Kicking & Dragging Wireless Operators

Imagine this sort of cyber-world if you will:

1. A domain name costs $400/month.
2. Before you are permitted to send and receive e-mail through your domain name, you have to submit an explanation to IANA explaining what sort of e-mail you'll be sending and receiving.
3. If you hope to use your domain name to launch a commercial service, you'll be required to give 50% of your revenue to your ISP.
4. Even after you get your domain name and e-mail address, only users in the same country as you can send you e-mail.  If you want users from other countries to send you e-mail, you'll have to register a new domain name in each of those other countries with similar restrictions.
5. If as an end user, you decide to install some software to enable a new service, you'll first have to contact your ISP to let them know what that service was before it would work.
6. Each user's browser is controlled by your ISP.  They will dictate what sites you can visit.

Now imagine where the Internet might be had it evolved under such a scenario.  Does this seem like a scenario ripe for innovation and opportunity?

The sad reality is that this is the evolutionary path for cellular data networks around the world - but most notoriously in North America.  These allegories are far closer to truth than fiction.  Applications in the cellular domain that wish to leverage the services of SMS and MMS are forced into an onerous and expensive process of short-code subscriptions.  In addition to having to explain the application to authorities, premium priced services are forced into crippling financial relationships with network providers.  These same network providers control what sort of services end users are privy to, and the extent of flexibility in accessing that content.

The result of this type of thinking has been hugely profitable for the network providers and hugely crippling for the creative entrepreneurs and inventors of such wonderful services such as google, e-bay, amazon, myspace among innumerable others.  In fact wireless arms of telecommunication companies are now providing the lions share of profits as traditional landline service revenues and profits decline.

The promise of wireless data is being accepted by all but made avaiable to few.  The market potential for rich mobile media is large but being grabbed by companies with deep pockets: Disney, MTV, and ESPN.  The nature of the content being developed is largely horizontal across mass audiences.  The landscape for innovative small companies to move into the cellular data space - particularly with vertical niche applications - remains difficult with the cost to entry high and the without the explicit co-operation of cellular operators, the potential cost to consumers even higher.

MobileMuse.ca fervently believes that this situation is untenable and the landscape is shifting.  With the advent of WiFi enabled cities and the integration of WiFi technology in traditional handsets, the competitive space for wireless data is soon going to experience a blossoming of innovation and growth.  The barriers being erected by cellular network service providers are as sure to crumble as sand castles in a rising tide.

MobileMuse.ca envisions a future where content owners can mobilize their content with no more effort than developing a web site and the result will be an endless array of highly veritical content offerings personalized and contexutalized for each end user.  And we'll get there whether the carriers want to or not :)