Russell Beattie doesn't know wireless

Russell Beattie doesn't know wireless

I like reading Russell Beattie on all kinds of Web 2.0 topics, but he doesn't really know jack about the economic rationale of wireless operators.

Here for example, he reflects on the lousy Virgin XL product. Follow the fairly plausible economic sketch here. Then note to yourself that the average WAP-browsing revenue is actually <$0.25/month. Real user behavior varies from the hypothetical!

Russell Beattie Notebook » Virgin Mobile, Star MTV and Comedy Central Mobile

Okay, so Virgin's VXL home page is pretty scarce, which is a shame since browsing on CDMA2000 1x is a pretty reasonable experience. Basically, all VirginMobile wants to do right now is to sell graphics, ringtones and induce you to send more text messages. How short-sighted can they possibly be when it comes to mobile data services? Even if they kept their walled garden, there's no content on the site! There's no news or even sports. How many kids in the Virgin demographic want to know the sports scores, etc.? Boost mobile is *much* more aware of these opportunities with their 25 cents a day mobile access charge and decent content on the back end. Small charge, but I'm sure they're making a ton from it: If someone uses the browser every other day for a month, that's an extra $3.75 in revenue for Boost. Seems a no-brainer to me.