Content providers could do this through direct payments to carriers, Stephenson said, but according to Fierce, he also said they could subsidize data costs through some kind of advertising revenue share. The end result, though, would be the same: content providers who pay would see their traffic exempted from customers’ mobile data caps.

Randall Stephenson

Stephenson comments come a week after reports that arch-competitor Verizon Wireless is in discussions with ESPN for just such a toll-free data deal. What seemed like a crazy suggestion from AT&T and other carriers last year, now looks like it might become reality. But is it a reality we really want?

A content provider-subsidized internet would be appealing to many consumers, especially those on AT&T and Verizon since carriers have hunted the unlimited data plan to the point of extinction. Imagine streaming Netflix movies and ESPN games to your heart’s content without ever worrying about exceeding your data cap or incurring overage fees.

But as I pointed out last week there could be some major unintended — or if carriers are being really cynical, intended — consequences to adopting these kinds of subsidy models. Legally mobile operators aren’t subject to the same net neutrality guidelines as the wireline broadband providers, but if mobile carriers created two separate classes of mobile data traffic they could upset the delicate balance that makes the mobile internet the mobile internet:

… there are enormous consequences to such a deal. The biggest and most obvious consequence is that it favors one provider’s content over another. If all access is created equal, then no content has an inherent advantage over another — which is the whole idea behind the wireline network neutrality rules the FCC established in 2010. But if consumers know they can get ESPN’s content without incurring any additional charge, they’ll naturally gravitate toward that content.

There’s an even bigger risk that ESPN’s competitors won’t just get penalized in the eyes of the consumer. Their traffic flow could be penalized as well. Embedded deep within Verizon’s network are policy servers that can distinguish an ESPN packet from any other packet. Not only could Verizon use that technology to exempt ESPN traffic form data plans, it also could use that technology to prioritize ESPN’s traffic from all others. The  [Wall Street] Journal’s story didn’t mention anything about traffic shaping, but you can bet its high on the list in any negotiation.

What’s particularly noteworthy about Stephenson’s comments, though, is the mention of using advertising as a former of subsidy currency. Stephenson could just be talking about inserting carrier-generated advertising into their app ad engines as compensation for their free ride on the network. But the other implication is that AT&T wants a true revenue share, taking a cut off the top of any revenue generated from YouTube ads or any Netflix subscription used on mobile.

This is an old idea the mobile industry first proposed way before the advent of the smartphone – in an age when the mobile internet was still a walled garden and carriers its gatekeepers. The idea was that operators would become equal partners with content providers, and that’s a scary proposition. I doubt that content providers want to give the gate keys back to the carriers.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Disney-owned ESPN is negotiating with Verizon Wireless to let the operator’s customers partake in unlimited quantities of ESPN content without incurring any additional data charges. In essence, ESPN would pay Verizon to exempt its content from its data caps.

The Journal reported that no deal is imminent and ESPN isn’t even sure that the economics will work, but the fact that it’s entertaining the idea is significant. It turns the notion of a neutral mobile internet on its head. The hierarchy of the internet is pretty simple: customers pay for access in the form of data plans, leaving internet players free use of the mobile airwaves to deliver their content either for free or as paid services. If ESPN and Verizon strike a deal that hierarchy gets flipped, and there would be consequences.

The mobile internet has problems, but it works best when it remains neutral

Mobile operators have chipping away at the principle of net neutrality for years, banning certain apps here and restricting competing over-the-top services there. In Europe, carriers are battling with Google over carriage fees. But in this case, a carrier appears to be challenging net neutrality with the complicity of a content provider. I can understand why ESPN might be eager to take the plunge into subsidizing mobile data. In fact, I’m surprised a big name player like Netflix or Hulu hadn’t done it sooner.

One of the biggest obstacles to widespread video consumption on the mobile internet is overage fees. Who’s going to watch a 3-hour sporting event on their mobile phone or tablet if it drains your monthly data plan in the process? If ESPN wants to make consumers as comfortable using its mobile apps as they are watching its cable programming and using its web services, then it has to get around those data caps.

But there are enormous consequences to such a deal. The biggest and most obvious consequence is that it favors one provider’s content over another. If all access is created equal, then no content has an inherent advantage over another — which is the whole idea behind the wireline network neutrality rules the FCC established in 2010. But if consumers know they can get ESPN’s content without incurring any additional charge, they’ll naturally gravitate toward that content.

