As a recent arrival at dotMobi, I am very pleased to be able to work with an organisation that has such a simple objective as “Work to reduce or remove the barriers to growth of the mobile web”. Simple in the sense that it is simply defined, execution is another story. I think everyone is familiar with the principal barriers to growth, and dotMobi is making good progress in addressing many of them, some of it already visible, some of it still in the works.
However one of the main accepted barriers is the cost to the end user. To a great extent globally, this should now be defined as “Perceived cost”, since mobile operators have made huge strides in moving to flat rate tariffs, and introducing other inducements. However many customer surveys still highlight that perceived cost is one of the primary obstacles to takeup. This does not surprise me at all, speaking as a consumer, but what has astonished me over the past few months has been the number of times I have heard surprise at this expressed by people within mobile operators.
Across Europe at least, the message from the consumer is fairly consistent: “I never press that button there, it’s really expensive”.
So why is this?
Speaking from my own experience, and that of those close to me, I can highlight a few points.
Firstly, for some years it has been incredibly easy to start a data connection from a mobile phone. This is great, makes perfect sense, unless the consumer does it accidentally. On several occasions in the past couple of years I have had the credit drained on my personal prepaid phone, simply due to a data connection running which I was not aware of.
Secondly, on some devices it is hard to actually stop a data connection. I met an acquaintance yesterday with a high tier device, who switches it off completely after a data connection is inadvertently started, because he is unable to tell for certain that the data connection has been successfully terminated. He does this because he has been burned in the past with unexpectedly high bills. In keeping with the company objectives, I worked out how to stop the data connection to give him the confidence to start one, and then showed him some compelling sites for his field, to convert him from a non-user into a reluctant user. Progress of a sort. Long job ahead.
So really there are three issues: too easy to start a connection, too difficult (in many cases) to stop one, and often no visibility that money is being spent. At least with a phone call there is a record in the device of the connection made, if not the duration.
So where does this go?
Obviously there has been huge collaboration over the years between mobile operators and device manufacturers. The ease of making a data conneciton must be a key driver for the mobile operator. However I think in the interests of the consumer, a little more transparency would be good, in that it would increase confidence.
As a consumer, what I would like to see are a few relatively simple changes. Firstly, make it as easy to stop a data connection as to start one. Secondly, make it visible that a data connection is in progress (on many devices this is already reasonably apparent), with an intuitive way to stop the connection. Thirdly, provide information on completion relating to the connection, tied in some way to the tariff structure: either duration, or data volume, depending on which is the chargeable item.
Now, maybe with the changes in pricing, all this is somewhat unnecessary. The problem is that the sea change in pricing policy that has occurred seems to have passed the average consumer by. An example is with another acquaintance, who was looking for the number of a restaurant. I suggested using the mobile internet, and received a brief response, which I suspect was cover for unfamiliarity. When I highlighted that with his provider, the charge was capped at €1 per day, this was not news to him, but he asked the very reasonable question “Does that mean if I make one connection of 20 seconds, I will be charged €1?”. Unfortunately, I did not know the answer to his question, and the risk of being charged €1 for one piece of information seemed too high. So recourse was made to the phone book. Still a long job ahead.
I think the only way to fix this is improved publicity of the new rates. Not much point making a huge shift in pricing policy if the average consumer doesn’t know about it. The shift is fantastic, tell the world.
Contributor: John Leonard, Product Manager at dotMobi. Background in telecommunications and IT, and an advocate of the end user.
