I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Peter Griffin did a good segment on National Radio yesterday which included his picks to tech trends in 2008. Summary here: Preview of hot trends next year.
2008 should be the year of mobile data. As I’ve posted several times this year mobile data is dead in New Zealand because crazy data prices.
So much so that a generation of mobile users are too scared to use mobile services.
There is a glaring absence of content and application providers building global businesses in the mobile applications space. Hyperfactory and DataSquirt are operating largely outside NZ, Run The Red have hung in there locally and are now doing things in Brazil but we should have 20 names of mobile data providers we could reel off.
We should see a PR release every month showing a local carrier incubating another yet another New Zealand mobile content provider that is now going global. Their on again, off again developer programs seem to be in off again mode. Just hire someone from Microsoft and grow a long term developer program. Give the good ones some handsets and free accounts and watch them innovate.
Peter made a great point yesterday that the iPhone and Google Android coming had flipped power back from the carriers back to those people who build great equipment and applications. We saw a glimpse of this in 2008 and it’s being delivered to the mass market in 2009.
New Zealand is going to be left behindunless we see two fundemental changes in carrier behavior here in New Zealand. And this chaneg should be very good for them.
1. Vodafone and Telecom need to allow mobile data providers to have a sustainable business model. Each customer pays a monthly fee to the carrier. For value added applications 60-90% needs to go to the application provider to encourage them to invest.
2. We need to flip around the fear of mobile data, quickly. That will require unlimited data plans. Sure put some reasonable fair-play clauses to manage the edges but basically any New Zealander should be able to feel like they can hit mobile data from their phone for under $30 per month.
Rowan asked me what my cause would be for 2008. This is it.
blog
What is the market you are targeting? Mobile users as in “Hip Youth Media Content Consumer” or business users as in “Travel around the country and need connection”?
So you advocate “unlimited” mobile data (fair use policy in place always limits the unlimited) for under $30…
What about the current crop of 1 GB for $49.95? On both Vodafone and Telecom if you go over 1 GB then you pay only $10 for another 1 GB.
$59.95 for 2 GB of data is not cheap, but again 2 GB of mobile data is a lot. This is not to be used as a replacement for wireline broadband.
There’s also an option on Vodafone for 3 GB plus $10 excess for a total of 6 GB.
If you use 6 GB of mobile data I will believe you are not John Doe on a mobile phone. You are probably a business person flying up and down the country because otherwise you would be using the wifi at the office or the wired connection at home.
For the Hip segment this price is high no doubt but as we’ve seen happening with other ISPs (Xtra Go Large, Woosh Orbit Unlimited) give the people “unlimited” and they will go 500GB/month - leaving no option to the provider than to close down the service.
This would be worst in mobile data.
First because the technology is not there yet. HSDPA has bad coverage in New Zealand and more users means less performance with this technology. CDMA is great but Telecom is pulling out of that in favout of market forces and moving to HSDPA - use it for the next five years though.
Yes, you can get up to 7.2 Mbps with HSDPA. If you manage to get coverage. Good luck with that.
Until the country is blankted with coverage, cheaper data is not going to work.
The best option, the one that Vodafone decided not to do, was to simply upgrade the bad GPRS technology with EDGE.
Unlimited data on EDGE makes sense. First because unlike HSDPA its maximum speed is about 180 Kbps. Not “broadband” like, but for most consumer applications it would work - browsing, email, instant messaging.
What wouldn’t work? On-line real-time gaming. BitTorrent. No big deal. Mobile devices don’t have yet the power to run those games. And BitTorrent is probably more suited to wireline because of the multiple connections requirement.
More to come, but it’s Sunday morning, before Christmas and I am out of here.
Mauricio: Arguably everyone - they just don’t realize it yet. You’ve already seen a massive shift in the industry with a focus towards more internet enabled mobile devices (iPhone/Android/Nokia 880), and I expect that to continue through to next year. More people connect to the internet with their mobile devices than their workstations or laptops. We absolutely need unlimited plans!
What’s required is flat rate handset based pricing with an end to the semi walled garden strategy of the Telco’s. Here is scandanavia the mobile internet has gone completely mainstream with many desktop activities able to be adapted to the mobile context. As a result of cheaper data rated and open access, innovation has flourished. NZ is being held back, mostly due to lack of vision by the operators.
Interesting post Rod however …
In November I went to an afternoon put on by NTT in London, it was about mobile devices and what is running on them. One of the speakers was from UEFA who now make all of their games available on the Internet via providers (you have to pay to see them which is fair enough). The upside is if you are a follower of an obscure football team, they will not be on TV but will be on the Internet.
