Carrier responds to net neutrality issue

September 29, 2009

Johanna Johansson is business development manager at Consumer Telenor Sweden

Hi Mickey,

I just read your article on the need for net neutrality to drive mobile marketing ("Why net neutrality is a must for mobile marketing's future," Sept. 28).

I particularly reflected your comments on the inertia that is due to carriers� slow response to the market in terms of enabling the market.

Now, working for a carrier (Telenor), I should of course argue too that this is not the case, but I fully agree with you.

With the case of short codes, for example, the MNO's approach to the opportunity is practically non-existing.�

So because this is the case, I felt strongly that I should provide you with an example that shows at least some MNO's are trying to do something about it!

Telenor Sweden has a created self-service concept for the developer community of mobile services. It's called Mobilstart.

Mobilstart works like an aggregator in the sense that it's a cross-MNO platform.� In addition, both technical and economic barriers are reduced for developers: there are plug'n'play features and open API's.

The business model is pure revenue share (nothing upfront) between Mobilstart and developer, letting the developer keep two-thirds of premium charging.�

With Mobilstart, you don't even need to take the risk of aquiring a short code, you rent one. The fee is part of the revenue share between Mobilstart and the developer.

In short time, nearly 12 000 services have been developed on this platform, and that's Swedish territory only.

If you're interested I suggest you check out the English version of the site: https://mobilstart.telenor.se/web/guest/home

Johanna Johansson
Business Development Manager
Consumer Telenor Sweden