John Linton I had 'breakfast' with a long term business acquaintance this morning (which basically meant we both had a cup of pretty ordinary coffee and he compounded his mistake by attempting to eat an 'omelet' and some exceptionally dry toast). At least the view was very pleasant. He was 'visiting' Sydney as he works in Hong Kong and his trip was largely based on looking for 'partners' in his SMS and associated business services. We first met back in our IBM days and have occasionally run in to each other in strange parts of the world every few years ever since we both left IBM to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
Like Exetel, he is very interested in SMS over HSPA/VoIP/Mobile handsets and the implementation he showed me on his 'globally roamed' iPhone was a very sophisticated implementation which is considerably in advance of Exetel's current version and was an 'eye opener' for me to see what amazing things could be done with the computing power and memory of today's advanced mobile hand sets. It was a very impressive demonstration and, if I hadn't already been 'sold' on the concept I just about would have bought on the spot - it had so much 'pizzazz' and 'must have that' appeal.
I'm sure he will be successful in selling his software to at least one of the Australian mobile companies as it was such a beautifully designed and presented product with so much eye appeal as well as being a major cost saving to the end user - and there lies the problem as he went on to explain. He had been in Sydney for almost two weeks and had generated no interest from the people he had met with so far at the four Australian mobile carriers. Now, we are talking about a very skilled sales person with a great deal of business acumen and a very senior position with a very large Chinese communications company - not some local 'account manager' or 'product manager'. In my eyes the SMS product he showed me was as good as I could imagine any product could be in every aspect of ease of use, presentation, functionality and cost saving and integrated with every commonly used 'name list' and third party program.
The problem, as he explained it, was that the mobile carrier personnel he had approached in Australia (and before that New Zealand) simply weren't interested in it because instead of seeing how it would generate additional net revenue and boost the sale of HSPA services they couldn't get past the likelihood that it would reduce SMS revenue - which I suppose it might if you wanted to look at it as an SMS replacement function rather than as an SMS enhancement of several magnitudes. I couldn't provide any sensible information in terms of who he should approach within the carriers (or their major resellers) as I have no dealings at any senior level with any of them and as Exetel are so small we couldn't even 'trial sell' his product as we are far too early in coming to grips with what is required to build any sort of 'presence' in the Australian HSPA market places.
As I drove back to the office I was encouraged that it was possible to develop such an appealing product and I have renewed hope for the ongoing development of the SMS via VOIP service that we brought to market a little over 12 months ago which has since been very enthusiasticly taken up by Exetel ADSL users and we are now working on the HSPA version with the first 'iteration' already in use and working quite well. To get from where we are today to what I saw an hour or so ago is quite a distance but, at the end of the day, "its only a few lines of code". Where we find the innate skills and the capabilities to write those few lines is another issue altogether. However - we have always managed to do it. We must increase the resources allocated to these developments and pull back the end dates for their deployment. Lucky we have such brilliant and skillful programmers.
It seems to me, and I would be the first person to admit that my knowledge of the mobile telephone market is extremely 'slight' (and that's being kind), that software developments like fring and nimbuzz and, on a much grander scale, the SMS over HSPA I saw today represent significant opportunities for businesses to not only reduce the ever growing costs of providing mobile services to operate their businesses but are capable of truly adding new functionality - almost in the same way that the introduction of mobile telephony added extraordinary new capabilities by being able to make and receive calls anywhere rather than only at the end of a piece of cable attached to a PABX.
I've been using fring exclusively since I returned from Sri Lanka to make and receive mobile calls over Exetel's VoIP service and, as when we switched the office wire line services from ISDN to VoIP, almost no-one I call, or who calls me, can tell any difference. The delay using fring varies from virtually none to 'noticeable' and we must implement local servers to eliminate that aspect of VoIP over HSPA but there are many solutions and it's only a matter of deciding on how we do that. I will start using version two of our SMS over HSPA function some time next week which will be more of a challenge for me as I've never had a need to use SMS in the past so have only ever received SMS from all those annoying sources that just require me to delete them rather than reply to them.
I've never regretted moving Exetel's telephony from ISDN to VoIP, and not just for the obvious call savings - the added functionality that VoIP allowed us to enhance our business by hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past three years by allowing us to do things that simply weren't possible at any realistic cost over 'conventional' wire line services. We certainly wouldn't have been able to automate so much of our support and update services nor would we have been able to operate as we do now in Sri Lanka without the functionality of a VoIP 'PABX' and the ability to 'bolt on' Asterisk functionality.
At this early stage I expect that HSPA VoIP and SMS will produce similar opportunities for us - if we are skillful enough to program them and then competent enough to make a dent in the corporate attitudes to 'new' functionality that my old friend is having so much trouble with.