Words to Live By

Asked about Google's revenue per employee, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the company doesn't focus on it. "It is more important to focus on end user happiness," says Schmidt. If that sounds ethereal, it isn't. The media business always is based on some equivalent of "aggregating eyeballs." So Google's business depends on attracting engaged users. "If we could bring out a product that will cause people to use Google and its various applications that much more and they spend more and more of their day using Google services, that allows us to eventually monetize that," Schmidt says.

Will Users Pay for Features?

Alec Saunders and David Beckemeyer are consistently worth listening to. This from David, who asks really good questions:

Fring is technically impressive, but I'm still wondering about its utility

I have mentioned Fring a few times before. The most recent post left it that I had not been able to complete the setup because I never received the SMS from Fring on my phone.

I sat down with Boaz Zilberman of Fring at VON and he was able to solve whatever glitch was happening at Fring that was preventing the SMS and I was able to get Fring 2.0 installed on my phone.

Luca Filigheddu calls Fring "the most complete multi-protocol IM VOIP client for mobile phones" and I would have to agree. That said, I still find myself asking, is it useful?

Like many other cell phone users in the US, I have GPRS data service rather than a true 3G data service with my carrier. My first experiences with Fring over GPRS were not very good. More recently, I have had much more acceptable call quality on Fring GPRS-based calls. It probably depends a great deal on signal strength - while one may be able to make a standard GSM call on a weak signal, it doesn't look like one has any chance of doing a GPRS Fring call unless the GPRS signal is very strong.

This is understandable, at least to anybody that knows the technology. I am amazed that Fring works at all over GPRS and the fact that it's possible to have a decent quality call using it is an amazing technical achievement by the Fring folks.

The entire Fring application is really well done, clean, and slick, also a nifty technical achievement.

At the same time, most customers don't care about technical achievements. They want to solve problems.

Fring is cool and the SIP support works with PhoneGnome so I will use it sometimes, but now that I have it, including SIP support (thanks Fring!), I'm still left wondering, does it really have value, not just to me, but to casual phone users?

For US calls, I already stay within my minutes so there is no cost savings opportunity to place the call via VoIP and, therefore, dialing the old-fashioned way is both more convenient and more reliable for those calls. That reliability factor is a big one, as echoed by many comments to an earlier post on the subject. Perhaps consistent is a better word. Unless I'm calling another VoIP freak, the risk of the call not working isn't worth the benefit (what benefit again?) in most cases. The situation may be different for others, say those outside the US without such a minute bundle model, or if I were making a lot of international calls. Even if that were the case, however, it would still depend on the cost of my data plan. If I'm on a data plan that charges by the Kilobyte, a VoIP call could well cost more than a GSM call. I can already make single-stage international calls using national minutes with a free phone application and my PhoneGnome (or two-stage calls with something like AllFreeCalls.net if it comes back on-line).

If I'm roaming, this is even worse (I think). Roaming fees are so complicated I'm in constant fear of accidentilly using the data channel when traveling. I always shut down any apps that use the data channel (including Fring) due to this concern. So if I'm outside my service, say in Europe, there's no way I'm going to gamble with the mobile data roaming fees and use Fring (again, the VoIP call over the data channel costs more than the same call over the voice channel). The exception would be Wi-fi, assuming I can find a cheap enough hotspot and I have a dual-mode phone (and can figure out how to work it, see this post on theN80i.

That brings up an interesting question. If a VoIP call does cost more than a plain GSM call, are some people actually willing to pay MORE to place a Skype or Fring call because of an added benefit, in particular, presence? I'm not a big Skype user myself (I'm one of those that just never had a good experience using it) and I seldom find my Fring buddies online, so I have not yet seen this to be a big advantage fo rme. However, I can see it being something to look into. That would be an interesting case. So how about it? We've always thought of VoIP as a way to save money, but might you get so much value out of knowing the party is there to take your call that you would actually PAY MORE to place a Skype or Fring call (because of the mobile data rates) because of that added value?

I know in my case, I'm more likely to place a call on my cell using VoIP to access an added capability (say like the call recording feature of PhoneGnome) than I am to use VoIP on the mobile just to save money.

