Mobile Entertainment

At the excellent Zed Symposium in Valencia last week, the 200 plus delegates were simultaneously transfixed and alarmed when ‘spokesperson for the MSN generation’ jellie-ellie took to the stage.

This 17 year old Brit was brought to Spain by Zed on the strength of her blog about bluejacking (sending Bluetooth messages to unsuspecting strangers for a laugh) and her book about how teens think.

She was a lively speaker, taking the audience through ‘a day in the new media life’ of a youngster. It quickly became clear that selling stuff to teens is mighty difficult – as if we didn’t know that already. But one phrase really stuck out. She said: “Whenever any of my friends gets a new phone, the first thing I tell them is ‘for God’s sake, don’t touch the internet button’.”

What a terrible indictment of the business: give people the web on their phones and scare them into not using it.

Of course, flat rate data could change this. But how long will it take for the mass market to adopt all-you-can-eat? And what about pre-pay customers? One possible answer is what used to be called wholesale data, but is now being termed ‘sender pays’, which quite frankly is a much better way of putting it.

This involves the vendor rolling up the cost of data in the retail price. It’s a subject very close to the heart of mBlox’s Andrew Bud, who was also at the Zed event. He’s been advocating it for years, with little success.

But now, just possibly, the tide is turning. Why? Because of what’s happening on the wired internet. Readers outside the UK may be unaware of the storm brewing around the BBC’s iPlayer, which lets web viewers watch programmes online for a week after broadcast. It’s been a huge success, but is causing a real strain on ISP’s networks. Now, there’s a stand-off behind the scenes, with ISPs demanding some compensation from the Beeb, while the broadcaster claims it’s driving the broadband uptake these ISPs are in business for.

Some kind of ‘sender pays’ deal could be the answer, if not for the Beeb, then for others looking to launch similarly data-heavy services. That would be a useful precedent for the mobile biz.

And with iPlayer already available by wi-fi for iPod/iPhone – and rumoured for other handsets – the issue could heat up very soon.