Simon Hendery: Mobility solutions don't go all the way

In the duopoly mobile phone market we live in, the best option would be a phone that switched between networks.

Imagine how much more Telecom and Vodafone would focus on offering the cheapest calling rates if they knew subscribers were only a button-press away from swapping over to their rival's service.

Sadly, this column is not about to announce the arrival of such a competition-boosting handset. Rather, it's about how Telecom is using this type of dual network phone technology to solve one of its mobile marketing headaches - global roaming - while still keeping its customers firmly glued to its network back home.

In the world of mobile phone technologies there are two camps: the more popular GSM (used by Vodafone) and the globally less-ubiquitous CDMA, used by Telecom.

For any mobile network operator, being able to offer its high-spending business customers an easy and comprehensive global roaming option is a vital part of the business strategy.

For Telecom, under CDMA, this has raised issues, particularly in its largest roaming destination, Australia, where Telstra plans to shut down its CDMA network.

That has led to speculation Telecom may be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars switching to a GSM platform - a move the company says is not on the cards at present.

Instead it has come out brandishing a solution to the global roaming problem: a piece of technology called the WorldMode phone.

Next year Telecom will begin selling the first of several WorldMode models that will operate on its network at home but be able to switch between CDMA and GSM networks when users are overseas.

"For us the time is right to get into this because we think this is a solution that will offer our customers the largest potential roaming coverage," Telecom Mobile's head of product and service development, Shane Ohlin, told the Business Herald last week.

"We believe now there is a broad manufacturing support for this concept so we are confident we can bring an entire range of these phones to market throughout 2007. We wanted it to be more than one single phone that could do this - that's why the timing is right now for us to get into this."

The phones are designed to seek out and use the best network available when overseas, although Ohlin says customers will be able to choose their preferred network themselves when travelling.

Telecom will supply custom GSM sim cards for the phones but, no, when users are at home they won't be able to plug a Vodafone sim card into the handsets.

The WorldMode phone has been on Telecom's agenda for some time, and a publicity drive around it last week seems to have been timed to divert some attention away from Vodafone, which was trumpeting a speed upgrade to its network and the related launch of aggressively-priced mobile broadband offerings.

Away from the global roaming front, Telecom and Vodafone are fighting a my-network-is-faster-than-yours battle, again pitched at the lucrative business market.

As working on the move over fast networks becomes a more mainstream way of doing business, both operators are tweaking their respective CDMA and GSM networks to provide faster upload and download speeds.

Vodafone has something called HSDPA which it launched in the main centres last week, as well as a clutch of gadgets and a range of broadband plans it hopes will lure a sizeable number of Telecom's fixed-line DSL customers.

For its part, Telecom has a CDMA speed upgrade called Rev A due to be up and running in Auckland by the end of the year.

So expect a marketing deluge of "mobility solutions" over the next few months as the two operators fall over themselves to tell us they can keep us connected better and faster.