Mobile operators are trying many ways to counter the challenge over-the-top services pose for their cash cow services. Two seem unlikely to succeed ‘ charging extra for such applications, or blocking them altogether. But some carriers are giving these antiquated tactics a try anyway, as seen this week in Korea and Sweden.
In the latter market, TeliaSonera plans to charge for VoIP calls carried over its various European networks, and has already piloted the scheme at its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo. It will finalize its group-wide pricing structure next month but it is likely to be similar to that at Yoigo, where users pay €6 a month for 100Mbytes of VoIP traffic, amounting to between five and 10 hours of call time. These are separate to the customers’ data plans, although there are subscription choices which combine both tariffs.
Meanwhile, the Korean regulator, KCC, has allowed the country’s three cellcos (SKT, KT and LG U+) to charge extra fees to use VoIP, or alternatively to block such services. In both cases, the operators are clearly seeking to resist the cannibalization of their voice and SMS revenues, rather than accepting that the world has changed and they need to work with OTT partners ‘ or harness the capabilities of their networks, such as location APIs, to attract their own developers and add value for consumers.
That approach is seen at Telefonica, whose Digital unit is charged with developing new-style services and has been an early deployer of enhanced voice and messaging applications using the RCS standards. And Australia’s Telstra is also in the modernizing camp, with its CTO, Hugh Bradlow, keen to work with OTT players. He told Mobile World Live this week: ‘I think there are two ways in which we deal with OTT players. One, we look at ways in which we can help them deliver their services better; obviously we expect them to pay for the additional value we deliver. And the other way is we help our consumer customers to actually use that service and have someone to call when things go wrong and to turn it on for them when they need to use it.’
In other words, carriers can offer web players the chance to improve their quality of service for consumers in the difficult mobile environment, in return for benefits such as revenue share or straight fees. This echoes the views of some other operators, such as Hutchison 3, which took an early stand in finding ways to cooperate with web majors and harness their brands to improve its own appeal to consumers. John Blakemore, director of European regulatory affairs, told a recent conference that cellcos’ record on developing their own services was poor. ‘As operators, what we’ve been really good at is deploying efficient networks and making sure our networks support services ‘ and that’s fine. We’re a little bit more relaxed about the content and applications not coming from within the industry.’