Hands0n
25th April 2008, 08:08 AM
Thoughts from Christian Lindholm, a blogger. The squeamish may not want to look at how he made modifications to allow a 3 USB Stick to fit into a Macbook Air :)
The langauge is quaint, obviously English is not his first. But if you can get around it Christian raises some questions. Is he right in what he wants to see the market segment into? Do we really want more complication that segmentation will introduce or is the model we have quite understandable (although it appears not to be to Christian).
What do you think?
For the first time in the history of mobiles the industry has cracked a key problem: selling more than one thing to users. Welcome to the dongle revolution, the real growth of mobile data.
The Dongle is the familiar term of a 3G USB modem. Dongles come in key two sizes: matchbox and gum packet size. The small command a premium.
I hope the manufacturers primarily Huawei understand to start segmenting the dongles. Learn from the past, give us colour covers, dongles with storage other nifty functionality.
TV was introduced recently good move. After some research I picked 3s very price competitive and stylish offer. This is one offer I use in UK. They offer free roaming in their own networks.
Installing the 3 dongle was a breeze on my Macbook Air, I was online in about 2 minutes from out of box. It was a bit tight to fit into the Air usb, so I carved a bit on the cover on the modem and that did the trick. [:eek: see pix on his site. Ed.]
I typically get around 512kbps adequate for rich surfing and voice Skype, but not enough for decent Skype video. On the train to Oxford, last week, it was clearly slower, but I got the job done. I do not think it can be seen as a replacement for fixed broadband.
In general I think 3 has again managed to package up an offer of real value. I earlier blogged about the Skypephone, which I really like.
In Sweden 430.000 dongles were sold in 2007. Rumours from operators in UK is that they cannot get enough of them. I see no reason that this market would not explode. Small cheap dongles + Flatfee + good networks + advertising will fuel this business into meaningful growth. In Indonesia there are reports that there are now more mobile broadband users than fixed broadband users. Long time ago Indonesia was the number one texting country and one of the ones with highest smart phone penetration, so if history teaches us anything follow Indonesia.
I have gone through the mobile offers in UK and Finland the market where I spend most time. In UK it is that 3 has the most consumer friendly offer. Vodafone sells on speed, which to me is dumb, as speed on mobile broadband will be a disappointment, as consumers can only compare it to fixed and it will be slower than office Wi-Fi or home Wi-Fi. Does Vodafone think we consumers are morons? I simply do not see how they can win with that proposition. I suspect Vodafone is having the best network. Vodafone is the only one offering a roaming package, but I still think it is too expensive. It is more expensive than hotel use model, meaning you use free Wi-Fi around town and then get the Wi-Fi at the hotel. T-Mobile, who did such a good job with the Web n walk Max but their offer is offputting: too much for too little, I would steer clear of them. O2 came out with an offer including Cloud Wi-Fi roaming last week, but only for existing customers.
My favourite offer of mobile broadband comes from Elisa in Finland, who offer 384kb for 9.90 per month for a 18m contract. True unlimited, with a fair use speed reduction for abuse. This sounds cool to me, you do not loose the right to use it, you only loose speed if you are abusing it.
Here is what I would like to see as a consumer. Give me 384kbps for 9.90, use a trottle to manage abuse. Then sell me speed upgrades when I want more speed. Finally give me 9.90 per day roaming, again coupled with speed upgrades, on roaming I accept some fair use cap, ensuring that I can do everything except P2P file sharing.
With speed upgrades I mean pay more for more bandwith like on fixed broadband. As the market evolves, one can segment further into use classes, if one starts to experience network problems, that can be coupled with different best effort schemes. Market is not ready for 1GB limits. It did such an abstract volume that consumer do not understand it. Start with familiar concepts like speed.
For Huawei and others give me a speedometer on the dongle, to help me steer my activities. My advice to Nokia is to get into the dongle business quickly it is not a commodity, it is your best gateway to the PC SW business, there is a great chance to design some great value add SW for it. SanDisk, king of mobile memory, get into the dongle game, there is added value for you as well. Let the revolution begin.
