Aircel has not responded to my queries and neither I am interested to follow them up. I had earlier emailed them about the promotion of mobile apps. It isn’t clear how they were developed and what platform is supported.
But I was genuinely surprised to see their advertisements in main stream media for Wifi access through smart platforms (phones/laptops/tablets). Although the adverts did allude to a “rosy picture”; it is not entirely clear as to how they propose to pull it off with no identified “backend”. More so, it is important that Wifi needs to be scaled up to residential areas so that they enough traction to call the shots as well as have a positive spin off on their recently launched 3G options.
As it says: The Webbox is externally just a 14cm by 25cm QWERTY keyboard that has an RCA cable dangling from its rear–this coaxial cable will connect to a domestic TV tuned to a particular channel, and lets Webbox content appear on its screen. Inside it’s pretty sophisticated, with the guts of a 3G smartphone powering it–it runs over EDGE or 2.5G networks to get its data, and leverages Opera’s Mini browser suite (which compresses web pages to much smaller file sizes remotely) to ensure that the data burden on cell phone networks is low–which is good for low-income users and struggling cell networks alike–and that the device works swiftly.
It is an interesting concept. It combines a ‘mobile telephony’ through 2.5G (or horrors of horrors through GPRS) and thence output through your television.
I have run Opera Mini on my laptop through Java Emulator; it’s brilliant access at times when I don’t have access to Wifi. This Internet TV is something similar in it’s approach although they have routed the output through a usual TV.
However, this is not the end all. Heavy Java Script sites would not work; although the demo is not clear, Opera Mini is expected to run the mobile versions alone; this is not a very pleasant experience.
What gets my goose is that India has been lumped with the bygone nations -Kenya, Ghana and others. This only reflects their “poverty of thought” and generalized assholism. I am not a fan of Vodafone at all; despite their slick advertisements, it does nothing to “serve” it’s customers and perhaps one of the worst telecom companies. Nevertheless, this is a good innovation; it remains to be see how well they are able to capitalize on this, if and when it is launched.
Oh by the way, expect some rather crude “download limits”; these buggers are going to charge you per kb. Their billing systems are pathetic and try wrangling out the details from their customer care executives. You’d be appalled.
Last but not the least. Beyond certain “platitudes” and ass licking in the media (with crumbs thrown at the journalists and news papers), I really doubt whether they would have a mass market for it. They could have easily loaded up Opera Mobile instead.
And yes, as the dingbat in the advertisement says about “technological leap”, it isn’t so. The mobile phone circuits (and the RAM) is cheap with an output for the TV and external keyboard. It’s not big deal but it’s a good idea.
I rarely cover the mobileInternet on this blog. Part of the reason is my antipathy towards a highly inefficient medium of communication that has been sold as “standard”. As well as persistent ad spends to try and increase usage. The real shit is in Broadband folks and we don’t see any action on that front.
Nokia India is seeing a decreasing market share because it is staffed up by inefficient morons who have no clue where the technology trends are heading for. Even on their “low end 3Ghandsets”, I don’t see mention of Opera Mini, a Java based browser, but their inane persistence towards technological harakiri. Hence the rise of alternative technological platforms to access mobile internet.
Even in the huge market, the per capita consumption is barely 7MB per month which may be true (reflects my own usage on Docomo that I have). The idea behind having Mini installed is that it efficiently compresses the page before it is rendered on your handset. Nokia has not been able to get ANY traction in this market and Opera is seeing millions of page views per month through it’s data centre.
This of course worries me as a Desktop user. Even though it grows in popularity in mobile space and earns revenue from Google for it’s searches, it does not seem to have a spill over in the desktop segment.
Although they have done everything to open up the extensions framework but it seems that it is bound to be doomed the way Opera Unite/ Opera Widgets were. There is no palpable excitement in the blogosphere about this.
Apart from this, IMHO, mobile internet has a huge potential to grow in terms of “apps”. These little widgets are a rage and out of all the mobile operators only Aircel seems to be doing something right. At least they have created a framework for the same to spur on internet usage. To be honest, I haven’t seen their application in real time but their advertisements are a pointer towards the same. Yet, if they were REALLY smart, they would open up their application framework
