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Demanding Richer Communication

June 30, 2004

Tomorrow's subscribers will demand richer communication in their everyday lives. The telecom market has gone from being driven by technology to being driven by consumer benefits. Ericsson recognizes this and believes that richer communication means increasing the consumers' telecommunication experiences.
"Communication is a basic human need and the more ways for people to enrich that communication, the more demand consumers will put on it," says Ericsson's Consumer Lab senior advisor, Carl Hoffmeister. "We communicate with all our senses and if we deliver services that support senses other than just hearing, such as sight, then the communication experience will become richer."

According to Ericsson, richer communication is about enabling people to always be accessible through their personal terminals. At any place and at any time, subscribers should be able to utilize sound, text, video and access information systems and services. Gaining this richer communication will add value to individuals in their personal and professional roles, as well as to organizations and enterprises.

 

In this modern day and age, half of humanity is yet to make a single phone call and only one billion people out of the world's six billion population have access to a telephone. Telecom users today spend less than one percent of their alert time communicating in a mobile context. Thus, it is easy to see, that communication between people will remain the main driver in the telecommunications market.

 

Even with the broad opportunities that voice calls represent, the role of telecommunications continues to expand. Future services and functions will empower and enrich people while they are communicating. New services will be built upon the needs of the end-user need as well as the trends of the day. In person-to-person communication, user trends will become an individual's desire for a richer communication experience. Not only will consumers want to communicate in different ways through the terminal, but they also want to feel control over the communication situation.

 

"Several trends in society support enriched communication," Hoffmeister continues. "One of them is the rise of the experience society where delivering products and services just isn't enough. Consumers are going to want personalized solutions and enriched communication can deliver that."

 

A good example of this is how today's teenagers stay in touch with each other. They want to share their everyday experiences but yet control the way they are communicated. To them, the terminal is much more than a phone: it is a device they use to maintain their social circle. If they are not accessible 24 hours, seven days a week, then they fear they are 'out of the loop'. The mobile phone is a very personal device and part of the teenager's personality and identity, and sometimes, even a measure of their popularity. Teenagers have formed their own independent world and social reality through the terminal and the Internet creating a so-called 'third place'.

 

However, rich communication isn’t just about people-to-people, but also about mobile media and enterprise communication. In a mobile media context it is possible to download the picture of a pop star simply by dialing through to the phone's WAP portal. And in an enterprise context, using the Multi-Media Services or MMS, could allow an elevator repairman to receive drawings in his end-terminal to help him better repair the elevator he is standing in front of.

 

Ericsson sees the future consumer as an empowered one, who will be individualistic, independent, informed and involved. Consumers will change the way they define value. Instead of thinking of what the value of the product will bring, they will instead rate the value of the experience much higher.

 

Consumers will expect richer user experiences that appeal to their emotions and that are much more personalized. They will demand the ability to control their communication channels. The latter will become more and more important. Ericsson knows this and is constantly building upon the knowledge of future needs for consumers and technology, using its long and extensive experience in the telecom industry. What remains to be acted upon, is the network operator's ability to combine todays and future service offerings. This will be vital to secure new services income while safeguarding business continuity.

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