Telecom Expense Management for the Brilliant Phone

August 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I want one box. I want to use it for pictures, phone calls, email, the web and the odd bit of work: writing, spreadsheets – all that stuff. I want to do it anywhere I go, too.

It’s happening in fits and starts, but it looks like I’m going to get what I want. There are still a few barriers. It’ll take a few years for the industry to figure out how to get me fully portable wireless broadband and there will be a painful period where it foolishly tries to charge me a lot of money for it. People still aren’t comfortable with the idea of converging PCs with true mobile devices either, but ultraportables like the Asus Eee are one third of an evolutionary process. The next third is embodied by the iPhone, and represents smartphones with PC-quality apps and an innovative user interfaces. The final third is 4G: packet-based, high speed wireless communications.

Let’s call the result a “brilliant phone,” though in a decade’s time the word “phone” will be an atavism, since voice won’t be anything special, but just one function out of many. It will do all kinds of cool things, but let’s get back down to earth. We’re a telecom expense management company. What will the brilliant phone’s TEM issues be? Here are some educated guesses:

Data Migration: The brilliant phone will be a consumer’s primary data tool. It will have enough flash memory (or a successor format) to take the place of your laptop, leading to the question of how you’ll move this data around when it’s time to backup or upgrade. Carriers currently encourage users to use expensive internet time to send pictures via email and unless you get a smart data plan, charge you by the megabyte for everything else. This method isn’t sustainable. Besides, in a decade’s time you won’t want to run home to a WLAN every time you want to move a substantial amount of data. Ultimately, carriers will provide a solution – and charge for it, too. It will be our job to get you the best deal on their backup and migration services.

Management and Reporting: Telecom management and reporting services will be as relevant as ever in the age of the brilliant phone. In fact, it will be even more important to track usage since everyone will use multiple functions as a matter of course. The era of voice-only usage, already moribund, will be truly dead and buried. While future cell phone plans will be much more generous with data, user management will transform from a straight savings issue to a matter of productivity. You’ll need to know if staff are using the brilliant phone appropriately.

Telecom and Data Billing Errors: Like death and taxes, carrier billing errors are inescapable. They’ll keep overcharging you and we’ll keep correcting them. The brilliant phone will continuously send and receive data from next-generation networks, so outages will be even more of a problem than they are now. You’ll deserve credit for dealing with them; we’ll make sure you get it.

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management, Communications Management Software, Telecom Expense Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Beyond North America

August 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

North American cellular telecom expense management is the heart of our business. Nevertheless, we keep abreast of trends beyond our primary market. There are compelling reasons for doing so – three “Ps.”

1) Products

One of the simplest reasons is that other markets are testing grounds for phones and devices that could be bound for the North American market. As I mentioned in our last article, the Blackberry Bold rolled out in test markets first – including Chile. You have to do more than just observe whether or not a product is hot in one country or another. Look at the relationship between the product, consumer and infrastructure.

Example: Developing nations’ explosive wireless growth and need for inexpensive handsets is a function of wireless infrastructures being simpler to install, and carriers’ commitments to volume sales that overcome low margins. Lesson: Economy handset fleets should be more attractive in rural areas here, too, especially in businesses that rely on personal mobility (on site technicians, for example). Low land line density for phone and internet makes it easier to get things done through a handset, and while carriers have no motivation to make handsets cheaper here, high market penetration in North America means they have to offer them if they want to compete.

2) Policies

Foreign markets provide an array of “What if?” scenarios that tell us what might happen if policies or government regulations change. Mobile communications is probably the most varied field in telecom. Every market has its own government-mandated quirks and unique carrier policies.You could write (and analysts have written) giant volumes about SIM card policies alone.

Example: In the UK, “box breaking” occurs when a consumer unlocks the SIM cards of phones and resells them at a profit in another market. Carriers dislike the practice, but it’s legal. Lesson: Thanks to box breaking, UK dealers are conservative with subsidies and have begun incorporating various policies to limit the practice, including mandatory minutes and detailed tracking procedures to follow the phone’s status. If unlocking SIM cards becomes a mainstream North American practice, carriers here will have to use the same methods.

3) Penetration

Other markets are an excellent way to look at various penetration levels. Europe and Asia are the primary focus here because they include regions with higher penetration levels than North America. Parts of Europe are saturated to over 100% market because many consumers own more than one active handset.

Example: Some European markets have reached the apex of linear growth, so carriers increasingly emphasize new features and higher-end hardware. Mobile banking and purchases are just the tip of the iceberg; converged multifunction devices will be the rule, and not status symbols. Lesson:Â North American providers will have to follow their European counterparts when it comes to attracting business from people who mostly already own cell phones and need a further inducement to switch carriers.

