Telco

The iPhone has become one of the most wanted devices on the mobile phone market 2008. No surprise there. With Apple's previous history of gadget success, this more or less had to happen.

And although Apple make money on these devices, Apple have decided to tap into the ongoing, continious revenue stream of their Telco partners. According to the Register, if you want to provide iPhone to your clients, you are required to add an Apple networking device in your datacenter.

At first glance, this is only to provide the customers with the services required for the iPhone to function propperly.

At next glance, you see that the device is able to capture and control the dataflow to and from any iPhone's connected through that Telco.

So what?

By controlling the actual dataflow to and from the device, Apple may now gather information, habits and control the way their users are actually using the iPhone. This also means that they may adopt content (advertisements) to the habits of the users - much like Google does on the web.

It also may enable services like pay-per-view and strict access control. As well as full monitoring of the content and communication.

According to the Register, this may become a threat to the Telco, as the Telco's themselves has been dreaming of such a tool for ages. Some have tried too - but due to too big differences on the device side, the success of identifying and controlling the content has not yet succeeded.

I think that Apple will share their technology with their Telco partners - the Telcos I know would never accept the technology partner to controll everything - unless they get revenue back.

I predict that Apple and the Telco's will walk this road hand-in-hand, all the way to the bank.

And the customers?

Nothing has really changed. You still get the bill. And you might persive the new technology as a better service to you.

Wich in my book means this is a typical Win-Win-Win situation.

And the security?

Well, you are already monitored and analyzed, so this makes no big change. The data quality is better, so the analyzes will be of a higher value, wich in turn will give you better adds!

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Telco = TELeCOmmunication Company