US operators are squashing Sling Media’s plans to let people watch their own content on their mobile devices, presumably because if people could buy a Slingbox and watch the stuff they wanted, they’d no longer (or never start to) buy the overpriced, crappy video content operators are trying to sell.
This is so typical. Take a technology that’s going to thrive in the mobile space — give users access to their personal media — and instead of figuring out how to empower it, and even improve it, carriers just say “Oh hell no” and shut up shop. It’s funny, I thought they’d built these networks for people to use, and if people are going to use the networks for valuable services, they’ll pay for it. But apparently it’s one of those “you can do anything you want, as long as it’s something we sell” situations:
“We have no immediate plans to run that service,” says Jeffrey Nelson, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the country’s second-largest carrier. “What runs on our network are our services.”
That’s the problem — a closed attitude that operators have to be at the center of everything, instead of empowering other content and service providers and working out an ecosystem through which everyone can profit. How many times will carriers’ closed systems have to fail before they learn this?
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>>>That’s the problem — a closed attitude that operators have to be at the center of everything, instead of empowering
Let’s hope that this issue turns into a strategy for one of the carriers… as in, they’ll change their policy as a means to get people to jump ship.
- Gideon Marken
Terrific post! I hope you will keep hammering the very true point that it is the carriers who end up failing. The content is going to find its way into the open mobile medium. The carriers short sided by greed will be left by the wayside. It sure would speed things up, though, if the carriers would wise up and open up content!
The next big area for opening up mobile content is for learning. In my view the digital natives are restless because their carriers of learning content are brick and mortar schools with tattered paper textbooks. Like Verizon and Sting, Sting will get its content empowered — and the digital natives are going to get their digital knowledge. It will be interesting to see how the schools (and Verizon) cope.
Good post. I definitely agree that wireless carriers are hindering mobile data service innovations. Wireless carriers, in all parts of the world, impose too many barriers on mobile developers wanting to launch new mobile data services. I’ve been working with wireless carriers in Korea and I would have to say that there are many companies in Korea that face similar challenges as Sling Media as their ability to launch new services are completely controlled by the three major wireless carriers in Korea. This is very unfortunate for everyone, especially for mobile users.
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