What effect will the FCC broadband plan have on mobile marketing?
March 18, 2010
Mobile industry heavyweights weigh in on the FCC broadband plan
The Federal Communications Commission has submitted a National Broadband Plan to Congress and the ambitious agenda holds quite some promise for mobile marketing and commerce.
The National Broadband Plan’s aim is to connect all corners of the nation while transforming the economy and society with the communications network of the future – a robust, affordable Internet.
“Mobile is essential to the future of broadband,” said an FCC spokesman. “Increasingly, Americans access the Internet from devices they carry around with them wherever they go.
“Carriers report massive increases in data usage over the past several years and industry analysts expect this trend to accelerate,” he said. “If we are not prepared, we will face a shortage of spectrum, the ‘oxygen’ of mobile broadband. “In order to ensure that mobile grows into the next great platform for innovation in America, the Broadband Plan recommends making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available over the next 10 years and 300 megahertz in five years.”
According the FCC, if we do not take these steps, we put ourselves at risk of limiting the potential of mobile broadband.
On the other hand, if we take proactive steps now, we will ensure that America is the home of the world’s best mobile broadband networks in the decade to come and will protect the country’s global competiveness.
A looming shortage of wireless spectrum could impede U.S. innovation and leadership in popular wireless mobile broadband services.
More useful applications, devices and content are needed to create value for consumers.
And the nation has failed to harness broadband’s power to transform delivery of government services, health care, education, public safety, energy conservation, economic development and other national priorities.
The broadband plan would have big impacts on mobile marketing and commerce as well.
“Negatively speaking I would say that having more allowance for media will decrease the mobile Internet search engine indexing reliability – in other words Google, Bing and Yahoo mobile search engines will not be able to interpret the true video, sound and image relevance; leaving perhaps the best search results out of the list,” said Phil Robinson, marketing and PR executive at Piri Ltd, Manchester, Britain.
But every cloud has a silver lining.
“Positively speaking the faster broadband would increase the mobile Web site delivery time to users, making mobile Internet media more diverse and deliverable,” Mr. Robinson said. “So, mobile marketers can offer videos and media as part of their mobile site promotions and content.”
The plan’s goal is to ensure that the U.S. is leading the world in mobile innovation by making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available for licensed and unlicensed use.
This will bring affordable broadband to rural communities, schools, libraries and vulnerable populations and give marketers a whole new target market.
Retailers will also benefit from the broadband plan.
“Upgrading the grid to provide faster and more reliable internet access is a great thing for consumers, online businesses and investors,” said Tim Schulz, senior product manager and general manager of mobile commerce and application platforms at Magento. “Online-retail players will especially benefit from this since the sector is already expected to double to $250 billion over the next four years.
“The impact on the mobile market will be more nuanced though,” he said. “Since mobile browsers can’t yet take advantage of native features within each device until technologies like HTML5 mature, we predict an even sharper rise in the importance of mobile apps to drive mobile commerce.
“These new proposals from the FCC will play well into this strategy since faster speeds mean more smartphone adoption – and more smartphones create a larger market for mobile apps.”
The plan was mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and was produced by an FCC task force that set new precedents for government openness, transparency and rigor.
Information for the plan was gathered in 36 public workshops, 9 field hearing and 31 public notices that produced 75,000 pages of public comments.
The debate went online with 131 blog posts that triggered 1,489 comments; 181 ideas on Idea Scale garnering 6,100 votes; 69,500 views on YouTube; and 335,000 Twitter followers.
The task force augmented this voluminous record with independent research and data-gathering.
“The change will be profound,” said Jamus Driscoll, vice president of marketing at Demandware, Woburn, MA. “Just as shopping on personal and work computers accelerated as broadband availability increased, so too will mobile commerce.
However, there are characteristics to mobile that make it likely to be adopted at rates exponentially higher than its PC-predecessor.
According to Morgan Stanley research, adoption of mobile Internet outpaces that of the PC by a factor of eight.
“What this means is that in a few year’s time, we won’t be called the ‘mobile’ Web, it will just be the Web,” Mr. Driscoll said.
“The other opportunity with mobile is that unlike the PC, the mobile device combines the Web—which brings with it virtually unlimited choices in data and applications—with context of the user’s location and preferences delivered into a device that is seen by the user as personal connection to themselves," he said.
“The possibilities just in the world of commerce are endless."
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