Consumer electronics vendors experiment with connectivity

The service is designed to not require the user to first go to the mobile Internet portal and take part in a laborious sign in, Rodgers said. Rather it works with one click via a Flash screen, giving users access to the content they were originally seeking. It offers options to the user that are relevant to them and that they would be prone to paying for in the first place. Passport today is designed for mobile handsets, but Rodgers could envision a business model in which the data access was given to a multitude of IP-connected CE devices, be it a digital camera, set-top box or in-car device. In that sense, Passport is device-agnostic, it just needs to work with one consolidated identity over IP to monetize the service.

“If you make a lot of demands on the end user -- if they have to skip through hoops to actually get available service, they are much more likely to switch off and not bother,” Rodgers said. “The user will expect ideally that they have one plan and whatever it costs for the one plan covers everything. But you are going to see carriers need to make some level of distinction between their users. They can’t afford to offer everyone the same flat rate. In terms of data access, there needs to be simple models in place.”

CE vendors most pronounced opportunity may come from WiMax. Already prevalent overseas where many smaller operators have deployments up and running, the 4G service is just starting to gain traction in the US. Sprint recently took its WiMax service, Xohm, live in Baltimore and is building out other markets throughout the year. Towerstream also turned on service in Chicago last week. WiMax has the capability of moving beyond phones and laptops to equip a variety of consumer devices with Internet access. Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are already on board with producing these WiMax-enabled devices, but they are unique in the CE industry. Yet as new as WiMax is, CE vendors still have the opportunity to get on board. WiMax holds the promise of letting consumers access the Web without a service contract or long-term commitment; it may just be a matter of getting the price of WiMax chipsets down to convince more CE vendors of the opportunity.

“It will always be a multiple-device world, and people will always own multiple, but as the expectations come up in the mind of consumers to the point where we expect all our devices will easily connect to the Internet, then that brings up a whole new set of questions,” Burden said. “That is what we need to deliver, but there are a lot of things around the service and infrastructure models that need to be worked out before this steam rolls ahead.”