Why Belgian media groups should consider buying 4th UMTS licence

By Fabian Tilmant on 1 April 2009 in New (ways of using) Media | Comments Off

Belgian government has decided, more to refill State’s accounts in these downturn times than to stimulate competition, to propose a fourth licence for setting up and commercially exploiting an additional UMTS network in Belgium. VOO and Telenet seem logically interested as 4th major Telecom actors in Belgium (Telenet mostly in North and VOO in South of the kingdom), but I believe that, UMTS being aimed at diffusing multimedia content through wireless network, other actors have a role to play in this game.
First of all because MNO (Mobile Network Operators) have failed until now stimulating mobile data usage in Belgium. Many people blame the lack of device subzidiation in the country, but I believe it is also the failure of enabler’s roll out (such as simple and standard configuration settings, activation plan and marketing propositions for mobile internet/WAP/wireless services) and expensive data plans by mobile operators, as well as bad quality of their 3G/3G+ network that are the real reasons.
I think that media groups, which are mostly private companies in opposition to mobile operators that mostly emerge from historical telecom operators, would be more efficient at providing an optimal experience to the users and efficient and profitable business models to advertisers. Look at Blyk being managed by a media expert in Belgium: Eric Samson. → Click to continue reading…

Interview about Flair Mobile Mag (in french)

By Fabian Tilmant on 26 March 2009 in Mobile Marketing | Comments Off

Google asks you which ad you want to see (or not?)

By Christelle Deliens on 19 March 2009 in Cleverwood | Comments Off

Google recently announced on its official blog the launch of the interest-based advertising and hopes to offer a better user experience for each stakeholder in the process: the advertisers, publishers and the Google users.

The principle is quite simple: each time a user googles a keyword, a number of specific interests-based commercial ads will be displayed depending on the previous search queries and on some preferences the user can indicate. Both information are stored in a cookie.

The first interest-based ads are expected to be launched during the second quarter 2009. → Click to continue reading…