There’s an even bigger risk that ESPN’s competitors won’t just get penalized in the eyes of the consumer. Their traffic flow could be penalized as well. Embedded deep within Verizon’s network are policy servers that can distinguish an ESPN packet from any other packet. Not only could Verizon use that technology to exempt ESPN traffic form data plans, it also could use that technology to prioritize ESPN’s traffic from all others. The Journal’s story didn’t mention anything about traffic shaping, but you can bet its high on the list in any negotiation.

Do carriers really want to go down this road?

I suspect ESPN isn’t the only content provider interested in bargaining with the carriers. And I’m sure the carriers are thrilled at the prospects at an additional mobile data revenue stream. But there are risks for the carriers, too.

Operators have long complained about being reduced to mere dumb pipes, but these kind of subsidy deals would only make their pipes dumber. If all the big destinations on the mobile internet starting paying network fees for the consumer, then operators won’t have much left to sell. Consumers basically would be dealing with the big internet brands to get their content and their access. That leaves carriers selling smaller and smaller mobile data plans to customers who will increasingly gravitate toward those big content providers. Operators will have even fewer ways of distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

What’s more, operators are making the very dangerous assumption that they will always have the upper hand in such negotiations. Last week The New Yorker published a very insightful piece by Tim Wu about the growing threat to net neutrality. While Wu was making his case for wireline neutrality, his points apply to the mobile internet as well:

An important aspect of the Internet’s original design is that many prices were set at zero—what have been called zero-price rules. The price to join the network is zero. The price that users and sites pay to reach others is zero: a blogger doesn’t need to pay to reach Comcast’s customers. And the price that big Web sites charge broadband operators to carry their content is also zero. It’s a subtle point, but these three zeros are a large part of what makes the Internet what it is. If net neutrality goes away, so does the agreement to freeze prices at zero.

If mobile carriers and content providers start negotiating over access the delicate balance of the mobile internet suddenly goes off kilter. Right now it’s teetering toward the mobile operators but that might not always the case. ESPN, Google, Facebook and HBO are enormously powerful brands and their consumer influence is only growing. Meanwhile carriers are becoming increasingly less significant.

It’s not hard to imagine a day when ESPN asserts itself in mobile just as its done in the cable industry, turning the tables on the operators. One day carriers may have to pay ESPN for the privilege of delivering its sports content.

Featured photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Lane V. Erickson; Verizon photo courtesy of Flickr user slgckgc

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First, let me say I’m not one of those people who thinks that every brand or tech darling needs its own hardware. I think the idea of an Amazon smartphone is silly and a Twitter phone even sillier. I believe there’s limited appeal for specialty Xbox or Nintendo gaming handset. And I feel the short unhappy lives of virtual carriers ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile show that the market has little use for devices built around a specific company’s content.

All of these companies are better served by offering up their content and services through an open application environment. In his very astute analysis post on Wednesday, my colleague Kevin Tofel claims the same logic applies to Facebook: It can much more easily and much more efficiently extend its reach through software, rather hardware. I agree with Kevin, but only up to a point.

I think Kevin is right that Facebook has no business creating its own smartphone. People buy smartphones for flexibility, and they’re paying for the privilege of not being tied down to a specific set of services or apps. A feature phone, however, is a much different animal. A feature phone is a much more rigid device, built over proprietary software and designed to do a few things — and only those few things.

There are still billions of people around the world buying feature phones, and they’re not approaching those devices with any smartphone expectations. They essentially want a communication device, and Facebook is perfectly positioned to deliver that communication capability in spades.

Facebook is already a communications company

Unlike say an Amazon or a Disney, Facebook’s whole business model is built around the idea of social communication. With Facebook’s suite of apps services, you can IM; email; share photos, videos, links and updates; coordinate activities and even make phone calls. While most social networks or over-the-top communications apps are limited by the size of their networks, Facebook doesn’t have that limitation.

Apart from the telephone grid and email, with 1.06 billion active daily users Facebook is probably the largest communications network in the world. And for many people Facebook has become their de facto communications network. I haven’t gotten an email form my younger sister in years. If she wants to contact me she pings me on Facebook. The point I’m trying to make is that many people have chosen to make Facebook the organ by which they communicate with the world. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s certainly something Facebook could capitalize on.

Who would buy a Facebook phone?

