Wirelessnorth.ca

We’re at a very interesting time for the wireless industry in Canada. We’re on the eve of new entrants into the industry but already the landscape looks a lot different and already a lot more competitive than just a few years ago. Here’s a snapshot, form our perspective [your perspective may vary] of the state of wireless in Canada. Stay tuned for where we go from here….

Originally presented at FITC Mobile 2009 in Toronto.

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstra, one of the largest service providers in Australia recently gave an interview on BusinessWeek, highlighting the success they have experienced with Data services, with 80% growth in data revenues! (not including SMS traffic, with 20% growth). So why should anyone in Canada be interested in an Australian network? For one reason, a number within the Rogers fold think there are many similarities between the two nations – geographic, economic and telecom fundamentals (?). So maybe there are a few lessons we need to learn and emulate to achieve similar success in data penetration and usage.

What is interesting to highlight are the reasons for the growth that Telstra has experienced:

• Infrastructure Investment in rolling out a technically superior network, with data rates reaching 14Mbps!
• Application: relevant and practical, that the consumer may actually be interested in. For instance, promoting data applications in outbacks where farmers can monitor their stock/land/crop through video riding off of the network. Given the large tracts of agricultural land with a small population, remote sensing and monitoring is a compelling application.
• Affordable rates : Is it a coincidence that the high data usage and growth being experienced are in some way stimulated by lower data rates? I would like to guess so. Compare the 5cents/Kb in Canada (Rogers) to the .025Cents/Kb offered by Telstra. And this includes “tethered” usage, currently charged at a premium by Rogers.
• Open Access : going beyind the walled-garden approach excercised by operators here to a free reign model. The motto being – give the customers the content they want and are looking for, rather then sandboxing them into content they dont. The success of the internet was not built on portals.

But the most important reasoning of all – believing that a strong business model for mobile data exists and taking the leap to provide consumer centric offerings. The right business model is certainly not an easy thing to build or come across, but it does exist as proven by Telstra. Maybe we need to send some of our folks down-under to do a study …..

Apple and RIM . Like Jr high sweethearts dancing a full arm’s lengths apart, but intent on trampling each other’s toes anyway, Apple announced today two kindof big things:

1. The iPhone is getting a mess of new enterprise features. Despite the hype though, remember that none of these software updates will help your iPhone magically sprout a Querty keyboard (One point still for the kids from Waterloo).
2. The apple software SDK

the crucial bit:

-The AppStore is going to be the exclusive way to distribute iPhone applications
-Your app will be updated over the air automatically
-If an app gets updated, the AppStore will “otomatically” tell you it has been updated
-Also built into iPhones, you can download it on your computer and transfer it too if you want, but we think most people will do it from the iPhone
-Just tap on it and it’s wirelessly downloaded to the iPhone using a cell network or WiFi
-Top 50, top downloads
-Categories for games, business, finance, health, lifestyle, music, etc.
-AppStore, put it on every single iPhone that everyone will have access to with the next release of the software
-Jobs: “Your dream is to get your app in front of every iPhone user. You can’t do that today, but we’re gonna solve that”
-Scott is back. “Once you have all of these amazing applications, how do you get them on your phone?” Back to Steve Jobs.

This is significant because:

• By pushing software SDK updates to phone (post sale), Apple is effectively reinventing it’s mobile platform (It’s truly a platform not just a device) with every new release
• The total package of the iPhone looks a lot different than it did just a year ago, but running on the exact same hardware.
• This is hugely disintermediating to the carriers as substantial and potentially valuable new services and content is being pushed directly to the consumer without their involvement, buy-in or pre-loaded bundling agreement.
• The carrier has been made a dumb pipe.
• Apple is charging 30%(!) of revenues to content providers
• 30% leaves a lot of incentive for mobile content/app/service vendors to seek out other ways monetize their content. But you might imagine that being on the apple deck of the apple mobile ap store could be a powerful distribution channel.
• Everything will also be available on the wifi iPod touch – which further bends the definition of mobile, and even more so cuts out the carriers.
• Note that iphone store will be “exclusive” distribution channel but that jailbroken phone users will still have other options (as many iphone users already install 3rd party apps today without apples permission)
• Spore runs on it. That’s neat.

The Apple iPhone is not yet officially available in Canada.

This announcement adds more weight to “post-June” as the likely date.

Most Canadians already know what an iPhone is. A surprising number use one already.

More voices emerging from the choir in Barcelona:

Ajit on Open Gardens: History does not remember the builders of the Silk Road – only it’s travellers and it’s traders ..
“In 2008, we see an industry in turmoil – and in the keynote sessions that dreaded word ‘Bit Pipe’ was mentioned at length…. But by common consensus, the company everyone wanted to meet was not an Operator – It was Apple. Like it or not – Google, Apple, Nokia and others drive the agenda today – and already with the launch of iPhone – the Operator is already a bit pipe. There may be no going back since iTunes is the billing mechanism for iPhone as I blogged before ”

Brian Dolan at Fierce: Dumb pipe nostalgia at Mobile World Congress “Just as the carriers’ fear of becoming a dumb pipe is one elephant the industry can’t seem to push out of the room”