Who Do You Trust?
At the heart of both of their presentations was the notion that wireless carriers make much more intelligent use of information they already own -- about their customers and about their own networks.
This is hardly a new idea, but it raises an old concern: Are consumers willing to trust their service providers enough to allow them to use information tied to presence, demographics and interests to make services more interesting and timely?
Lenehan argues that,if service providers offer discounts or other deals in exchange for opting in to provide specific personal information and a guarantee that such information is only shared anonymously to augment service and never sold, consumers will take a chance.
I admit I remain a bit skeptical, jaded by past experience. A year ago, I changed service providers and discovered with my first bill that my new carrier had added an "e" to the end of my first name. That became an easy barometer of how often my information was misused and it was frequent. Among the most persistent of unsolicited sales pitches that arrived to Carole Wilson were those from competitors of my new service provider -- apparently in the zeal to make a buck on my new info, the service provider wasn't particularly discerning about its sales.
Lenehan may be on track in saying carriers will have to essentially "buy" the right to use customer info, but I think they will have even larger barriers to overcome. Large incumbents, in particular, are too closely associated with "Big Brother" oversight for many consumers, and that could be a greater challenge to overcome to new potential services than any challenges of technology or integration.
— Carol Wilson, Chief Editor, Events, Light Reading
I am actually not talking about the privacy bit. I am talking about the location based services bit. Here is the issue from a consumer's standpoint - they already exist and those leading edge folks have already bought them. So now a consultant (basically) is trying to talk carriers into developing services that the consumers already have bought. By the time a carrier introduces a service, the app companies will be on their 3rd generation of solution.
This is what I mean when I type about the innovation problem at the carriers. They just can't. To expect them to is wrongheaded. What carriers are good at is mass deployment of high take rate services. These are all commodities but hey "It is what it is."
You know what is very funny? When AT&T broke up, everybody bet on the Long Distance side of the business. That was where the margin was. Then it was broadband. Now its wireless. Why not just admit you are a commodity and move on? Investors I assume. If you did admit it, you would never be able to invest in something like FiOS.
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