you’ll see from my usage, I’m very much a heavy data user and don’t tend to use too many SMS or use much of my allowance. You even advertise data as part of your PR for your network (see “deep pan” and other silly marketing terms you use).

He continues — and here’s where it gets a bit, well, embarrassing for Vodafone:

I previously worked in the network department of another network and I was able to see when sites were due to be upgraded or what particular faults were. If the issue impacted a large number of customers then it would be raised as a high priority fault and was usually quickly resolved. If I felt the issue was big enough, I’d push it on behalf of customers to get looked at sooner.

Yup. That’s what they do at Vodafone too. However, in this case, I reckon it’s not got the priority it needs.

Squawk continues:

Why didn’t you seek an update on this particular site? Why didn’t raise a case to have the other sites checked for faults? For example I’ve done some testing and I’ve been connected to the following 3G sites:

LAC: d5 CID: 30dceff
LAC: d5 CID: 30debd6
LAC = d5 CID: 30dceea

It’s ridiculous Squawk is having to do this.

The standard ‘over capacity’ explanation that works for most users didn’t work on Squawk:

This suggests to me it is an additional fault rather than completely due the excess demand placed on it due to site 32520 being down

Ah dear.

It’s also ridiculous that the eForum team aren’t getting the resources they need to resolve this particular issue.

I reckon the eForum team will have submitted a ticket reporting the fault.

One would imagine it’s worthwhile prioritising an area that’s getting a lot of heat ahead of other areas without so much heat.

Or, is the reality that the whole network is on fire? The key here is, ironically, communication — and then action.

The customers getting a rubbish service need some clarity on WHY and WHEN it will be fixed.

I’ve had similar issues myself and it’s hugely frustrating — in one memorable experience last year, a senior chap at 3 noticed my post and escalated a fix, meaning my local base station was back online within a few hours.

Now then, come on Vodafone, what can you do for the people of Glasgow?

If you’re working in mobile music, I strongly recommend taking a look at midem. Most people working in music know all about midem, however it’s not so well known in the mobile sphere.

modem — always written in lowercase — is the world’s largest and most influential music industry event. It takes place each year in Cannes and if you’re looking to connect with senior folk in the music industry, it’s the place to be.

I write this because I know the organisers, Reed Midem, very well. If you’d like a personal connection, please let me know and I’ll introduce you.

Perhaps you’d like to speak, get more details on exhibiting or find out about participating in some of their mini events? For example, I think the midem Innovation Factory could well be highly relevant for some readers.

Here’s their event announcement:

For its 46th edition, midem is undergoing a makeover orchestrated by the music industry market’s new director Bruno Crolot. “We’re keeping the fundamentals, but we’re aware of the need to widen our positioning to encompass a broader range,” he explains. To adapt to the natural evolution in the music market, a number of innovations will be implemented. “We want to reach a bigger ecosystem. midem, which next year will run from Saturday to Tuesday, will bring together technology companies, advertising agencies and brands around artists and traditional music industry players.”

Alongside this new positioning, the tariffs for accreditation have been simplified and revised down: “We are proposing some very attractive prices for artists and start-ups. We’re also offering a special price of €495 until 30 September,” said Bruno Crolot.

Among major innovations for 2012, midem will create a new space, the Direct2fan Camp, where independent artists and labels can meet and where the latest digital tools aimed at developing and enriching the direct relationship with audiences will be showcased. Participants can benefit from advice and training on techniques to optimise their online presence via new technological tools and social networks.

Henceforth, the MidemNet programme will now run concurrently over the four days of the market, with a special day dedicated to major keynotes on what will be known as Visionary Monday. midem 2012 will also see the launch of the Innovation Factory, a space for meeting and discovery where start-ups, major technology players, artists and labels will be able to share their needs, projects and expertise in the field of music.

At the heart of the Innovation Factory, the midemlab, the international competition open to innovative start-ups and developers of applications, which was a great success in 2011, will widen its scope to include companies from all sectors. Candidates should propose innovations and digital solutions aimed at helping executives, artists and brands reach and cement bonds with audiences whilst generating revenues.

For brands, the new-look midem is developing an even more sophisticated programme of content, conferences and workshops, in order to foster interaction with artists, publishers and labels. After the success of Sync Day last year, midem is expanding this event through the addition of a competition, which will bestow awards for the best use of music in a marketing campaign.

Another novelty will be the launch of the midem festival, open to industry executives and for the first time also to the general public. This will comprise three evenings of special concerts in a single dedicated venue, during which upcoming artists and international stars will share the line-up. The Fringe stage, launched last year, has been renamed midem off, and for the forthcoming edition will include musical programming in the heart of the market by day, and live performances in the bars of Cannes by night. “We want the event to be more fun, to put live music at the core of midem, and do all we can so that participants feel more involved than they have in the past,” summarises Bruno Crolot.

My very good friend Ilana is recruiting for a Community Manager to help out with a company that produces a mobile payments app for the Android platform.

This is a super, *super* opportunity to get a leg-up into the 1.2 trillion dollar mobile industry for anyone who’s been working in the old, boring internet and eyeing up the exciting mobile industry eagerly.

The full details on the role are right here on Ilana’s site.

