2008/12/17

Charging for mobile Internet gets better

I just heard an interesting rumour concerning mobile operator billing services: It looks like a Finnish mobile operator will enable (mobile Internet) content providers to charge for their content from users using their GPRS/3G Internet access point (not WAP Access Point). I have been talking with the operators' technical personnel for quite some time already about the availability of such a service, and they've been just telling me that "they are working on it". I actually asked the operator's technical contact immediately if there was any truth in this rumour, and he confirmed that this is the case. They are going to start a commercial pilot in the near future.

This is actually very good news for all content guys out there. At least those ones who have been selling content to Finnish WAP users (we've had WAP-based click-to-pay-billing services in Finland available for many years already). The problem with the WAP-billing has just been the fact that according to Nokia, less than 25% of the mobile phone users are actually using WAP access point to connect to the Internet; the great majority of the users use the Internet access point to connect to the Internet (and bypassing the WAP gateway). Therefore, they have not been able to pay for the mobile content.

Enabling users to pay even if they are on an Internet access point will be damn good news for the mobile service industry. Can't wait to get my first client to launch a premium content service that supports it. Hopefully it will become possible in other countries / networks ASAP.

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