Also had an analyst from a research firm and here is the rub (bear in mind this is the result of research not just one or a few people opinions which to me seems the prevelent view in ICT) -
Its not content that drives the mobile market … its devices.
And the main group of people who are interested in this is under 24 years old.
I think in the first 6 months of this year you will see a whole lot of devices with interfaces like the iPhone and Touch come out without the restrictive contracts of the iPhone and lots of sub 24 year olds who will spend the money on the devices and subsequent services.
I don’t think mobile data is too expensive, I think people over 35/40 would be shocked to know how much people under 25 are willing to spend on this stuff every month.
Anyway Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
Glyn… I agree a lot of people access the Internet from mobile devices - I do it myself.
But most mobile devices don’t have OS support or power to actually run data intensive applications.
What we see is mostly RSS readers, weather applications, online calendaring, email. These are not by any means data intensive applications…
My german prepay account had all data traffic at 20c/mb. If they had that here for all customers (instead of $10-30/mb) that’d open the floodgates. You could build some amazing services with xhtml-mp + sms that can be deployed on current generation phones.
I have no interest in any kind of “unlimited” internet service, whether mobile or fixed line. I’m more than happy to pay for what I use, I just want to pay a reasonable price.
What about the current crop of 1 GB for $49.95? On both Vodafone and Telecom if you go over 1 GB then you pay only $10 for another 1 GB.
That’s not bad, other than that I’m not going to pay $50 - $60 a month every month for mobile data, and 1 or 2 GB is way more than I usually need. I’d be pretty happy to pay a proportionate amount for what I actually use. 200 MB for $5 or $6 would be my likely typical usage if I let the iPhone check mail and did a bit of browsing on it on a regular basis.
The problem is that at the moment on casual rate GPRS I can only get half a MB for $5. That’s 400 times more than people on those plans pay. But, as I understand it, you have to have a voice plan in order to get a data plan. I don’t want a voice plan. I prefer prepay. So I keep GPRS/EDGE turned solidly off and wait until I’m in range of CafeNet or home or work.
For the moment, the iPhone gets used while out and about 99% as a texting machine. For which it is superb, btw.
Bruce… You are using an iPhone. In New Zealand you can only connect at GPRS speeds, which mean about 30 - 40 Kbps. This already limits the amount of data you can download, so your 200MB per month is ok.
But for devices with 3G or HSDPA, connecting at 1.2 Mbps or more this is good only for the start.
The iPhone is an anomaly. People who never used mobile data before seem happy to connect to the Internet with a device that uses six or seven year old technology. Lucky there’ Wi-Fi on that device.
Great cause Rod. We’ve been crippled for far too long.
yo Rod, nicely put.
2008 will be a big year for little NZ mobile. flat rate should arrive, but we still believe content and apps here will lag far far (far) behind unless a wider industry change takes place…
i think overall there is a much bigger new zealand problem with regards to digital content: the brand managers and advertising sector live in fear of the interweb and are so backwards in refusing to allocate higher digital spends. i think its about $US16b in the US, with half on search and represents 13-15% of total spend, UK is higher. Nz is less than 5%, with only a childish understanding of search - even though you could easily launch a brand new consumer brand in NZ purely digitally without any offline support whatsoever.
why is this relevant? because all around the world content and mobile apps are rapidly becoming ad-supported…vs premium priced. if there is no ad-$$$: there will be no great content.
when The Hyperfactory, RTR and Datasquirt started this industry in 2000, the work we were doing in NZ made us global pioneers off the back of innovative SMS apps and brand services - now, the work we do in Asia and the USA is so far ahead of what is even possible here, it is such a shame that that homegrown leadership position is lost because of the data rate and walled garden issues; but equally because of the wider reluctance to join the ‘world’, make a few less ’sexy’ TV ads and harness the power of digital to connect consumers w/brands…
derek
I just downloaded Google Maps onto my phone. It was really easy, took me like 30 seconds to have it installed. I then did a text search for my street and zoomed in for the aerial photo. That took another 30 seconds. It has all the features like “set a destination”. It can even give an approximate “My Location” based on cellsite name. The scarey part was I used about 400Kb data in about 2 minutes, at $11.25 per Mb. An example of the dilemma of a great data-intensive application and a high casual charge for data.
I would support a campaign for reasonably priced mobile data, because I believe the “lack thereof” constrains our competitiveness as a country.
Several overseas visitors have commented on the lack of free/reasonable mobile data for casual usage. When I look at what they do, they are used to a continual background feed of 2-way data to their (social) networks. They make decisions/deals in real time.
Every time a NZer chooses to wait until they get home to their broadband, to close the decision/deal, we fall further behind.