Here’s a sneak peak of the role requirements:

- A strong awareness and interest of Android, Android apps, and Android app development is essential.
- At least two years community management experience within a well-known company or agency.
- An effective communicator, you will have participated in online communities and be confident about speaking to entrepreneurs and app developers across all social media platforms.
- Good technical understanding of Android apps and phone operating systems.
- A team player with the confidence to act as the voice of our customers within the organization
- Editorial, marketing, PR and customer service knowledge or experience an advantage

And the important bit, how to apply:

Please send details of your experience with Android phones and apps, along with your CV to ilana.recruits@gmail.com. No agencies please. Please submit applications by August 5th 2011.

Every success!

Charles Arthur over at The Guardian reports that some enterprising software patent owners have decided to have-a-go at mobile application developers that they fear might be infringing their intellectual property.

Charles quotes a few developers, including MIR favourite, Mr Simon Maddox, who are, I think it is fair to say, understandably running scared over the potential fallout.

Charles reports that Simon has taken the rather dramatic step of withdrawing all his applications from US app stores (on all platforms). Why? Well, he doesn’t want any problems.

I wouldn’t either.

If I was making a wicked living from my mobile apps, the last thing I need is some 800lb Gorilla arriving and demanding royalties. That would be a very bad day, especially since the moment I have to even think about the issue, it’ll cost me £300 per hour on legal fees. Yeah. No thanks.

Here’s one of the issues that’s giving folk the willies:

Meanwhile Kootol Software of Mumbai announced that it has sent a notice to Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, IBM, Research in Motion, LinkedIn, MySpace, Research in Motion and a number of other companies – including Iconfactory – claiming that they infringe US patent application 11/995,343 – “A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed” – which it said has also been applied for in India, Canada and Europe.

It says that patent it is seeking is an invention which “allows the user to publish and send messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network. By indexing each message of each user the system provides real time search capabilities to users of the network in turn creating a unique form of communication.”

Yeah. I think it’s a pile of rubbish too.

An ‘invention’?

Oh come off if.

But let’s not get into the nitty gritty.

The last thing the big platforms need is for their developers to get cold feet and start panicking about getting sued. The marketplace dynamic relies on independent and small developers innovating the hell out of the rest of the market, running fast and responding swiftly to end-consumer needs. This is why there’s half-a-billion-trillion apps out there for iPhone. Everyone piled in. Everyone messed around. Some lucky developers found small niche markets for their products. Other even luckier ones got big very, very fast.

The key point is that the consumer was delighted. And the platform’s value grew and grew. This is the case with Apple and, to a lesser extent, the other platforms.

Can you imagine what would happen if Apple had 50% of apps removed from sale because of patent fears? This is somewhat conceivable.

One would imagine that patent holders would only attack the biggies — the companies with money. But you only have to look at the mindless antics of the record industry to see some people have no qualms suing individuals who don’t have a room full of lawyers.

The fear, though. That’s the problem.

Pulling your apps is a highly sensible precaution if you think you’re anywhere near infringing on a patent. We only know about these particular problems because of the post from Charles. Chances are, the next app you’re working on could well already have a patent lurking somewhere that you’re infringing.

But if you’re a developer with £500 in the bank, are you going to spend the resource checking this out? No.

The continued threat of a patent problem could have hundreds of thousands of application developers pulling their apps from multiple platforms.

Indeed, if you really, really want to screw up Apple, one would imagine that you should setup a company, invent a lot of useless stupid patents — or buy some existing ones for a lump of dosh — and set-about PR’ing the hell out of your infringement war, scaring all and sundry and demanding millions in compensation from each developer. You obviously wouldn’t need to go through with it to have an effect on Apple. Twitter, Facebook (and now Google+) mean that our world is super-hyper-amazingly connected. Developers even more so. What would happen to Apple’s share price if this practice became widespread?

One solution is to use some of the $70-odd-billion-dollars to buy up the problem companies and shut them down. Job done. Another would be to counter-sue. This would go on for years and put the willies up everyone though. Or Apple could arrange a global license fee that applies to the platform as a whole, so developers aren’t involved. Another possible alternative would be for Apple to indemnify every registered iOS developer with unlimited liability for these kinds of patent claims. That would give a lot of reassurance.

As for the other competing platforms such as Nokia/Windows, WebOS, RIM, Bada and, to a lesser extent, Android, a similar indemnification shield would be useful for attracting and retaining developer attention.

This is one of those issues that’s worth keeping in the back of your mind. It could easily, easily turn into a News of the World style debacle for Apple — I think they’ve got the most to lose from this, given their scale.

Perhaps the issue will simply go away? We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I hope the platforms take note of the plight of some of their developers.

Another Pizza-themed post today, this time about Dominio’s.

The company is about to open it’s first motorway store at the Leigh Delamere East services station in Wiltshire on the M4. This, by the way, should be encouraged. I’m a little bored of the usual Burger King offerings at a lot of these service stations.

This new addition means that passengers (NOT drivers, obviously) whizzing down the M4 can now use the Dominio’s Pizza app to place their pizza orders ahead of their arrival at the service station.

Love it.

Anything that increases convenience, I love.

The press release from Domino’s today explains:

Passengers will be able to order ahead by phone or using Domino’s iPhone app, Android app or mobile optimised website, so a delicious, piping-hot pizza will be ready and waiting on their arrival at the services.

