@MWC: Execs tout societal benefits of wireless

BARCELONA – The first official day of this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, kicked off with a high-powered, though low- energy, keynote address with heads of Vodafone Group plc, Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion Ltd. giving their perspective on the wireless industry. Though it must be said that RIM’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ view was decidedly BlackBerry-based.
Vodafone’s CEO Vittorio Colao touched on a range of topics relative to the expanse of the carrier he oversees. Colao said that the current economic troubles were a perfect time for the wireless industry to invest into their operations in support of future growth.
“Think of the next five years as the new seeding phase of the industry like the first half of the 90s where when we started the GSM world,” Colao said.
This investment was especially important as a means to prop up ailing economies, which Colao said is often overlooked by governments.
“Many governments have not yet recognized that mobile is a key sector for rebuilding the European economy,” Colao said, noting the benefits of enabling mobile voice and data services for consumers and businesses.
Colao said carriers needed to make serious attempts to meet the increasing demand for data services, but added that no one consumer should be allowed to degrade the quality of service of others.
“If someone wants more, they should be allowed to pay for it,” Colao graciously offered.
Saying he supported net neutrality, Colao said Vodafone should offer the same level of service quality to a third-party provider of Voice over Internet Protocol service that Vodafone would provide if it offered a VoIP service.
Tapping into Vodafone’s broad reach into a number of developing markets, Colao hinted that many nations were averse to letting wireless carriers touch markets that were the stronghold of established corporations. Colao specifically mentioned the banking industry, noting that the wireless industry has an important role to play in expanding the opportunity to underserved segments of the population, but that the carrier was seeing pushback in some markets.
“We operators do not want to become banks, we just want to take people that are unbanked and make them pre-banked,” Colao explained. “The banks can then take them into being banked.”
Alcatel-Lucent’s CEO Ben Verwaayen touched on similar themes of using wireless to enhance the lives of consumers, but noted that the mobile industry was still seen by many governments as an extravagance and not a necessity.
“We are not seen as a force of good when it comes to social issues,” said Verwaayen. “We are seen as an industry of ‘me’ instead of ‘we’.”
Verwaayen noted that this view has led to the high taxation rate placed upon the industry, adding that it needs to be seen as more like the oil industry where the common good is enhanced by the products and services provided.
BlackBerry to the rescue
RIM’s Lazaridis used his time on stage to hype the company’s BlackBerry platform, highlighting the network efficiencies embedded in the offering. While not the sexiest aspect of a phone, Lazaridis’ claim that a carrier could support the data service of three BlackBerry devices for every one of another device’s operating system was compelling at a time when carriers are beginning to see strains from customer usage.
“That’s three paying BlackBerry customers for every one on other platforms,” Lazaridis said.
The RIM exec also took a dig at the proliferation of the numbers game for application stores, noting that RIM’s application storefront was more interested in providing the right applications, and not just the greatest amount.
“You don’t need 100,000 applications, you just need ones you love,” Lazaridis said, playing off Apple Inc.’s recent claim that its App Store supported more than 100,000 applications. Lazaridis claimed the apps that customers find they can’t live without should be dubbed “super-apps.”
Lazaridis also showed off a glimps of the company’s soon-to-launch new Web browser designed to replace the current embedded browser derided by many as clumsy and difficult to use. The new browser is expected to provide a more true Internet experience.