Almost every Telco in the world who are providing the data service facilities to their subscribers have their own operator WAP portal or intend to have one. An operator WAP portal can be a strong revenue earning source for the operator if it is properly planned architecturally as well as strategically.
The basic purposes to have an operator WAP portal are:
- To inform the subscribers about their packages, ongoing promotions and offers etc.
- To provide several types of lucrative services to their subscribers, like news service, search facilities, weather report etc.
- And at the end and most importantly, to sell several types of contents to their subscribers thus enriching their content revenue.
Content business drives huge revenue for the operators for which it became a major focus for them to look into.
So where the operators host their WAP portal and why?
It is seen that there are actually one of the two approaches the operators are taking to host their WAP portal. They are:
- WAP Portal Hosted in Local IP: So in this case the WAP portal is hosted in a local IP; meaning to say that, this WAP portal is only accessible to the on-net users. No off-net users (users from the same country but other operators) or any foreign (outside the country) visitor can enter the operator WAP portal.
The major reason behind keeping the WAP portal hosted in local IP is the security issue. If the portal is hosted in local IP then it reduces the probability to be hacked globally. - WAP Portal Hosted in Real IP: In this case as the portal is hosted in a real (global) IP so if there is no other checking (ie. MSISDN based portal access) enabled, anybody from anywhere in the world can access these WAP portal.
Analysis of the approaches:
1.Security Issue: In case of local IP based approach the operators are less vulnerable than the real IP approach because it is only accessible to their own subscriber base. But of course it does not eradicate the possibility of being attacked. Of course the local IP approach restricts the global hackers to access the platform but there are local hackers too. So if security holes are not blocked properly the potential local hackers can also enter into the system.
So in case of the real IP approach the operators can also take the same security protections to ensure the availability of the service.
2.Subscriber Confusion: The basic procedures or steps to use the operator data service (GPRS or EDGE etc) are:
(A) First to configure the subscriber’s handset with correct parameters (like Access Point Name eg. APN, IP, Port, WAP Portal URL etc). Most of the cases the operators have a specific platform to handle this work (sending the correct GPRS/EDGE settings to subscriber’s handset) which is OTA (Over-the-air) Device Management Platform.
(B) Then as the handset is correctly configured with operator specific parameters so the subscriber then click the “Home” to visit the operator home page or can manually type and go to any web address.
When the operators put their WAP portal in the local IP, then they generally provide two different settings for accessing the GPRS services: WAP and Internet settings. Conceptually both settings are used for getting the browsing service. But the general difference is: using the Internet setting the subscriber can not visit the operator WAP portal. But they can visit naturally any other web/wap sites which are hosted under the real IPs and can be accessed over the internet.
So when the subscribers get to know about two settings like one setting will be used to browse the WAP portal and another setting will be used to browse all the portals except the operator’s WAP portal then generally less tech savvy users may be confused and may become interest less to do these hardship to use the GPRS services. At least this will happen in case of the subscribers from low developed countries.
But the operators should carry the motto like “One APN, One Setting, One WAP Portal” which will give the subscriber more comfort to be interested in using the data services.
Worldwide Content Business:
Now to discuss on the main point.
The operators do the content business through their WAP portal. Subscribers can visit the portal and can download several types of contents like Wallpaper, Ringtones etc. In some WAP portals the operators provide the facility subscriber to subscribe for different types of alert services like: news alert, sports alert, subscription based astrological information etc.
When the operator WAP portal is local then the customer means only the on-net customers. But when the portal is hosted in real IP then this is accessible globally over the internet from anywhere in the world by any subscriber who have data service enabled and properly configured. So there is specifically no customer base or can be said that the customer base is unlimited.
When theoretically any subscribers can access the portal then any subscriber can download the contents from this specific operator WAP portal. Now if specific charging option can be ensured for these off-net subscribers (all the subscribers worldwide except the operator’s own subscribers.) then this operator can say every data users in this world as the customer of its content service. But there are legal issues of course to do worldwide content business. I will ignore that part in this article and will consider that “Sky is the limit”.
As a strategy to run the worldwide content business the operator can set two different prices as well two different currencies (ie. Local currency and USD) for each content.
So the first requirement for any operator to run the worldwide content business is to open up their WAP portal to be accessible globally and then of course to provide some sort of charging mechanism to charge the off-net customers.
In the following it is proposed some different types of charging options for worldwide content customers:
1. On-Net customers: On-net customers are the operator’s own subscribers. So any event based charging mechanism which is available to that operator can be used to charge the subscriber in real time. For an Example: Premium SMS based charge can be one technique.
2. Off-Net but within the same country: They are the subscribers from the competitor operators. It is not expected that the competitors will welcome this business and may restrict their subscribers to access this WAP portal. But there should have been some kind of negotiation or agreements to be done between the operators so that each one can do maximize their business scopes.
Here in this case a easy solution can be: PIN code based billing. The customer (from any operator) can buy scratch card and can use the PIN while buying the content. On-net subscribers can also have the same facility.
3. Off-net and out of the country: These are the customers from the other countries.
So they can be given the facility to be charged by PayPal or by Bango Billing etc.
Conclusion:
From the analysis above it is pretty clear that there are immense opportunities waiting for the mobile operators to maximize their earning through global business of their services. Just it is required to have the good will from the operator side.
Conservative approaches always limits the scopes. And of course conservativeness is not competition. So letting the operators WAP portals be accessible globally and settling the agreement among the telcos permitting service access among each other will be beneficial for each others.
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