You won’t be able to pick up a breakfast pizza unfortunately. No. The motorway store will be following the standard Domino’s opening hours: 11am ’til 11pm.

Still, plenty of opportunity to pick up a Mighty Meaty on the way to see granny.

Good work Domino’s.

I came up from London last night and stayed overnight in the Premier Inn next to the stadium. I then had to make what I’m sure is a very familiar decision to most readers — WiFi or not? Should I give a tenner to Spectrum Interactive (the providers of WiFi at the Premier Inn) or should I simply continue to use my 3 MiFi?

My dilemma was this. I had 1.3GB to download and it would obviously be a lot faster via a fixed connection. However I’ve been to far too many hotels with utterly shit WiFi so I’ve grown very, very wary of wasting my cash unnecessarily. In this context I’d have been happy to pay for the utility.

What’s your perspective?

I took a video and walked through my reasoning. Let me know what you think…

Now then, this is brilliant news for all pizza lovers across the United Kingdom — and indeed, anyone else who happens to visit the UK. And anyone who’s been following the burgeoning m-payments space too.

You can now pay for your Pizza Express meal using the all new Pizza Express app. It’s fully integrated with PayPal, enabling you to settle your bill with a few taps and completely avoid using cash or cards in the restaurant.

If you’re like me, you have your PayPal account linked directly to one of your bank accounts so if you’re out of balance, PayPal simply picks up the cash from your account without any issue. All you have to do is enter/confirm your PayPal credentials to do the transaction.

I simply love this.

I love not having to arse around with cards and bits of paper.

The new app enables a whole host of other functionality including restaurant finder, table booking, special offer integration (for those 2-for-1 deals) and, of course, the ability to peruse the menu.

We’ve been waiting a long time for this sort of usage model. Kudos — absolutely kudos — to the Pizza Express and PayPal teams for making this happen. Indeed this is the kind of thing that most companies seem functionality unable to even consider, let alone deploy.

I can guarantee that this feature is going to get some heavy usage in the Pizza Express Charlotte Street, given the amount of geeks and new media techies working in that region. It will be very interesting to see where the FIRST official ‘consumer’ app transaction takes place. Will it be in London? Or will it be somewhere out in the provinces?

The app is integrated fully into all Pizza Express restaurants. From table booking to bill paying. You might be wondering how you actually confirm that you’ve paid? Quite simply, you just have to show your transaction receipt to the waiter, however the restaurant will get confirmation of your payment too.

Pizza Express reckon that you can complete your whole payment transaction in under a minute (provided you’re an existing PayPal user).

Here are the steps you take to pay the bill:

Step 1. Once you have placed your order in any one of our 384 restaurants, you can ask for your bill whenever you want. Whether that is when you place your order, at some point during your meal or at the end of the meal. It is up to you.

Step 2. All you have to do is click on our app, select the ‘Pay Your Bill’ option and enter the 12 digit code, which will be clearly marked on the bottom of your bill.

Step 3. Once your bill appears, you can check the amount on the app matches your bill and add a tip if you wish.

Step 4. You will also have the option to redeem against a valid offer code or voucher and your total bill amount will be automatically amended.

Step 5. Then log in to your PayPal account or enter your credit or debit card details and press ‘Pay Now’.

Step 6. Once payment is received the app will send you and our tills a confirmation that will let us both know you have paid. You will also receive an email confirming your payment and you can view your full receipt in the ‘My Receipts’ section of the app.

Here’s a video that nicely illustrates how the app works (featuring The Next Web’s Hermione Way):

I particularly like this quote from the Pizza Express CEO:

Mark Angela, Chief Executive of PizzaExpress says, “We knew there was no point just launching an app for the sake of it, so we waited until we had a system that could genuinely improve our customers’ experience of eating out at PizzaExpress. We believe today’s version does exactly that and we’re looking forward to developing it in the future.”

Good man! Now and again I see apps from hospitality chains that are little better than a list of restaurants and their postcodes. Pointless.

Now then, this most definitely is big, big news. I’m pleased to see this level of innovation in the marketplace. Congratulations to both companies — and, once again, kudos to Pizza Express. That must have been a heck of a lot of work making sure the service rolls out to all 370 restaurants across the UK.

I know the app only just launched this morning but I’d like to get my next feature request in as soon as possible: I’d like to see the ability to order an extra dough balls without having to flag down the waiter. Or another diet coke. That would be simply genius. And you know what, I don’t think the team here are that far away from being able to order this kind of fully integrated experience.

If you’re an app developer working for the hospitality industry, you’re about to get a lot of phone calls today asking about this app. Even if you don’t work in hospitality though, I strongly encourage you to download the app and go and test the process out.

I think today marks a highly positive shift for the hospitality industry and mobile payments. It won’t be long before a lot more companies deploy similar services. There will be a lot of red faces amongst the highly competitive restaurant chain senior executives. The waves of this launch will reach a wide array of other shores though. Once a company such as Pizza Express jumps on mobile payments in such a committed manner, it won’t be long before the rest begin to do so.

It’s going to be rather interesting to see how this service performs. How will the mobile and hospitality industries respond when, say, Pizza Express announces 5% of its payments are being made via the app?

