A Mobile Carrier Responds

It’s tough without jumping through various PR hoops to get a mobile phone carrier to talk on the record, but I did get one carrier exec to counter the assertions of folks at the Mobile Marketing Forum, run by the Mobile Marketing Association, who say the carriers don’t play fair, do all kinds of nefarious things that hurt the market and the industry. The assertion, and the unattributed rebuttal, below:

- Carriers ask too much of a revenue share on ad and marketing campaigns:

* If it’s too costly, don’t do it. It’s business. I’m not in business to keep you in business.
* Our customer acquisition and retention costs are really high. Customer only has 1 carrier (and take a lot of time and energy deciding). They can get content from a dozen, two dozen places.

- Carriers unfairly block applications and things people want to download onto their phones:

* If the application doesn’t work well, customer doesn’t call the one who made the app, call 611. We have to deal with it.
* Customer experience is paramount.

You’re not sharing data on customers, age, location, etc, which hinders our ability to target them with services, etc:

*Has to be worth it. Generally, he who controls the data, controls the game. Very valuable. Have to give us a reason to share it.