13 hours until kick off of the keynote address at the exclusive sponsored data panel discussion!
https://mobileecosystemforum.com/event/beyond-voice-text-data-disruptive-services-grow-carrier-arpu/
Beyond voice, text, and data – disruptive services to grow carrier ARPU
February 27 @ 14:00 - 15:00
Beyond voice, text, and data – disruptive services to grow carrier ARPU
Moderated by Susan Welsh de Grimaldo from Strategy Analytics this panel session of mobile industry experts will explore the next generation of content services and business models to increase operator ARPU, add new subscribers, and strengthen customer retention.
Unlimited data plans swept the US in 2017 and are now making their way to other developed markets. However, these plans are not available in emerging markets due to limited network capacity and prohibitive pricing.
Supported by
Space for this session is limited and on a first come first served basis. Please register here to secure your seat.
To better monetize their networks, mobile carriers in emerging economies, such as Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America are showing great interest in new content-centric models. Many operators are already experimenting with zero-rated content, sponsored data, and “content plans.”
In 2018, more economical and targeted solutions, such as unlimited data content offers, ad- supported content, time or usage-based micro plans, and unlimited-data content subscriptions can lower the access barrier for consumers and grow carrier ARPUs. These new models also open up the funnel for the entire ecosystem, allowing brands, app developers, and publishers new ways to acquire, engage, and monetize consumers by reducing the unnecessary tax associated with mobile data limits.
Speakers
Gary Greenbaum
Co-founder & CEO
Syntonic
Connect
Frederic Dingemans
Head of Digital Commerce
Tata Communications
Connect
Nicholas Wodtke
Executive Vice President of Digital Content
Veon
Connect
Danielle Levitas
Senior Vice President, Research & Professional Services
App Annie
Connect
Susan Welsh de Grimaldo
Director, Global Wireless Practice
Strategy Analytics
Connect
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Ahead of an
exclusive panel at MWC examining the next generation of disruptive content services, Syntonic Co-Founder and CEO Gary Greenbaum here discusses the market opportunities for content solutions that allow consumers to experience the mobile internet beyond their data plan with unrestricted access to apps and content.
Today’s basic data plan is built around ‘megabytes’ and ‘gigabytes’ of data, however, the concept of data is fundamentally abstract and confusing for the consumer.
What do you actually get with a gigabyte of data? We live in an app-centric economy where consumers recognize value based on the mobile apps and content they consume, rather than the ‘bits and bytes’ sold by mobile operators.
Syntonic introduced the Freeway® app to help consumers discover and explore the content they want, and we developed back-end Freeway technologies to support business models and industry solutions that are simultaneously friendly to the interests of operators, value-added service providers, app developers, publishers, OEMs, and advertisers.
A number of mobile operators across the globe are experimenting with solutions to ‘zero-rate’ mobile apps to provide consumers
unlimited access. However, there’s usually fine print surrounding these consumer offerings, which illustrates incompleteness and restrictions that silently tax the consumers’ data plans. For example, that zero-rated pass to a music app may not zero-rate the video, ads, images, and more from the music app because content delivered through an application typically originates from a set of dynamic source IP addresses that can’t be readily accounted for by the operator’s solution.
In practice this means the consumer will have to use some unknown amount of their own data to enjoy the
unlimited data they purchased or accepted from a sponsor.
If the consumer becomes aware of the leakage against their data plan it comes as an awkward surprise, jeopardizing their loyalty with the operator. There’s little solace from referring the consumer back to the fine print. With Freeway by Syntonic, every component associated within the app or website is data free. Freeway also supports the mobile ecosystem: it doesn’t require any changes to the network, or apps, is available on iPhone and Android smartphones, and is offered to mobile operators as a white-labeled service.
Freeway lets consumers experience the mobile internet beyond their data plan. While the recent growth in unlimited data plans has given many U.S. consumers unrestricted access to mobile apps and content, there are many users, especially in emerging markets, that remain on prepaid or postpaid plans with limited access.
When users exhaust their data allocation, they have limited choices: seek out a Wi-Fi hotspot, restrict usage, buy additional data, or simply do without. Those are not great options for the consumer. These limitations also impede app developers, publishers, and advertisers that want to reach consumers to build brand awareness, or acquire and engage users to monetize the assets they’ve developed.
Freeway provides consumers an alternative path, whereby a sponsor can pay for the consumer’s access to deepen engagement, or the consumer can purchase unlimited data content plans to access the app or content they want.
The ability to personalize the mobile experience to gain access to the specific apps and content a consumer wants lets them use their smartphones to watch, listen, share, and play more without having to worry about the complexities of data usage. And it simultaneously enables the mobile ecosystem to deepen engagement.
The Freeway platform was designed to be highly flexible and adaptable. It supports any mobile app, service or content, and it’s easily personalized for the consumer. From a business perspective, this means that Syntonic can readily introduce new content access models to market, such as sponsored data and more recently, Freeway Overpass™ – which allows users to directly pay for one day, one week, or one month of unlimited access to specific apps and groups of apps.
For the consumer, Freeway provides a steady stream of unlimited access to a growing set of new and popular apps with a product experience that is constantly evolving to meet their needs and expectations. The Freeway platform lets app developers strengthen their user relationship; advertisers reach a new audience; and allows mobile operators to move beyond traditional commodity data plans and capture new sources of revenue from the app economy.
Gary Greenbaum
Co-Founder and CEO, Syntonic