What happens when 40% of payments are made through the app? When the app is responsible for, I dunno, say £100m of revenue?

What are the implications for the hospitality industry and the payments industry? What would it mean for the consumer? This could potentially revolutionise the relationship between Pizza Express and its customers.

See, right now, Pizza Express doesn’t have customers. It has anonymous individuals that cannot be profiled. Folk that walk in, give them cash, then walk out again. Some of them — a small percentage, I imagine — sign up for the Pizza Express Club. Those you can manage, segment, profile. But the vast, vast majority are completely unknown to the company.

If they’re paying via the app, they’re a heck of a lot more visible, especially if you can tie them to a username or PayPal account. You can begin to closely look at their spending habits. You can market to them directly — because you’ve now got the ability to deliver an end-to-end special offer delivered and fulfilled via the app. Oh yes. Very interesting possibilities indeed.

Anyway, let’s give it a go. I’m going to try it out as soon as I can. I’ll let you know how I get on.

You can pick up the app from the iTunes App Store today (iTunes link).

There is no doubt that mobile payments company Square is on a roll. The company just landed a lucrative deal selling its credit card readers in Apple’s retail stores and is growing at a fast clip. And now the company has just received a strategic investment from a giant in the credit card industry—Visa.

via Visa Makes A Strategic Investment In Disruptive Mobile Payments Startup Square.

I had to knock out a brief comment on this Financial Times post. Here’s the first few paras:

Leading European telecoms companies want to levy significant charges on Google and other online content providers through an overhaul of the regime governing how data travel over the internet.

Operators in Europe complain that they are contending with an explosion of data on their networks, much of which comes from US sites such as Google’s YouTube video service.

It’s just shocking.

Shocking.

Tons of Youtube and Facebook traffic? You don’t like it? Think that demanding a load of cash from Google is a quick and easy fix? Oh dear. Oh dear me no, no, no.

First of all, what the hell am I paying you for, Mr Operator? That’s right — I pay you for this already. Now it’s your problem if you’ve got the model wrong and can’t afford it. Change your terms and conditions accordingly. That’s my first problem.

But as for charging Google or seeking to make it Apple’s fault and demanding they pay? Oooooooffff. OOOOFFFF!  Oh no.

You don’t want to have that conversation. You really don’t. Not with the Silicon Valley super-egos. Oh no. Not when — for example — Apple has $60 billion in free cash sitting there waiting for a problem to fix.

Would you, Mr Operator, like to be that problem?

Step into my office. Take a seat.

Here’s what we’ll do. You think carrying Google, Apple and Facebook traffic is a bit of a ball ache? Too much hassle? And you can’t be bothered to innovate your way out of the challenge? Fair enough. As of 1st of June, we’ll deny all traffic to your piddly little operator.

Well, no, actually. What we’ll do is this. Anyone requesting Facebook.com from your piddly little operator IP range will get a 500 byte HTML file in return, explaining that the content is unavailable from your bollocks network.

That’ll solve your data crunch nightmare overnight, won’t it?

Right.

And then we’ll do a deal with the number two in the market — or, better still, we’ll buy them. Or, actually, it’ll be quicker to do a deal with those LightSquared folk to move you into irrelevance in the next few years.

Actually yes — are you still comfortable? Good. Here’s what we’ll do. You can have some cash. Yes — you heard us right, we’ll pay you as you demand — we’ll pay you to sit there and play dumb, Mr Operator. You can have a few hundred million from us. You’ll think that’s a real result. It’s pocket change in the context of what we’re planning. It suits us to pay you to keep quiet whilst we sort out a better solution. We know you’ll take our cash contributions and spunk it up the wall anyway. You’ll take the cash and you’ll start thinking of it as a ‘revenue stream’ when actually, it’s a set of handcuffs.

Ah dear.

I think it’s reasonably fair to say that your average billion dollar mobile operator couldn’t innovate its way out of a wet paper bag.

Where’s all the smart thinking?

For the avoidance of doubt and for all the people sitting in the propositions and strategy teams trying to coax some kind of strategic-whitepaper into life for the utterly confused telephone men running your operator, here’s a few suggestions:

- Assign all standard mobile internet connections on your network a consumer grade 25k/second throughput. This means I can still do stuff with my internet connection, but that I’ll have to think twice about watching the T-Mobile Royal Wedding Spoof video in high quality, on the bus, for the 18th time today

- Tier your price plans according to speed (e.g. Everyone gets 25k/sec for free, £5/month gets you 50k/sec, £10/month gets you 100k/sec and so on — and these speeds will all be adjusted uniformly according to the available bandwidth on the cell)

- Tier your price plans according to application (“Do you want HQ video with that? Really? That’s £15 extra a month”) — give consumers the choice

- Charge me for the video, not Youtube. Pop-up a little note at peak times asking me to agree to a £0.50 charge to stream the video in HQ. Otherwise make me wait 30 minutes for it to finally arrive on my phone.

Here are some other related ideas I wrote back in December.

Some of those points above are contentious, yes. It’ll certainly stimulate debate. But that’s what we need. The consumer needs to be educated that cell access is a finite resource. Give everyone a basic service to avoid the net neutrality wonks choking on their beards. But since it’s a finite resource, price it as such.