I would argue there’s already a substantial crossover between likely feature phone buyers and Facebook junkies — teenagers, for instance — but Facebook could further broaden that mutual appeal.

There are still plenty of people in the U.S. who are uncomfortable with the idea of the mobile internet, but are perfectly comfortable using Facebook online. They would embrace a Facebook-centric phone as a way to ease into mobile data (think of it as a “gateway phone”). Parents giving their younger children their first internet-capable handset might be much more comfortable with a device that hosted a single social network, over which they could easily keep tabs on their activities.

Facebook is growing like wildfire in developing markets where few people can afford a smartphone or have regular access to a PC. A cheap Facebook phone would be ideal for their needs. Many more people would simply be attracted to such a device’s cheapness. A free or sub-$50 device that comes with a cheap data plan and a core social networking service you’re already well familiar with — that’s tough to ignore.

Facebook has already started pursuing a cautious form of this strategy. It’s working with mobile chipmaker Spreadtrum to pre-optimize its software for the cheapest Android handsets. If Facebook made its own inexpensive phone, though, it would exert considerable influence in the market. Carriers would be anxious to carry any Facebook-branded device, so Zuckerberg and team could negotiate specialty data plans for their members. Orange and Facebook are already experimenting with this concept in some European countries, exempting social network traffic from the usual data caps.

The company could also optimize any Facebook device for its own advertising, kicking of its still-nascent mobile monetization strategy. If it made enough money through advertising it could even take a page from Amazon’s book, subsidizing the cost of the phone or the cost of the mobile service, thus making its phone even more accessible.

Ultimately the Facebook phone and the Facebook network would begin reinforcing one another. After year or two of viewing the mobile internet through the Facebook lens, a user might graduate to a full-fledged smartphone, but they would more than likely bring their dependence on Facebook’s applications to the new device. Billions of people around the world will get their first exposure to the internet through a mobile phone. If it can produce a cheap, attractive device, Facebook can ensure that exposure is through its portal.

Getting into the hardware business isn’t an easy thing to do, especially if you’re expertise is in software, but in Facebook’s case it might be worth it. The more vested Facebook is in mobile, the stronger its social network becomes.

You can argue all you like about how worthless a Facebook phone would be to you are your friends, and I would agree with you. I wouldn’t buy a Facebook phone. As a GigaOM reader, I doubt you would either.

But I guarantee there would be millions of people who would.

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One just needs to look at analyst predictions surrounding the release of the new iPhone5 to begin to grasp American consumers’ unquenchable thirst for wireless technologies. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. just this week estimated sales of the new iPhone could add between a quarter and a half of a percentage point to the annualized rate of economic growth in the fourth quarter. And Time magazine last month published a must-read special issue focused on America’s mobile future. Thanks to our ever faster and more ubiquitous wireless broadband networks and the smartphones that use them, Time rightly concluded that when it comes to our demand for mobile connectivity, “only money comes close” to our “always at hand, don’t leave home without it” attitude. Then again, the magazine notes, our smartphones are quickly replacing money, too.

There are more than 330 million wireless connections in the U.S. and counting. And as we increase our reliance on mobile devices, applications and networks, we also require more of the technology backbone that supports that use — spectrum. However, the FCC, the White House, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)and industry leaders all agree that not enough spectrum is in place to meet increasing consumer demand.

Why?

The root of the problem is that it is primarily government and broadcasters — not wireless companies — that still hold the great majority of the spectrum best suited for mobile. And much of that spectrum is underutilized. Mobile Future recently created a “Growing Demand for Wireless Spectrum” infographic, which contrasts the booming consumer demand for mobile and the small percentage of airwaves available to support that demand going forward.

The Wireless Association (CTIA) reports that only 409.5 MHz of spectrum has been assigned by the government to support commercial wireless services. With the radio waves best suited for providing high speed, commercial wireless broadband services situated between 400 MHz and 3 GHz, wireless network operators have access to less than 16 percent of these critical airwaves. Government agencies and television broadcasters, on the other hand, primarily have access to the remaining nearly 85 percent.

To put this into perspective, consider that commercial wireless broadband providers support more than 330 million connections with 409.5 MHz, serving nearly 90 percent of the American public, while broadcasters provide traditional, analog television to just eight percent of the U.S. population.

This meager allocation of spectrum is the same amount that was available to support the mobile Internet in 2007 when the iPhone was first introduced.

