Carriers will be responsible for working with content providers to correct violations. “All the business relationships in this value chain are between the carriers and their content partners,” DeSautels continues. “Where there are violations, whether technical violations or significant violations that require the carrier to contact the content provider, the responsibility is the carrier’s because of that business relationship.”
“I think that our overall perspective is that the industry is generally doing a good job. A lot of what is confusing to consumers can be cleaned up with educational efforts, a review of data and information about results, and a dialog with the industry in terms of how to best resolve problems,” Petersen adds.
Auditing system will grow with industry’s needs
Individual carriers have already started receiving audit reports, and CTIA plans to report initial aggregate findings on auditing results and on how the process is working at its CTIA WIRELESS IT & Entertainment 2007 in San Francisco. It will also invite feedback from the wireless community at that time.
“This can be a great tool for everyone in the industry,” says Petersen. “Users able to get content via their phones can enjoy a richer experience. Operators can increase the usage of their data networks and set up entire thirdparty ecosystems of people providing all these services. Carriers want this to be a safe and
friendly habitat for consumers because that will encourage greater growth.”
The monitoring and auditing system is likelyto get increasingly busy, adds DeSautels. “As an industry we’re still in a very early stage of having providers who are less tightly affiliated with the carriers than the content providers that offer content directly from carrier decks. I think that will grow fairly significantly in the 12 to 18 months ahead. There will be even more players and content providers that we will have to survey.
“We will have to make sure that they are educated in the best practices. We want to continue to broaden the range of mobile content offerings and the channels from which consumers can reach those offerings. At the same time we want to assure that they have the kind of quality of service that they would expect and get if they were buying that content directly from the carriers at the web site.”
