Friday, December 01, 2006
Smartone-Vodafone's Broadband To Go
by David Jacques
Some time ago I met with Smartone-Vodafone (a mobile services company in Hong Kong) Director of Future Services Chris Lau to talk about customer research and how it could help improve the customer experience. Mr. Lau said he already knew everything there is to know about his customers. I was very impressed. So when Smartone-Vodafone sales person cold-called me up in the office last week to offer a demonstration of a new service, I was curious.
“Broadband To Go” is a wireless internet connection claiming speeds up to 3.6Mbps. Because it uses mobile phone networks, you can connect wherever there is HSDPA, 3G or GPRS coverage (although the 3.6Mbps is very theoretical but that’s not the point of this article). In the short term, until the next wireless technology comes along, that can be a fairly useful service particularly for the laptop business user on the road.
However a number of issues show that this was launched hastily for technology’s sake with a few obvious problems that show a misunderstanding of the users and their context of use.
Fragile Connector
The device sleek-looking device (a modem), unfortunately plugs on the side of your computer through the USB port, hanging by a tiny connector at one end. The whole point of this product is to allow users to be connected anywhere, most likely on laptops, not always stable table surface. A slip of the laptop, pressure on the device, and all the torsion is on that small connector. It is guaranteed that many users will have breakages with the device snapping off or worse, damage some users’ USB port.
Different Number for SMS
You can send and receive SMS messages directly from the computer. Problem is, the device uses a SIM card, and you can’t use your existing phone number. Who wants to manage two SMS numbers, on two different devices? And how will the people you exchange with know when to SMS to your laptop number, or your phone number? You won’t receive messages sent to your laptop until you login. That goes against the common usage and purpose of SMS.
Pay-per-Kb
At a listed price of HK$3,500 (US$ 450), the modem is very expensive, but the real issue is that unless you take the more expensive unlimited transfer package, you pay per amount of data transferred. The whole idea of broadband is to be able to download more in less time. And value of data is very relative to each user. A tiny Excel sheet can be worth as much to one person as a huge video file to another.
Restricted Use
So one would think that taking the unlimited package is much more advantageous. The small print however states that "In keeping interest of all customers, there are restrictions to the use of VOIP, Bit Torrent, video streaming and other such types of applications", meaning that Smartone-Vodafone actually restricts almost anything that makes broadband advatageous over slower connections.
Roaming Cost
Worldwide roaming sounds very interesting. But at HK$0.12 per kilobytes, that’s HK$120 (US$15) per Mb. That means downloading a typical day’s emails would cost me, with the 100-plus spams and genuine emails with attachments I receive daily, US$20 to US$40 a pop. A 30-second YouTube video can cost you US$50.
We might say that if the service is targeted to business people on the go and that the company is paying anyway, cost doesn’t matter. But the ad campaign seems to target a much broader audience (see www.getmoving.com.hk for the Web site).
Get Moving
On a side note, the apparent disparity between the actual and the campaign's target customers is similar to Cathay Pacific's “Born to Move” campaign reviewed earlier this year. And the TV ads have strange similarities, including scenes of a young colored-hair woman jumping around in reverse-motion. If it is not the same creative director trying to recycle his old idea, then it almost seems like the creators of this new campaign were heavily “influenced” by Cathay’s old one.
About the author: David Jacques is Founder and Principal Consultant of Customer input. He is specialized in human-computer interaction, usability and qualitative research techniques.
Comments from readers
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Overall, WiFi remains my option of choice for wireless connectivity. It might have less coverage but I don't need to take my email in the taxi and i don't want to take it walking from point A to point B as the spots on the Web site suggest. Nor in the water at the beach.