The UK Mobile Report

3 - after the press conference

I'm back from the press conference and jolly good it was too, all taking place in a swanky marquee just off Battersea Bridge. About 200 people attended, mind you at least half of them were staffers from 3 and all the partners that are part of this announcement.

In case you missed it, 3 X-series consists of two mobile phones enabled to offer you services from: Skype, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Sling, and Orb. The phones are Nokia's N73 and Sony-Ericsson W950i. All on a flat rate mobile broadband service. Costing how much? Don't ask - more on that later.

In theory this means cheap or free calls over Skype, searching with Google and Yahoo, instant messaging with Microsoft, remote access to your TV with Sling, mobile auctions with eBay, and remote access to your PC with Orb. And of course all the internet you can eat.

Deep breath.

According to 3 it's all about tearing down the 'walled-garden'. Yes, OK, but mind the roses eh?

The press conference was like a who's who? of what I would call new mobile, with top representatives from all these firms represented - some of them in pre-recorded videos.

You can't help but be impressed by what 3 is trying to do, and it's nice to see they brought all their friends along to show what a love-in the new mobile world has become, but......and there's always a but....we don't yet know how much this will cost and whether the cost will differ for Pay-as-you-go and contract subscriber.

The killer question is: How much will the consumer bear? £10 per month? £20? £30?

I say consumer because while Skype is great, the call quality just isn't good enough for most business people - I tried it at the press conference on the Sony Ericsson phone, and even in a short conversation a number of words had to be repeated.

So in summary, well done 3, a superb marketing effort that sets the agenda for others to follow, but if you don't get a spike in subscribers in December/early 2007 (this goes live with 'flat-rate' prices next month) we will know that you will have to do more than tear down the walled-garden to get your business back on track.

N.B. Sling Media is the odd one out because you will also have to buy a Slingbox which sits beside your TV and sucks out your desired choice of programme to send to your mobile. Clever stuff eh?  Pictured above: The Nokia N75 showing TV transmitted from a Slingbox.

 

Vodafone launches Broadband at Home

£25 per month, 8 Mbps service with free tech support. More from Reuters here. The relatively high price is to weighed up against the benefits of 25% off calls to other mobiles. BT is supplying the broadband lines and promises connection within ten days - eat your heart out Carphone!

Chris Williams from Uswitch says: "On price it's fairly competitive. Vodafone will be pushing the customer service aspect rather than price. The broadband market is still growing, so far this year there have been 1.5m new subscribers so it's something of a land-grab."

Vodafone's outsourcing fever

Could a mobile phone operator become a virtual company, outsourcing most functions while holding the network as its core business? Vodafone is certainly pointing the way forward. On October 9th it announced that it was oursourcing some development to IBM and EDS; today it follows up with news on Reuters that it is outsourcing more of the same to Microsoft. Naturally Vodfaone intends to save millions of quids by doing this - but for now at least it's not saying how big those savings might be.

Will operators outsource themselves?

An interesting story broke over the weekend about Vodafone outsourcing some of its software development functions in a £560m deal with EDS and IBM. Details were scant, but Vodafone said it affected a massive 6,300 jobs most of which were contractors. More intriguing perhaps is whether this cost reduction exercise is emulated by other operators and whether it becomes a growing trend in the industry in the light of an increasingly saturated phone market.

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