I had already seen the need for this, for WiFi, hence I started Free The Net Aotearoa, intended to solve the issue in Wellington, http://groups.google.co.nz/group/ftnaotearoa.
Mobile data for phone will be equally as important. Unfortunately in the short term, I think the solution for phones, can only be achieved by publicising the issue/demand for telcos. Longer term, with convergence, more phones will probably have wifi as well.
The iPhone is an anomaly. People who never used mobile data before seem happy to connect to the Internet with a device that uses six or seven year old technology.
M Freitas, yes, I’m using an iPhone *now* but it’s hardly my first use of mobile data. Two months ago I was using a regular Vodafone-branded phone (made for them by Sharp) which I set up as a bluetooth modem for my MacBook Pro, for emergency use only. Years earlier I was using mobile data on my Seimens C60 which actually understood HTML and CSS (unlike the newer Sharp).
I know what fast mobile internet is like. I was involved with driving around Wellington and Christchurch testing the speed of EVDO when it was being rolled out two years ago.
So yes, GPRS isn’t fast. It’s somewhere between the current generation of dial-up and the previous (32kbps) one. There are people still happily using those speeds today, and some of them download gigabytes per month.
GPRS is fast enough for many many mobile uses. And it’s NOT the speed of GPRS that stops me from using it but the cost. Even at 40 kbps GPRS chews through 4 - 5 KB/sec, or $2.40 - $3.00 per *minute* of use. $150/hour or so. That is just nuts.
I can live with the speed. I can’t live with the cost.
Further to the above, one of my biggest and certainly most long-standing uses of mobile data is to hit one of my own web servers, to use a little perl CGI I wrote that feeds into http://www.whitepages.co.nz and parses out the actual results into minimal HTML for the phone. WOrked just great even on that old Seimens.
That doesn’t use much data, but it’s frequently been a life-saver, especially as that web site can find people that directory service can’t (anyone not listed as the first person in the directory entry, for example).
Sometimes being connected at *all* is a thousand times better than not being connected.
And once again, I won’t give a damn about the speed until the cost gets at least two orders of magnitude less, preferably three. And without a $50 monthly minimum commitment (unless it’s *so* fast and cheap that I can replace my cable modem with it).
A timely post for me. I’ve just got an iPhone and have started using mobile data for the first time. I’ve only had it a couple of weeks and have already had to upgrade my plan a couple of times. The prices are ridiculous. When the revolution comes they will be the first against the wall.
20c a MB sounds about right — it’s about what wired broadband cost 6 or 7 years ago when you went overcap. The current casual data rate (IIRC, both TCNZ and VFNZ are at $10/MB) is just insane — no one in their right mind is going to use any significant amount of data at that exhorbitant rate, which isn’t going to help your ARPU. Of course this is all you can get on prepay.
The plans available if you’re on account aren’t much better — for 10MB you have to pay a total of $20/mo, with a minimum of $10-15. Which may be okay if you really need mobile data, but the usefulness per dollar ratio compared to what you get for one of the $10 texting plans is pretty low.
The only times I’ve used significant amounts of mobile data were when I could use voice minutes for it (on Verizon in the US a few months ago) and back in the good old days when Xtra had an 0800 number which accepted calls from cellphones.
For developers or vendors who are developing applications in this area, you might find the following journals interesting for your product development.
#1) Mobile Networks and Applications
#2) Pervasive and Mobile Computing
The abstracts (summary) of all the articles per volume are freely accessible online, however the full articles are available to paid subscribers only (anyone can subscribe online). Single article can be purchased online. Journal #1) is available at the University of Auckland School of Engineering library, if anyone wants to read the articles for free or perhaps photocopy them. I am not sure if Journal #2 is also available there, but it must be, since Journal #2 is a publication from ScienceDirect which is owned by Elsevier, where Auckland University subscribes to almost all engineering & science related Elsevier journals. For those who don’t live in Auckland, must check your local University’s library for those journals listed above.
I am not a mobile developer, however, I frequently flip thru the pages (for curiosity) if I see a new volume of Journal #1 being displayed at the temporary shelf (a shelf for new publications & materials that have recently arrived). I am interested in mobile computing for finance and health-care applications and I will try to dig in deep to this area over time. Recently, I was at Auckland Hospital for an appointment, where my ECG chart was taken by a nurse and I saw that they don’t computerised these records (ECG digital files). I had a chat with the specialist whom I had an appointment with, about ECG automated clinical decision support systems (CDSS). I talked with him about a system that was developed overseas (which the authors had published their work), where a patient’s ECG’s reading is queried against the ECG database. The engine retrieves all the ECG records that are similar to the target (query), which they’re being ranked from most similar to the least similar. Since not all physicians are expertise in reading these ECG charts, the physician on duty (at that night or shift) could just scan the retrieved records and examine the type of treatments that those patients received from previous diagnosis (obviously from different physicians). In this way, the physician can make a quick decision of that course of action to be taken since he has some fairly good idea on what to do(based on retrieved records of past diagnosis which have similar ECG to the current patient).
