Comments on: A location based services rant, part II

By: Montreal Start Up » Montreal Wireless Developers Unite!

Montreal Start Up » Montreal Wireless Developers Unite! — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:44:42 +0000

[...] what about Mobile Monday? I’d previously mentioned Mobile Monday and the fact that one was being organized for Montreal. It was originally [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:58:59 +0000

Daniel, I think you make an interesting and important point (several, in fact), but I don’t think the problem that people have with mobile carriers is totally unfounded. Both statements made by execs and the carriers’ behaviour – particularly related to pricing – clearly indicates an unwillingness to move towards more open (end-to-end) services based not on revenue projections but on some kind of value judgement.

In other words, they do things in certain ways not because it will serve their shareholders better but because tradition and history suggests that there is a “right” and a “wrong” regardless of the financial impact of one decision or another.

I don’t have the numbers at my fingertips (though I have done some real research on this in the past), but if you compare the uptake of data plans in Canada to the US, Canada is clearly far behind the US – and this is very likely to be largely related to pricing issues.

Furthermore, I believe that the Canadian carriers are leaving significant revenues on the table by defining data plans as a) a businessperson-only requirement and b) something that reduces them to being dumb pipes.

In this analysis, the carriers are basically saying, “forget about the ascension of the end-to-end principle represented by the Internet, we DESERVE to mediate data connections and meter every individual transaction rather than opening up access at reasonable rates.”

That’s not a financial decision – that’s a value judgement. And making that kind of judgement stifles innovation and reduces consumer choice. Canada is clearly ready for a massive adoption of data plans – but they’re simply not accessible at this time. I don’t think regulatory or shareholder value excuses are sustainable anymore.

By: daniel

daniel — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:15:38 +0000

@daniel: your opinion is based on your experience as a consumer, but senior managers at Telcos aren’t trying to please you, they are trying to please their investors! Now in most markets there is a fairly strong link between customer satisfaction and a company’s financial performance. That’s not necessarily the case if there are few alternatives to a service perceived to be essential.
By the way, BCE had a net income of $2B last year (par for the course) and yet Teachers still decided to take them private. I doubt service will be improving anytime soon…

By: Daniel Haran

Daniel Haran — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:10:52 +0000

Mobile Mondays sounds like a great idea.

“the need to leverage legacy assets” – is that commonly accepted business strategy? Because that sounds disturbingly close to the fallacy of sunk costs, a costly cognitive bias.

I’ll confess to having a very low opinion of telco’s. Their rates, service and customer service experience has been horrid for as long as I can remember. That’s not to say the execs are all stupid. It would be nice to meet some of them to see what can be done despite the obvious organizational inertia.

By: Denis Canuel

Denis Canuel — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:35:58 +0000

Regarding the dinosaurs, I think they are not doing anything new as they are old, will retire soon and don’t want to mess with their retirement plan. Then again, I could be wrong Business culture is another thing. I worked in several “types” of businesses and some execute things much faster than others. Some are scared of change, others live through change.