US wireless pioneer to carriers: Don't be European

He's wrong

Look at the situation with the iPhone: it was only available on one carrier, and customers pretty much revolted and unlocked their iPhones.

Problem is that providing a great experience isn't the same thing for everybody: for some people it is having an iPhone, for dome it is having a Treo, for some it is connecting their EEE PC with 3G, for some it's android, for some it's blackberry etc... and it is the same thing for online services.

If carriers want to control what devices get on their networks they either need to support pretty much any device (at which point they lose control anyway) or face user discontent, leading to high churn rates, early terminations, then government intervention because of the early termination fees etc... How many people left their carriers just because they couldn't use an iPhone on their current networks?

He's right, but he's evil.

He's right in that carriers make more money if they own everything, and can therefore dictate terms to customers. It's called lockin, and Microsoft does that very well in the computer field.

However, from a consumer perspective, what he's proposing is downright evil. Just look at what's happened in Canada, a country with some of the highest wireless rates of any country in the world. If corporations are allowed to follow this person's model, consumers will get repeatedly raped.

Moron

It's idiots like this that gave us tri-band mobiles.

he's product of his stockholders

and pretty short sideed at that..

he's basicaly saying that you can screw the custumers out of more money if you lock them into your network/service/software. and thats perfectly true.

microsoft has done it in the past

apple is doing it now

it works.. it sucks for consumers, but it brings in the moola

Own content?

By all means, be my guest and buy up all the content you desire.

Make yourself unpopular I dare you :)

Flame, well, obvious.

The difference between 'us' and 'them'.....

... but only an idiot from a British or European point of view. Americans do indeed think that the provider should also be owner. Look at the furore and verve around the pile of shit Apple calls a mobile phone; they restrict what you can put on it, they will actively remove what they don't like, and if, in the interests of the subscriber saving a few pound when they travel, they unlatch the device, Apple deem this to be breach of Apples T/C's and will try to disable the device.

As it seems, Americans are quite happy with this. Only a minority of people have bought the Apple thing. Nokia is bar far the market leader. Nokia's are devices which allow the user to add pretty much anything they want to their device, thanks to the S60 OS.

So, for an American to advocate American companies owning content as well as the devices that are used to access the content as well as the airwaves for carrying that stuff is not so bizarre, for Americans.

Being English we will tut and grumble and not much else, but the French being will take a much liberated approach. And as oft reported, the Scandics don't like being told what to do by fruity upstarts, cocky little shits who think that because they sell an no better than average much player that some how gives them the right to do what they want in the wireless world.

No siree.......

Hit the point, but from the wrong angle

He's saying they're in dange of becoming a commodity - well, here's news: they already are. Get with the program(me) and accept your fate, carriers!

If you want to innovate with content, do it on top of the commodity infrastructure.

If you want to create new infrastructure then be prepared for a bumpy & risky ride.

Dead vulture because there wasn't a dead carrier (pidgeon).

market penetration?

Uh, Ireland and the UK are "over 100% market penetration" for mobile phones. How, exactly, that happens I don't quite know but suffice it to say that pretty much every teenager upwards has a mobile phone.

Could it (just could it) be that the US has not reached this saturation point and is simply working its way there with double-digit growth? Or that US mobile phone networks were basically under-developed until GSM carriers entered the market?

And this guy was a *successful* businessman?

It's consistent...

with US policy. Talk about capitalism, competition etc. Then do your best to stop it. Control the content, don't allow a market for it. If you control the content, people have to use your network if they want it. Of course, much of the media belongs to US companies (aside the vast output of Asia - Bollywood etc.).

The European model works and competition is working (aside from roaming, where all the providers have the same loathing). The barrier to entry in this market is high enough, regulators should be involved if the market is more constrained.

Next he'll be promoting the idea that we should be paying to receive calls and texts !

John Stanton is clearly deluded

"You see, he doesn't buy the idea that wireless carriers are access providers."

That sums up his delusion problem quite precisely. He calls for innovation, but his idea of innovation is to put his customers into jail, and control everything they see and hear on *his* wireless network.

A Big 'Thumbs Down' to John Stanton, you have obviously been sucked too deep into the corporate mindset, and forgot what you're supposed to be really doing.

"own the content" ?

The European operators he considers successful generally don't "own the content" but these successful cellcos have based their business model on universal coverage and not charging a fortune for incoming calls (except when roaming), whereas the same is clearly not true in the US. Someone is confused.

Next this genius will be telling us that that the future is bright, the future is "owning the content" which means mobile IPtv content rights and delivery mechanisms, and other such epic-fail rubbish.

Have a mobile weekend.

Apples to oranges

"If you become a pure access technology, in a saturated environment, you’re ceding yourself to growing at the rate of the economy." -- well, if you want to compare today to nine years (which you do) ago maybe a big factor is not that you were not an access technology, but rather that the market wasn't yet saturated, eh?

not an idiot

...just stuck in the past.

The point is simple:

Most consumers (especially high ARPU customers) will prefer an open network to a closed one. The simple reason is that there are other businesses that provide the hardware and software and services better than the telcos can.

There's an interesting parallel to the iPhone here (also very, very closed) - I wonder what Stanton's view there is? I don't think the iPhone can be viable as a closed product for very long...

I'm not an industry leader but ....

There is a seminal paper on the subject :

http://www.maht0x0r.net/library/Content-Is-not-King.pdf

The lessons within have served me well, you won't catch me without me trousers.

Huh?

am I understanding that right in thinking that he seems to be saying go back to the days of the "internet portals" where "everything" we need is determined by that first page that we see - and space on those pages paid for by companies who which to "be seen". No thanks, I'll stick with searching via google. Which is an american company last time I looked...

He's not wrong...

in that he believes that mobile operators have to do a better job integrating services that are "relevant for customers", in the way that DoCoMo did in Japan. Truly, most mobile experiences today are incredibly voice-centric, because mobile devices stem in large part from mobile phones. However, take that root out of the equation, and consider what customers want as a "mobile device", not a mobile phone, and there exists a large whitespace for mobile operators to innovate, and exceed the growth of the economy.

Apple isn't selling millions of dollars of iPhone apps via AppStore because people want mobile voice...they are selling all of that software because people want a mobile DEVICE. And that is one thing that that iPhone really does bring to the market, and to a lesser degree Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. (I say lesser extent because AppStore is brilliantly integrated to the mobile experience, whereas going to Handango or similar to buy Win Mobile apps just is a throwback only a geek can love).

So Stanton isn't wrong, as long as the emphasis is not to promote a walled-garden, but encourage user tie-in via innovation and new services and content...