Sometimes I wonder if the big incumbent companies don’t innovate as much as they should because they are consciously defending their legacy revenue streams?
It must be hard to say let’s go down this route because it makes sense and blow the fact that we will initially reduce our revenue for the short-term until the innovation starts bringing in more cash.
At the moment a simple innovation in the area of mobile data would make my life easier, and also just makes sense to me. It may mean a possible reduction in short-term revenue (but I reckon it would actually increase it although that’s a gut decision as I don’t have the data to make a data driven one, of course if a telco wants to grant us access to the data we would be happy to help them make a data driven decision!)
So the innovation I would like is the ability to have all our mobile devices to access data via a single data plan. Hell let me go one step further (oh im such a dare-devil) and lets say our entire team can run all their devices off a single data plan.
That would save me a hell a lot of time, effort and pain.
At the moment our iPhones are all on Telecom plans with an individual 3gb of data. Our iPads are hanging off a shared data plan from 2Degrees (they are the only ones who have out their toes in the shared data plan innovation it seems), which we top up with 12gb shared each 6 months (iPads don’t use that much if you’re not streaming movies). Of course 2Degrees only allows 5 devices off a shared data plan (why?) so we have 2 plans and are going to have to get 2 more as we grow this year (ohhhh wanna job?).
So why can’t I just have a single plan that all our devices share?
Oh while I’m at it, why can’t my iPad and my iPhone have a shared sim/phone number? I remember in the 90’s when I was with BellSouth we could get dual sim cards so you could keep one in your pocket (ok hip 😉 and one for a second mobile in your car. Both had the same number so hop in your car, turn your hipster off and you could answer on your in-car phone.
So lets look at the lost revenue factor. You could make me still buy a minimum of 3GB of data per iPhone I connect to the shared plan. That way you will retain the revenue per person you get at the moment. Of course letting me share that data across the team and the devices would be better for me. And I bet we change our behaviour and start adding extra data packs to our shared plans in the near future as we use our mobile devices more and more (I started off with a 2GB a month data connection at home and are up to 80GB at the mo and still growing!).
Oh yeah forgot to mention I spend money with Vodafone, 2Degrees and Telecom off and on for shared wi-fi dongles as well when we have a project team on a customer site. Why? Just cause its easier than everyone hooking their individual iPhones up to their individual laptops. So let me add wi-fi dongles to my wish list, in fact make it any mobile device to make it easy for me.
Of course we all know where trying to defend the legacy way of doing business has gotten companies. Remember MasterPiece Financials, Burroughs etc?
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