BT to Expose Itself

Project Web21C BETA software developer kit will expose network capabilities to developers working in the .NET Visual Studio, Java, PHP and Python environments. Initially the thinking seems to be to provide developers a way to add communications and global positioning satellite features to applications. The Web21C SDK abstracts the services interface and serialization classes by providing the developer with a simple object model to interact with.

The Web21C SDK provides the ability to embed Short Message Service into an application, for example. It also allows applications to make phone calls, conference calls, presence information, authentication, a way to store and retrieve data about an individual and location information.

A somewhat parallel effort, the BT Applications Marketplace, aims to give developers a way to market apps to the BT customer base.

BlackBerry Outage Disrupts Enterprise Ops

In a webinar poll conducted April 18 by ProfitIine, 81 percent of responding large enterprise IT and telecom professionals reported disruption to operations from the BlackBerry outage. Some 44.5 percent reported "moderate or substantial" impact to enterprise productivity. Only 18.2 percent reported no impact from the outage.

Engagement Might be The Issue

A recent Forrester Research survey suggests that mobile data apps are moving into the mainstream. More than one-third of mobile subscribers use text messaging, and 18 percent send or receive picture messages, but adoption of the mobile Internet lags, with only 11 percent using it.

As you might expect, data users are not only younger, but their attitudes also expose a deeper engagement with their mobile phone and service, and they are more satisfied with all aspects of their mobile experience than are those who only use voice.

Which raises an issue: even as wireline providers are able to leverage IP to provide richer directory and call log features, as well as click to call, will those new attributes put a brake on user engagement with their mobiles?

Certainly Embarq believes that offering wireline call logs, directory services and click to call are going to enhance the value of wireline voice, says Bill Blessing, Embarq SVP. He's undoubtedly right about that.

The issue is that end user involvement with their mobiles seems to be increasing. Mobiles are personal. Landlines are tethered to places. Mobiles inherently are "mine." Landlines are "ours" or "yours." You might use a landline. It is not "you."

Don't Have It, Don't Want It

Some 29 percent of U.S. homes do not buy any form of Internet access, and 44 percent of the "resisters" says they don't buy service because they are not interested in anything on the Internet. About 22 percent say they don't buy because they do not own a PC. The 31 million U.S. Internet "resister" homes also say they don't plan to buy access for the next year either, says a Parks Associates study. Parks researchers also find that most new broadband access subscriptions are coming from dial-up customers who are upgrading, not "newbies."

MetroPCS: More Evidence Voice is Not a Commodity

MetroPCS provides more evidence that even mass market mobile phone service is not a commodity, in the strict sense. MetroPCS offers flat rate local and domestic U.S. calling in Miami, Tampa, Sarasota, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit and the Sacramento metropolitan areas to more than three million customers at the moment.

It might be said to specialize in a several market segments: people who want flat rate wireline pricing plus mobility; people who have problems qualifying for prepaid plans; immigrant communities; people who don't like contracts; people who don't like credit checks or deposits; younger users and first time users.

MetroPCS offers a $30 per month service plan offering unlimited calling. For an additional $5 to $20 per month, ssubscribers can add nationwide long distance calling, unlimited text messaging (domestic and international), voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, picture and multimedia messaging, mobile Internet browsing, push e-mail, data and other a la carte options on a prepaid basis.

The company's most-popular service plans are the unlimited $40 and $45 rate plans which offer unlimited local and long distance calling, text and picture messaging, enhanced voice mail, caller ID, call waiting and 3-way calling. Those plans are purchased by more than 85 percent of MetroPCS customers.

On February 22, 2007 the company introduced a new $50 service plan which includes unlimited mobile Internet browsing and push e-mail in addition to the services included in our $45 service plan.

MetroPCS customers in all metropolitan areas averaged approximately 2,000 minutes of use per month, compared to approximately 875 minutes per month for customers of the national wireless carriers. Average usage at thsoe levels suggests that a substantial number of customers use MetroPCS as their primary telecommunications service. Approximately 65 percent are first time wireless users.

Though cable and tier one telecom providers clearly have bet their futures on triple and quadruple play strategies, MetroPCS (and Leap Wireless) show that a targeted wireless pure play is possible, if a provider is willing to segment. And note that the company's average revenue per user does not appear to different than that of the market leading companies.

Talking, generally considered to be a commodity, does not appear to be such a thing if one looks at the matter closely.