Ofcom's Nations and Regions Communications Annual is out now

This is Ofcom’s third annual review of the markets for television, radio, and telecommunications, showing detailed data for the nations and regions across the UK.

Some key points from their press release which you may find interesting (with my comments in italics) are:

• In the previous two years, take-up of broadband was strikingly lower in rural than in urban areas. This year, the data suggest that, taken as a whole, rural areas have caught up – in fact, slightly overtaken urban areas. Overall, 57% of UK homes now have a broadband internet connection, up from 45% a year earlier. I think this is great news as it has felt that broadband uptake had remained relatively static. I'm interested to see how the broadband providers cope with the increasing popularity of the BBC iplayer and other TV channel's video offerings. It's using up a *lot* of bandwidth.


• There are other striking patterns; in the UK’s biggest cities, such as Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester, an ever-larger segment of the population is living without the use of fixed-line telephony. Across the UK as a whole, 87% of homes have a fixed-line telephone (down three percentage points from last year). The 12% of homes which rely on mobile phones only are able, increasingly, to access broadband through wireless technology. I still have a landline but I barely use it - I only have it for accessing broadband as I can't get cable in my area. It seems to me to be a terrible waste of money (and a nice little earner for BT) to keep the line but it's essential thus far.


• People are also using broadband to download video. This report suggests that 30% of adults have taken advantage of video downloading, although on a city-by-city analysis, the hottest hotspots are Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. I thought this figure would have been higher - I need to explore this section in the report further.


• There are many other such fascinating points of detail in the pages that follow. Social networking, as Ofcom has previously reported, is now enjoyed by one in five UK adults. This report suggests that the people of Northern Ireland are among the UK’s most avid social networkers. Across the UK, these sites are most popular among young people. I wonder if that's because the Northern Irish like to chat?! (I have pals from North of the Border in Ireland and they *do* like to talk... I'm jesting! But seriously, if you think facebook is huge in the UK now, it still has some way to go in the market place if we're still at 20% penetration of usage.


• Another big trend is the fact that more than 85% of UK homes now have digital television – ten percentage points higher than a year ago and a significant milestone to have passed in the year in which digital switchover began, in Copeland, Cumbria. At the same time, take-up of digital radio continues to grow, with one in five adults reporting that they have a DAB digital radio at home. Digital here we come. Now if only the signal were reliable in my area... oddly enough, I can actually see the Crystal Palace mast from the end of my road but my signal can be patchy despite the proximity. And if I have my laptop and mobile going at the same time, I quickly get interference on the signal. Sigh.

Anyway, the Ofcom report is a must-read to get the lowdown on the state of the communications market in the UK. It's a veritable mine of well-researched information. Oh, and even better, it's free!

How not to do mobile marketing... Subway style

A friend just alerted me to this review of Subway's latest mobile marketing effort in the US. It's a tale of how not to do mobile couponing essentially. I suggest you give it a good read, but the upshot is that the coupons are only available in a few locations, namely Buffalo, NY and Seattle, WA markets. I can understand starting with some kind of pilot scheme, it makes sense to iron out any issues with a smaller set of customers before going national.

Anyway, back to the campaign. It's supported by the My Subway Mobile website and with flyers in store locations (where the offer is valid). The author of the article, Jay Holcomb, tells us about his experience:

"... despite my sincerest efforts, I had a very difficult time at both Subway locations where I tried to redeem my code that allows for a free sub upon creating account. Each location had the campaign flyers at the cash register, but the problem was to be found in the employees themselves: they had no idea about the campaign! I pointed it out to a total of four employees in these two locations, and no one had ever heard of it before."

A campaign is only as good as it's weakest link and clearly, in Subway's case, the staff were the weakest link. Or was it that staff training was the weakest link. There's no point dumping a load of flyers on your shop counter with the latest offer if you don't brief your team properly. That's something we learned very quickly back in ZagMe days and we spent a lot of time working with store staff and their teams bringing them up to speed with the latest offers and how it all worked.

Mobile marketing isn't just about the technology. The technology is only a small part of it. Your people, your brand, your service all play a part in it too.

You have been warned... don't make the same mistake!

Tesco supports m-retail... or does it?

For those of you who don't know already, I spent the best part of 10 years of my working life in retail - mostly fashion, and mostly in and around London's Oxford Street and Knightsbridge. Later on in my career, I worked for ZagMe, the location based marketing company who marketed to customers via SMS at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls, and much of that time was spent working with retailers creating and running campaigns for them. So I have more than a passing interest in things retail.

So I've been keeping an eye on the m-retail or m-commerce world and was very interested to see that UK grocery retailer, Tesco has joined the world of m-retail after successful trials of ordering flowers via mobile for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

As an aside, Tesco also claims that it's wap portal is a great success attracting over 300,000 customers in December last year. And not only that, but that's it's customers are hungry for ads.

