Developer Vs Network Operator

September 29th, 2007

Sam gave a talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the services that you do and don’t have access to as a developer and all those things that are potential but just aren’t available unless you are on their white list. The same issue of whitelists is applicable in the UK independantly of each operator.

Items that were discussed were, identity of user/ device, payments or charges for services via mobile device billing mechanism. Location aware data again needing identity information. Security of data and authentication across sessions.

For the side of the operator it’s all about risk vs reward. If you’re the little guy or girl then you’ll find that it’s hard to get integrated with the operators and you’re cut is pretty small for any profits collected via the operator offering a service to the customer.

All in all it’s not a nice system at the moment. So I guess the other thing that the operators should consider that all these links through and issues that they are creating by being quite closed are things that long term the developers will find a way round. Wifi helps the developer. The phone numbers for ID can be a log in for the user on the phone turning on. Location could be triangulated (or if there’s GPS in the device you could use that) and for payments you can use paypal.

Network Operators see their closed wall garden as a value added data service. The way I see it there are two spaces and the most usable will win out… what do you think?

Entry Filed under: Talks,Video