KEY POINTS:
There's a company here in the US getting a lot of attention at the moment - Sonopia.
The pitch is this -rather than having your mobile phone service with Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile, you sign up with Sonopia, a mobile virtual network operator. You then gather your own customer base of users for which Sonopia will pay you US$50 for each customer signing up to a 12 month contract and a percentage of the customer's monthly bill.
You're also given the platform to host your own online content which can be accessed by subscribers on the internet or downloaded to their mobile phone - for free if you choose to do so.
The idea is that companies, non-profits or clubs can build their own niches, generating revenue in the process that possibly could be ploughed back into the community of members in some form.
The whole user-generated mobile content approach is very Web 2.0 though the handset range is limited -currently only the Motorola RARZ is being made available.
The back-end network service is provided by Verizon and Vodafone for overseas roaming. I think this is a great idea, that could take off here.
A number of smaller internet providers have signed up for MVNO deals with Vodafone - Orcon, Compass Communications and CallPlus among them. These companies now have the challenge of making it more attractive to buy your mobile service through them rather than directly from Vodafone. In some cases, just having your internet account on the same bill as your mobile account will be enough to make you want to shift provider.
They'll also likely offer their own mobile content platforms. But the niche mobile reseller model is particularly suited to our sporting nation, where numerous school and club organisations have to fundraise to stay alive.
A sports club a few hundred members strong could effectively subsidise its annual running costs by taking a cut of the revenue generated by its members' mobile usage.
It will be interesting to see if any of the MVNOs starting up here adopt such a model. In the US, where's there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the big mobile operators when it comes to customer service, there appears to be a lot of interest and the system is scalable - Sonopia is advertising for resellers targeting customer bases 50,000 strong.
The resellers take care of handset provision, billing and customer service rather than Verizon which sits as an invisible provider behind Sonopia and the reseller. Sonopia raised US$12.7 in venture capital funding in May and has some large accounts onboard so the model seems to be working. Lets hope it catches on in this part of the world.
Meanwhile, Geekzone will this afternoon shed light on some of the issues wireless broadband provider Woosh appears to have been having with its services. I've had a few emails from dissatisfied Woosh users of late, but to be honest, no more than usual. The symptoms are familiar - terribly slow access speeds.
Philip Newman emailed me with a link to this article he's written on his website about his Woosh woes.
The Geekzone forums outline the types of problems subscribers have been having. What's up with Woosh? I'm intrigued to know -keep an eye on Geekzone this afternoon to find out.
