Or – The Havenots become the
Haves.
Preamble
It’s a well known fact that when
placed under restricting circumstances, all animals will look for an escape or
release from the restriction.
"The Internet treats
censorship as a malfunction and routes around it." - John Perry Barlow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Article
IRC stands for Internet Relay
Chat. It’s been around since I was a little boy. OK – It’s been around since
1988.
For those that are not familiar
with IRC, it’s the same (in principle) as MSN chat, Yahoo chat, Skype chat – in
fact all of those programs allow you to type messages to each other – via the
internet – FOR FREE.
In fact in the early nineties, I, with a number of BBS
sysops in
I was connected to the Internet so we found like minded
Sysops in other countries like like Florida Frankfurt and
It was fun, chatting to people on the other side of the country or world. (This was BEFORE MSN/YAHOO etc.)
I fell in love with the technology because I saw it as a way for people to communicate with lots of other people, cheaply and as an economist, I just knew that had to be good for the economy.
Fast forward to 1996 and Telstra attempting to defend their voice traffic by attempting to implement a ”B” party charging regime for incoming VOIP calls via the internet.
Well we stopped that one with concerted activism which I
believe for the first time in
Telecommunications companies in the early days of the Internet were moaning and groaning about losing revenue. Every one of those groaning, complaining Telco’s, are still with us today, stronger and more profitable than before the internet.
They observed, they learnt, they entered the ring and started boxing… and it rather looks like they have won the game. In most countries, it is the large Telco’s that control access to most of the internet infrastructure.
That accounts for approximately one fifth of the worlds population, mainly what we like to call the industrialized world.
The other 4.8 billion (the emerging economies) are still hunting with bows and arrows.
Or so I thought until I received an email from Tomi Ahonen today. It contained the summary of his 2010 Mobile Phone Almanac.
We started talking about messaging programs on the Internet.
Here are some bullet points from Tomi’s Almanac Cheat Sheet.
- The
mobile telecoms industry grew subscribers, services and revenues even in
economic downturn
- The
'mobile internet' browser service use (including WAP) now has more users
than legacy PC based internet
- The
mobile phone is the only device that 30% of the world's population carries
- Digital
content revenues on mobile are four times as large as those on the legacy
PC based internet
Sorry folks, I just have to say it again. WOW.
The phone companies – in a recession, increased their
revenues to 153 Billion which combined is larger than all the revenues form
And here is the interesting bit...
They didn’t need to sue their customers for using MSN/Yahoo or IRC.
They didn’t need to turn our courts into their personal employees.
They didn’t need to lobby our politicians for unworkable legislation.
The Telephone companies achieved their 12% revenue increase in the middle of a recession, the old fashion way.
By providing a service and billing for it.
Let me spell that out in large letters for the folk that don’t quite understand how this works.
If you are a mobile phone consumer and wish to send a message – first you have to be located within a service area, and you need a mobile phone.
If there is no Cellphone tower within range, the Telephone Company don’t get your business.
So of course, Telephone companies build infrastructure to make sure that there's a cellphone tower close by, in case you want to send an SMS.
If you cant afford to buy an expensive handset, they offer you whichever handset you want on a pay by the month plan; just to ensure that they have your business.
SMS messaging in
Now the cost of SMS varies between three cents and eight cents (at the wholesale level) and twelve cents to twenty cents at the retail level.
According to Tomi’s data, 3.6 billion people used messaging
services of whom 2 billion were from emerging nations. )(OK so bows and arrows
and cellphones….)
So now persons in emerging nations are able to afford to send a message to others for a few pennies/cents.
Obviously low cost messaging with availability of service equals windfall revenues for the carriers.
Can those emerging nations afford to buy a Blu-Ray copy of this years movie? – Nope.
Can they buy it from Amazon if they don’t live in the
Is there any legal affordable manner for them to obtain the content legally ? – Nope.
What choice do they have?
They can download it from the Net or not watch it.
That’s not a choice, it’s a Technical Meme waiting for some software to make it happen.
Oh the software for mobile phone P2P downloads already exists?
Sure has done since 2004.
But only for people from the industrial countries surely.
Nope, its available to anyone with a data connection.
And as can be seen from Tomi’s connectivity data, the communication crossover between industrialized and emerging has occurred.
|
DIGITAL
DIVIDE per capita |
Industrialized World |
|
Emerging World |
|
Total |
|
Banking account unique holders |
950,000,000 |
(79%) |
1,250,000,000 |
(22%) |
2.2 B |
|
Internet users incl PC, shared & mobile |
775,000,000 |
(63%) |
925,000,000 |
(17%) |
1.7 B |
|
Mobile phone subscriptions |
1,600,000,000 |
|
3,000,000,000 |
|
4.6 B |
There are now more people connected from the emerging nations than the industrialized nations.
The moral of the story is that the industry that provides the ability for it's customers to :
a) Acquire the content (get connected)
b) Use the content (send/receive a billable message)
c) Economically (cheaply)
Appears to be leaping ahead of the industry that makes the content
a) hard to get - if you happen to live in the wrong country.
b) too expensive
c) encrypted and too hard to use
d) self destroying DRM rental overnight digital copies
e) sues their customers
f) wastes money lobbying Government to enact prehistoric legislation.
g) When it does make the content available - it is usually not in a timely manner.
In other words what would happen if when you wanted to send an SMS, the Telephone company operator came on the line and said - I'm sorry
sir, but SMS service to your destination party will be delayed for three to six months from the time you send the message.
When you ask why.....
The operatior replies....
Well our boss is on the board of Warner Bros Studios and it's a new thing they're trialling. Three month Delayed SMS. Do you think it will catch on?
The Telcos with their agressive and suportive marketing plans have made a success of harvesting increasing revenues from countries who it seems only last decade were on our foreign aid recipient list.
We wonder if the content industry can learn to do the same.
After all, look at the money they made out of a lousy billion people. How much could they make our of selling that catalogue to five billion more?
Hint - A Bluray video that sells for $25.00 on Amazon is not going to sell too well in Burundi where the average income is $120.00 per annum.
(Of course I'm assuming that unlike Australians, Burundians will be able to purchase Video content from Amazon and not be told - I'm sorry the country of your IP address is not yet authorized to purchase that content.....) AAaaaaargh!
Disclosure:
I have purchased Tomi Ahonens 2009 Almanac. I have no other connection with Tomi or his products. I do however happen to like the way he presents his data and findings.
References:
Tomi Ahonen "Tomi Ahonen Almanac 2010
[Tomi Ahonen presentation and slides on The Next 4 Billion]
http://fora.tv/2009/09/24/Mobile_Phones_The_Next_4_Billion_with_Tomi_Ahonen
