The bright side of portability

LAS VEGAS--The Nov. 24 deadline for wireless number portability looms large over the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association’s Wireless IT & Entertainment show that’s taking place here this week. But it’s occurred to me during several conversations at this event that in addition to being a good thing for wireless consumers--and setting aside for a moment the expense of implementation that so many carriers pointed to in their efforts to lobby the regulation away--maybe some part of the mobile service provider community is quietly looking forward to the date.

That certainly would defy conventional logic, but here’s why I think it: U.S. mobile carriers, and certainly their supporting technology vendors, are reveling in a wireless world that seems finally to be embracing mobile data applications. Short messaging is growing in popularity, the ringtone market is large and projected to get larger, and carriers are starting to offer so-called “premium messaging” to their top-tier customers--people are finally using wireless data, and carriers are loving the traffic and revenue implications that acceptance means for them.

Wireless carriers have even learned from their mistakes, realizing that they can’t spend millions developing and trying to sell one or two applications to a customer base of millions--they have to develop thousands of apps, then let consumer trends, customer fickleness and their own marketing capabilities figure out which ones are popular and which ones are duds. And the underlying cost structures of developing, delivering and collecting for mobile data apps seems--by many reports of companies at this show that provide those functions to carriers--to be adjusted to the point that carriers can afford to let the duds be duds, rather than flogging a bum app to death because millions were spent on it.

So what does all that have to with the WNP deadline? The mobile sector is inherently competitive and thrives not only on winning, but also on making the other guy lose. Maybe a deadline that forces them to be more competitive--to make customers more sticky by adding not only the kind of data applications and enhanced content they want right now, but also the flexibility to give them what they’re going to want tomorrow and the next day and the next--was exactly the shot in the arm this industry needed to take that competitive compulsion to the next level.

E-mail me at jmeyers@primediabusiness.com.