WW-138 -- Japan Lags Behind in Mobile Messaging and TV

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J@pan Inc presents the Wireless Watch Newsletter:

W I R E L E S S W A T C H

Commentary on Japan's Wireless World
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Wireless Watch Newsletter
Issue No. 138
Monday January 24, 2005
TOKYO

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CONTENTS

@@ Viewpoint: Japan Lags Behind in Mobile Messaging and TV

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@@ Viewpoint: Japan Lags Behind in Mobile Messaging and TV

Interactive television is big in Europe. Switch on your
television in Europe and you are bombarded with SMS short
codes. You can vote, play a quiz or participate in contests.
Carriers and providers of these interactive services make
good money out of this as the text messages are premium
priced - on top of the normal price for a text message,
the user often pays more than one euro for sending the
message. These interactive services are addictive - young
people often work part-time at night and weekends to pay
their hefty mobile phone bills.

We are frequently contacted by companies asking for
state-of-the-art interactive cross-media services in Japan.
Our reply is disappointing - the Japanese lag behind.
The Japanese carriers have not opened their messaging
networks to allow for messaging using easy-to-input
three- or four-digit short codes. Instead users have to
send a mail to a complete xxx@yyy.com mail address or input
a URL to access a mobile website. This is too big a hurdle
for most people driven by emotional reflexes to participate
instantaneously in these sorts of campaigns.

Why are the Japanese carriers reluctant to open their
networks? One reason is technical: the huge Japanese couch
potato population might become so addicted to these services
that the traffic spikes generated by millions of pieces of mail
sent at the same time would paralyze the network. Scaling up
the network capacity would be expensive. In Europe text messages
are sent using a low-level signaling protocol (SS7) that
does not affect other mobile data services and is easier
to scale up.

Cybird, a mobile content provider, is betting on terrestrial
digital broadcasting to introduce cross-media interaction
between mobile phone and television. Using a so-called
One Push Java appli on their mobile phone, viewers can
send messages through the infrared communications to the
television. The television connects over the internet to
send the viewer data to a central server. This server sends
a mobile mail with a URL to the viewer's phone. Clicking the
URL brings the viewer to a mobile site so he or she can access
full functionality including quizzes and contests. The
functionality offered is much richer than for texting. Will
it take off? Europe showed that interactive services do not
have to be high-tech to become adapted by the big masses.
Cybird better try to convince the carriers to introduce
simple interactive texting using short codes rather than
email addresses.

-- Arjen van Blokland

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