At a time when many households have one, two or even more mobile phone subscriptions, it is frustrating to note that only 18 per cent of college students found mobile internet services to be satisfactory.

At the same time, the granddaddy of mobile internet, I-mode from NTT DoCoMo, the simplest and most painless way to get to internet services from a cellphone, is finding such a lack of interest in Europe that it is being phased out in some markets.

A tech-savvy colleague complained, while trying to get his new Treo configured for e-mail, “If everybody had as much trouble getting online by phone as I have, I’m surprised there even is a mobile internet”.

And that’s before seeing his first monthly bill for those data services, an invoice that may scare him straight back to voice calls.

InfoGin, an Israeli company that after seven years in business might no longer pass as a start-up, disclosed in its survey of British universities early this year that two out of three students found surfing the internet on their mobile such a poor experience that they gave up. These are college kids, mind you, people who practically grew up with cell phones and are culturally defined by the shape and sophistication of their handsets.

InfoGin, which makes software that enables smoother surfing, also found that 71 per cent of the students in its trial would pay for a service like InfoGin’s that improved the mobile internet experience.

In a private demonstration, InfoGin’s system seemed persuasive. But the business opportunities for helping people simplify their mobile phone use doesn’t stop there. In fact, it may know no bounds.

Schering Health Care, for instance, is running a marketing trial in London for its emergency contraceptive pill, Levonelle. When users send a text message from the privacy of their handset, they will receive a message back to their phone with the addresses of the three closest pharmacies.

Meanwhile, ZYB, a Copenhagen start-up, offers a service to store, manage, share and access your mobile data on the internet via a personal computer.

More than eight million contacts have already been backed up through ZYB, whose basic services are free. Judging by the frustration of many “normal” subscribers you would think that the “mobile internet” had just arrived, when in fact it became technically available almost a decade ago.

Analysys, a consulting firm in Cambridge, England, believes “the outlook is far from gloomy if mobile operators learn from the most successful services in the world”. A vast majority (83 per cent) of the respondents to InfoGin’s survey said that it was becoming more important for them to access the web while on the move.
Rather than leave the “keep it simple, stupid” market to start-ups and entrepreneurs, I think it falls to the big telecom companies to work harder for their end users.
IHT