Article Source: http://www.christianlindholm.com/christianlindholm/2008/04/the-dongle-revo.html
The langauge is quaint, obviously English is not his first. But if you can get around it Christian raises some questions. Is he right in what he wants to see the market segment into? Do we really want more complication that segmentation will introduce or is the model we have quite understandable (although it appears not to be to Christian).
What do you think?
For the first time in the history of mobiles the industry has cracked a key problem: selling more than one thing to users. Welcome to the dongle revolution, the real growth of mobile data.
The Dongle is the familiar term of a 3G USB modem. Dongles come in key two sizes: matchbox and gum packet size. The small command a premium.
I hope the manufacturers primarily Huawei understand to start segmenting the dongles. Learn from the past, give us colour covers, dongles with storage other nifty functionality.
TV was introduced recently good move. After some research I picked 3s very price competitive and stylish offer. This is one offer I use in UK. They offer free roaming in their own networks.
Installing the 3 dongle was a breeze on my Macbook Air, I was online in about 2 minutes from out of box. It was a bit tight to fit into the Air usb, so I carved a bit on the cover on the modem and that did the trick. [:eek: see pix on his site. Ed.]
I typically get around 512kbps adequate for rich surfing and voice Skype, but not enough for decent Skype video. On the train to Oxford, last week, it was clearly slower, but I got the job done. I do not think it can be seen as a replacement for fixed broadband.
In general I think 3 has again managed to package up an offer of real value. I earlier blogged about the Skypephone, which I really like.
In Sweden 430.000 dongles were sold in 2007. Rumours from operators in UK is that they cannot get enough of them. I see no reason that this market would not explode. Small cheap dongles + Flatfee + good networks + advertising will fuel this business into meaningful growth. In Indonesia there are reports that there are now more mobile broadband users than fixed broadband users. Long time ago Indonesia was the number one texting country and one of the ones with highest smart phone penetration, so if history teaches us anything follow Indonesia.
I have gone through the mobile offers in UK and Finland the market where I spend most time. In UK it is that 3 has the most consumer friendly offer. Vodafone sells on speed, which to me is dumb, as speed on mobile broadband will be a disappointment, as consumers can only compare it to fixed and it will be slower than office Wi-Fi or home Wi-Fi. Does Vodafone think we consumers are morons? I simply do not see how they can win with that proposition. I suspect Vodafone is having the best network. Vodafone is the only one offering a roaming package, but I still think it is too expensive. It is more expensive than hotel use model, meaning you use free Wi-Fi around town and then get the Wi-Fi at the hotel. T-Mobile, who did such a good job with the Web n walk Max but their offer is offputting: too much for too little, I would steer clear of them. O2 came out with an offer including Cloud Wi-Fi roaming last week, but only for existing customers.
My favourite offer of mobile broadband comes from Elisa in Finland, who offer 384kb for 9.90 per month for a 18m contract. True unlimited, with a fair use speed reduction for abuse. This sounds cool to me, you do not loose the right to use it, you only loose speed if you are abusing it.
Here is what I would like to see as a consumer. Give me 384kbps for 9.90, use a trottle to manage abuse. Then sell me speed upgrades when I want more speed. Finally give me 9.90 per day roaming, again coupled with speed upgrades, on roaming I accept some fair use cap, ensuring that I can do everything except P2P file sharing.
With speed upgrades I mean pay more for more bandwith like on fixed broadband. As the market evolves, one can segment further into use classes, if one starts to experience network problems, that can be coupled with different best effort schemes. Market is not ready for 1GB limits. It did such an abstract volume that consumer do not understand it. Start with familiar concepts like speed.
For Huawei and others give me a speedometer on the dongle, to help me steer my activities. My advice to Nokia is to get into the dongle business quickly it is not a commodity, it is your best gateway to the PC SW business, there is a great chance to design some great value add SW for it. SanDisk, king of mobile memory, get into the dongle game, there is added value for you as well. Let the revolution begin.
Article Source: http://www.christianlindholm.com/christianlindholm/2008/04/the-dongle-revo.html