I have asked the specialist, if I could give him a program to do this , and he is happy to see one in his unit. I said to him that I will do it as a hobby, and if there is a potential for commercial use, then may be I can it further. I had pitched this idea to Ian Mcrae in 2006 (CEO of Orion System), that I can develop such API for his developers to use but they were not interested. I sent him 7 peer reviewed references from special issue of Signal Processing in Medicine about these algorithms. Orion System’s application is SQL query-based and not automated clinical decision support systems (CDSS). This means that their system is deductive. Automated CDSS are inductive (pattern recognition). I have already developed these algorithms for an API that I am using for a financial analytic application, since stock prices are signals that are no different from ECG signals. Such queries could be : Find all stocks that have similar movement to Rakon in the last 3 weeks , etc. The only differences is one has units of $ while the other has units of milli-volts, but they are both time-series. This is one reason, I am keen to use my API for an ECG automated clinical decision support systems at Auckland Hospital.
My opinion, I believe that mobile health-care CDSS and mobile context-awareness systems will be the technology to watch out for in the next 2 years or so.
MerryX to all,
Cheers.
Reaing my comments again it might look like I am not for cheaper mobile data.
This isn’t the case. I want cheaper mobile data. I don’t believe in unlimited mobile data though without a significant investment from the operators in making the coverage denser to provide better performance. Today’s coverage is just the minimal to provide mobile data to a reduced number of people, due to technology constraints (less on CDMA than GSM).
For example the current density causes cell breathing problems - where an increased number of users reduces the coverage of a cell site. That’s why we will need more investments.
Also as I wrote before we shouldn’t see mobile data as a replacement for wireline broadband because of performance (latency is much higher, coverage is not so great).
As for those $11.25 per megabyte - get a plan. For now only casual data users pay that price. Anyone on a plan case pay much less.
Bring mobile data but don’t make it THE broadband option.
Forget all this talk of $/Mb .. that is NZ talking. There is no reason why it should not just be flat rate. Instead, here in the US they differentiate between “tethered” and “un-tethered” plans. Tethering allows you to plug your phone into your laptop and use it like a data card. Those plans cost more.
Price is interesting. Here in the US people still concider it pricy. All plans, bar one, are unlimited. The cheapest unlimited plan (un-tethered) is $44.99 and it comes with 1500 text messages. Plans above this come with unlimited PXTs attached.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service//cell-phone-plans/pda-personal-plans.jsp
Of course these are personal rates … not corporate. Expect a 50% discount if your company has an agreement set up.
I have an HTC Kasier (on ATT) and love unlimited data. I regularly use it to find places/maps/directions with Live Search for Mobile, surf the net & read all my RSS feeds when travelling, push mail & MSNBC mobile TV.
I never have to worry about how much data i have used and all for the low cost of ~$25 a month (after corporate discount).
-Chris.
Chris Johnson wrote:
Forget all this talk of $/Mb .. that is NZ talking. There is no reason why it should not just be flat rate. Instead, here in the US they differentiate between “tethered†and “un-tethered†plans. Tethering allows you to plug your phone into your laptop and use it like a data card. Those plans cost more.
So you get a plan and it’s flat rate, use as much as you want? Unless you are going to plug it into your laptop, in which case it costs more. Why? Presumably because they think you’re going to use it more as a result. But wait!!!! Wasn’t it flat rate, unlimited usage already?
I don’t want any part of flat rate. Virtually every provider that has flat rate does so by one or more of:
- having a secret upper usage limit that they won’t tell you. But go over it and you get a warning or account termination.
- limiting your line speed so you can’t use much anyway
- under-provisioning so that you get less than advertised performance at peak times
- forbidding you to do things you may well want to do e.g. run servers, p2p etc
Having done a few different web apps which were targeted at mobile devices I also have seen another issue. To make the most of mobiles you need to integrate with their features like sms, mms etc.
But the cost of accessing these services are way too high, and things can easily go downhill when one of the main providers decides they don’t want to let you use their networks (it happens more than you think).
From a developers perspective, I think some innovation from the providers is definitely in order too!
Hi Rod, everyone.
I think you’ll find you’re comparing apples (ha!) with oranges here.