Orrrr… refer everyone to Hutchison’s 3UK who currently offer proper unlimited everything on their data plans.

I’m helping out the organisers with the mobile stream of the event. Therefore I’m hunting around for best practice examples of mobile companies using social media and blogging. My intent is then to see if we can get the relevant protagonists on-stage with a presentation or perhaps participation in one of the array of panel discussions.

Now I’ve already got some personal favourites. Vodafone UK, for example, are simply legendary when it comes to their outreach on Twitter, on their own forums and around the internet. I have to admit I wasn’t that enamoured by T-Mobile’s outreach because (and I haven’t looked recently) they were all about broadcast and wouldn’t respond to anything other than specific TMO enquiries. The Orange team do their own handset unbox videos which I think is brilliant.

Sticking with Orange (or at least, France Telecom), the LifeIsBetterOn team do a super job too. I often end up finding rather interesting links from their Twitter profile.

If you think you should be on a panel discussion, giving a best practice presentation or perhaps even exhibiting to the ‘connected’ audience at BlogWorld, drop me a note and I’ll connect you to the right people.

I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com or ew4n on Twitter.

Alistair Hill, the managing director of On Device Research, reckons this trend is down to customers becoming more satisfied with their connected experience:

“As mobile media becomes more important to consumers daily lives, mobile operators are gaining more satisfied customers. Great services such as social networking and mobile games help operators to increase customer loyalty and handset manufacturers to differentiate themselves.”

I can understand that — especially when considering an international audience. Here are some of the report’s fascinating highlights:

- Operator satisfaction increases 22% for daily mobile internet users compared to occasional browsers in the UK, +10% in India, +26% in Kenya.
- Mobile social networkers’ operator satisfaction increases 10% in the UK compared to those who do not use the service, 14% in India, 10% in Kenya.
- In Kenya mobile games have huge influence on which mobile phone to purchase. 89% of mobile media users in Kenya consider the quality of games they can play on their device when choosing a new phone.

Here’s Alistair’s slideshare:

New research from Ofcom-accredited mobile bill analysis firm billmonitor has revealed that more than three-quarters of UK mobile subscribers are on the wrong mobile contract, wasting £4.899 billion every year (an average of £194.71 per person). The findings revealed that over half of subscribers (52%) are on too large a tariff, using on average just one quarter of their monthly calling allowance; 29% are on too small a tariff, wasting a total of £1.53 billion; finally, a further 19% have the right level of inclusive minutes but are wasting £0.74 billion by not choosing the right contract length or optimising other costs.

What’s does Acision’s top mobile billing chap Steven van Zanen think?

“The explosion in mobile data usage in the wake of the proliferation of smartphones and tablets has transformed the ways in which we use our mobile devices. Mobile social networking, gaming and video streaming are now all common activities and these in turn are affecting the costs which users are incurring. This new research is a further illustration of how existing mobile tariffs are out of step with consumers’ usage habits.”

Agreed. It is ridiculous. I know why the operators are doing it, but I think the time is fast approaching when the price plan as we know it (in terms of minutes and texts) will be obsoleted.

“As both devices and subscribers’ usage habits have become more sophisticated, the standard ‘one-size fits all approach’ to mobile charging is ineffective. Central to providing a greater level of consumer confidence in billing is giving them the power to control and manage their spend in real-time. Recent research from Acision highlighted that over 40% of consumers  would be willing to pay for notifications which would prevent out of package cost, reinforcing the consumer demand for greater control over spend. In this way, offering a charging facility which allows consumers to track their mobile spend in real-time provides operators with a unique opportunity to derive genuine competitive advantage in a fiercely contested market.”

I’m with you there Steven. But again, I can see why the operators are quite happy to just sit in silence — no news is good news, because the consumer is either over-using (in which case, they’re paying a premium) or under-using (in which case, you’re making a nice profit). Give the consumer too much clarity and you could see your profits drop quite substantially.

The other way to look at it is by giving control, as Steven asserts, you enable the consumer to choose where they spend their money. It’s then over to the operator to demonstrate value, rather than hiding everything away with obtuse billing plans. If I got a note from Vodafone to let me know when I’d hit my text message limit, or my minute bundle limit, the chances are I’d probably phone up and upgrade to the next plan. Even better, if the alert service could do it for me.

Still… dangerous talk, all this ‘innovation’.

Continuing our BlueVia Introduction series, their top man, Jose Valles, is back — but this time in English! (I hope you enjoyed Jose’s brief Spanish video from Monday).

I asked Jose if he could give me an example of how BlueVia works with developers. He jumped straight into an answer so I’ve edited the video from there — I particularly like his ‘internet speed’ point. It is written in the annals of developer history that thou shalt not expect a mobile operator to move fast. This might well be true, but when it comes to BlueVia, Jose explains that they’re enabling developers to move at internet speed. I can well believe it. Have a watch..

For more information on BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer programme, please visit www.bluevia.com.

Here’s Gideon with an overview of the service:

She got home from work one day to find the whole family house turned upside down. They’d been burgled. The burglars had been rather smart too. They managed to find and expertly extract all the valuables — from watches to televisions to PlayStations.

