Watching TV or movies on your mobile device….

Mike Masnick of Techdirt makes a mute comment that people don’t want to watch full length movies on their mobile devices. I guess Mike isn’t travelling a lot on public transport.  

This reminds me of the streaming TV channels to mobile devices debates that were bandied about early last year by those not doing it and now of course we see plans or serious discussions about deploying.

For a telco the main problem is, if they don’t do it and their competitors do, will they loose subscribers or new acquisitions? Secondly, the lack of forethought that the additional functionality deployed to stream the movies could be utilised for other services such as training systems, m-commerce etc.

I guess the biggest anchor with innovating 3G technology is that is run predominately by 2G telco people. Their mentality is to always run back to what they know the best, voice. Therefore the true differentiators of high speed data and video connectivity products are left behind.

3G has always been to me about convergence. Convergence of IT, Internet & Telco. See included picture.

So the big issue here, specifically Australia, is why we don’t see marriages of IT & Telco organisations to take advantage of this mature high-speed technology. The reason why so many mobile solutions failed on GPRS was the poor usability experience, 3G doesn’t suffer that fate.

In the end it’s about giving your mobile customers the mobility solutions they require in a seemless easy to use way.