What a response!
The press release that we published yesterday with Commtouch proved one thing for sure: Content filtering sells. Then again, maybe it was the headline:
Protecting Children from Mobile Porn Gets Push from National Governments
The irony, of course, is that we and Commtouch are trying to help mobile operators comply with child protection legislation and people seem to be more interested in porn than in content filtering. I suppose that should not be too surprising. But it does underscore the issue: Porn is big business. But, for better or worse, it’s still going to be big enough even if parents can protect their children from it with the help of their mobile network operators.
Quick Summary
Governments, including the UK, Ireland and Australia are debating the merits of requiring mobile subscribers to opt-in if they want to be able to receive certain content categorized as unsuitable for children.
Constantly changing content, new sites and user-generated sites with a mix of family-friendly and inappropriate content pose a challenge to operators who will be required to enable the regulation of specified content.
Mobixell Seamless Access Mobile Internet Gateway, using Commtouch GlobalView™ URL Filtering content categorization, enables telecom operators to manage complex content delivery policies, offering a variety of opt-in user protection services, including parental control, real-time rating and content verification.
For more information, check out the press release.
And for those of you celebrating, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
Seth Greenberg
Director of Corporate Marketing
Mobixell
One of the most interesting things I get to do as CTO of Mobixell is to explore and discuss new trends in the telecommunication industry with others from around the world. One of these opportunities was at last week’s Broadband Traffic Management Congress in London.
This year, Mobixell sponsored, and I sat on a panel discussion entitled Taking Steps Towards ‘Two-Sided’ Business Models: To What Extent Can Operators Build a Dialogue and Establish a Common Language with OTT Players? The main argument was whether or not this business model could happen, keeping in mind both sides’ interests.
We at Mobixell see a few ways in which the operator can monetize their networks in cooperation with over-the-top (OTT) content providers. The big challenge for the operator is to add value to OTT content and services.
Though still in its early stages, one example of a monetization model that was presented in London is the initiative between Ericsson and Akamai targeting content providers with optimized mobile delivery (video and web), in which the content provider will pay Akamai to improve user experience for content delivered to mobile device users. Revenue from content providers will then be split among
Akamai,
Ericsson and the mobile operator.
Markus Freikamp, Head of International Wholesale Business Models at Deutsche Telekom and one of the panel members, said he was a true believer in the two-sided model. He believes the content providers will eventually pay the mobile operators for the network’s bandwidth usage. “It won’t happen today, it won’t happen tomorrow, but it will happen eventually”.
There is simply no other choice. Similar to the cable TV model, operators will need to demand payment from premium content providers to be able to continue investing in network expansion to satisfy their subscribers.
One of the insights from the panel was that the technical components that facilitate the two sided business model already exist. But the real challenges lie within finding the right use cases and getting global market acceptance. While content providers don’t fully understand why they would have to pay the mobile operators for using their networks, which until now has been free, some mobile operators are looking into the future and seeing how they can recoup a chunk of their network investments.
Yehuda Elmaliach
Mobixell CTO
