Wireless carriers are risking their place in the mobile value chain by not responding to consumer demand for smart, personalized mobile Internet services quickly enough.

Carriers need to act fast according to Mike O?Malley, director of market planning and analysis at Tellabs. Mr. O?Malley offered his suggestions for carriers in this exclusive interview with Mobile Marketer.

What are the main takeaways of Tellabs/Nielsen?s latest survey about carriers? role in the value chain?
Users have a tremendous appetite for personalized mobile services and 63 percent say they would use these services within six months.

Users look positively on mobile operator offerings and trust them with valuable and personal services that they may not trust to an unknown Internet service company.

However, mobile operators must act now to take advantage of the mobile Internet opportunity.

To what do you attribute media organizations?, app developers? and service providers? advantage when compared to the carriers?
The advantage of the existing ecosystem of Internet advertisers and app developers is that they already provide many of these services. 

However, the operators? advantage is that they have much more information about the consumer and they are already trusted by the consumer.

What can carriers do to avoid becoming a dumb pipe?
Carriers need to act quickly to put a smart mobile Internet infrastructure in place to deliver the fast, personalized mobile multimedia experience that consumers demand.

What effect could this situation have on brand advertisers, agencies and marketers?
If operators have a mobile Internet infrastructure, this could open a whole new level of customization of marketing advertising available to brand advertisers.

Brand advertisers would now have much more information to use to target ads.

On the Internet, ads are targeted based on keyword search or Web site visited.

In the personalized mobile space, (assuming consumers agreed to share their information), ads could be targeted based on their physical location, the types of mobile applications they use, their social media circle, things they buy using mobile commerce, credit history and etcetera. 

The advertisers will be able to microtarget ads to users that are much more interested in a particular brand based on their known behaviors and physical location.