The EU commissioner has handed down a deadline to operators to come up with credible data pricing or face being regulated.
The move which will be welcomed by content owners, mobile marketing agencies and broadcasters who have been held back in their use and development of mobile as a medium largely due to inflated costs of data consumption.
Although not relating specifically to costs of mobile internet - type services this is certainly a step in the right direction.
With the date set out as the 1st of July 2008, europena operators will now have to become realistic about what they are asking their customers to pay for using mobile internet and other data services.
A key area of focus are data charges paid by mobile users for roaming both in the retail and wholesale market.
Watch this space!
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Tags: data pricing, network operators, eu commissioner
This month the Mobile Marketing Association (A global body representing more than 550 member companies) has announced it will partner with the current Irish MMF association to form the MMA Ireland. The new branch will be chaired by Eamon Hession, former chairman of the MMF and CEO of Puca.
The association is made up of member companies who all contirbute to work towards promoting industry guidelines, best practices in mobile marketing and help to build a sustainable ecosystem for the mobile marketing industry in Ireland and globally. The MMA Ireland will become part of the MMA EMEA Regional chapter and will have representationat the global table. Primary member companies include Vodafone, 02, Meteor and 3 as well as Irish technology and service companies such as Return2Sender.
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Tags: mma ireland, mma global, mobile marketing ireland
This week a very special service was launched by Rehabcare in association with ourselves and meteor communications. From monday 13th August young people will be able to access a range of helplines and support services by texting the word "Headsup" to 50424. The fully confidential and free 24 hour text service is being provided by rehab and is the first one of it's kind in Ireland.
When seeking to access the service, the user sends their text to 50424 and is offered information on support services for 12 problem areas including crisis, suicide, alcohol, drugs, mental health, debt, sexuality, abuse, gambling, sexual health, parenting and teen issues. The user chooses the topic and instantly receives a list of appropriate helpline numbers to their mobile phone. The Samaritans, AL Anon, Aware, Women’s Aid, Childline, MABS and Bodywhys are among the many support services listed.
Ms. Angela Kerins, Chief Executive of the Rehab Group, believes that a wide range of factors can affect mental wellbeing among young adults including exam stress, financial problems, relationships and sexuality issues. Ms. Kerins commented that "in many cases [young people] do not know where to go to get the support they need" and that the ‘Headsup’ text service "increases significantly the possibility of young people accessing the support they need at critical times. It is designed with young people in mind as they all use mobile phones on a daily basis.” The new service is being supported by an extensive youth - focused marketing campaign and is being promoted on flyers, on outdoor media and press.
Mobile works so well in this situation particularly because of the anonymity involved. With the embarrassment and hestitation young people experience when looking for help with important social issues such as suicide it can be difficult for them to ask for help. Young people can interact with the service by sending a simple text message and recieve the help they need for free, without anybody knowing their identity. Being completely anonymous, sending an SMS allows young people a risk free introduction to support services and addressing their problems.
UPDATE: In it's first 48 hours "Heads up" received 2,000 messages with the most sought after topics being sexual health, sexuality, suicide and drugs.
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*Update 23/05/07: ENN Reports today that an EU wide roaming structure could be in place as early as the summer with the Commissioner ruling on the matter today. Existing mobile customers have a month to choose whether or not to go with the new EU tariff and those who fail to indicate their preference will automatically be moved to the EU rate after two months.
Bad news plenty for mobile phone operators yesterday as the European Parliments Industry Committee proposed a Cap on roaming charges that will see consumers receiving a 70% reduction. The committee members voted 45 to three to draft legislation where charges for incoming calls will be capped at 40c per minute (excluding VAT) and 15 cent for calls received while travelling.
Currently the 3 Network provide free roaming to all of their customers where consumers can also use their free tarriff minutes while travelling in the EU.
This legislation is at the proposal stage and it will take further voting by the other 785 MEPs to become law. This is great news for consumers as charges as high as €4 have been charged for roaming, not so great for the mobile phone operators as it is no secret that falling revenues per user and stagnant growth are making life difficult enough these days.
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Comreg's quarterly report came out just over a week ago and has reinforced the message that SMS Growth has again experienced more growth. According to the Report (Which can be found here) - your average Irish person will send 117 text messages in any given month and a total of 1.64 Billion text messages were sent in the last quarter of 2006.
Encouraging as this is what is even more encouraging is that mobile penetration in Ireland is now level with the EU average of 111%. This confirms that many Irish people will now own two mobile phones or devices and this growth is predicted to continue on throughout the year.
The report is worth a look though as there is a section dedicated to future trends in Irish communications with Mobile Content in the spotlight. The Report details the key trends in mobile content that have been surfacing in the past year and the newer opportunities in the mobile content market for the future. Its great to see the attention being given to mobile content and mobile internet in this way but you get the feeling that the report merely scratches the surface of what is really happening out there with mobile at the minute.
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