That's Wireless Entertainment

Consumers' expectations for mobile entertainment and what carriers can offer has been grossly misrepresented, said Andy Nulman, Airborne Entertainment (www.airborne-e.com) president. According to Nulman, when carriers call wireless entertainment applications the wireless Web, users expect to see full-resolution movies on phones. Instead, he suggested calling it “cool stuff on phones.”

The expectations and the viability of mobile entertainment were discussed at two Wireless 2001 sessions: “M-Tertainment” and “Wireless Amusement.”

Bill Diggins, Diggit! Entertainment president, wants to drive revenue to music artists as well as carriers.

“As managers, we can take the artist directly to fans through wireless,” he said.

Diggins used an example: A fan of the band TLC is sent text messages alerting him of record releases, concerts and upcoming appearances before the mainstream public hears the news. The fan, then, can be rewarded for being devoted to the music artist.

A better-known entertainment avenue for driving airtime is games, and one carrier that knows this market is NTT DoCoMo. Satoshi Nakajima, UIEvolution founder, president & CEO (www.uievolution.com), said that DoCoMo's i-mode has captured the mindset of users — the service doesn't concentrate on Internet services; it concentrates on content.

“Entertainment traffic is as important as voice traffic or data traffic,” he said.

According to Nakajima, entertainment-based traffic is exceeding text-based traffic in Japan.

Charles Gerlach, Mainspring director of eStrategy, said i-mode's success in entertainment traffic also includes sex chat clubs. He added that because pornography is so successful for the video and the PC busineses, it's quite likely to prove a success for wireless devices (www.mainspring.com).

Alan Reiter, Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing president, emphasized that sensitive issues such as wireless gambling, erotic stories, escort services, clubs and pornography need to be addressed. Journalists are investigating them; parents are starting to be concerned; the government will be involved; and stockholders are clamoring for new revenue sources. Although no one likes to discuss it, risqué business could be big business for wireless.

Rick Ekstrand, Rural Cellular president & CEO (www.rccwireless.com), said that if customers want (risqué content), at least one carrier in each market will offer it, meaning that other carriers at least will need to address the issue.

Ray Soular, SafeSurf chairman, raised a few eyebrows when he promoted his company's filtering system for handsets (www.safesurf.com), designed to protect children from adult entertainment. Soular would like to see the industry and Congress embrace this filtering system to protect children from adult-themed content. However, a rating system is subjective and can't be completely controlled, so carriers obviously are concerned about being held responsible for what's distributed on their airwaves.

The main question was: How do carriers create a premium model for end users?

The technology is here, but will entertainment services stick with users? That's still up for debate.