"Banner advertising served up on the portal delivered a click-through rate to tailored WAP campaign sites of between three and seven per cent, said Tesco. Brands advertising on the portal included Bee Movie, ITV, Nivea and Teletext.

Tesco said the user-base of the portal has a strong segment of female household budget owners with an average age of 36 - a demographic it said is particularly valuable for fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries and cleaning products.
According to a survey commissioned by Tesco, more than half (60 per cent) of portal users are female and the same percentage said they visit the portal at least once a month, while 69 per cent claimed they would click on a relevant advert."

So this all bodes well for entering the world of m-commerce. So I thought I'd check it out.

Alas for me, going to http://www.tesco.com/ from my mobile takes me to the main Tesco website with no adaption for the mobile screen whatsoever - large file sizes (well comparatively large when dealing with mobile), navigation required up/down and left/right so you can't actually see anything properly.

It occurred to me that they'd probably done a mobile specific site so I also tried http://www.tesco.mobi/ and http://m.tesco.com/ and neither of those worked.

So it looks like I can't do a review of the service for you.

I then thought, well maybe it's for Tesco Mobile customers only (Tesco Mobile being the pay as you go MVNO with O2), especially since their wap portal has been such a success.

And then I saw how much data charges were on Tesco Mobile... £4 per megabyte. Yes, that's right, a whopping £4 a megabyte. And there's no mention of whether or not access to the Tesco Mobile Portal is free of charge or not. In fact, there's no mention at all of any Tesco Mobile Portal or any Tesco mobile shopping service.

There's a free Tesco sim offer on at the moment, I may give it a go although I really don't fancy spending £4 a megabyte to check out their mobile portal and m-commerce offerings.

On the commercial side of the equation, I know that 02 is heavily pushing mobile retail services and is touting Tesco as it's major success story and case study (there's even a video I've seen about it). But if you're going to make your shop invisible and then charge for entry, isn't that just a bit daft?

Hmm. What's going on?

If anyone can shed any light on what's going on with Tesco m-retail and Tesco's wap portal and relevant data charges, please let me know either via the blog or via email.

And on a parting note, I think this quote (via Silicon.com) from Ashley Schofield, head of customer management at Tesco Mobile, is somewhat ironic:

"Our customers are showing a real appetite for more products and services
through the mobile internet. Delivering more great experiences and value through
our portal is a priority for this year."

Ashley, I'm not sure how you can deliver more great experiences and more value through the portal when you're charging £4 a megabyte.

Technokitten's upcoming London gigs

I'm a busy lady this month with several speaking engagements and workshops lined up both public events and clients. I thought it might be useful to let you know about the public events in case any of you lovely readers were in London town and fancied coming along to share your knowledge and wisdom with us.

MoMo London
I kick off on Monday 2nd June at MoMo London with "Wassup in Mobile Media and Marketing?"
I'm chairing a high-level panel discussion on current mobile web, services and applications from a media and marketing perspective. We'll take a look at everything from mobile web to proximity to messaging to games and highlight creative execution and effective campaigns. We'll also discuss what media-owners and agencies want and how we as an industry should or could respond. We will also be challenging our expert panel to take a glimpse into the future and tell us what's catching their eye on the mobile horizon and what they think will capture the public's attention in the future.

Panellists include Matthew Postgate from the BBC and Stephen Pinches from the Financial Times and the event is being held at the Royal Statistical Society near Moorgate tube

Those details again:

Theme: Wassup in Mobile Media and Marketing?
When: Monday June 2nd (doors open at 6pm as usual)
Where: Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, London, EC1Y 8LX, UK (http://www.rss.org.uk)
Our kind sponsor: Wireless Foundry!

To register, please add yourself to the list here: http://snurl.com/2aup4

EDM08
Next up, on Monday 9th June, I'm leading a panel on mobile advertising at this one-day conference focussed on mobile search and the impact it will have on different sectors of the mobile industry. There's a discount code available for this conference available over at mashable.


Being Digital
Third time lucky is the Being Digital conference on Tuesday 10th June where I'm opening the day with a panel session on digital advertising. As well as the usual conference type discussions, there will also be a dedicated demo area and presentation sessions showcasing the latest offerings from companies breaking new ground in the digital world.

Cass Creatives
More details to come on this one but basically Cass Creatives is celebrating their 5th birthday and are inviting back some of their favourite speakers to join the birthday panel session to see whether the interactive revolution has actually happened in the last 5 years. More details to come as I get them. In the meantime, there's a facebook group to join.

Then on the social side, there's Minibar Mobile this Friday, the NMA social on 18th June, The Guitar Hero on Mobile launch night courtesy of Mobile Entertainment Magazine on 5th June, an Unlimited Drinks night from SMStextnews.com (date tbc), a Women in Mobile Data Association reception on 1st July and a Mobile Geeks of London night at the end of July. I'm also heading out to Barcelona for Mobile 2.0 and plan to hang there for the weekend (subject to flights and accommodation). Who knows, I might even try and squeeze in a Swedish Beers night in too at some point as I'm gutted I can't make the Sydney launch party tomorrow night.