The Police came and did the usual. They looked around. They didn’t take any fingerprints. There’s no point. They could tell it was a professional job. They just consoled my friend’s mother and gave her a crime reference number for the insurance.

Thankfully, the family was insured.

That, unfortunately, is when the second wind — the second nightmare — arrived. The sodding insurance company made it as difficult as possible.

Not many people know this — but if you’re trying to claim a item on your insurance, you typically have to supply proof of purchase. Or if you don’t have that readily available, a model and serial number will do.

I tell you now, I don’t know the serial numbers of anything I own.

I could *probably* tell you the details of my Apple Macs, simply because I got an electronic receipt from the Apple Store so I could search the information via Gmail.

My friend’s mother was outraged — the insurance company was incredibility difficult, refusing to reimburse the full amount because she had no proof of purchase, and no serial number records. Indeed, as the family began adding up the value of everything that had been stolen, they realised they were dramatically underinsured. By something like 30-40 thousand pounds.

When you count your flatscreen TVs, PlayStations, laptops, computers, iPads and array of iPhones, that figure can easily come to well over 10k before you’ve got to jewels, watches and so on.

Eventually the family managed to reach an understanding with the insurance company. But the family lost out, big time.

It was a lesson to my friend. The family now keeps the receipts and serial numbers of all important purchases — just in case.

I remember remarking that it’s a shame there’s no online system to help you do this.

That got my friend thinking.

He and his brother started doing research. They hunted far and wide — and they couldn’t find anything that their mother could use to track valuables, serial numbers, replacement costs and so on.

There were some systems out there — and some desktop software applications — that could be co-opted for the purpose. But Richard and Tom wanted an online solution that did the job.

They specified out the system. They began the build. Then they came to me with the concept.

I liked it a lot. So I invested in the concept — took it under our EventScope brand and it’s just gone live.

If you’d like to have a look, I encourage you to visit www.myhomecontents.co.uk (it does what it says on the tin).

You can keep updated with the team via Twitter (@myhomecontents). And we’d all very much welcome a ‘like’ from you on Facebook:

The service costs £5 per year — and if you use the code ‘fivek’, you’ll get an extra year free.

There’s a mobile angle. At least, there will be. The chaps are working away on that idea right now — the ability to be able to scan the barcode of each product and store it easily along with a photo and other details, straight from your Smartphone.

The first and most important part of the system was establishing the web version.

What do you think of the concept?

Here’s the obligatory Youtube tutorial video:

Normally when talking about The Big M around here, it refers to MacLeod, but this time we’re talking about something a little different.

Ewan is off to Bath on Monday to speak at the very cool, very exciting Big M conference.

His topic? The State of the Mobile Union. He’s like our very own Obama.

According to what we’ve heard,

The Big M is a developer-focused, independent conference for people who want to learn from and connect with the very best people working in mobile today.

Now that sounds very, very cool.

Check out their site here, and if you can, GET THERE!

One company I met on Sunday morning prior to MWC was apoplectic with rage about Facebook, Google and Apple. I won’t go into detail about the company’s identity except to say they’re a highly influential service provider to the mobile industry.

This company’s perspective was very similar to that of the France Telecom and Telecom Italia Chief Executives (detailed in this post). The collective view amongst many in the mobile operator space is that these ‘b@starding companies‘ (direct quote) ‘are screwing up the network for everyone and not paying a cent toward the network upkeep‘.

It was a fascinating discussion. I listened for a little while before asking this series of questions (I admit to teeing the guy up for the final one):

Q: Do you think it’s unfair that Facebook, Google, Apple and so on are not paying for the use of the mobile network infrastructure?

A: It’s insufferable. It’s ridiculous. It’s outrageous. (I’m paraphrasing his exact words. He used a few F-bombs too — highly entertaining.)

My next question:

Q: But the consumers themselves accessing Google, Facebook and whatnot, they’ve paid their mobile operators for the privilege, right?

A: Yes, but it’s highly irresponsible of these companies to keep on introducing new services that are causing [the industry] to have to spend more and more money maintaining quality of service. (Paraphrasing again)

My final question:

Q: Ok, so how would the industry react if, for example, Facebook simply switched off mobile access for every one of it’s 650 million users and charged the mobile operator £3 per month for the privilege of delivering Facebook content to the consumer?

A: [Silence for a few seconds, followed by a look of horror]

Heh. What happens when Facebook decides to tell the market that it can no longer afford to maintain it’s hugely expensive bandwidth and server infrastructure without the mobile operators coughing up. That could become a rather sticky conversation. Unlikely. But at least the example made this chap — previously apoplectic with rage — sit back and take stock.

I don’t think many people in the marketplace have thought things through when they argue that mobile operators are victims in the ‘data crunch’. It’s laughable that these giants are demanding the biggies like Google and Youtube cough-up when the consumers accessing these services have already paid to do so.

If the model is broken, fix it. Simply doing a T-Mobile and deciding that ‘unlimited’ means 500mb of data per month is silly. And offering ‘unlimited’ 250mb plans is ridiculous. It’s a guaranteed way to ensure consumers think twice about doing anything on their handsets in fear of bill shock.

It’s not about the race to zero. For some reason, the mobile marketplace is consumed with this race to zero. To be the cheapest. To offer the cheapest rubbish because that’s the only thing people will pay for.

Nonsense.

