telecom

Currently, cellular service providers have been growing due to wider end-user adoption. In many emerging markets increased competition is driving prices down to a few pennies a minute, rates at which service providers cannot continue to maintain quality of service and fund the frequent upgradation of infrastructure so common in the cellular provider world. At a point in time, the battered bottom lines will certainly cast a gloomy spell over cellular carriers that are not as well funded or not able to provide markedly different services from the larger players.

"When Carriers are focused entirely on maintaining/gaining market share, and have adopted price-drops and freebies to hold the fort, then we do have the signs of a troubled industry."

Many markets are beginning to mature and user growth numbers are less euphoric. This decade will be the one for the more agile players, a combination of prices, functionality and coverage to hold the front, coupled with innovation and premium services to lift the bottom line. It is our belief that Cellular Carriers are yet to focus on the Enterprise with premium offerings.

Infynita Inc is planning upon the Infynita Interaction Platform upon which engaging applications could be built in a short period. These applications leverage SMS interactions, which the end users perceive as more affordable than voice based premium services.

Although our Infynita Interaction Platform is planned to be accessible via most networks and most any phone capable of alpha-numeric messaging, it is skewed towards GSM standards prevalent in most parts of the world.

Most SMS based applications today are largely informational or recreational and interactivity is generally limited to the extent of requesting ("pulling") information. Infynita Interaction Platform is planned to allow storage of user requests (where the Carrier is willing to provide such services) and both "pull" and "push" of content when the trigger is attained, resulting in enhanced revenues and loyalty.

A benefit of SMS is message delivery confirmation, which greatly enhances end user perception of reliability in the service. SMSC capabilities such as message concatenation etc may be available to transmit messages longer than 180 characters.

Infynita supports MMS type core capability of end user subscription management while maximizing the use of SMS, SMS is supported by a majority of GSM handsets and SMSC infrastructure.

Infynita services are designed for push or pull according to interaction, criteria, etc. An occasional request will be a pull service whereas a notification request will be a push service. Infynita is designed to handle and execute high volume of service request efficiently and conveying the result to SMSC for forwarding to the end user .

The unprecedented success of SMS (outside US) has made a significant impact on the development of mobile services. Although very limited in data length, short message usage has grown exponentially despite the emerging, more promising technologies that offer richer interfaces, more capacity and bandwidth. However, development of messaging services is already in progress, with new steps including EMS and MMS.

EMS extends SMS capability by providing additional formatting capabilities to handle small images and animations and even some small melodies (ring tones) can be included in one message. EMS is based upon the standard SMS, which was expected to be an interim solution to the MMS, but it appears to have been bypassed by cellular carriers as we are now on the verge of MMS adoption. EMS takeoff has been limited and it has largely ceased to be offered as an end user service option.

Mobile access to information storages has created a need for new types of non-voice communications services. The development can be characterized as fast-paced and unpredictable: some techniques and services have become incredibly successful, while others have failed miserably. As they appear to play a significant role in influencing the success and failure of wireless technologies, products and services, we considered the following research, findings and facts to architect Infynitá.

Current mobile info services can be described as centralized, conventional, media-based, professionally provided, large-data and non-unique. This means professional companies providing a specific type of commercial information that usually can be also found both in the conventional media forms (newspapers, TV, radio) and also on web pages. Creating mobile services out of this kind of information is merely providing a short-version duplicate access method. SMS and WAP services can be discussed together as mobile services, because an estimated 80 per cent of WAP service content is also available by SMS.

Taking a global perspective, mobile information service content is typically produced by new media companies via mobile portals owned by mobile operators. Current mobile services can be classified primarily by their information source. The biggest class contains services that are newspaper originated, such as domestic and foreign news, economy, sports, weather, television programs, sports scores, horoscopes etc. Services belonging to the second biggest class are based on static, textual data, and used because of the already existing supply, not demand. Such services are jokes, quotations, recipes, etc. Another category is searchable databases that need relatively frequent updating: stock quotes, arrival and departure info, currency rates, event calendars, etc.

Despite the very limited capabilities of wireless clients, multimedia in the minimal form of ring tones and operator logos has gained enormous popularity. Interactive services involving several users, such as dating services, have also found their way to the mobile world in some markets, usually by copying existing Internet service ideas and existing content . However, the benefit in this category is rather the large mobile clientele than mobility itself.

Positioning services utilize the mobility aspect of the appliances, as services can be tailored and personalized according to the client's location. In the GSM architecture the Home Location Register (HLR) stores information of the subscribers belonging to the covering area of a Mobile services Switching Center (MSC). It also stores the current location of these subscribers and the services to which they have access. Location-based positioning service development projects for mobile appliances are still being rolled out in services such as "find-a-friend", GPS-GSM asset tracking, etc.

Mobile entertainment such as gaming is a growing category, and will play a more significant contributor to non-voice revenue source. Other entertainment services are contests, where practically the winners are those who play for the longest time - that means those who get billed the most.

An important issue that is playing out is the positioning of various "players" in the value chain of data services. The value chain is a sequence of activities, where each activity adds to the customer value of the end product or service: from network infrastructure, access providing and content origination through content packaging and transmission for end-user access. Content owners and network operators are attempting to integrate vertically towards the end-user, which may result in a dominating position of these massive participants outside their core business areas, leading to a situation where smaller "players" cannot compete.

The artificial division between service providers and service users in the mobile world should be reviewed objectively. For a greater diversity of information and alternatives, anyone should be able to provide mobile accessible information services and to produce personal content for individual, networked group and virtual community needs. The objectives can be summarized as follows:

There is certainly an intrigue in providing non-commercial content by individuals, groups and communities. This publicly created content such as seasonal poetry submissions, blogs could coexist with current mass services, because new services would satisfy personal needs, create enough of a differentiator and enhance loyalty.

Individuals should be allowed to submit content for their personal and peer groups' need, where the relaying is done without costs. The user may create personal groups (using fee based services based on Infynita) and Carriers can relay these in off peak periods and augment revenues with sponsorships by local businesses. Content for only personal groups can be provided by members of the group, content management systems should handle group management functions.

In addition to commercial mass services, valued personalized services should be introduced, targeting those many small groups of service users, communities and virtual communities who have interests in small-size local information content .

The 'value add' should be mobility itself, not mobile information content. Free information could multiply mobile information service usage, bringing additional revenue to mobile operators who could charge for paid submission of free dissemination.

The Infynita Interactive Platform has been conceived with diligence and due consideration and addresses real pain-points of cellular carriers. This platform enables quick services creation and deployment, offering the greatest ROI.

A unique feature of the Infynita Interactive Platform is that it mimics a critical characteristic of MMS in that it makes it possible to store, manage and retrieve subscriber based information .