Phew, and on top of all that, I do actually have a day job and clients to work with... oh yeah, and a festival season to squeeze in too. When will they invent a human cloning machine?!

Another case of billshock

Billshock is an oft-used term in mobile circles to describe what happens when you use data services without having any kind of data plan in place and you suddenly get stung for a bill of, what can be, hundreds, if not thousands of pounds.

I've had billshock in the past and it wasn't pleasant. But it wasn't extreme as the case Ian Delaney is currently experiencing.

In short, he was sold an upgrade by one of Carphone Warehouse's telesales team and sent a swanky new Nokia N95 on trial for 14 days. In getting the upgrade, Ian also committed to a monthly data plan. Ian uses the phone to its full effect and tried out lots of lovely new data services. And was enjoying what the mobile internet had to offer.

What he wasn't counting on was having his service cut off very suddenly when trying to make a call and to be told that the reason was that he had a bill of around £500 to pay. On investigation, it seems that the data plan wasn't immediately effective and so billshock ensued, to the tune of £500 or so.

Ian has been trying, so far in vain, to get this sorted out. And he describes, in some detail, the hoops he's had to jump through. I think he's justified in getting annoyed about this because as far as he was concerned, he had an unlimited data plan and no-one told him any different. Of course, navigating the customer services people at Carphone Warehouse is proving very tricky as you'll see from his blog post.

I don't condone what Carphone Warehouse and O2 is doing. They're both at fault.

1. There is no point sending out a fancy new phone with a new contract in place but not have that contract actually in place for another two weeks. That's just daft.

2. O2 should not be allowing its customers to run up such uncharacteristically high bills for data usage. Why not send a courtesy text message or phone call to alert the customer as to what's going on? It's not that hard to do is it? It's common courtesy.

3. Carphone Warehouse should take responsibility for this and apologise to Ian and find a way to cancel the debt owed and start afresh. I'm guessing that it's actually O2's billing system that's at fault and that it's just not that easy to write off a debt of this nature. The reason pre-pay has been so popular in the UK is that, historically, it was harder to get a mobile phone contract than a credit card so it was just simpler to go to your local supermarket, Superdrug or phone shop and get a phone off the shelf without worrying about credit checks and onerous contracts.

4. Customer service is hard to manage when you have no control about the kinds of decisions you're allowed to make to keep the customer happy and to do the right thing. I've been a retail manager and I know what it's like to be dictated to as to what you could and couldn't do to make things right when they sometimes go wrong. You get a lot of responsibility but no control or autonomy. And that's very stressful. There are so many processes and checks to follow that it becomes very long-winded and almost impossible to manage.

Ultimately, both O2 and Carphone Warehouse need to sort this out. And not just Ian's individual case, but the whole issue around billshock and data charges. To still be suffering this nonsense in 2008 when we've had mobile data services for several years now is just plain daft and it's hampering growth in the mobile data sector.

I wonder when Ofcom will do something about this?

Swedish Beers launche Down Under

Not content with London and Barcelona, we're very excited to announce that Swedish Beers is launching Down Under with its inaugural event next week in Sydney.

The team behind the launch is Jen² (Jennifer Hiley of 5th Finger and Jennifer Wilson of Lean Forward) and they've booked the charming Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe for your pleasure.

We all know Aussies love their beer and with mobile penetration at more than 100%, it looks like we also love our mobiles so we reckon you'll also love Swedish Beers Mobile Networking. Come along and join us for a beer or three and plenty of chat at The Redoak Boutique Beer Café. Drinking commences @ 5.30pm. Nothing formal, no speakers, no powerpoint, nothing flashy, just turn up and mingle and hang out with folks from the mobile, marketing and media worlds. So if you're friendly, enjoy mixing and have a passing interest in mobile, then come and hang out with the nice Swedish Beers folks Down Under. No need to RSVP unless you'd really like to but do spread the word to your colleagues and friends.

If the London and Barcelona events are anything to go by, this promises to be a good 'un so you'd better be there to check out the action!

What: Swedish Beers launches Down Under
When: Wednesday 28th May from 5.30pm
Where: The Redoak Boutique Beer Café, 201 Clarence Street, Sydney, Australia. (Here's a map)

Unfortunately the London crew won't be there to enjoy the first event Down Under, but we've left you in the capable hands of Jen² in our absence.

skål

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What is Swedish Beers?
Swedish Beers www.swedishbeers.co.uk is an ad-hoc mobile networking event (run roughly quarterly) by British mobilists, Helen Keegan (aka technokitten) and Steve Flaherty of RespondMobile. It has been running in London since October 2001 and in Barcelona for the last 3 years. Find us on facebook too.