Innovate. Truly innovate. And we’ll see some excitement and delight spreading across the market from consumer to operator.

You can see some of the ideas I’d like to see from operators in terms of innovation here.

Meanwhile, it’s not just me speculating about Facebook. The industry analysts Ovum have been doing so too. I’ll be publishing a post from them on that subject in just a moment.

Which means I’m doing about 120mph+ on the Eurostar right now. I’m in the United Kingdom at the moment (barely — the Channel Tunnel is heading this way quickly) and I’m MiFiying like no tomorrow.

I’m thoroughly delighted to say that although I was seriously unhappy with 3UK last week (ONE POUND TWENTY-EIGHT A FLIPPING MEGABYTE? SERIOUSLY? HUGH? COME ON!), I’m very pleased with the 3UK data service via my MiFi in the UK.

The fact it can still deliver whilst I’m zipping through the countryside is a testament to the 3UK network chaps. Love it.

Pick up one for £49 (plus a tenner top up) from any 3UK store on PAYG.

I’m not sure what it is about Barcelona — whenever I find myself needing an internet connection, there’s usually some kind of impediment in the way.

This year I shared an apartment with Ben Smith of Wireless Worker. Ben located the flat a few months back after some genius searches through an array of semi-useless apartment rental sites. We went back and forth, expending far too much time trying to decide on the best place to choose.

With every search, we specifically checked the ‘broadband’ or ‘internet’ option.

You can guess what happened when we arrived in Barcelona. Aye. Flipping annoying. We arrived at the apartment to find no internet.

Ben did his best possible Englishman-Abroad (i.e. talk LOUDLY) accent and asked the chap who had let us into the apartment where the internet was.

The guy explained that he would bring it along in an hour.

Right.

He turned up with a Vodafone broadband USB stick.

This was ‘internet’.

But it wasn’t what we needed.

Our problem was not quite understanding the definition of internet. We’d assumed the place would have had wired super-fast broadband.

So if you’re wondering why you haven’t seen much from Mobile World Congress here on Mobile Industry Review this week, it’s quite straight forward: I couldn’t get the data up.

I’ve got pots of videos. I reckon I generated about 200 gigabytes of data this week on the big camera and on the little handheld.

You’ll have seen one or two videos I’ve managed to get live — thanks to Cisco, by the way (more on that below). But it was simply unrealistic to try uploading 200-300mb videos using the Vodafone broadband stick supplied by the apartment.

It didn’t take long for Vodafone Spain to recognise that Ben and I were hammering the USB stick just through normal usage and within a few days, the stick had reduced down to delivering a few kilobytes of connectivity at 2G level. Instead of cutting you off, they just screw your speed down to nothing. Fair enough.

There were 60,000 people at Mobile World Congress this week. I reckon most of them had at least two WiFi capable handsets not to mention the obligatory laptop. So finding a working fixed-line connection to knock up the videos to the web was, predictably, a bit of an arse.

Our trick — it was Ben’s idea — was to go and sit in the lunch place in Hall 5. This is an on-site restaurant that charges you €35 a pop for a 3-course lunch every day of the congress. Luckily if you hold a press badge, you get to eat free. And there’s as much Coke Zero as you want.

The good point here is that Cisco had wired the place up — and since everyone else was busy eating, hardly anyone bothered connecting in this zone.

This was how I managed to get the BlackBerry videos I’d taken over to Kevin at CrackBerry. I was uploading directly to the CrackBerry Youtube account for speed as Kevin needed the videos live for the North American morning. And goodness me Cisco, you rocked.

I uploaded 160mb (4 individual videos) to Youtube in about 4 minutes.

Literally it was taking me longer to type out the brief descriptions for the videos, the connection was working so fast.

Sadly by day two, some other WiFi refugees from around the Congress had worked out that this area was virgin territory and the upload speed dropped significantly.

Still. Nice work there Cisco.

I’ve got a ton of video coming. Normally I would play it out over quite a few weeks but, you know what, I think it’s time to go nuts and get it all up as soon as I can. That’s what I’ll be doing when I get back to the super-dooper MIR Towers internet connection later today, tomorrow and across next week. Standby!

[Here's my BlackBerry Booth Tour for CrackBerry]

While I was running around like a mad man at Mobile World Congress this week, reader Kerry Ritz spotted news that Telecom Austria has decided to break apart the mobile roaming marketplace.

Abroadband uses Telecom Austria’s existing international roaming agreements to offer PAYG data roaming across 50 countries for just €0.59 per megabyte.

And that’s it.

No strings, no nonsense. You need to stump up €19 for the sim card and there’s a yearly access fee of €10 to keep the sim active.

And then you just pay per megabyte. €0.59 per megabyte seems highly reasonable. Indeed, it’s at least half the per-megabyte price that Three UK and Vodafone charge me for EU roaming.

With Abroadband, you just top up when you need to. You get real time usage statistics from the service so you’ll never run up a crazy bill.

Telecom Austria’s existing agreements ensure that you’ll be roaming on to quality operators in the supported countries too.

You can have a normal sim card, a microsim card and you can get a USB stick if you’d like one. Me? I’m going to get a couple and see how I like it.

I’m particularly impressed that it’s the same rate in a ton of different useful countries from South Africa to the United States — and of course, Europe.

