Other Things to Do With Your Mobile

Buy stuff! The number of mobile payment users is expected to grow from just more than 100 million worldwide users in 2006 to more than 200 million in 2009 according to the Yankee Group. That translates into revenue growth from $800 million to $1.8 billion in revenue between 2006 and 2009. That growth could be increased dramatically if a revenue sharing agreement can be developed among mobile carriers, credit card associations, issuing banks and retailers/merchants. This is better than debit cards for small purchases, don't you think?

Unity Will Put Brakes on Wireline Defections

Wasting no time at all since it gained full control of Cingular, at&t is creating one of the largest communities the communications industry has ever seen, in the form of 100 million phone and wireless accounts. at&t Unity, a pricing package that allows its cellular customers to call any AT&T landline customer without incurring additional usage fees or using their wireless minutes, expands the wireless "friends and family" concept to friends, family, business partners and people you don't know."

This is the same company that has an exclusive right to sell the Apple iPhone as well. Unity is available on all wireless plans of at least $59.99 a month.

To subscribe to a at&t Unity plan, a customer would need to have at&t wireless service as well as an at&t landline plan that offered unlimited local and long-distance service. AT&T’s unlimited local and long-distance landline service starts at $40 a month if bought online.

Actions such as this are one reason why even astute cable companies and independent VoIP providers won't be able to keep ripping landline customers away from at&t at high rates forever. At some point, it was inevitable that at&t and other similarly-situated firms would bundle their wireline assets in ways that would compel customers to keep their POTS lines.

Video Pricing Sticky to the Upside

One reason service providers might like being providers of video service, among many reasons they might well not like it, is that video entertainment prices are remarkably sticky to the upside where it comes to retail prices. Virtually every other type of communications good has seen declining prices over the last 10 years. Not so with video.

U.S. Phone Penetration is Up

...after a dip after 2000. This survey by the FCC includes both wireless and wireline service, and corrects for buying of multiple wired or wireless accounts by any single household.

More Web-Activated VoIP

Looked at from one perspective, voice is not inherently a commodity. It simply has been sold that way. Jajah, for example, has been a pioneer in web-activated calling that doesn't require a client, broadband access, a terminal adapter or much else beyond Web access and a phone service of some sort that can make a phone call.

So now voip.com now is beta testing its own web-activated calling service. To use the Make a Call service, members create a free account and then add credits, using any U.S.-issued credit card. Then, members simply go to the web-based interface and enter the number they're calling from and the number they'd like to call.

It might be a niche, but that's the point. Web-activated calling is a type of voice application quite distinct from POTS replacement. It appeals to the episodic or casual call to an international location, or to some of the same needs a prepaid calling card answers, namely an ability to budget for and control global calling expense.

Voice, Data Trump Content, Advertising

In the rush to retool themselves as providers of content services, and to add ad revenue to subscriptions, carriers might want to remember that most of the money to be earned in the business comes from communication services (voice and data) rather than entertainment, as important as these new sources of revenue are. If you click the image, you'll get an expanded view of the numbers, but suffice it to note that all global ad-related revenues for mobile providers will amount to less than $3 billion by about 2011. Basic text messaging blows those numbers away.

Alltel Wireless Ports Desktop Metaphor to Mobiles

Alltel Wireless has launched Celltop, a handset navigation system that offers customers an easier way to access, manage and organize information already available on their Alltel Wireless phones. Celltop is said to be similar to the desktop on a personal computer.

Now available on select Alltel Wireless handsets, and on all new phones by late-2007, Celltop is free-of-charge and features 10 "cells" that come pre-installed or are downloadable. Each cell is a category-specific half screen comprised of graphics and text that provides shortcuts for wireless users to navigate through information and applications including: call log, weather, news, baseball, basketball, football, rodeo, stocks, text messaging inbox and ringtones.

Customization options include the ability to modify the appearance, presentation and organization of information within each cell. Similar to "widgets" on a personal computer, Celltop is open to the developer community, providing unlimited user expandability of new and unique cells.