Net Effect

Bell Mobility is adding services to its free Mobile Browser service at the rate of at least two or three a month. Where's the business case?

Sometimes you have to take risks to reach your goal. Bell Mobility is proving that just because everyone else is presenting wireless data one way doesn't mean it's the right way.

An Ernst & Young survey found that 4% of Canadians currently use wireless-Internet services, and 24% are likely to purchase them in the coming year. As the first Canadian PCS provider to offer Web-browsing service, Bell Mobility is looking to corner a large portion of this market.

Charlotte Burke, Bell Mobility vice president of services development, said the company is focused on data services in two areas: Mobile Browser offers Web content on browser-enabled handsets, and Digital Data To Go allows customers to use their handsets as modems to access the Internet.

Bell Mobility already has a long list of Mobile Browser services and is rolling out at least one or two per month. The company's strategy is to offer a full suite of entertainment, financial, corporate and e-commerce services and content. Users can access e-mail through Yahoo Canada, Sympatico or other POP3 e-mail accounts, while directories such as Web411, Yellow Page Express and Restaurant.ca help them find phone numbers and addresses. Webcare lets subscribers add and remove features and look up account details from a PCS phone, and messaging allows them to send and receive text messages or "e-pages" to other Bell Mobility subscribers.

Bell Mobility customers can access financial institutions and the stock market through BMO Veev, Schwab Canada, TD Waterhouse, and i|money. Other services include daily news updates from Canoe.com and Canada.com, weather updates from Sympatico, sports scores from Slam! Sports and Sympatico Sports, travel services from GetThere.com, and Quote of the Day, Word of the Day or Joke of the Day from Sympatico. Through a partnership with Amazon.com, Bell Mobility subscribers can use their handsets to shop online and view bestseller lists, product reviews and ratings.

Entertainment applications include HMV.com, which lets customers see and purchase the latest CDs; Jam! Showbiz, where customers can review the latest concerts, movies, books and theatre productions; Cinema Montreal, where they can search by film or theatre to see what's playing; and the Mobile Browser Edge102 site, which offers information for radio listeners.

New Pricing Models
Burke said Bell Mobility's success lies in its ability to move beyond typical business models. Unlike most U.S. providers, Bell Mobility doesn't charge access fees for its browser or data services. Any customer who has a data phone can use them immediately. Bell Mobility also has partnered with content providers that share its vision: get people using wireless data first and worry about generating revenue later.

"We have selectively chosen partners who value being in this space and recognize the key is market penetration at this stage rather than focusing on the revenue streams that will come in the future," Burke said.

Today, most of Bell Mobility's data revenue comes from airtime. Customers using Mobile Browser or Digital Data To Go can use their bundled minutes for voice or data.

"We have every variation of business model you can imagine, and we are not sure which one is right, but they all are based on who is delivering the most value, so certainly we see more than an airtime-revenue component to this," Burke said.

One option Bell Mobility is considering is assigning charges to various slots on a handset's menu. Value-added services and e-commerce applications also should generate revenue.

"Then there are enhanced services like location-based or high-value content," Burke said. "Or customers will recognize value in certain corporate or vertical applications and be willing to pay a premium for them."

However, once Bell Mobility and its partners discover more ways to generate revenue, it plans to keep offering entry-level data services for free.

"There are revenue opportunities at all layers, but the key is figuring out a partnership where the revenue opportunity is non-customer-impacting," Burke said. "It is not an accident that we partnered with banks. There is a tremendous transaction flow between businesses and consumers that has a lot of business-to-business (transactions) before it hits the customer. At each one of those layers, someone is taking a slice out."

Bell Mobility differs from U.S. providers by not charging access fees for data, but Burke said the entire Canadian wireless-data market differs from that of the United States. For instance, Canada's government encourages wireless providers to spend money in research and development as part of license requirements.

"Banks also have an obligation to spend locally," she said. "Once you have the banking, wireless and development communities working together within a hub of creative thinking, Canada has a leg up in new, emerging markets."

Bell Mobility is breaking free of other data-business models, as well. For example, most providers offer consumers information via the Web, but it isn't always what they want to see. Bell Mobility plans to personalize its Web service so customers can access and receive the information they want instead of what wireless providers want them to see.

"The idea is to deliver relevant information that is personalized to consumers and enables them to do transactions," Burke said. "A more sophisticated example of that would be Amazon.com, where customers personalize their accounts."

Burke envisions that if someone likes jazz music, a merchant could alert him on his handset when the latest jazz CD arrives, and then he could buy it over the phone. Bell Mobility also has gone after some niche markets. In March, the company teamed with JTEL to provide wireless-Internet services using JTEL's CellVic PDA. The PDA uses Chinese characters, in addition to several other languages, helping Bell Mobility reach the 1 million Asians in Toronto.

"A significant portion of our customer base is from the Asian market, more specifically the various provinces in China, particularly Hong Kong," Burke said. "We brought this product in to address that market, which has shown to be early adopters of technology and has a high penetration of wireless."

Making Data Irresistible
Although Digital Data To Go appeals to business users, customers in many demographics have embraced Mobile Browser. That adoption is partly because the Mobile Browser service is free and because 90% of Bell Mobility's handsets support data, making the service nearly impossible to resist.

Most Bell Mobility customers use the Qualcomm 2700 series phones and Samsung's SCH-3530 handset. Bell Mobility also offers the NeoPoint 1000 phone, and it's set to offer Motorola's Digital StarTac. Customers who have older Nokia 6185 handsets that don't support data soon can take them to dealers and get software upgrades that include Web browsers. Soon, all Nokia handsets will ship with browsers.

"Because we don't charge a premium for the service, we are getting the stereotypical early adopters, but we also are getting a good cross section of ages," Burke said. "The bottom line is this service is attractive to people who use online information."

Harter (betsyharter@aol.com) is a freelance writer based in Athens, GA.