xseries

Suits 2.0 - questions answered

Well, it's been an active weekend here on the X-Series blog, with loads of questions and comments, especially around the most recent post by Frank Sixt, HWL's Group Finance Director. Here Frank answers a couple of comments from that post.

Adrian writes: I just read on SMS Text News about someone who had been extremely enthusiastic about the X-Series being charged £1.35 for an email. How does that fit in?

Frank writes: It doesn't fit at all and I am looking into it personally. We are of course in early days here and there are bound to be gremlins from time to time but the principles behind the X-Series are very clear and will not be compromised. We will get back to you on this one.

Mobile Boffin writes (in response to Frank's drinks cabinet analogy): But what if, as your guest, I wanted to drink something from a bottle that I brought with me (i.e. use a different application on the handset other than the ones you indicate)? Are we allowed to do that? On my home broadband, I am allowed to drink from most any bottle out there on the Internet. Given that I have to use your mail client if I want to send or receive email it sounds like I am limited to only the bottles you have pre-selected for me. Will there ever be an offering that allows me to select any bottle I want?

Frank writes: Dear Boffin, I have no doubt that such a time will come. It is early days in terms of fixed-mobile convergence in the applications domain so BYOB doesn't work at the X-Series drinks party for now. The reason is that there is of course no ubiquity in terms of operating systems for mobiles as there is for PCs and laptops. Although I am convinced the industry will move fairly quickly towards more homogeneous standards, for the time being many applications need to be re-written or adapted as clients to work in mobiles. And we we, of course, have to work with handset makers to make that happen and to ensure integration of the client with user interfaces so that the application will be useful in mobility. If you have a pet application you think would really fly for mobile users let me know and I'll see if we can enable you to bring it to future drinks parties.

Fair users will be happy

Welcome to the second of our Suits 2.0 posts. Frank Sixt, Group Finance Director, of Hutchison is back again, this time providing a little more clarity on the philosophy behind the X-Series Fair Use policy.

A few weeks have now passed since we announced the X-Series from 3, and a full week since we launched in the UK. So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive  for which I really thank you all.  Still, some people have been seeing ghosts in the wording of our Fair Use thresholds in our UK offer.  So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me go over this area one more time. 

First of all, it’s fair use, not a cap or a limit. The X-Series is about moving away from the old world of charging per byte, per minute, per message, and entering a new world where it’s free when you use it once you have paid  your monthly access fee.

The Fair Use policy is really just about protecting ourselves from the crooks who might seriously abuse what we are offering to the detriment of those using X-Series services fairly.

So what does this mean?

Well, one of my colleagues suggested the best way to describe it is by using an analogy of visiting a friend’s house for dinner. They say to you: “Would you like a drink?” and they point to the drinks cabinet and say, “Help yourself, have whatever drinks you want."

They mean it - have whatever drinks you want, and as many as you want.

However, if they see you starting to put all their bottles in cardboard boxes and loading them into the boot of your car - well, would they think this was covered by their 'Help yourself policy'?

I think not. This is all the X-Series Fair Use policy means.

As another example, we truly believe that a fair user will be hard pressed to use more than 5,000 Skype minutes a month. But imagine they did. Imagine an instance where they had a sick relative in Australia and went way beyond that limit? I would make personally sure that the fair use definition was not invoked to limit their use.

If on the other hand, someone was using Skype on X-Series to run a long distance call centre, well, I’d be equally determined to make sure they were shut down.

That's it.  Simple as that.  So if you think "Fair Use" is being used unfairly in your case, as always, you know where to find me!

//FS

No unfair limits on use, just fair use limits

There’s been a lot written about X-Series since it was announced a little over a week ago in London. The blogosphere has been buzzing. We’ve been gratified to have received a lot of positive response from journalists, analysts and bloggers. Many see X-Series as an inflection point, and that is certainly how we see it at Hutchison.

We’ve also been gratified that even though we haven’t announced pricing in the UK and our other markets as yet, we have been given the benefit of the doubt that we will deliver on our promise: a fair, transparent and fixed rate access charge so that what is free when you use it on the internet is free when you use it in mobile broadband. I believe that the trust people are putting in us will be rewarded when pricing is announced in our first market, the UK, on December 1st (and if you disagree, you know the place to get in touch and tell us).

What I do want to touch upon in this post is the philosophy behind the pricing and the fair use policy that will be attached to it.

When we worked on the X-Series over the past few months we were mindful first that X-Series should not contain any traps or hidden charges. We did not want anyone to think that by joining the X-Series they would be asked to pay more for handsets, voice, video, SMS, MMS or our existing Planet 3 services. So we are structuring our offers to make sure that people who join the X-series will do so on the basis of our best available pricing for all of these services, and that access charges for the X-Series mobile broadband free use will be simple and transparent. Indeed, as mobile broadband today is a subset of people’s home broadband and media world, the structure of those access charges will be familiar to people who use fixed broadband at home. It is our objective that people should be comfortable with the charges and feel as free to use X-Series applications in mobility as they do at home. Indeed, my own expectation is that as mobile broadband usage and delivery capabilities evolve, access charges for mobile Broadband will also evolve in a similar way to fixed broadband. For example there may in the future be more differential prices for different service levels and service level guarantees. But that discussion is for another day!

As to fair use thresholds, it is not our intention to cap use, but to simply ensure we protect ourselves from people who might try to rip us off. So expect fair use to be re-defined from time to time as we gain real life experience. Really unfair abuse of usage is bad not just for us, but for everyone who uses our services. It is not just unfair to us as an operator; it is unfair to all users. So, if you’re having a laugh at the expense of the rest of us, we reserve the right to turn your X-Series usage off. That’s how we plan to administer fair use thresholds. It’s that simple.

As Doug Hamilton, our global creative director coined it, “there’ll be no unfair limits on use, just fair use limits.”

I hope you will like what we do in our X-Series launches and join our networks. In any case, this is the place you can tell us either what you like or what you don’t about what we are doing.

// FS

This post is the first in an ongoing series called Suits 2.0 of blog posts from senior folk from Hutchison Whampoa and the 3 Group. They're designed to offer a point of view and also give you the chance to ask questions and get straightforward answers. This post is by Frank Sixt, the Group Finance Director of Hutchison Whampoa. Email: blog.xseries@three.com

Suits 2.0: The blog

Note: we've decided to hold off on launching a second blog, and instead have created a category in the existing one called Suits 2.0. Same purpose to the posts, same open initiation to send us bouquets or brickbats. Get writing.

In a few days time we are launching a second X-Series blog, Suits 2.0.

The new blog will give you direct access to some of the most senior execs from Hutchison Whampoa Limited, the owner of the 3 Group of companies.

The blog will provide the chance to ask questions, warts and all, about the X-Series and the future of the mobile internet. It'll be written by two of the driving forces behind the introduction of the X-Series from 3, Frank Sixt, the Group Finance Director of Hutchison Whampoa, and Christian Salbaing, European Managing Director for Hutchison 3G.

Any questions, thoughts, bouquets or brickbats -- let us have them via email or by posting a comment right now.

Email us at: blog.xseries@three.com

Modified on 24 Nov

//d