Always-on Society – Interviews with Experts

Geitner: Of course. On the Internet, with my mobile phone and with the BlackBerry. To me, always on means that I can always communicate, even when my partner at the other end isn’t available online at the time—and that I have access to the information I need, anytime. But sometimes it also means I have to exert the self-discipline to turn it off.

Does constant accessibility have a greater impact on the professional environment or in the private sphere?

Geitner: Always on impacts our business life more profoundly than our private life. But I haven’t met anyone yet who uses e-mail for business and doesn’t take advantage of it at home. I think they go together.

What else needs to be done to develop always on to its full potential?

Geitner: In my view, technology isn’t the bottleneck. The greatest challenge is making things easier to operate. And that’s a multifaceted challenge. How user-friendly are the devices? How readily is information available in portals? What services are being offered to the customer? What’s more, manufacturers of terminals are improving security and working to increase battery life. That sounds trivial, but it’s a major problem.

Vodafone uses the slogan "Vodafone live!" What’s that about?

Geitner: Vodafone live! isn’t a slogan. It’s a product and marketing concept that encompasses different services we’ve developed from the customer’s point of view. Early on, the mobile communications industry attempted to sell data services using buzzwords like WAP or GPRS, but there weren’t many takers. We’ve chosen a different approach. Just a few clicks from snapping a picture to sending the MMS, and just one click to get on the Internet.

That’s new. Is the concept working?

Geitner: Sure. We’ve been marketing it for a couple of years. This summer we had about three million active Vodafone live! users worldwide. That’s far more than we expected when we started. And increased usage also brings down prices: In Germany we now charge 39 euro cents for an MMS. That’s less than half of what it used to cost.

What else can we look forward to, when UMTS becomes widely used?

Geitner: With Vodafone live! and Vodafone office we’ve created the marketing platforms for mobile data services. First we gained experience in this market by using GPRS, and we learned which services and what content the customer really needs and wants. In 3G, we’re continuing to put that experience to good use. We’re expanding our applications and we’re making our portals faster, more colorful and richer in content. Moreover, videotelephony is adding a new dimension. And of course we’ve been accumulating experience for quite some time with a UMTS card for laptops and PDAs.

In that area too we’ll have more to offer in the future. Have you found the killer application for UMTS yet?

Geitner: The killer application for mobile communications is voice. When it comes to data there are many services, and you can’t single out any one of them. The market will be more segmented than in the GSM era. Your customers won’t have more money to spend than they do now.

What enticement will you use to boost sales?

Geitner: Enticement is not what’s needed. We’ll offer our customers solutions to solve their problems, to make their lives simpler and more enjoyable. Private individuals in Germany presently spend 3.5 % of their budgets on mobile communications. That figure is already higher in other European countries. Mobile communications wasn’t a mass market at all twelve years ago. And there’s absolutely no reason to assume that expenditures for mobile communications are going to level off.

Which data services are successful now?

Geitner: Downloads of ringtones are growing by 50 % annually. If we’d predicted four years ago that this sector would amount to 10 % of the global music market by 2003, everyone would have laughed at us. But that’s what happened last year, and every multimedia cell phone that’s added boosts the number of music playback devices. Another surprise was the mushrooming growth in download of games. Five years from now, no one will question that the mobile phone is a device customers use on a large scale for consumption of media.

What’s the role of WLAN or WiMAX in Vodafone’s strategy?

Geitner: Most of our investments in new networks involve UMTS. Of course WLAN and WiMAX are technologies that work well, but only in hot spots, not over large areas. If that becomes relevant to our customers, they can also access WLAN now or WiMAX later on their Vodafone account. But UMTS is the most widely usable, and it’s also simple to operate.

Will there be a UMTS-WLAN-WiMAX cell phone someday?

Geitner: The day will come when the customer won’t want to be bothered anymore with having to think about access technologies. Instead, they’re simply going to insist: Wherever I am, I’ll want to use whatever is fastest, simplest and cheapest. The number of transmission technologies is almost endless. How important are standards?

Geitner: Standards are the key. Here in Europe we’ve got an advantage with the GSM standard—both with respect to the availability of networks and of terminals. A single company never could have achieved cost reductions the way the GSM industry as a whole has been able to do. So standards are a much faster route to mass market solutions. That’s another reason why we’ve built Vodafone live! on the basis of WAP, because we believe our customers like the open standard. Thanks to standards, suppliers of content can amortize their costs across a larger number of terminals. Customers benefit because they, in turn, are offered more content more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. We’re still a long way from approaching the end of standardization.

Interview: Norbert Aschenbrenner