Do People Want Dual Mode, Convergence?

Dean Bubley has a nice list of things that will happen in the wireless market this year. Several caught my eye, one of them being that in our rush for all things "converged," we might be missing something, and taht is that people might be better at managing multiple devices, numbers and identities than we usually give them credit for.

Bubley argues that suppliers and service providers have a hard time creating the "one device that does everything" because, in fact, "people are happy with complexity."

"People like multiplicity," Bubley argues. "They want multiple service providers."

Some people certainly seem not to mind complexity, multiple bills or providers. Others probably prefer to buy in a sort of "best of breed" mode, despite some incremental friction.

I suspect that although lots of people say they like triple play services because it is more convenient using one provider instead of three, the adoption driver really is the discount.

The issue here probably is that many attempts to converge functions, identities and so forth involve some compromises, some effort and some limitations. People might be willing to put up with some amount of complexity or effort to get more choice.

But not much. According to the Reuters news service, half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices.

Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, but companies frequently dismiss them as “nuisance calls,” Elke den Ouden found in her thesis at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands.

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.

Will Femtocells Change Behavior?

According to iLocus, Nokia has found in its most-recent smart phone survey that 35 percent of packet data was consumed on the move, at-home use was 44 percent and in-office use was 21 percent of total.

Overall usage also increased from 6 megabytes a month to 14 megabytes a month.

What will be interesting is to see what happens when appreciable numbers of mobile users have access to femtocells--local transmitters that allow them to use a standard handset with better signal coverage in an indoors setting.

Aside from greater usage because signal quality is better, one wonders if the exposure to high-quality data bandwidth indoors might somehow lead to sustained and permanent changes in use of packet data outside the femtocell or indoors setting.

The other issue is whether users start to rely on mobile handset access in a setting where PCs also have broadband access. What applications or use modes start to become more attractive, even when there is the possibility of using a PC to conduct the same operations?

Of course, the same sort of questions can be asked of dual-mode devices able to switch to Wi-Fi access indoors.

BT Tries to Differentiate its Access

One way to differentiate what might otherwise be a fairly ordinary broadband access service is to extend access from a "one site" service to a "hundreds of thousands of sites" service.

And that's what BT hopes will happen as it capitalizes on an exclusive deal with Fon to create a huge new network of hotspots in the U.K., based on three million BT broadband access accounts. BT had been headed in that direction anyway with its Openzone program. The BT Fon effort accelerates the WiFi footprint within the U.K., and also offers connections abroad.

Greater density also makes possible more ubiquitous dual-mode mobile phone usage: which is part of why the Wi-Fi initiative made sense in the first place.

Sprint Launches Airave Femtocell Service

I happen to live in one of the neighborhoods in Denver where Sprint is rolling out its new Airave femtocell network, and i do have mobile service with Sprint (I also use Verizon, T-Mobile and at&t). That doesn't necessarily mean I am going to test it or use it, but I can. The service also is available in some parts of Indianapolis.

Make no mistake: this is a landline replacement service. In my case the incremental cost of the femtocell service, offset by the abandonment of my landline, would save $20 a month or so. That might be an interesting number for lots of consumers.

It makes possible unlimited incoming, outgoing, and long distance calls using any handset Sprint sells and supports. As I have argued before, handset freedom will be vitally important in the fixed-mobile convergence space. Dual-mode phones don't make as much sense to me, for precisely that reason.

Airave vastly improves indoor mobile coverage (something desperately needed in my neigborhood. All you have to do is watch all my neighbors out on their front porches talking on their mobiles.

Airave costs $15 per month for individuals and $30 per month for families, above the existing wireless plan any user has.

The Airave base station costs $49.99. Sprint plans to make the AIRAVE available later this year to customers in the remainder of Denver and Indianapolis, along with Nashville, and to customers nationwide in 2008.

The Samsung-built Airave base station covers approximately 5,000 square feet. Up to three Sprint subscribers can use the AIRAVE simultaneously as long as they are registered with the device.

Airave is Sprint's answer to T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service. So watch the deployment numbers, when they ultimately are available.

T-Mobile Prepping FMC Service?

T-Mobile, which has launched a dual-mode (GSM plus Wi-Fi) Hotspot@Home service, looks like it is getting ready to integrate landline service as well. T-Mobile is working with Linksys on a router that integrates home phone lines into the service along with providing VoIP service over cell phones, according to documents with the Federal Communications Commission.

In June, T-Mobile launched its Hotspot@Home service, which allows T-Mobile cell phone subscribers to transfer calls seamlessly between the T-Mobile cellular network and a Wi-Fi hot spot in the home.

My issue with the implementation is that it only supports two phones: the Samsung t409 and the Nokia 6086. So far, no tier one provider has found its dual-mode service very attractive to users when device limitations are that stringent.

The new router, not yet available but already bearing the model appellation WRTU54G, also has two slots that support two GSM SIM cards, allowing users to add up to two additional mobiles.

If T-Mobile wants to unify the access to VoIP and other IP-based communication services, over Wi-Fi in the home, wired connection in the home, at a T-Mobile Hotspot or on the GSM network, that might be more interesting. But there still is the handset issue. Given a choice between the tri-mode feature (even with seamless VoIP across all devices)and relatively unrestricted handset choice, I think handset choice wins, just about every time.