What your mobile operator and service provider do not want you to know?

A few days ago CNN published an article on its technology section about what mobile operators and cellular service providers do not want their customers to know. It centers on an application from carrier compare showing a comparison of various service providers/operators. The application is crowd-sourced and cost $1.99, a big amount of money for such an app compared to some really good mobile games costing less than a dollar. The CNN article on comparing networks can be found here.

Being curious and having little knowledge about such applications, I can't seem to understand that the hoopla is all about and why CNN put such worthless coverage on its news feed. Come to think of it similar applications have been available since 2009 and they are far better showing coverage and performance of competing mobile networks; better yet they are free. Well of course carrier compare is free if you don't mind the advertisements.

As a mobile user will you pay 2 of your precious dollars to know how the operator you did not subscribe to performs on a specific area? I am not so sure, but as one of my American colleagues explained to me in America, people will pay for such app. Now that got me thinking why don't we push our Customer Experience Management app in America for subscriber to pay a dollar :-) but then it will contradict on what we believe in that such application should be free of charge to the user and free from advertisements... Maybe one day I will bite the bullet and will do so, but that is not today.

On another point how will operators and service providers react, will they push more of Carrier IQ applications hidden to the user to know that their subscribers are checking out the competition? I believe in 2 things... (1)subscriber has the right to know (2)subscriber has the right to the best service possible. Having said that the network operator or service provider must provide the level of service they guarantee their customers will have, and at the same time keep their subscribers informed. This can be achieved with  CEM applications that are native to a smart phone, has opt-in and opt-out capabilities and has value to the user such as customer self care or information about the services they are receiving.

Where and when does innovation start?

A few night ago, my 10 year old daughter talked to me and declared that in 10 years we will all be drying with automated blowers after a shower. This statement has taken me by surprise, and I naturally asked why she thinks so. Her explanation is that showers are tight places to dry your self with a towel and that the cost of producing towels plus constant washing is more expensive than the cost of of blow drying. She actually has a point, if you look at most hotels, towels are washed everyday and in most cases changed every month, a wasteful exercise. Now it dawn to me the question of what triggers innovation, how does it start? Do we start innovating because we do not like the way current things work? Out of necessity? Out of curiosity?

Let's discount the fact that some people are keener to innovate than others and focus on why. In the telecoms world, we innovate to solve common issues and make them simpler, think iPhone. Now's let's apply that to software, we innovate to make life a bit easier, think of business intelligence solutions. Clearly to me innovation is driven by the need to improve something and at the same time generate financial returns. If I look back at AmanziTel 4 years ago, we started processing drive test data and now we are in the forefront of end2end CEM and SQM. We got here because of the need to simplify the the workload of our customers, make their jobs a bit easier but more importantly keep their own subscribers/customers happy and satisfied. 

I read an Ascom press release two days ago about TEMS visualization supporting various data formats, and have the question that why are they re-inventing the wheel? Actix was there 15 years ago with proprietary software, we innovated in that space 4 years ago with open source solutions and have moved on. Perhaps to some innovation comes late and starts to play catch up. I still believe that the future of telecoms service delivery is in actual customer experience, if done right ti can replace all expensive SQM systems today. That statement actually did not come from me but from a large operator group after seeing what we can do for them.