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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:01 |
More than one million football fans will be attending the World Cup in Germany. From roaming voice calls and texts to goal alerts, videos, pictures and even mobile TV, the football World Cup will give the mobile industry a massive boost. However delivery tests reveal that not everyone is ready to score.
According to research from Informa Telecoms & Media, visiting supporters will spend a combined total of EUR 36.5 million on mobile calls, text and video messages during this month's FIFA World Cup.
Roaming Charges
Informa estimate that each person will generate an average of EUR 36.50 roaming charges during their stay. A typical roamer is expected to send 8 text messages, make 10 voice calls, generate a single data session, possibly to send an MMS, and receive 6 calls during their visit.
"Recent price cuts announced by operators such as Orange and Vodafone are going to benefit fans of teams inside the European Union but it's worth remembering that 21 of the teams in the tournament are from non-European countries. They will be paying a lot more to call home than European supporters. A Brazilian fan will be charged as much as EUR 3.50 per minute to call Brazil from Germany - three times what it will cost a European supporter. Many may opt for purchasing local SIM cards or other alternative roaming solutions, as advocated by tourist boards and some mobile operators," says Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media.
The assessment is based on roaming usage patterns and pricing trends in retail and wholesale roaming prices that are examined in the forthcoming Global Mobile Roaming Strategic Research report published by Informa Telecoms & Media.
Mobile TV
Four major cities in Germany, (Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover and Munich) are running a World Cup pilot with DVBH – digital video broadcasting for handhelds. Germany’s E-Plus, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone have joined forces to promote the development of mobile TV. DVBH already enables broadcasting of TV and radio programmes over 16 channels.
Using IP technology, T-Mobile is broadcasting 20 matches onto the handset via a subscription fee of €7,50 during the World Cup.
Colin Orviss, co-owner and founder of Logan Orviss International, points to the importance of quality and reliability in the data-centric market that mobile and IP services operators are playing in today.
“Not enough effort is being put into reliability of delivering media content. If customers are disappointed by not getting the content they have paid for, or by getting a spotty or grainy image, operators will lose repeat customers. Sports fans are serious about seeing every piece of the action with a good quality picture,†he said.
Video Mail
Based on its experiences over the New Year and during the winter Olympics in Italy, videomail specialist Mobeon estimates that the World Cup will over three million videos will be shared by mobile phone users. “Voice services during the World Cup will be stretched by the shear volume of calls. Having messaging services set up ensures mobile users can be confident that video, picture and text messages will get through should a call not complete,†said Birgitta Olson, VP marketing at Mobeon.
Video Clip Faster Than SMS!
Argogroup tested the new World Cup services provided by all five UK mobile operators during England’s Group B game with Paraguay between 2.00pm and 4.00pm on Saturday 10th June. The services were tested on a variety of phones from different manufacturers. All five operators offer an SMS-based alert before each game offering team news, plus alerts for each goal, at half time and at the end of the game. Only two operators, including 3, offer a video clip service.
T Mobile – official sponsor or the tournament – was fastest to deliver its text update, delivering the news in just over three minutes. This was more than twice as fast as one operator, whose SMS took nearly six and a half minutes to arrive in customers’ inboxes. This was nearly 90 seconds slower than it took 3 to deliver an edited, high quality 10 second video clip of David Beckham’s free kick. Another operator’s service was not able to be tested because the registration process failed completely despite several attempts.
Sleepy Text Alerts
For the England/Sweden match, Swedish operators edged their UK counterparts in the competition to provide the best mobile data services to subscribers, providing quicker SMS alerts than their UK counterparts for the game's goals. One of the UK's quintet took 12 minutes or more to inform consumers about each of the four scores. One Swedish operator, 3, also showed an uncharacteristic passion for the game: their SMS shrieked 'NEEEJ!' when England scored and 'JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!' when Sweden
equalised. Its British sister simply offered the score.
The worst-performing operator was on average three times slower than the pack, sending the team line-ups to sports fans 44 minutes after kick-off. Its SMS goal alert was seven times slower than
FIFA's, arriving long after other operators had delivered an edited video clip of the goal.
"All three Swedish companies performed a little better than the British firms and were much closer to each other in terms of quality and performance" said David Frodsham, Argogroup CEO. "In the UK the operators are offering the service themselves, whereas in Sweden the operators are just pointing to 3rd party providers. This may be a reason for the difference."
Testing Testing 1 2 3
"This is hugely important to everyone in the industry," said Frodsham, "Our collective future rests on our ability to be credible content players. We believe that active testing can help operators get it right - but first we must all admit we're getting it wrong."
"Clearly, our industry has a long way to go if we want to be seen as a serious provider of sports coverage," said James Pearce, Argogroup CTO, "Operators have proven (with the FIFA alerts) that they can deliver 160 characters in a timely manner. What they failed to show is that they can add value by delivering their own content faster than, say, the average newspaper."
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