Global wireless web operators' goldmine

By RICHARD BRADDELL

HONG KONG - It was the Economist that noted, with no small irony, that for all the internet goldrush it was the incumbent telephone companies which had retained the art most internet companies have found elusive: that of charging for their services.

But while making money has proved challenging for internet companies, one area of hope is the mobile internet, or commerce over mobile phones.

Raghav Sahgal, the vice-president of Lucent Technologies' Asia Pacific software products group, is in no doubt that the world wide wireless web (wwww) is on its way, and because wireless networks are even more ubiquitous than landline ones - you can use a cellphone almost anywhere - the opportunity to provide services people will pay for is immense.

Just as encouraging is the fact that twice as many people have mobile phones as have personal computers, and their numbers continue to swell.

For wireless network operators, the opportunity lies in being able to manage the relationship between themselves, their customers and content providers.

To do that, they need good billing systems.

"Billing is the one time you communicate with your customer," Mr Sahgal said.

Nobody likes getting bills, but when they are combined with other opportunities, including rewards and loyalty incentives, the value in a customer's mind can be out of all proportion to the cost.

The snag is that getting billing systems right is difficult. According to Mr Sahgal, 40 per cent of billing systems fall down on the job, as many frustrated New Zealand electricity consumers might well attest.

Mr Sahgal says billing software is either customer-centric or product-centric. But while it might seem that building software around customers enables their needs to be met immediately, the benefits may be short-lived because of the time it takes to implement a new billing system. In the six to 12 months it takes, the environment will probably have changed and sales and marketing will be calling for something else.

Instead, the billing system should be designed around existing products, but it should have the ability to readily adapt, at least to the changes that can be expected. Again, doing that is a challenge, since customers will ultimately decide what they want, and so they, rather than the networks and content providers, will have the final say on the shape of convergence between wireless networks and the internet.

*Richard Braddell travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of Lucent Technologies.