Flash forward to today:

• There are more wireless subscriptions than people in the U.S.
• Wireless carriers have invested $113 billion in network infrastructure to support the needs of America’s mobile customers – more investment than any other sector in the U.S. economy by far.
• AT&T alone has seen data traffic on its wireless network spike 20,000 percent.

What lies ahead?

• By 2016, there will likely be 3 billion networked devices in the United States. Forget just smartphones and tablets — that’s nine Internet-ready gadgets for every man, woman and child in our country.
• No surprise then that mobile data traffic is expected to grow 74 percent, on average, every year through 2016.

The FCC has stated that without additional spectrum, by 2014 U.S. wireless consumers will not have enough spectrum available to fuel their devices.

Just imagine if traffic on your local freeway was expected to grow 74 percent each year for the next five years and there was no land available to build additional lanes?

While the Obama Administration and the Federal Communications Commission have worked diligently to draw attention to this issue, concrete and immediate action is needed to help alleviate both the near-term and long-term strain.

The FCC and the White House have shown great leadership in finding a path toward making more spectrum available for consumers to use. But they need to seal some deals — from reallocating under-utilized government spectrum for mobile use to setting near-term plans for voluntary incentive auctions to supporting a vibrant secondary market that allows spectrum to move to its most valued use. Mobile Future recently sent a letter to President Obama outlining a series of twelve such steps that can be taken this year.

And these actions would come not a moment too soon, as Time reminds us.  According to Time’s Mobility Poll, one in four Americans check their phones every 30 minutes and one third of us admit that being without it for even a short period makes us anxious.

The wireless industry has been racing to keep up with consumers’ wireless use. Now it’s time for government to respond with the same sense of urgency.

Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future, a coalition of technology and communications companies, consumers and a diverse group of non-profit organizations focused on the wireless sector.  

Explore the implications of our increasingly wireless world at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco (September 20 – 21).

Image courtesy of Flickr user jurvetson.

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For the first time, the U.S. will spend more on mobile advertising than any other country, including Japan, which had been the reigning leader, eMarketer said Wednesday.

According to the research firm’s forecast for worldwide mobile ad spending, advertisers will spend more than $6.43 billion globally in 2012, with the U.S. contributing $2.3 billion and Japan following with $1.7 billion.

“The big underlying reason is that smartphone growth and mobile Internet usage is growing very quickly in the U.S. and  you’re starting to see a tipping point where a majority of people are starting to use smartphones… or mobile Internet,” said Clark Fredricksen, vice president of communications for eMarketer. “That’s causing a lot of interest from advertisers.”

Additionally, he said, the increase in mobile spending is stemming from the fact that many advertisers in the U.S. already spend heavily in digital and are moving more money into mobile and from consolidation among U.S. ad publishers (for example, Google’s purchase of AdMob and Apple’s acquisition of Quattro).

The research firm expects the U.S. mobile ad market to grow 96 percent in 2012, which is a decline from the 126 percent growth in 2011, but Frederickson said they expect growth to slow because the market is maturing.

Despite the booming interest in mobile advertising, it’s important to note that mobile advertising still accounts for just one percent of the total ad spend in the U.S. and worldwide.

In terms of global ad spending across all categories, eMarketer projects that total media ad spending will grow 7.4 percent this year to $542.3 billion, with help from a small bump from the Olympics, and decline next year to 6.4 percent. Next year, ad spending in China will reach $53 billion, surpassing spending in Japan for the first time, and placing it behind the U.S. as the country with the second highest amount of ad spending.

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The Taiwanese silicon vendor has agreed to include Twitter’s mobile application into the run-time environment software it ships with every chipset, just as it did for Facebook and the Opera Mini browser. That means the handset makers designing devices around MediaTek’s chipset can make Twitter a pre-installed app optimized for the minimal memory and processing capabilities of a feature phone.

Currently Twitter runs on OS-less phones, but not as a native app. It has tweaked its mobile Web site to work on less sophisticated browsers and any user can send and receive tweets via SMS. By offering a more readily accessible app – as well as brokering preferential treatment deals for its data traffic with carriers – it can tap into a huge potential market. In the developing world, far fewer people have access to PCs, and smartphones (and their requisite data plans) are an unaffordable luxury. Even in North America and Europe, big percentages of the populace haven’t yet made the move to smartphones. If Twitter is going to get at those customers, it needs to do it through the feature phone.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Julien Tromeur

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T-Mobile this week revealed just how much that typical smartphone user on its network consumes: 760 MB per month. What’s more subscribers that have its 42 Mbps dual-carrier HSPA+ phones such as the new HTC One S gobble up an astonishing 1.3 GB a month, which proves the obvious: faster networks mean more data used. T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray revealed these details at the NGNM conference in San Francisco during a slide presentation (pdf) that was first reported by the eagle-eyed folks at FierceWireless.

