Mobile billing...
I was just pondering on how much money would an mobile application developer get for a decent application...It depends on quite a few factors..
The mobile network infrastructure - 2.5G, 3G and 4G...
GPRS, W-CDMA and 4G (future)are all packet based, so u can monitor the packets...also content based billing (CISCO was the first one to propose it - this means a if u r downloading a richer content to u'r mobile, u could be charged more) could fetch more
CISCO billing model
On operator - for a 6Rs SMS, Airtel gets a small pie, KBC will also get its share..and don't forget Siddarth.. it depends on how much revenue an application developer can project to Airtel and convince the operator to get a larger pie of the revenue. Operators are powerful (look at vodapone and DOCOMO- they dictate so much - I wish this reduces more and more as we progress...it should be the retailers and not operators who should have so much say...who knows..the shop next to u probably understands what the user needs better and dictates the features in a phone..)
Quite a few billing models - edge pricing and paris-metro charging, market based reservation charging etc ... i am not interested in any of them..
Other billing models
Coming to original point on how the application developer gets the money ...
Say I am dowloading a page from server. The network infrastructure consists of mobile(client), WAP gateway(which does the encoding/decoding), and the server. Now the payment gateway can be at the operator or the operator can re-direct the payment request to the application developer's payment gateway. If this redirection happens (oh already quite a few follow this model - paypal, paypaisa, many banks - banks have their own payment gateways for security reasons. It's like having an account with paypal or the bank. One disadvantage, the user has to switch profile since now the gateway is changed and maybe will have to bear with a subscription charge as well..), its gr8...but operator wants it all..so its a difficult proposition to convice the operator..
One last way...at the server, the number of hits can always be monitored(number of times the user is downloading the content), so we can make a predictive model of how much revenue it generates. This way the operator cannot give u a vague sum when it comes to revenue sharing.
Last option- sell the application to the operator...combine this option with the two options explained above..
With so many standards, not so good and costly network infrastructure there are not many options to break the operator supremacy...but given a chance, consider all the options and break it..This is to all those application developers...
The mobile network infrastructure - 2.5G, 3G and 4G...
GPRS, W-CDMA and 4G (future)are all packet based, so u can monitor the packets...also content based billing (CISCO was the first one to propose it - this means a if u r downloading a richer content to u'r mobile, u could be charged more) could fetch more
CISCO billing model
On operator - for a 6Rs SMS, Airtel gets a small pie, KBC will also get its share..and don't forget Siddarth.. it depends on how much revenue an application developer can project to Airtel and convince the operator to get a larger pie of the revenue. Operators are powerful (look at vodapone and DOCOMO- they dictate so much - I wish this reduces more and more as we progress...it should be the retailers and not operators who should have so much say...who knows..the shop next to u probably understands what the user needs better and dictates the features in a phone..)
Quite a few billing models - edge pricing and paris-metro charging, market based reservation charging etc ... i am not interested in any of them..
Other billing models
Coming to original point on how the application developer gets the money ...
Say I am dowloading a page from server. The network infrastructure consists of mobile(client), WAP gateway(which does the encoding/decoding), and the server. Now the payment gateway can be at the operator or the operator can re-direct the payment request to the application developer's payment gateway. If this redirection happens (oh already quite a few follow this model - paypal, paypaisa, many banks - banks have their own payment gateways for security reasons. It's like having an account with paypal or the bank. One disadvantage, the user has to switch profile since now the gateway is changed and maybe will have to bear with a subscription charge as well..), its gr8...but operator wants it all..so its a difficult proposition to convice the operator..
One last way...at the server, the number of hits can always be monitored(number of times the user is downloading the content), so we can make a predictive model of how much revenue it generates. This way the operator cannot give u a vague sum when it comes to revenue sharing.
Last option- sell the application to the operator...combine this option with the two options explained above..
With so many standards, not so good and costly network infrastructure there are not many options to break the operator supremacy...but given a chance, consider all the options and break it..This is to all those application developers...
posted by Raji @ 10:58 PM
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