Internet access on the pipeline

"China Mobile will release three new handsets at the Global partner Conference 19th." Tang Jianfeng, deputy general manager of China Mobile Terminal Company, announced the media meeting on December 18. This also means that China Mobile's RCS (Rich Media Communications) strategy officially landed.

At the World Mobile Fair This February, Li, president of China Mobile, released the RCS White Paper, proposing to the "three new" transformation, the existing calls, text messages, contacts into new calls, new messages, new contacts, Li said at the time: "Operators will seize the basic needs of communications, building the advantages of the Internet transformation." ”

The industry generally believes that this is the latest strategy of China Mobile in the face of competition from OTT business.

Internet access on the pipeline

China Mobile's introduction to the "Three new" is: The new call is based on the volte call system, will completely change the existing voice system, to provide users with a clearer, high-quality, diversified communication system; The myth era of SMS and MMS has been broken by instant messaging software, and operators need new messaging systems to rebuild their advantages New contacts will build a communications social system that used to present only the relationship between phone numbers, phone calls, lack of location, avatar, status, and other social information.

"Simple understanding is the type of micro-credit business." "In the Partner Assembly area, China Mobile's joint TCL, Cool, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung and other terminal companies have begun to showcase the RCS business based on three new handsets." A cool booth staff for the reporter introduced: "The use of operators in the network advantage, the arrival rate of information, call quality, are higher than micro-letter." ”

Reporter experience found that the new call can be in the process of launching pictures, video multimedia content sharing, in the phone on both sides of the mobile phones play the same picture, video and other content, new messages can also send video, pictures, files, location information and so on, but also have read after the burning function. The new contact is similar to the micro-mail phone book.

The RCS business is the operator, which is equivalent to overlay the Internet function on the telecommunication pipeline, has the reliable business quality assurance, but also can compare with the micro-letter and so on the service brings the user experience, the new contact, the new information will become the operator to the Internet the formidable entrance.

No interoperability with Telecom Unicom

However, RCS does not only overlap the advantages of operators and the Internet, it also carries some of the operator's inherent bad genes. According to the reporter understand, only mobile users can automatically add to the new contact, RCS and telecommunications, Unicom is not interoperable.

The same problem has been found in the letter. The letter was once the second largest domestic instant communications business, but for a long period of time only China Mobile users can use, which is the limit to the development of one of the root reasons. So far, the problem has not been perfectly resolved, although the flying letter has been through the three major operators, but the users of different operators to fly when the need to pay fees.

"The fundamental problem is the idea of designing a business. "Well-known telecommunications expert Cheng Dejie told reporters:" Operators design business, the first consideration is the existing technical framework, standards, reliability, call, text messages are so. But micro-credit services Consider the user experience, and constantly iterate to meet user needs. ”

SMS has rarely changed since it was invented. But in the past year alone, micro-letters have been iterating over 40 versions, almost every Monday. If China Mobile is to make the RCS into the Internet business, can China Mobile change its business model? Is it possible to have such an iterative ability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of users in social software?

China Mobile has not yet given the answer. According to the RCS White paper released by China Mobile, the deployment of Chinese mobile in RCS is limited to the technical path and industry chain specification, but not to the subsequent business and operations strategy.

And, it should be pointed out that China Mobile is the RCS mobile phone built in the way, which means that the major mobile phone manufacturers need to be based on China Mobile technology requirements to develop the same RCS business. The different development capabilities and technical differences between vendors are bound to have an impact on the RCS business experience.

"China Mobile provides us with the development package is not very good, a long time to open." As for whether to communicate with other mobile phones, must be through interoperability testing. "A terminal manufacturer implicitly says.

Reporters on the operation, iterations and other issues to consult the mobile experts at the scene, the other party said: "These can not be said." ”

Explore the Internet model

China Mobile is not the first to eat crabs, the RCS business will face the challenges of the future has a history to learn.

European operators have been experimenting with RCS operations since 2009. In 2012, Europe's five telecoms giants, including Spain's Telefonica, Vodafone, France Orange, Italy Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, decided to jointly launch their own instant messaging system, named "Joyn", to deal with the BlackBerry The challenges of instant messaging applications such as HTC and WhatsApp.

However, because of several major operators in business operations, personnel appointments and other aspects of the differences, it is always difficult to reach a consensus. Joyn is actually dead in the womb.

For China Mobile, RCS as a new business, whether the original billing mode, whether all changed to according to the flowmeter fee? How is the billing model between users who use the RCS business and users in the non-RCS business? Does RCS need to set up a company to operate alone? When can we get through the barrier between the three major operators? China Mobile did not disclose these business plans at this meeting.

For China Mobile, a radical change in the three business will also overturn the business development, operations, billing models that have long been formed on these businesses, and even vested interests. This is the Chinese mobile in the commercial RCS must be fixed before the problem, but also the inevitable choice for the Internet transformation.

Since this year, China has launched a series of internet transition strategies while pushing 4G. Including the previous speculation of the five major base of the company transformation, China Mobile set up 5 professional firms, market-oriented operation, responsible for music, games, reading and other content development and operation, in addition, China Mobile also set up the Internet companies, large data companies layout of the future.

One of these companies told reporters: "But, in fact, all the professional firms are faced with a problem: to open up on the Internet, but the corresponding technology, talent, resources are not aligned, more important is the concept, mechanism, and the conflict between vested interests, these are not resolved." ”

While building and developing internet advantages, China Mobile is also exploring a mode of operation adapted to the development of mobile Internet.