The idea behind Telco 2.0, that telcos collaborate with innovative designers & marketers in other industries to design and sell to those industries new or enhanced communications-enabled products & services, may sound futuristic - certainly not a top priority amidst the current economic crisis and competitive battle for connections. Surely the examples of such communications-enabled products &
services - a washing machine that sends you a free text message when a load is
finished, and includes an Order Detergent Refill button that initiates
a shipment to your home by your telco that shows up on your next telco
bill - aren't the solutions to the current problems of (a) plateaus in demand for broadband and wireless and (b) laid off subscribers cutting their connections.
Or maybe they are.
The following are three examples of new communications-enabled products & services that were designed without telecom involvement and, as a result, without payment to the telcos. Instead, these providers benefit from consumers' telecom usage without paying a dime themselves. And the services to these providers that the telcos didn't come up with would have required no capital build-out - just new products riding on the existing network.
(1) Phone-In Parking Meters: Cities across the U.S. are adopting smart parking meters, including phone-in meters that allow you to call a number and enter a parking spot number, and parking duration. If the service at the restaurant was slow, you can call the number to add time to the meter, instead of running to your car every 30 minutes. Doesn't it seem silly that the phone-in meter manufacturers, like IntelliPark, designed and built technology to receive, store and process your credit card number over the phone when the wireless service provider bills you every month?
(2) On Call Street Lights: In a move likely to be followed in other countries, cash-strapped municipalities in Germany are turning off street lights at night and allowing residents to temporarily turn them on within a district by text message. Does this seem like a service that telcos, who can geocode your location if you have the right phone (T-Mobile is the sole iPhone carrier in Germany) and who could allow subscribers with no texting plan (e.g. the elderly) to text a particular number for free, could design such a service and charge municipalities or vendors like Dial4light?
(3) Hearst e-reader: The last example is an opportunity that will also likely be missed, but hasn't technically been missed yet because the launch is later this year. In a bid to save the newspaper industry, Hearst is launching a wireless e-reader for its magazines, newspapers and their ads. Everything from Cosmo to Esquire to the San Francisco Chronicle may soon be read on an e-reader whose cost could be subsidized by subscriptions to Hearst properties - just like cell phones. Speaking of cell phones, could the wireless providers enable for Hearst all of the fancy location-based advertising their vendors are enabling for their supported cell phones? In fact, since the wireless provider has your address and billing relationship, couldn't they allow you to click on ads to have free samples mailed to your home or to have products sent to your home and billed on your wireless invoice?
The examples are enough to make one wonder if the challenges facing the telecom industry are a lack of credit and capital, or a lack of imagination.
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