Mobile internet? It ain't just for the iPhone Statistics released by mobile software company Novarra show that it's not just owners of status-symbol handsets who are surfing the internet these days, with around half the mobile sessions coming from "dumb" handsets. The figures only cover networks that have deployed Novarra's software, which pre-loads content and optimises …
...its, what i am going to do about it. Not much is the answer.
You cant run no script on a phone yet to my knowledge. So whatever you get on your phone when the page finally loads is what you deal with! If we had a choice, im sure people would vent about it, but seriously what are we to do. For the sake of checking the news whilst on the bog (el reg please fix ur mobile version of the site) or checking twitter, its a time killing web page, or at best something that is not mission critical so if it doesnt work or the service is naff im not gonna scream n cry about it.
As in "anonymised user W went to domain X for Y amount of time from device Z"?
Or more
"Mr Orlowski went to domain www.napster.com for 2 hours from an iPhone"?
Former, good, latter, pfht. Plus, to brazenly say "look, we're spying on you! Aren't we great!" Seems silly. Sometimes schtum is the best tactic.
Used to be you could buy the snapdial software and usb cable at your local Best Buy stores here in the US, it's sole purpose was to use your cell phone as a wireless internet adapter, all you needed was a cell phone with a internet connection... only drawback is it dropped the connection every time someone called your cell... Tethering is nothing new...
"So you can run a script on a phone then?"
Huh? There's certainly an option in the browser on my Blackberry to enable or disable Javascript, and some sites give different results when it's turned on - I usually leave it off, because it doesn't make any difference on most sites, except to slow down the loading of pages.
I think a lot of networks have Novarra's software, actually.. if you can ONLY browse .WML (WAP) sites on the phone, they might not. If you can browse full-HTML sites on the phone, they are most likely using Novarra. From my understanding, it's VERY widespread.
I am in this camp btw -- I still have a LG VX9800 "The V" which has a flip-out keyboard but an awful browser -- Verizon (I think using Novarra..) does some server-side working over on most sites to make them usable on the phone, it works pretty well. I have read theregister on this phone.
I happen to be one of the better placed people in the UK to comment on how much mobile networks know about you, as mobile customer analytics happens to be my profession, and I have worked with operators closely.
The answer is much more the former (anonomyzed user X...) than the latter, pretty much across all networks. Most of them outsource their ad serving to companies like Double Click or 4th Screen, Amobee or JumpTap, and will not share your data with them except as a hashed or doubly hashed number as a user ID. And that data is very, very limited...age range (not age), gender, maybe a lifestyle or interest classification for ad targeting, depending upon network. No personal details such as where you live, etc. That's not to say they don't know more, and couldn't learn more - but in terms of mobile ad targeting, that is pretty much the limit in the current environment.
As for mobile networks knowing more than the internet companies, that is hardly the case - mobile doesn't have cookies, and as such state-dependent knowledge is harder to acquire and maintain. Nor is there yet much ecommerce on mobile, which can be a huge factor in building a personal profile on the wired internet. Mobile may be better at linking their billing data to you for profiling, but over 50% of the UK mobile market is on prepay SIMs with no bills. All in all, customer profiling for mobile is still quite a challenge, and much harder than on the wired internet.
Not to say that mobile won't catch up...real-time traffic analysis and sophisticated contextual analysis of web browsing are on the horizon for mobile. But not this month...
"So you can run a script on a phone then?"
Well, that is actually what he's saying, whether you choose to use this as an exercise in pedantry or to interpret what he's saying. If the former, nice try. Except for missing the opportunity to make a comment about the correct usage of the word cant. Speak to your teacher about it in summer school.
You refer to a WAP Gateway, manufacturers of which are many.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAP_gateway.
WAP is so Y2K, BTW. Any decent new phone has a proper HTML (and JavaScript for that matter) aware browser without the need for intermediate processing on the operator side. I installed Opera Mini instead of using the default with-kitchen-sink browser mainly because it saves bandwidth.
This may not apply on contract phones if your operator dictates what you may run on it and how you use it. This of course is related to the article's point about operators screwing the customer. Competition is clearly not working in the consumer's favour.
" ...I happen to be one of the better placed people in the UK ............, as mobile customer analytics happens to be my profession
"...............mobile doesn't have cookies, and as such state-dependent knowledge is harder to acquire and maintain........"
so years of data we have from our sites that shows mobile cookies ids is a result of one of our coders conning us or the divine intervention of jesu himself
mr hill, come on............. you're really a comedian called Harry please call us immediately for some Consultancy work that we have.. we need a permanent cleansing operative for our data room aka brush holder
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