Mobile data, as in served off a 3G network, is expensive for a number of reasons, not least of which is the cost of buying a licence off the govt in the first place. In NZ this was a relatively cheap exercise - in the UK and Europe it very nearly bankrupted some of the world’s biggest telcos.
As for our pricing of mobile data, I have to say I don’t think you’re on the right plan, Rod. We offer the cheapest mobile broadband data package in the world. There are no restrictions on what you do with your 6GB of data on the plan yet almost every other mobile operator limits what you can use it for (eg VOIP). The cost of the 6GB is $80/month which is not that different to a fixed line ($35/month) plus say 6GB of data via DSL. Telecom’s own Broadband Explorer plan costs $49.95/month for 6GB (plus the $35 = $85/month).
Comparing that with wi-fi, which is best efforts, just doesn’t really cut it.
Cheers
Paul
Hi Paul, thanks for responding.
My concern is that the Internet is going mobile and in New Zealand we have a generation of consumers who are terrified of mobile data. It would be good for all players in the industry if we worked together to drive mobile internet access in New Zealand.
This means education of data pricing, case studies of mobile data scenario’s, investment in applications and partnering programs.
A big thing the carriers can do is market and assist our innovative mobile developers to get their messaging and applications out there.
Lots more to come on this but I think here are some easy things that working as an industry together we can do.
A goal this year should be getting the big NZ content providers, like FairFax with Stuff and NZHerald to be investing in mobile interfaces to bring mobile access to the mainstream.
It is exciting to see Google investing in NZ maps so that part of the ecosystem is developing.
I hope you guys are working on visual voice mail for when the iPhone 3G comes out :)
Oh I’m with you on that - I’ve used data on mobile networks (Vodafone and Telecom’s) for years and couldn’t get by without it. It’s one of the reasons I came to work at Vodafone (who wants to be tied to a phone line. A fibre one, maybe… but that’s just crazy talk!).
Part of the problem has always been slow upload speeds on mobile data networks.
This year we’re upgrading to HSPA speeds - that’s real world speeds of around 5Mbit/s download and, better than that I think, upload speeds of up to 2Mbit/s. That means you can do a lot more of the business-related things that need better upload speeds (VPN access, tunnelling, that sort of thing). We’re also reducing the latency on the network so real-time services operate better.
And already we are working with content providers. We’re the biggest seller of music singles in the country and Sky Mobile TV has been a roaring success this last year and this summer we’re showing all the cricket from the England and Bangladesh tours. (Sorry, not trying to place an ad here, just answering your point on content providers. But do mention my name when you buy a service, I think I get some kind of brownie point ;-)).
Mobile broadband doesn’t have to just be about data - we’re already doing video and music and there’s plenty more where that came from.
Cheers
Paul
Hi Paul, happy New Year. Can you give a timeframe for the HSDPA upgrade? Will this be from 3.6 mbps to the 7.2 mbps offered in the UK? I understand in the UK though you need a special high speed vodem to achieve these speeds.
Hi Dermott,
We kick off in April, although we demo’d it to a group of journalists in November… that was a test rig though (and very exciting it was too - have you ever tried to demo a speed test? By golly!).
Yes, 7.2Mbit/s but real world we expect to see 5Mbit/s at the handset. And yes, it’s a hardware upgrade to get both upload and download speeds (I think you can get download speeds increased with just a firmware upgrade but I’m not sure) but we generally offer trade-in deals or similar for those with new hardware. We’ll be offering both Vodems and VMC cards and then handsets as well as they come on the market.
Cheers
Paul
I got my Vodafone bill this month. I estimate it cost me $8 to look for an address and get driving directions, using googlemap. The cost in Germany based on a previous comment would have been 16c.
I was engaged as an independent consultant with Vodafone in 2003 - and one of the programs I launched was exactly as you suggest - a Developer Program [VIPER] aimed at supporting the growth of mobile data applications and development. There was a lot of support for the program, which ultimately floundered when Vodafone UK got involved [no surprise there]. Subsequently I was involved with two independent ventures [mobile commerce and mobile entertainment] but after intial support, Vodafone just got too greedy with the pricing and rendered the initiatives unprofitable. Interestinly, Telecom came to the party with excellent support and saved the day [at a time when Telecom was not known for supporting third party innovation].
At the time the market was lush with some magnificent application development but without the carrier support, these ventures just wiltered, to todays sorry state.
It is indeed sad to see a nation that was once heralded as a leader of innovation be relegated to status below that of emerging nations. But I am not giving up hope!
Hutchison in Australia just announced 1Gb for $15.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23460734-5013037,00.html
[...] De-clutter Published December 31, 2007 General I see that Rod has picked his theme for 2008. [...]