The first panel kicked off with three of the top four U.S. carriers discussing the meaning of “open.” Participating in the panel was T-Mobile’s Robert Dotson, Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel’s Dan Hesse, and Verizon’s (NYSE: VZ) Lowell McAdam.
Hesse: A few things we’ve done was in March of this year, we allowed full HTML browsing on all of our CDMA devices. They won’t always get the same experience, but they’ll be able to get anywhere. Secondly, we came out with Simply Everything, which encourages more data use. We try to look at what people do when they surf, and try to make it easier. We’ve launched One Click. This is on mid-tier devices. They are like tiles, and they can be like anything from voicemail, text, or go to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search or YouTube, or any Website, that might not be a Sprint Web site. You won’t get an error message. From a device point of view, we still have a way to go. On the GSM side, with sim cards, they have more ability to be open. We have a device authorization program that we have on 3G, for instance, the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle, which uses our network. But 4G and the embedded chip model, will be ‘bring your own device and go down to Radio Shack.’ Much more from this session after the jump.
Dotson: “If I go through the litany of what is critical to us in the consumer space, and what are the most important pieces, you unleash the innovation that you didn’t see in 2G. We are in one of the most interesting times in our industry where a bulk of our revenues aren’t coming from voice. We’ll tap into the genius in the developer community… (via) our relationship with Google and the Open Handset Alliance, which allows the openness on the devices. The second part is not only unleashing the innovation side, but Part B is to expand and push out and shorten the cycles in getting to market. The time when we start a device and when it shows up to the consumer, we are trying to accelerate and shorten those cycles by using open source. Those are two chief ways. We’ve had the advantage and sometimes the disadvantage. The numbers of devices on the coasts that go on our network is a big number — sometimes 30 percent of our devices, like in New York City, aren’t on T-Mobile authenticated device.
McAdam: The exciting thing about open, is that my opinion and the carrier’s opinion about open is irrelevant. When you look back on 2G and 3G, we had to make big bets. We had to integrate the device and the applications and we had to train thousands of people to deploy that. Robert used the word innovation, we are going to see a tidal wave of innovation. All the people who made something for the PC are coming to mobile, we wouldn’t be able to handle that. Just opening up our doors and protecting the network is all we need to do. The developers will place the bets and their customers will decide if they want them.
Open vs. Walled Garden: Dotson: “‘Wild West’ is a good term for it. I think all of us would agree it would be a poor experience at the end of the day because it would be a poor experience. We saw it with municipal Wi-Fi. It was a weak experience…I think the notion of walled garden is one that sits in the past. You start seeing innovation exploding in a mobile open environment, by taking advantage of location.”
Verizon’s Open Initiative: McAdam: “We had two devices go through the process in less than four weeks. I have a couple others in my pocket, A voice and text device, mostly voice, will retail for $69 by Airvoice. We’ll see where that goes. A wireless router, plug in our router and Wi-Fi out of this for the insurance industry. I think real progress and lots of applications in the pipeline for us.”
How do you navigate everything?: Hesse: There’s such a thing as too much choice. The most returned item last Christmas season was the Smartphone and PDA, one and five were returned because of complexity. You can make the bill easier, there’s personalization, and there’s a business opportunity there if we have the opportunity to open the Web. Yesterday we launched ReadyNow, where you learn how to set up your device from voicemail to email to pairing the Bluetooth earbud.”
How do you get the PC experience on the mobile phone?: “The complexity is something that doesn’t exist in the PC world. That’s why the transitions has been difficult over the last couple of years. Rather than take the PC and put it on mobile, it’s better to leverage the mobile. The U.S. is leading the adoption right now, and i think it’s on the back of adoption of the PC, and then we need to put that on the back of mobile, and we’ll see revenues grow. If you look at penetration rates as number of subscribers, that’s short-sided.
Will everything be open?: Dotson: “I’ll take one example — the Blackberry — is not an open platform, but you have the most phenomenal email experience. There’s a role in that world, or a role in our world, to get a great experience in a more focused, not application-driven, environment.”
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