I continue my short series of telecom and wireless in a larger perspective than just mobile entertainment and apps. It must be the effect of watching our garden explode with new life again that triggers this.

In the environmetal debate the mobile industry is not very present. Despite the graduation from only offering token “green telecoms” slots at conferences, to being a real subject, wireless has not made it to the main stage of the climate discussion.

What’s worse is that at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December wireless is not even on the agenda. At MWC in Barcelona, claims were made that the CO2 emission in connection with “running” a mobile operator’s customer for one year corresponds to the CO2 emission from one hour of car driving. I will not argue the facts but if we assume that the order of magnitude is somewhat right, the implication is pretty substantial.

We need to get beoynd “let’s use more energy efficient servers and low energy bulbs” when it comes to seeing what telecoms can do for the environment. It still seems like most of the discussion is on renewable energy etc. Even though some sober calculations show that some so called solutions are completely unrealistic. David MacKay’s book Without the hot air reveals has some good examples for you.

In the light of the fact that telecoms already do a lot for the environment, but surely can do much better, it feels criminal not to make use of this and create some impact. Politicians, time to talk to the telco execs? Telco execs, time to talk to the politician about other things than radio spectrum and license auctions? The self proclamied recovered politician Al Gore has started to bridge the gap somewhat. His keynote speech at CTIA in Las Vegas in March touched on this. Hopefully he will be able to drag telecom as a climate changer for good onto the world stage.

A final word goes to the hosts at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December – please put telecoms on the agenda and invite the key players from the telecom industry!

There were a few thems the I picked up. Mind you I went to CTIA with my mobile social networking, advertisig and multi-player poker glasses on. That was my mission to learn and sell. As you might know I am one of the founders of both Acemob and Souldate, and these ventures are what pay the bills these days. Here we go:

1. Business models

Everywhere I went, the theme was business models. On the panel I sat in on, on the show floor at the parties at night, business models where a common theme. What’s happening here then?

One big change is the on/off deck distinction is about to fade away. On-deck is not the only way to get distribution these days. Operators are realising this and are opening up for easier access to their portals. They can thereby also cut some staff costs as well.

The effect of this is that the content provider will have to carry more of the marketing cost and get the full responsibility for discovery. It also means the operators will have to stop milking their abuse of the billing monopoly they have. Stealing 30-40% for a transaction that Visa charge 5% for is not viable in the long run and is hampering innovation and growth. Please read this great post buy Steven Spencer on this subjet and app stores etc. 

2. Advertising

Advertising is cool, but in most cases will not be enough. Additional revenue streams with virtual goods or freemium is needed. There are probably some arbitrage possibilities or rather timing gains to make to go build a user base in a virgin market when CPCs are very low but rising. However you are then banking on that you keep the users long enough to make money on them when the advertising market is more valuable. A risk, but it might work. It’s about timing and guts I guess.

3. Role of Social networks

In our panel we had some interesting exhanges about social selling. Both Glu and iPlay see the social networks as a distribution channel. Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth, so they try to tap into social netoworks or use social networking infrastructure to give their fans the tools to sperad the word. One cool service I came across here was mpowerplayer. Baiscally it is a social seling tool. Web based play of java games with community features built in to facilitate spreading the word. iPlay use this for their recent launch of their Fast & Furious game. With links to the portals and decks where the game can be bought. This drives revenues and is one way to facilitate discovery, one of the main challenges in selling stuff in a small screen world.

4. Health

I also noted mHealth being a trend. This came from other reports (and here) and comments from people I talked to in Las Vegas. Unfortunately this was an area I missed to cover entirely personally, but hey you can only do so many things. The good thing is that it is now on the radar. My personal belief is that it is a huge area where mobile really can make the world a better place. The formation of the Wireless Health Institute in San Diego is one milestone.

With these words I will head for the ol’ egg hunts and whatnot. See you after the weekend!

I am honoured and humbled to be asked to join the likes of Karen Webster from MPD, Ajay Madhok from Equals, Scott Derringer from GLU, Jeremy Wasser from Virgin Mobile (joining from the Helio team) and Mike Breslin from iPlay, part of the online casual gaming giant Oberon Media. And myself representing Acemob.

So the mix is really good. Karen will moderate this panel where we have the carrier, huge global publisher, the niche social networking player  and the the social network aggregator among other things. I hope to learn more as the days pass by. Hope to come back here with some interviews with my fellow panelists.

What we hope to cover are questions like:

• What is driving the increased use of social networking via the mobile?
• Does it vary by geography?
• Do we find the same user both on PC and on mobile or are there different segments?
• What does the mobile phone allow in terms of experience that the PC cannot do?
• What are the challenges?
• Who are doing great stuff?

I am really looking forward to this. Hoping we will get to the core of a few burning issues, and maybe kill a darling or two? Please feed comments, thoughts and questions to me here or on twitter @pfhagermark.

Anyway, CTIA or not, it is still the state of the industry as I see it.

We have many experts thinking and presenting theories – Strand, Juniper et al. you know them.

I am biased, but I tend to listen to people who are actually operationally active and doing the dirty work themselves. Yes, I am one of them, Yes, we tend to get tunnel vision every now and then, but we do live the industry and can provide a sobering insight to some of the external experts.

Why mobile content suck, this was also both the best conference session name and session itself at CTIA this year. Excellent moderation by Andy Nulman from Airborne Entertainment. Thanks Andy!

In short the people from the traditional media or more mature media niches are quite clear. The content is often crap. The experience clunky and the pricing often nothing else than a rip-off. Sobering statements. However painful they might sound like they are true.

So the stuff has to get better, easier to discover and use and I do not want to feel robbed after using something on my mobile. Ok, if that is what the consumer wants. That’s what you need to deliver.

This brings up the other side of the equation. We the content providers. Since most of us plan to pay our mortgages and eat three healthy meals a day, we want to make money. This requires business models that work. Preferably today and not in some undefined future. The big dragons can throw money around and see what sticks to the wall, spaghetti chef style. But the rest of us can seldom afford that. We have our dearly earned money that we want to reinvest to add value for all parties involved.

Thankfully the flat rate data plans are kicking in and the handsets are there with all the features available. That also increases the pressure on the content providers and producers. Then we have this “Next big thing” mobile advertising that we can use to make money from the services if we attract enough users. We do not have to be shackled to the “you-do-most-of-the-work-and-I-take-half”-business model which is the essence of doing your premium billing via mobile operators. So, there are no excuses anymore. It will come down to good services and content to be produced. Now the spotlight is really on us.

To summarise, the time is now for us in the content and service production business to deliver as well. This is easier said than done, but stick to simplicity, real needs among the users and use the comparative advantages the mobile has. No they are not screen size, input interface and processing power! But it is the thing we are most likely to always have with us, it is personal and private, always on and connected to the largest communications network in the world. I can think of a worse brief. Go create!