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Mobile: the motion pictures

Tim Green
Mobile: the motion pictures

How to follow the Social Network movie? What about 'The Leading Provider'...

This week, the Soclal Network arrives in the UK on a wave of glowing reviews and boffo box office returns.

If I know Hollywood, the next phase is surely a series of similar movies about tech companies.

So here are my three 'treatments'. Any hotshot producers reading should contact me at the usual email address.

The Leading Provider (courtroom drama)

US content delivery specialist Providia knows it's the leading provider of end to end solutions.

Always has been. Simple as.

But then it glances at a certain industry website to see its main rival Providius advertising itself as a 'leading provider' too.

Its world falls apart. But what can it do?

Only one man can help, renegade hotshot lawyer Skip Vegas. The Providia team go to see him, and find a washed up alcoholic living in a one room apartment with a single jar of mayonnaise in the fridge. It's hopeless.

But then they find out that Vegas's brother was killed in a shady licensing deal involving – you guessed it – Providius.

A vengeful and newly sober Vegas arrives at the courtroom only to find out that his beautiful ex-wife is representing Providius.

She runs rings round him. But at the 11th hour, Vegas's team discover an old CTIA show guide that lists Providius as a plain old 'provider'. They produce this in court. The case is won.

Even Vegas's wife cheers.

The N95 (rise and fall story)

At the start of the film the N95 is working as a chef in a seedy bar, but his life changes when wiley old manager Anssi Vanjoki walks in.

Vanjoki realises that this regular candy bar has an eye-wateringly long battery life. It also has a slider action that never seems to quit.

He removes the N95 from its drab surroundings and turns it into a star. All over the world women are getting off on the vibrate function and men are marveling at the sheer size of those megapixels.

But after a while, the N95 starts doing too much coke. Its slider function becomes unreliable. Worse still, new technology is making it redundant. The public begins to tire of hard keys and numeric keypads.

N95 goes to see Anssi Vanjoki, and finds a weary broken man. "The world's changed N. People are staying at home and flicking their own touchscreens."

The film ends with N95 making a cheap advert for a company that 'buys back your embarrassing old phones'.

The flat rate data plan (disaster movie)

The film begins with a handsome scientist alone in a lab scribbling notes into a jotter, pouring liquids into test tubes, writing out algebra on a chalk board.

The montage ends with the boffin slowly taking off his glasses and staring horrified at the results of his labours.

"Oh, sweet Jesus. Noooo!!!!"

Cut to the scientist barging unannounced into a meeting of the tariff committee – a snooty bunch with no concern for public safety.

He bangs his fist on the table: "Can't you see what you're doing here? These flat rate data tariffs are no protection against the deluge that's coming. We'll all be submerged! There'll be hardly any signal in built-up areas!"

The replies are dismissive: "Don't worry, it's all fine. We have wi-fi offloading in place. And fair usage policies. If you go public on this, you'll only panic people. So take this little payment from us, go on holiday and forget all about it."

"You're trying to buy my silence? God help us all."

Cut to scenes of absolute carnage: ordinary phone users getting cut off mid-call, iPhones showing no bars of signal, children screaming because they can't get online.

Our hero runs from place to place administering to the sick with a hastily built femtocell. But there's only so much he can do.

Just when all appears lost, the military flies over and drops emergency bolt-ons before humanity is completely wiped out.

Film ends with the tarriff committee being lined up and shot.

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Tags: me mail , world according to me

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