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management, Telecom Expense Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Eyeballing the Blackberry Bold – How Does it Stack Up Against the iPhone?

August 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

We’ve been blogging about the iPhone 3G a lot lately, and for good reason: Everyone working in telecom expense management will have to deal with its rigid plans and arcane activation procedures. But what’s really interesting is how the iPhone woke every other manufacturer up. They all know that people want stylish, high end smartphones now, and that they’ll go to considerable effort to get them.

The iPhone is branded as a smartphone and its features take aim at RIM’s Blackberry, so it’s fitting that RIM’s reacted with a product seemingly designed to attack the iPhone’s niche. It’s called the Blackberry Bold, or 9000 series.

The Bold is currently running in test markets, but a wide release is just around the corner. AT&T in the US and Rogers in Canada have both announced plans to carry it, leading to the big question: Which smartphone will get a better plan? Unfortunately, that’s not something we can reliably answer (yet), but what we can do is look at the 9000′s features and see how they compare to the iPhone’s.

Applications: The iPhone supports lots of snazzy Apple apps. They’re a real joy to use but let’s face it: There are times when you just need to get down to business. The Blackberry Bold lets you edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. The winner? That depends on your agenda, but you’ll probably be more productive with a 9000 gracing your pocket.

Memory: The iPhone wins here, with 8 or 16 GB options. The Blackberry Bold has a respectable 1 GB, but can be expanded to 8 GB.

Media Toys: Both phones synch with iTunes. The Times review notes that the Bold’s screen is just as clear as the iPhone’s. Both of them feature 2 MP cameras, but while the iPhone’s great at organizing photos into nifty albums, we’re not sure if the 9000 will match it. Winner: iPhone, but only due to lack of evidence on the Bold’s part.

Email: The iPhone uses Activesynch technology to regularly request email right from your Exchange server. RIM operates its own network; Blackberries are virtually synonymous with this “push” approach. Although outages are an occasional problem, millions of users are satisfied with it. We’ve also heard anecdootal evidence that it’s just plain faster than iPhone, too. This is Blackberry’s edge; it wins.

Web: Both phones offer true HTML browsing but the iPhone uses Safari: the same browser used by Macs. I feel conflicted here; I know lots of people dig Safari but when I tried it, I was disappointed – but maybe that’s because Firefox is my usual browser, and it’s just so good. I’m withholding judgment here. Both phones are also capable of Wifi.

The iPhone is very, very cool. The Blackberry Bold might be cool, but it has to overcome the brand’s somewhat staid, business-oriented image. That sums up the whole challenge of the “iPhone niche.” This is a crossover market whose customers are looking for a mix of features and style. One thing that might resolve it is the state of this niche a year from now, when the Apple fan effect will fade, and a larger proportion of consumers will decide based on something more than Apple’s formidable brand.

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management Tagged With: , , ,

iPhone Madness in Canada!

August 15, 2008 By 4 Comments

Well, we got the iPhone in. To use a technical cellular expense management term, it’s getting all crazy in Canada.

Despite my initial skepticism from a telecom expense management perspective it looks like it’s a hit on both the corporate and consumer side of things. Certainly, the iPhone’s capabilities mean the right plan will let it do your Blackberry’s job and give you a bunch of stylish tools, but I was curious to see whether corporate users in particular would tolerate the drawbacks of Rogers’ monopoly. It probably helped that last month, consumer outrage drove Rogers to change its iPhone plans. It looks like the company successfully headed off objections and tapped into the runaway hype.

As you can probably guess, demand is one of the chief issues right now. It’s just plain hard to get an iPhone – estimates put sales at over 90 units per Apple store, per day, leading to chronically low stock. Thanks to our cellular customer service and procurement focus we were able to get them but many others haven’t been so lucky. I have to admit though: Once you see it up close it’s very, very pretty.

Now as I did predict, cellular expense management for the iPhone is tricky business. Rogers has a “one size fits all” philosophy that makes migrating services difficult, though not impossible. You can negotiate plenty of changes if you want to pay $700 per unit, but most customers are in it for the subsidy. If you’re willing to pay for the whole phone though, you can simply add a $30 per month data plan – if you order before August 31st. If you want to pay $199 ($299 for the 16 GB) for the unit you’ll have to get a bundled voice and data plan that costs $60 and up. The bundles include unlimited WiFi access at Fido hotspots, too. When it comes to data usage, that definitely softens the blow.

This is a very general overview of iPhone pricing. The devil really is in the details here, and they include all kinds of fiddly bits around activation, rebates and service migration – but that’s what we do, so we’ll deal with it. The iPhone isn’t the only smartphone game in town by any means, but sure is the most stylish one.

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management, Telecom Expense Management Tagged With: , , , ,