In the coming year I am speaking at O’Reilly’s emerging Telephony conference identity.
I attended the show last year and learned a bit about how that whole space.
- How traditional telco’s think
- The latest on VOIP beyond Skype and
- I had never heard of Astrerix before (it is open source PBX software for office phone networks that are jacked into the web).
This month I will be discerning what I might want to talk about. I am open to unsolicited suggestions from the community. This is my talk description.
I think my best angle is as a consumer advocate because when I end up in ‘telco land’ that is most often how I feel. They just don’t get me, my communication needs nor do they want to have a real conversation. There is a reason that I have my ‘gheto’ MetroPC 3+ year old phone (it is so old that my provider recently turned outgoing text messaging turned off). I want a little computer that works but I have a Mac so I can’t get a windows phone (I just wouldn’t on principle). You walk into a celphone store and ask if any of the handsets they have work on Linux they look at you like you are from outerspace.
This post was inspired by Open Gardens ranting about why there are so few cool data applications. Because handset makers and carriers have decided that my data is not my data….
3. Unlock the user’s data. Many operators (especially in the US) make it very difficult for an application to access the user’s data stored on the device, such as the address book, the dialer, and the user’s current location. But many of the most interesting new mobile applications need to be able to work with this information. The operators are afraid to give access to this data, but they’ll need to adopt the same security model used on the Web — let the user do what they want, and defend the device via security software. It’s ugly, but it worked in the fixed line world.
The other reason I am on my current phone that has unlimited and local calling and long distance for a flat fee that only works in the bay area. To travel I end up with a pay by reasonably priced minute from t-mobile. The reason is in part to manage costs. I can’t afford the crazy bills that I have heard people getting for “going over their minutes.” This is especially true for me because I have no land line. When I have brought this concern up like I did at SuperNova last year it is sort of dismissed saying well we can’t do things for free. I was like. I don’t want things for FREE I want reasonably priced good services and not hidden ways you gouge me. Some how this concept is hard to understand. He continues.
5. Get ready to go to a flat rate for everything. The logical outcome of putting the open web on a mobile device is that voice and data merge under a single flat fee. If a Skype call is free, then eventually all calls need to be free, or the users will just switch everything to Skype. Same thing for SMS messages once they’re directly in conflict with instant messaging. The operators’ old financial model won’t evaporate overnight, but I believe it’s now officially dying. I think the race is now on for full flat-rate mobile pricing. The operator that moves to the new model fastest stands to gain the most customers.
I will be one of them. As long as I have decent pricing in Canada. All the celphone stores I went into recently said that it was like 60 or 80 cents a min for canada. That is like saying you don’t have coverage there. I would like to see 10 cents a min and would even be willing to pay up to 25. I don’t mind paying for things. I just don’t like getting ripped off.
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