Jun 15
2011Morodo: WiFi – the growing usability “must have”!View Comments
Reporting on movements in user habits towards and favoring the Morodo model is always one of the more pleasant tasks of reporting in and around our ecosystem. It is surprising however to witness a move towards WiFi where the combatants with the greatest too loose, the Mobile Network Operators, are the force for change and towards customers seeking our WiFi as part of their daily data consumption pattern. This is certainly the case in the US today. Devicescape WiFi reports 64 percent of consumers surveyed hit hot spots at least once a day. Home Wi-Fi use can help reduce data usage, but for most smartphone owners who supplement their data plan with Wi-Fi, a full 89.8 percent use Wi-Fi both at home and on the road.
Customers are moving towards WiFi as MNO continue to pursue data capping as a means to concentrate revenue back in the MNO’s favour. The report describes 72.9 percent of respondents presuming they will switch carriers if faced with data capping and further a full 80 percent will likely adjust their downloading habits if data capping is introduced by their carrier.
There is no doubt that data demand around the mobile device is growing. Earlier this year, Cisco said it expected the average mobile user to consume 1,185 MB of data per month by 2015. That’s far more than the 250 MB that AT&T claimed was used by 65 percent of its customers when the carrier switched from unlimited to tiered mobile broadband plans.
The MNO’s have failed to see the world is now a more social and connected space. It is more social in the fact all human interaction is around your social network, whether articulated through membership or not. It is a more connected world than ever before as conceivably your most valued and useful possession is your mobile handset. The convergence of these two domains (mobile and Internet) is the genesis of Morodo greatest opportunity. The opportunity exists at its greatest inflection due to the ‘time to market’ a new aspirant would face wanting to support both the socialness of the internet with the connectivity of a ubiquitous handset.
The change in attitude and thinking and the realization the world is changing was articulated clearly in Nokia’s desire to partner with Morodo offering the clever feature phone platform (S40) the network support of Morodo. Nokia can now support VoIP calling globally over this feature phone with Morodo’s network support. Nokia is now a global network operator in its own right on this platform. This model supports no payment for spectrum licensing nor is the new entrant bound by geographical boundaries and expensive support and maintenance of last mile infrastructure.
Today, supporting over 800 WiFi enabled handset MO-Call can originate calls, disruptive of incumbent mobile network operator, to destinations all over the World. Last month this technology originated calls in over 150 countries around the world.
Morodo see any ISP, broadband provider and fixed line carrier as a good fit, with the support and success of WiFi, to become a mobile originator via a Morodo white label. Morodo will support all e-commerce comers with telephone 2.0 services and monetize via affiliation and loyalty incentives. Perhaps Morodo’s first success will be borne in America as the environment seems ready and almost demands new entrants like Morodo to come and fill the void left by the sleeping and slothy MNO’s. Morodo will soon be talking to LightSquared, the operator of a complete USA solution for 4G. Morodo is hopeful of joining their ecosystem to provide a range of services from voice, video calling, Instant messaging and video messaging services under the MO-Call brand but also, ready to enable others to provide service on a white label model.
The one thing from this report , whether WiFi or the new and coming 4G, is that Morodo is able and ready to support all e-commerce websites will telephone and communications and we are in small company.
