Track 2 --
 
Forget Sisyphus; Think Athena:
How to Operate Wireless Data Businesses Smart and Profitably Under Difficult Conditions.
Presented by Alan Reiter

Sisyphus spent eternity rolling a boulder up a mountain, only to have it tumble down again and again. Do you feel like Sisyphus when trying to create a viable data business?

So forget Sisyphus. Think Athena. She was the goddess of practical wisdom. The wireless data industry could use all the practical wisdom it can get.

Leveraging 24 years of helping companies roll wireless data boulders over mountains, Alan A. Reiter details how to succeed with today’s devices, applications and technologies, avoid past mistakes and build for a realistic future. He analyzes the global wireless data industry’s self-inflicted economic problems to illustrate how to prevent wireless data meltdowns and succeed with future SMS, WAP, GPRS and 1xRTT services.

Reiter reviews today’s commercial successes, such as e-mail, messaging and entertainment. But he goes beyond basic offerings to demonstrate how carriers, vendors and content providers can create more intelligently designed bundled services that also gracefully evolve with technological advances and “prime” the customer for new offerings.

Reiter also reviews the industry’s phone-centric approach to wireless data, and recommends how a more data-friendly device-agnostic approach can lead to greater use of data.

Reiter analyzes how poor advertising, marketing and customer service have adversely affected wireless data revenues and subscriber satisfaction – and details how to turn around the situation with proactive customer support services that encourage data usage. He also recommends how the wireless industry can be significantly more helpful to subscribers in emergency situations.

Wireless data growth also depends upon “what type of company should you be.” Reiter examines the opportunities for integrating 2.5G and 3G with other systems – such as wireless LANs – and the potential economic impact for operators with a cellular “only” mindset.