Following up on a post from earlier this week, Total Telecom did a quick, unscientific survey of what mobile services would be interested in paying for above and beyond their line rental. The unscientific survey was of some small subset of mobile users in the UK with some ties to the telecommunications industry, so theres a high likelihood of early adoptership among those surveyed as well as perhaps a bit too much inside baseball in the respondents feedback on what services would and would not be welcome.
Since TT is a pay site I am not going to provide a link, but rather lift what I thought was the meat of the article:
Interestingly, of the mobile content services that many see as the likely winners in future, few seemed to appeal to our select group of users. Mobile email was one service cited as potentially useful, but on the whole music downloads, TV and sports updates met with an almost complete lack of interest, although football video clips and access to new music downloads as well as Internet Radio were highlighted as possible areas of interest.
What did emerge was that if services were seen as directly relevant to a user’s life, they would be far more willing to pay for them. In addition, users clearly don’t want to pay for services they already get elsewhere, such as news and sports updates.
One respondent, a mature student with no budget to spend on any extra services, commented that they might be interested in practical services such as links to bus-running times, or banking services. The respondent added that service providers could also encourage loyalty amongst students by offering them discounted account deals and after all today’s students are tomorrow’s high earners.
The study was by no means scientific or widespread, but one key message to emerge is that “one size fits all” will probably not work and service providers need to spend a great deal more time on finding out who their customers are and what they really want.
I like the transport schedules service. On a somewhat related note I would be willing to pay to receive updates and announcements of traffic times and incidents for routes that important to me. If I could receive an update on travel times between Sterling and Tysons Corner either on Route 7 or the Dulles Toll Road that would be pretty sweet. If I could receive alerts of traffic incidents on my commuter routes that would be great, too. My willingness to continue to pay for this service is how correctly the service enables me to estimate how long my commute will take each morning.
I currently get e-mail on my Treo and do find my ability to check mail on the go to be very useful, so I would definitely continue to pay for that.
I have a tough time thinking of any content sufficiently compelling to make me want to buy. I dont like the concept of a premium for content I can get elsewhere for free or low cost, and integration of exclusive content deals is a continuation of the cursed walled garden approach to mobile data and content. I probably would be interested in seeing short mobisodes of the shows Im really in to like 24 or Battlestar Gallactica, but theres no way Im going to switch carriers for such a frivolous offering.
Social networking and user-generated content suited for mobile consumption have some appeal as well. If mobile carriers were willing to bring down the walls of their gardens I think there are a number of business models that could catch on in this space and generate data revenue for carriers.
So, what would you be willing to pay extra to get on your mobile?
Tags: Wireless
