The Cloud - Wi-fi strategy

The Cloud is provider of nationwide WIFI networks in Europe countries.

Initial Strategy ?

Provides laptop and gadget users to surf the Web for around $8.50 an hour or $17 a month at 7,500 cafes, hotels, pubs, airports and other public places in Britain, Germany and Sweden.

This type of offering hurt mobile service carrier companies like Vodafone and Orange where both can't provide similar service via 3G mobile-phone networks at similar price; it has to be higher.

Thus this is indeed a good example of MVNO as evangelized by MCMC.

Future Strategy ?

To force the big players like Vodafone and Orange to pay them in advance by sharing mutual customers. How they do this ?

The voice business - where The Cloud is prodding customers and business to make cheap VOIP calls through its hotspots.

VOIP- as according to London research firm Informa Telecoms & Media says will be a $550 billion mobile-voice business by 2010.

They are already teaming up with SKYPE which allow SKYPE users to call anywhere from their hot-spots through headset-equipped laptops. The purpose of working with SKYPE is because it has 66 million registered users, and if these people connect via Cloud's networks instead of a mobile network, mobile operators will lose revenue big time.

This coupled with even more disruptive power (to earn more money) when mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia and Motorolla start to sell dual-mode phones that let users call via the Net or mobile networks, without SKYPE's software. Shouldn't SKYPE already negotiated to prevent this ?

The biggest challenge for mobile network operators are..

"If they don't embrace these things, they'll lose the game." George Polk, CEO of The Cloud

Thus, mobile network operators like Vodafone and Orange is expected to pay The Cloud some commission to channel back certain users to their networks. Or they can pay up-front booking fees to have certain traffics reserved for them.

~Now i know why eBay wanted to acquire SKYPE~

contents taken from - Time December 12, 2005 by Mark Halper/London
Scenario in Malaysia?

MCMC recently had announced the controlled base rate for interconnection, which benefits MNVO.

Redtone has previously mentioned strong intention to venture into MNVO (here too) instead of 3G.

Maxis, Digi, Astro and MiTV are all gearing up for 3G.

While smaller players like CNX, Airzed and others are not yet creating much disruptive act.

---------------evalet----------
1. Why MNVO ?
2. Why eBay acquired SKYPE?
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Comments

Anonymous said…
That's a great story. Waiting for more. »