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?).

As first we wrote about back in April, there’s a mini revolution going on in mobile computing. Cheap and cheerful netbooks are outstripping even Intel’s expectations who can barely make enough of the Atom chips most commonly used to power the things.

This is a shot of the just announced Dell unit released to compete with the Asus Eeepc, MSI Wind, Acer whatever it’s called and many others. At an entry price of $399 for a featherweight mobile pc with (just) enough power to run firefox and any web app, a proper keyboard, and substantially more screen resolution of the best mobile phone, what’s not to like?

Here’s the thing though, all of these are coming out in Canada as wifi-only machines… where’s the 3G? This is a pc that cries out for mobile broadband, the perfect knee-top mobile computer for the streetcar or passenger seat etc.

With netbooks starting at $399, throw in a $200 carrier subsidy on a reasonable 3G contract and you would have had a hell-of-a back to school offer…

maybe in time for Christmas?

Link: Vodafone to market Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with built-in 3G on September

UPDATE / FOR EXTRA CREDIT: $399 – $200 subsidy= $199. Thanks to moore’s law the shiny new $399 pc will be $199 anyway in just a year or two. Here’s the point: Imagine a world where laptop computers cost less a pair of shoes. How many computers will you have? How many computers will everyone else have? What’s your mobile broadband strategy in such a world?

Not the cheese shop sketch
Man walks into a mobile phone store.
Ouch!
No, let’s do that again. This time without the faintest hint of a joke.
Man walks into a 3UK retail store on Princes Street in Edinburgh.
“I’d like to buy a prepaid mobile broadband SIM card please”.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t sell those.”
How do they stay in business? I want to know the secret to making money without sales! Just don’t expect me to blog it when I find out…

Har har it’s funny because everybody knows how easy it is to find prepaid data cards.

Er wait, hold the phone^*, everyone knows you can find _what_ in Europe?

£10 per 1 GB or £25 for 7GB prepaid is the going rate btw (taxes included).

Prepaid data. Data by the pound, stick it in any device, like a £49.99 prepaid mobile broadband dongle, pay for the data only as you use it. A startling invention. Due any decade now in Canada.

File under: business models we’d like to see.

^{*Hold the phone – geddit?}