It’s far from new news that there is a covergence of the mobile phone and the internet with the coming of faster data access available for mobile phones particulary with the emergence of HSDPA and 3G networks but what is that going to mean.

Having fast (or reasonably fast anyway) data access on a mobile opens up a lot of possibilities for services.

Internet Access: Cool to have net access from a mobile device although sites need to be designed for a mobile experience. Viewing a normal web page (like this one) on a mobile device would be and is hideous, that’s really a no brainer as something that’s made for a 17inch screen probably isn’t going to scale to well on a 2inch screen! Also take into account there isn’t a full keyboard just a ‘designed for phone’ keypad and it all gets a bit too hard. Web developers are finding solutions to this through device detection and intuitive interfaces so when you visit their site it will detect the type of device in use ie pc, handset, smartphone etc and adapt the site accordingly to provide a user freindly experience. Although for the developer this is a challenge in itself with the boundless amount of devices on the market utilising differing screen sizes and operating systems.

My thinking on mobile internet is surfing the internet as we would on a pc is probably worth forgetting. Although there is probably something to gain from stepping back and taking a look at internet 0.1 when portals where the key to the internet from a pc. The ‘internet portal model’ would work well for mobile. The portal would be especially designed for handset use and sites accessed from that portal the same. Site developers could apply to be listed in the portal and if it meets usability criteria the portal moderater could add that to the range of sites accessable by the user (remind anyone of early Yahoo days!).

None of this is to dissimilar to what you get when you connect to a network now, exept that what you are looking at is a walled garden, so to speak, created by the network carrier to offer a range of services that they decide worthy. More than likely based on income generation. For example some services are sold by subscription ie. pay x amount monthly to access weather, sport etc. or sometimes services are used as bait to get connections ie. connect to x network and get unlimited access to x live.

This is where I believe it is open for an independent portal/s to take hold. Built especially for mobiles containing sites/content that are mobile ready, relative to that user enviroment and in the spirit of the web at present, free access. Then you ask how do you get quality of content to feature on this portal? Take a look at the web today, what have you paid for lately? Also look at the biggest sites on the web at the moment, does the user pay? No, but advertisers do.

Network carriers and providers, although, still hold the upperhand by controlling who gets open access to the web via their network. For example if you connect to a pre paid service (the big market for mobile web) you usually don’t get open access although you can access the walled garden. And when you have an account that offers access, time based data charges come into play leaving the user thinking ‘..hmmm how much is this costing me while i’m online’ although surfing the walled garden for paid content is free.

The Internet on the PC has been through most of this to end up at a place where users roam free and developers innovate daily, hopefully the mobile web gets there too.

Further reading on web dev for mobile » Mobile Internet - are we there yet?

Tags: mobile, technology, wireless, internet, phone, mobile web, mobile internet