Those figures may not seem huge to GigaOM readers, whom I’m betting tend to be power users. But let’s put those numbers in perspective. Cisco Systems’ Visual Networking Index calculated the average U.S. smartphone in 2011 consumed only 201 MB per month. Globally, Ericsson’s Traffic and Market Report found that in the first quarter iPhones and Android devices consumed roughly 350 MB per month. T-Mobile’s typical user either doubles or triples those numbers depending on which report you go by, and its power users break the bank completely.

It’s possible that Sprint’s average smartphone usage exceeds T-Mobile, but I doubt it. Sprint does still offer unlimited plans, but a large portion of its smartphones are on its CDMA network, not its soon-to-be-retired WiMAX service. Just as faster speeds increase data consumption, slower speeds limit overall data use. Plus Sprint doesn’t extend free mobile hotspot capabilities to its customers, meaning subscribers are limited to the data they can access directly from their phone screens.

We won’t know, though, until the carriers release information on their average usage rates, which they are loathe to do (in fact, I’m surprised T-Mobile did so). Carriers typically keep that data confidential because if it were it public, it would be glaringly obvious how much we’re getting ripped off. While it’s hard to argue with Sprint’s unlimited policies, AT&T and Verizon both have historically priced their data tiers in ways that nowhere near reflect how the typical smartphone behaves.

According to Chetan Sharma Consulting, only 30 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers exceed 1 GB each month, yet their most common tiers are 2 GB and 3 GB plans. American consumers are paying for a lot of data that they couldn’t possibly consume. Verizon is rectifying that situation, in part, with new shared data plans that scale down to 1 GB a month, but it’s making up the difference by charging customers for required unlimited voice and SMS plans – arguably robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So why is T-Mobile releasing its numbers all of sudden? Well, for one, it has a lot less to be embarrassed about. Though its customers are still well below their caps, T-Mobile customers pay a lot less for data are consuming much more of the allotment they pay for. Also, T-Mobile is trying to convince regulators to nix Verizon’s proposed acquisition of the cable operators’ spectrum. Its key argument is that Verizon is a lousy steward of the public airwaves. By showing just how much its subscribers consume over the limited spectrum resources it owns, T-Mobile is betting it can shame Verizon in front of the Federal Communications Commission.

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Called the ASR5500, the core gateway is designed to handle what Cisco called the “new normal” of the mobile data network: millions of devices, each with dozens of applications in constant communication with the network. According to Murali Nemani, Cisco director of service provider mobility, that influx presents three distinct challenges: maintaining millions of sessions, supporting millions of individual transactions and handling enormous throughput.

You can distinguish between the three by breaking down a Google Chat conversation, Nemani said. Chat is constantly creating sessions over the network, pinging Google’s servers to see if an IM session is being initiated. If a chat session is opened, the messages sent between the participants are the transactions, while the actual payload of those messages – the text, video or voice – is handled by raw network throughput.

All of the background sessions and transaction signaling that makes our mobile apps tick run over the what’s known as the control plane, while what we actually experience – the services and content – ride the bearer plane. The capacity of both planes needs to be scaled enormously to meet the smartphone’s unquenchable hunger, but the problem facing carriers is that the capacity demands of those planes varies dramatically from site to site and time of day.

“In the morning there is a massive spike in signaling as people check e-mail and do social networking,” Nemani said. All of that signaling traffic places enormous demands on the control plane, but requires very little in terms of throughput, he said. “In the evening it’s throughput that’s in most demand as consumers shift to watching video and viewing other content,” Nemani said.

When designing the ASR5500 Cisco attempted to create an “elastic” core, which would prevent operators from having to scale both their signaling and throughput requirements for the worst-case scenarios of any given day, Nemani said. Rather than create dedicated resources for each type of traffic, the gateway’s processers are generic, allowing capacity to be shifted between the control and bearer planes in real-time. The result, Nemani said, is a dynamic mobile core that at any given moment can be signaling juggernaut or a packet-routing powerhouse.

