At Mobile World Congress, we made a b-line for the mBlox stand to find out more about their Sender-Pays Data offering. It’s highly, highly innovative, still a trial — and only for the UK networks at the moment (with the exception of T-Mobile UK!). Andrew explains the concept in the video, but briefly, here’s the issue:
If you’re a content provider selling, say, a video or a music track via mobile at a cost of £3 — that’s not usually the final cost paid by the user. Data isn’t typically included. So you might end up having to pay £3 to the content provider — and then something stupid like £10 or more — to download the actual content.
Ridiculous and hugely, hugely problematic when you’re trying to encourage the market and prevent user bill shock. Well, mBlox have worked out a model whereby you, as a content provider, can pay for the data downloads of your customers (at, one imagines, a decently advantageous rate) so that the price you advertise your content for is the price the user pays. Rather smart.
Anyway. Over to Andrew to explain.
Find our more about Sender Pays here.
