Looking at the subscriber from a different perspective, that is, one who is going to use the mobile device as an on-ramp to the internet, the service provider can embrace the Internet model of making money: extracting value add from the advertisers instead of the subscriber. Half of all internet traffic is from mobile, which means there’s huge opportunity for location-based advertising. I’ve started to see mobile ads now, and given the prevalence of ads when accessing the internet from our laptop, I’m not as taken aback by ads on my phone as I might have been at one time.  The time is probably right now for this.   Another page out of the Internet book is providing a freemium model for value-added services.   Maybe a three-person conference call is free but another over is chargeable.  There are many variations of this.

Obviously, analytics play a large role in the Internet model of making money and the service provider would have all kinds of data available for that as well.  In an article I wrote in Internet Telephony magazine about IoT and Real-time communications, there were about different kinds of value-added services that could be offered, from real-time communications in connected cars to smart health.  This whole area of smart homes, smart cities, smart cars, etc. is a huge value-added service that is in the inception phase and will only grow.

Next week, I’ll be talking about value-added services from an enterprise perspective. Stay tuned.