I’m going to order one. I’ll let you know how I get on.

By default, 3UK insist you spunk £1.28 per megabyte. Period. No ifs, no buts, no bundles. £1.28. And then they’ll happily switch you off after they’ve taken £45 from you in a calendar month, so as to try and, you know, look as though they care for your wellbeing.

This, by the way, from the network that claims it’s the best go-to operator for smartphones in the United Kingdom, offering ‘truly unlimited data’. Until, that is, you go abroad and the cash spunking begins.

Thanks but no thanks Three. It’s utterly ridiculous.

UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere, which is a joint venture between Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange, announced a commercial launch of a nationwide contactless mobile payments scheme in Q2 2011.

via UK: Everything Everywhere announces first commercial NFC rollout during Q2 2011.

Good work Everything Everywhere. I’m looking forward to buying a sandwich from Pret with my handset. Bring it ON!

I’ve just come across a rather interesting service from ThirdPresence. Their service fixes a key nightmare for a lot of organisations: Getting video working on mobile devices.

Almost every modern mobile phone is capable of playing video. The problem is, they all play different formats and different resolutions. That’s why most people simply format their videos for iPhones and… screw-everybody-else.

Indeed, here at MIR we used to produce a Nokia N95-compatible video podcast stream. For a little while. It was such a flipping hassle I eventually stopped though.

With ThirdPresence, you simply upload your video to their system and boom… it’s done. That’s it. It’s ridiculously easy.

As a test, I uploaded an old video of Flirtomatic’s Mark Curtis accepting a recent MEF2010 award. It was processed and ready within just a few minutes.

Want to test it? Visit this page on your mobile device and you should be able to view the video:

Or visit directly by clicking this URL.

When I signed up for the service, I got to create a custom domain. I also got the option to text myself (or any mobile number) a simple URL that clicks through directly to play the video.

Interestingly, I tried this on a corporate BlackBerry Curve on OS 4.6 and the video didn’t work. It wanted to stream, but I think the corporate permissions have locked it down. (This is not an issue related to ThirdPresence.) The video played beautifully on a non-corporate-locked BlackBerry Bold 9780. And on the iPhone 4 I had to hand. Did it work for you?

ThirdPresence is elegantly designed — it was a piece of simplicity to use. And at $39/month for 10,000 minutes of delivered content, highly reasonable given the problem it solves.

If you’re trying to mobilise your video content, do take a look at ThirdPresence.

Detenna WiBE

We’ve had a note in from the team at Deltenna to tell us about their newest gizmo, the Deltenna WiBE. Or, in other words, the ultimate MiFi unit known to man. At least, it looks that way. I know that Ewan actually saw one of these working last week and all things being equal, we might have one to play with here at the MIR office soon.

The news release we got in today from Deltenna reports that recent 3G network testing undertaken in Cumbria and the Lake District has been very successful. So much so that for one news organisation, it may end the days of satellite vans. The WiBE device managed to increase 3G coverage 40x better than a standard MiFi device.

The signal was reportedly so reliable that it was able to deliver a continuous network connection good enough to deliver a continuous high-quality voice stream. So instead of having to drag a satellite van wherever you go, you could theoretically hop in your car, arrive on scene and contribute your report from a microphone plugged into your laptop running on your WiBE.

The trial with the WiBE proved that audio broadcasting, even in the most isolated of places such as Whinlatter Forest, is possible via 3G. (Literally the middle of nowhere – Google map) Independent tests were carried out using a MiFi device and the Deltenna WiBE with software similar to Skype but with better audio clarity. The result is a success — so much so that the news organisation will be using WiBE routinely.

Let’s get to some key points.

Speed

The WiBE extended mobile broadband coverage range into the remote forest of Whinlatter, where the MiFi device failed to register any signal. Not only did the Deltenna high-gain technology increase signal strength immensely, it also maintained average connection speed of 136KB/s, which exceeds the necessary minimum broadcast speed. Excellent.

Range

The longest recorded connection range was from a 3G base station located an impressive 22.9km (14.2 miles) away. Deltenna claims the proprietary antennas and algorithms give WiBE a throughput up to 30x that of a 3G USB dongle or mobile phone and 5x the connection range. The largest recorded RF signal strength difference was 22dBm, meaning the power reaching the WiBE was over 100 times that of the MiFi.

How it works

WiBE acts as a WiFi hotspot just like a MiFi device, but is nothing like your usual 3G dongle. The WiBE utilises four directional antennas and signal isolation algorithms to enhance the fastest signal in range.

Let’s have a comment from Dr Andrew Fox, CEO of Deltenna:

“Reliability is crucial in live broadcasts as the listener will instantly spot when technology has failed. The results, especially the 14 mile connection, highlight the increased range that WiBE delivers and its potential to bring broadband to a greater proportion of rural locations.”

The Potential

Deltenna’s WiBE technology provides an opportunity for businesses, especially when reliable broadband is needed in rural locations. It has developed solutions for a wide variety of wireless standards, including GSM, WCDMA, WiMAX and WiFi. Its technology is deployed throughout the world and has been adopted by multiple mobile operators to test 4G systems based on LTE.

We’ll definitely need to get one in the MIR office and see just how good it is.