links for 2007-10-22

October 22, 2007 | Comments

links for 2007-10-21

October 21, 2007 | Comments

iPhone, I-mode, content providers and revenue share

October 21, 2007 | Comments

I read these comments from Mark Curtis t'other day: "Make no mistake; the operators will be seeking to get the data element of the Apple tax back. And guess who from? Yes, the small army of content and service providers trying extremely hard to create a mobile data industry." Now, Marks' company Flirtomatic are an old client of ours... so maybe I should just talk to him rather than blogging aimlessly about this, but hey it's Sunday and I think he'd rather spend the weekend with his family than hearing me drone at him. I'm wondering whether this is actually all that much of a departure for O2; when they introduced I-Mode they threatened to shake up the ol' UK content ecosystem with a 86/14 revenue share in favour of content providers, which makes it look as though in principle they're comfortable taking a small cut of data revenues: call it 15%. So between 10 and 40% of revenues go to Apple, say it's near the upper end of that and it's 35%; O2 are happy taking 15% for themselves as per I-mode, this still leaves the now-traditional 50% of revenues going to content providers - so no change for them. And O2 get to avoid a bit of risk by not subsidising iPhones - if customers buying them don't use data services, O2 aren't out of pocket. I'm not saying this 50% is necessarily reasonable, just that it's not much of a change from the status quo.

3 USB modem

October 21, 2007 | Comments

So I'm giving this little fellow a go: it's a USB modem which purports to give broadband access over 3G (or if you're within coverage, over 3's "Turbo" HSDPA network).

The thought of paying a tenner a month for connectivity at home without all the attached and unused furniture of a BT line etc is attractive - and the idea that my connection goes with me wherever I am *just makes sense*; I suspect the idea of pumping bandwidth into homes over cables might seem a tad quaint one day soon. But the proof of the pudding etc etc.: in Ireland folks had problems with this service when 3 launched it, so I'm going to give it a go for a while before I tell Virgin where to go.

So far, the experience is decent: the device installs OK, suffers being disconnected and reconnected just fine, takes a few seconds to login to the 3 network (and manages to do so on first attempt about 80% of the time, 100% the second time). Connectivity is OK so far; I don't get blisteringly fast broadband (Brighton being outside Turbo coverage for now), but it seems unmediated - I haven't discovered anything I can't do yet - if a little slow compared to my old wired broadband. I get the impression that at some level I'm travelling through an HTTP proxy somewhere which makes me nervous, but SSH and mail being collected on weird ports seems to be tolerated.

How long before we have laptops with embedded 3G connectivity and SIMs, just as we have Bluetooth and Wifi today? For me this is certainly a wi-fi killer: I'll not be paying T-Mobile, Starbucks, BT Openzone or the Cloud a penny from now on, which given that I do this once or twice a month as it stands makes the device pay for itself.

Update: if you're using something like this on capped bandwidth, I thoroughly recommend SurplusMeter for the Mac.

links for 2007-10-20

October 20, 2007 | Comments