Two carriers, Verizon Wireless and India’s Bharti, have already installed the new gateway in their networks, but given Cisco’s track record in the mobile core, many more operators are sure to follow.

While we often hear of the big radio network deals going to Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, Cisco has been the unsung vendor in the guts of the network ever since its scooped up gateway specialist Starent in 2009. The core is a much smaller contract than the radio win in terms of revenues and it’s often less publicized. Synergy Research estimates that the mobile core market totaled $2.4 billion globally in 2011. It’s growing rapidly, but to put that in perspective a single large LTE radio network build can easily cost more than $2 billon.

Cisco, however, is by far the market leader when it comes to the mobile core. According to the vendor, it has won 270 3G total gateway contracts and is the core supplier for more than 30 LTE networks.

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Duda is bringing hundreds of thousands of small-and medium-sized businesses to the mobile Web, giving food trucks and haute cuisine joints, attorneys and dentists, their first taste of the mobile Internet and a means for their customers to find them on their phones.

We last reported on Duda when Google tapped the Silicon Valley/Israeli startup to power its Go Mo program, which will optimize any Website for mobile and host it for a year at no charge. But the company has also licensed its service to AT&T, HP, Yahoo and Webs.com, leading to enormous growth in its business. Last August it was hosting less 100,000 sites. Now it’s up 1.65  million, CMO Dennis Mink said.

A good portion of those sites are in the personal rather than the small business category. Duda will allow any user to throw a free but ad-supported mobile-optimized version of their Website online, so anyone wanting to optimize their 100 greatest Baywatch moments tribute page or Twilight fan fiction portal can easily do so. Duda’s primary customers, though, are the ones that either pay $9 a month — or come through Go Mo — to access its premium features.

It beats advertising on public benches

Including pizzerias, restaurants are Duda’s biggest customers, accounting for 28 percent of its premium sites. Duda recently began direct integration with Open Table, allowing the more sophisticated set to place reservations directly from the mobile browser – rather than just order up delivery with click-to-call.

Food trucks, which already depend heavily on social media to bring in customers, have also begun to use the service, Mink said. For instance, Brooklyn’s Mexicue uses a Duda mobile site to broadcast its trucks’ current location, to point people to its Twitter and Facebook accounts and to detail its current menu.

Professional services makes up the next biggest category, encompassing locksmiths, plumbers and a whole lot of lawyers, Mink said. Health and Wellness businesses account for 10 percent of its sites. About half of those are beauty salons and spas, but a good portion of the remaining chunk are doctors and dentists.

“For service professionals, they want phone calls,” Mink said. “If you’re a lawyer or a dentist, that’s how you build your livelihood.”

Another major category is travel and tourism, which is dominated by small, privately owned hotels and B&Bs, Mink said. The logic here is that when people are on the road they often don’t have an easy way to access a computer. Having a mobile site is therefore key to landing last-minute business.

What Duda can’t do (but is working on)

Duda’s site builder does have some limitations. It’s not building new and distinct mobile pages for its customers. Rather it automatically plugs content from their full Websites into template pages optimized for the mobile browser. The approach may not be as slick as a custom-designed mobile Website, but it has its advantages, Mink said. It’s cheap, and you can get a mobile Web presence up within minutes. It’s also easier to manage, since any update you make to the full site is automatically reflected in the mobile version.

That said, more sophisticated features don’t carry over to the microbrowser. For the hotel and B&B sites, for instance, it’s a simple button push to call the front desk, but if you try to access their online booking features, you’re taken to a full PC browser page, which is difficult to use on a small screen. Duda also can’t carry over in-site e-commerce features, which explains the dearth of e-retail businesses among its customers.

But Mink said Duda is solving many of those problems through partnerships. Its integration with Open Table allows restaurants to book digital reservations. And it just reached an agreement with eBay to mobilize its ProStores customers retail sites, though it charges more for the feature (a $99 one-time setup fee and a $20 monthly subscription).

Duda has raised $8.4 million since its founding in 2009. Its latest Series B round brought in $6 million and was led by Pitango, Israel’s largest venture capital firm. While the company was founded in Tel Aviv, it is now based in Mountain View, Calif.

Food truck image courtesy of Flickr user edibleNY; Feature photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Lasse Kristensen

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