{"id":983,"date":"2008-08-29T00:30:36","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T05:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=983"},"modified":"2008-08-29T00:30:36","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T05:30:36","slug":"mnp-here-mobile-content-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/08\/29\/mnp-here-mobile-content-thoughts","title":{"rendered":"MNP here; mobile content thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a busy week for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skmm.gov.my\/\">MCMC<\/a>. They&#8217;ve just <a href=\"http:\/\/thestar.com.my\/news\/story.asp?file=\/2008\/8\/28\/nation\/20080828115854&#038;sec=nation\">announced<\/a> that Mobile Number Portability (MNP), will now be a reality (a rather <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/30\/number-portability-only-next-year-wake-up-mcmc\">delayed reality<\/a>. There is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skmm.gov.my\/ViewWhatIsNew.asp?cc=67863102&#038;winrid=77247257\">FAQ<\/a> available. Key things to note:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t terminate your mobile number before porting &#8211; only active numbers can be ported<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re contractually bound (12 months, etc &#8211; such offers apparently can exist, with incentives to consumers) porting will be denied (unless you break your contract, I guess)<\/li>\n<li>Prepaid users beware &#8211; all existing credit doesn&#8217;t transfer over &#8211; so use it all up!<\/li>\n<li>A request to port, therefore, is notice to your current provider to terminate subscription<\/li>\n<li>Porting can take between 5-10 business days (utter bollocks, this kind of thing should take hours)<\/li>\n<li>You may get suspended international roaming during porting, so beware<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Its about time. It will only cost a minuscule RM25 to change the provider. Customer service will clearly have to improve (this would be the sole reason I move off a network, IMHO)<\/p>\n<p>A long time ago, Adam (017 &#8211; now owned by Maxis) used to offer &#8220;free calls&#8221; to 017 numbers, for users on a postpaid plan; plus they had the cheapest prepaid options. I was a heavy phone user in those days &#8211; it was a long time ago, during the Nokia 5110 days (so late 90s?). <\/p>\n<p>Wonder how many new service offerings like this will crop up? Optus has free 20 minute calls to Optus customers (Yes Time, from 8pm-midnight), 3 has free 3-to-3 calls for 10 minutes anytime of the day, and so on. But knowing what service provider people are on, is key. This is the main reason I carried 2 SIM cards (and phones) in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>Well, here&#8217;s to saying goodbye to 012\/017 being Maxis, 013\/019 being Celcom, and 016 being DiGi. <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I&#8217;m sitting here at a talk about the mobile industry now, and its all mostly focused on an overview of the mobile platform(s). Its basic (for me, but from the wide range of attendees, I think they got a lot out of it)&#8230; Location based services, APIs, Java, XHTML, all the joyous buzzwords. There&#8217;s plenty to do in the mobile industry, in terms of content creation in Malaysia (and Australia, fwiw). Lots of sites don&#8217;t have mobile specific sites, and scrolling, etc. is a pain. <\/p>\n<p>Wild idea being thrown around in my head&#8230; Content creation isn&#8217;t complicated. At the last government event I attended, apparently, MOSTI has got lots of money to throw around. Some of the amusing things people got 5-figure funding for, included a guide to Malaysian beaches (not mobile related) available. Smells to me like a weekend hack for easy money.<\/p>\n<p>Bandwidth is a problem&#8230; Metered bandwidth per kilobyte\/megabyte isn&#8217;t something many in Malaysia think about (anyone in Australia knows the pain of this &#8211; but limitations make us present content better, IMHO). Its expensive. But I think this is a problem that will fix itself, as mobile data becomes more ubiquitous.<\/p>\n<p>Then comes how to monetise this whole shindig. An interstitial does not work &#8211; they are annoying, they are a waste of bandwidth, and Mowser tried them and I believe removed them because they were largely a failure.<\/p>\n<p>Mobile AdWords? Google doesn&#8217;t believe there is a market for this in Malaysia (or maybe anywhere else outside of the US). Its chicken-and-egg &#8211; till a market is built, Google won&#8217;t enter it, I&#8217;d guess. <\/p>\n<p>Banners? The Star has it on their mobile site. They don&#8217;t have any public information as to how successful they&#8217;ve been. But this seems like the strongest option, currently &#8211; use an ad system powered by Slash, go out to advertisers and create unique tiny banners for them. However, this goes beyond the weekend hack idea&#8230; and that just becomes too much work.<\/p>\n<p>Location based services tied into a mobile website. This could work&#8230; My social life is largely unplanned (professional life on the other hand is driven by calendars, that SMS me of appointments, even). Say I&#8217;m around the MidValley Shopping Mall, its 12:10am, and I decide I have time to kill. Access the site, it figures that there&#8217;s activity at MidValley at that time: bowling, The Dark Knight in Gold Class starting in 10 minutes, etc. Book a ticket through the site, get a commission? Banner ad for bowling, so its a &#8220;promoted&#8221; link\/sponsored link, over the regular stuff (again, breaks the weekend hack rule).<\/p>\n<p>If data is always on, coupled with your location, if you&#8217;re near a Burger King, it might blast you with ads saying &#8220;bring this coupon in, buy a meal, get a free ice cream&#8221;. Bluetooth based advertisers, beware &#8211; always on data+location will kick you in the nads.<\/p>\n<p>OK, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.entrepreneurs.my\/google-and-the-mobile-business\/\">talk&#8217;s over<\/a>, time to be social! Looks like we won&#8217;t have the Google talk after all&#8230; Thanks again to Daniel for organising this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a busy week for the MCMC. They&#8217;ve just announced that Mobile Number Portability (MNP), will now be a reality (a rather delayed reality. There is a FAQ available. Key things to note: Don&#8217;t terminate your mobile number before porting &#8211; only active numbers can be ported If you&#8217;re contractually bound (12 months, etc [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[171,436,441,439,440,431,434,437,435,438],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-advertising","tag-content","tag-entrepreneursmy","tag-locating-based-services","tag-location-based-advertising","tag-mcmc","tag-mnp","tag-mobile-content","tag-mobile-number-portability","tag-rawideabin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-fR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}