GPRS Applications Creep Into View
By Mathew Downward , Apr 12 2001
OverNet Data and QuadraNet claim to have launched
Europe's first restaurant booking service over GPRS networks
– months before GPRS networks have been made available
to consumers.
UK mobile data company OverNet has teamed with
restaurant IT firm QuadraNet to offer the 'Livebookings
Mobile' service in partnership with BT Cellnet, which launched
some GPRS services for the corporate market in June 2000.
The service is being pushed on Microsoft PocketPC devices.
Some 40 million restaurant bookings are made in London
each year, according to QuadraNet. Under the terms of the
agreement, the 400 member restaurants will pay ?1.00
($1.43) per person for the booking, which OverNet Data and
QuadraNet divide equally. The service, launched on
Wednesday and available on GSM, will become operational
on GPRS late this year.
The pitch is that GPRS's 'always-on' connection to the mobile
Internet will change the way people use their mobile devices.
Given the appalling take-up among consumers of WAP, it
would have to, if anybody wants to make any money out of
GPRS. Demands from software protocols have brought the
data transmission speeds over GPRS way below projections
of just a few months ago.
It is a measure of how desperate service providers,
operators and device manufacturers are to show the value of
GPRS to consumers that these kinds of services are being
touted as GPRS applications. A chicken and egg scenario has
developed that has created an impasse between the data
applications being available to run over GPRS devices, and
the devices being available to run the applications. As a
result, the initial applications for GPRS are turning out to be
versions of WAP services originally designed to run over
GSM.
"GPRS will be relatively slow when first unveiled," admitted
James Laurence, CEO of OverNet Data, which was the first
UK mobile data firm to go public last year on the Alternative
Investment Market.
Laurence says the transmission speed doesn't matter,
because BALI, OverNet's proprietary mobile software
platform, compresses the data transmitted into very small
amounts. Users can select a range of restaurants by location,
ambiance, style of food and price range, and then drill down
to a particular restaurant to make a reservation. This request
hooks into QuadraNet's restaurant interface technology, and
the system is updated in real-time through its customer
relationship management (CRM) portal.
OverNet Data is aiming at as much of the mobile data chain
as possible. The software necessary to run the application
can be implanted in the device, or offered over mobile
operator portals, added at a device reseller level, or even
downloaded over the Internet at livebookings.com.
thefeature.com
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"Laurence says the transmission speed doesn't matter.."
<g>
This may well be true ---- in light of reported "persistent problems with network availability", capacity problems and conflicts with voice and data priority with the very few "early adopters" trying to use networks. What will be the scope of capacity problems when (if) carriers attempt to bring subscribers fully online?
Transmission speed may indeed not matter. |
