Fewer walls, not much broadband (yet), two handsets; lots of partners
3, which can’t shake off irritating rumours it is for sale, certainly made sure its X-Series announcement was the big news for the day. Hutchison had brought along its own top bodies, including Canning Fok, group managing director, Frank Sixt, group finance director, and Christian Salbaing, group finance director. Also speaking at the press launch were top names from Microsoft, Google, Ebay, Yahoo!, EBay, Skype, Sling Media, Orb Networks, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Quite a line up.
The theme was that by introducing flat access fees with no extra charges for usage, 3 was finally opening up mobile to the experience users get on the broadband internet. 3 is calling these mobile internet services its X-Series, and is launching X-Series in the UK in December, with other territories to follow next year.
Speaker after speaker endorsed the vision and the strategy, until by the end it was possible to believe 3’s cleaners might have got up on stage to extol the virtues of tearing down the walled gardens and opening up the mobile internet to the outside world.
Yet, for all the talk about mobile broadband, where is 3 now on HSDPA? Well, still in roll out phase, although the company has previously said it would have HSDPA phones available by Christmas this year, with the network completed in 2007. But for now, the phones the X Series is launching on, the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W750i, are not HSDPA phones. (Nor is WCDMA even available throughout the country, and how much use would GPRS be for most of these services?)
As for pricing, Graeme Oxby, 3 UK’s marketing man, told Mobile Europe that there would be two bundles. One would be for more “basic” comms services such as Skype, messaging and search. The other would included the richer media stuff from the likes of Sling and Orb. Neither would be very expensive he said, certainly nowhere near the cost of a typical monthly spend. Nor is the operator intending to set its fair usage levels at a height that means it will collect on inevitable customer over-spend, Oxby said.
So to the services. First of all, Skype. Here, 3 is offering free Skype calls to or from a mobile/ PC to other Skype users. Skype in and out, Skype’s premium services, will be available later next year. Users do not need to have a Skype client on their PC to use the service, they can get up and running from a stand along Skype client. But clearly in the short term 3 is interested in attracting the 136 million existing Skype users that may be attracted to 3 if they knew they could continue Skyping on their mobile.
Oxby said that the operator is genuinely unconcerned about cannibalising other voice revenies. “It doesn’t really matter a lot to us, as long as people are using 3,” he said.
Also free in the package will be search from Google. Oxby admitted that the implementation of the Google toolbar within Planet 3 was not so different from the way other operators have worked with Google. But he said that 3’s broadband internet vision meant that further mbile versions of Google’s other services were much more likely. Existing partners Microsoft and Yahoo! were also at the feast.
We also saw a demo of Sling Media’s and Orb Networks’ services. These companies are somewhat similar in that they offer remote access to content that is normally only available on your home PC or television. Both were quick to praise 3’s vision, with Sling’s ceo Blake Kirkorian saying he was, “Disappointed 3 is not in the USA. In fact I’d like you to buy one of our stodgy operators.”
Orb’s general manager for Europe, Scott Monson, told Mobile Europe that in fact with some US wireless networks already providing broadband speed, over there he was able to offer the Orb client independent of a deal with operators. But the deal with 3 allows him to get a decent user experience, optimized to 3’s network, to users in Europe. Orb is a client-server based system that allows users to securely access their PCs over broadband, and access any digital content they have on the PC. Sling lets users watch TV when they are away from home, again by users dialing in to their broadband modem, which in this case is connected to whatever digital TV service they have. Both of these services will be part of 3’s more pricey bundle, but will be free to use once the access fee has been paid.
The promise is that you will be able to record and watch TV, your own TV, wherever you are. Of course, this is liable to compete directly with operators’ own “TV” services, streamed over 3G and any future broadcast mobile TV.
So there we are. No walled garden, but a series of preferred partners for each of the services (VoIP, IM, search, TV etc) you might want to use. The promise of broadband internet over mobile, but not much true broadband internet coverage. And two handsets.
Impressive, but much more impressive than T-Mobile’s Web n Walk? Yes because there are IM and VoIP services, and you don’t have to access everything through the browser. Yes, because from what we could see the user experience was sweet. Yes, because there is the nice fancy stuff from Sling and Orb.
No it’s not total freedom to everything, anywhere. But it’s a start. Does Arun Sarin still want to buy?
