Reding throws out bath water, just about keeps hold of the baby…
The spectacle of the GSMA’s spokesperson on various TV new programmes, trying to wave back a furious tide of “calling from abroad is about to get cheaper thanks to the good old EU” stories, was amusing for two reasons.
First, certain news outlets in the UK are used to portraying the EU as an interfering, unelected body spreading its malign socialist influence into the British way of life. Yet clearly mandatory cheap EU calls, which mean we can all chat away from our villas in Lombardy, or beaches in Ibiza, is self-evidently a GOOD THING. The second mildly amusing aspect was seeing our industry argue that left to itself, market competition, technical innovation and, well, just the goodness or our wireless hearts would deliver far more savings to far more people in a targeted and useful way.
The industry pointed to the fact that “certain” operators had cut roaming costs by up to 40% already this year. Without any regulation at all. Which is true, but ignores the fact that in the previous year, before Reding really started getting serious and making it plain she was going to do something if the operators didn’t, roaming prices, even by the GSMA’s own figures dropped by just 8%. It also ignored the fact that the 40% number was part of a campaign so carefully choreographed it would put the Corps de Ballet at Covent Garden to shame.
It’s tough to have sympathy with the industry on this one when they adopt this type of “the truth, some of the truth, nothing but the half-truth testimony”. But, frankly, what is wrong with charging what people are prepared to pay? Anyone who really, crucially needs to make lots of roaming calls will either find a way round it (two SIMS etc etc) or migrate to one of the new toll-bypass services coming along. If the industry wants to milk the cow until it dries up, let it. If we’ve all moved from milk to lemonade by then, then lemon farmers are going to get rich, and the dairy farmers are going to have to give their milk away. Unless they’ve diversified into lemons.
Intel spends $600 million as part of $900 million investment in WiMax…
Well they said the standardisation of mobile Wimax would change the way the industry approached the technology, and at first sight the investment secured by Clearwire for its business expansion plan, and for Motorola to buy NextNet Wireless looks like a tremendous vote of confidence in the technology.
Which of course, it is. But from those already heavily committed to the technology. Motorola has long coveted the chance to actually implement the vision of its seamless mobility roadmap. Not having done much business in the way of 3G so far, despite its hopes for getting a foothold with HSDPA and further 3GPP technologies, it obviously makes sense for Motorola to take a good strong step on the “other”side of the mobility fence, building on its knowledge of WLAN and other 802.16, OFDM type, technologies.
Clearly, for Intel, its investment integrates it further vertically into the market value chain. From chip developer to financier of the service providers that will provide access to all the owners of the notebooks and devices that contain Intel’s WiMax chips.
Just one question. Isn’t this vendor financing — which was held responsible for so much grief when the wireless bubble burst at the turn of the century?