Wirelessnorth.ca

A recent trip to Italy really drove home the point of how useless our fancy mobile phone are the minute we step across a border. At the going rates from our carriers of $2/min, $1/sms, $12-$30/MB + GST/PST etc. you really have to want to use that phone to make it worthwhile. Or your company is paying the charges which in turn works out to a hell of a productivity tax on Canadian companies trying to do business globally.

But just think of mobile apps for a minute. LBA or location based apps have been hyped as some kind of a big deal. The problem is, and a lot of people seem to miss this point, if you are anywhere near home you probably already have a fairly good idea of things around you. At least the interesting things. And you know how to read the signs and how to find your way around.

It’s when you are out of your home range however that mobile location-based-apps can be enormously valuable. Google maps are a lifesaver when trying to find directions abroad. On top of maps there’s a wealth of apps that can help you find good restaurants, interesting sights, hotel deals etc. In an ancient city like Rome, the place is absolutely soaking in history and it absolutely cries out for augmented reality applications to let you visualize or at least understand more about the history and architecture of almost anyplace you might be standing.

As it stands now, this market, for Canadians doesn’t exist. At current roaming rates it’s quite literally cheaper to buy your phone a seat on AirCanada and fly it return back to Canada than it is to share or stream a mere 25MB of data to your friends (say 10 digital pictures or a couple minutes of streaming qik video). And buying a local SIM is little help when the vast majority of phones are sold locked (or CDMA for that matter).

For services this valuable it makes sense to charge a little for it. We pay $30 for a month of data in Canada, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to charge another $30/week for the convenience of data on the road. In reality though, actual roaming rates are a thousand times higher than this.

It’s time for this to change.

addendum: How do we fix it? Well at best Canadian carrier policies or anything Canadian regulators could do covers only half the problem. It may take cross-border co-operation or regulation (as in the EU), or perhaps competition from other technologies (global standards on open spectrum anyone?).