WebRTC DevCon London

WebRTC Insights DevCon London will target primarily developers – Web developers and mobile developers.

It will help to:

• inspire them to do awesome things with WebRTC – from initial tinkering & experimentation to developing full-blown applications and services;
• engage them in conversation with other developers, helping to build a coherent developer community;
• enable them to discover and use the various WebRTC SDKs, APIs and Libraries.

When: 19 June 2014
Times: 09:30 – 16:30
Theme: WebRTC Development
Format: Conference
Venue: Tech City – Venue TBC
Twitter: @webrtcinsights
Contact: jeff@quadco.co.uk

Register at: http://webrtcinsights.com

New EU Roaming Regulations Shine Focus on Mobile Billing

This post was originally featured on BriteBill.com

By Jeffrey Peel – The European Union hasn’t done itself any favours when it comes to roaming charges. Indeed while the EU used to be considered ahead of the mobile game its predominance has slipped since 3G. To that point European vendors seemed unstoppable – Nokia was the world’s largest mobile device manufacturer, the GSMA was European-headquartered and pretty much defined and drove global mobile standards, with penetration of mobile devices in Europe ahead of just about everywhere.

However, since then, things have changed. Nokia’s device business was recently acquired by Microsoft, and its market share has been dwarfed since Apple launched its eponymous iPhone. LTE or 4G is seen to be an American-owned standard. And, despite numerous good intentions the EU still hasn’t managed to sort out roaming charges, though supposedly achieving a single market for everything else back in 1992.

While things are set to change in the Summer of 2014, quite a few cynics think that nothing will. In July of this year the EU will impose pre-selection. That is, if someone roams from, say, the UK to France they will be able to select which service provider they use – rather than having the roaming provider exerted upon them by their domestic service provider. This exertion exercise in the past has resulted in good margins for operators, but very unhappy customers. There are many who argue that with mobile connectivity being so important for day to day functioning, the roaming charges have been an obstacle to economic growth in the EU.

Perhaps that’s over-stating it (after all, there’s always free wifi in the hotel). But, the fact remains that the new regulation is at least a step in the right direction. It also offers a new business opportunity to roaming providers willing to create great billing experiences for their new roaming customers. The consequence might well be that we’ll see the emergence of new pan-European roaming providers with whom customers will enter into their own contractual arrangements – outside of the arrangements they have in place in their home country.

Big roamers – people who travel extensively on business across the EU – will want a mix of services. Roaming is no longer just about call tariffs – it’s about a mix of call, text and data tariffs across a lot of countries. If operators are serious about offering a compelling service they need to think about the complexity of service and tariff information they’ll need to convey – cross-platform, to a very sophisticated breed of mobile user.

If operators get the package right – thinking about both value and customer experience – there are significant riches to be had in something as esoteric as roaming regulations. And, in the process, the EU might just claw back some plaudits when we all were beginning to think it had lost the roaming war.

Biometric Research: London and New York Demos

We have been commissioned to undertake a program of research for a company that has developed a new tool that measures emotional engagement in video – based on two types of respondent engagement metric.

The tool can be used to test video based advertising treatments, story-boards, ‘viral’ videos and digital content that is delivered via video. It uses advanced biometric techniques including galvanic skin response.

We’re hoping to undertake a series of meetings (with our client) during late February and early March with researchers and/or agency technology specialists – with people that undertake advertising creative testing in a controlled environment. We were hoping to demo the tool and collect feedback on its potential relevance – and to obtain reactions to the proposed pricing.

We’re hoping to meet with researchers and creative agencies in London 19th to 21st February and in New York from March 3rd to 5th. Would this be of interest to you? Would it be relevant to your specific role? Would you have a spare 1 hour slot where we might demo the solution and get your feedback? If not, would you have any colleagues or connections in the agency world for whom it might be relevant?

This is a fascinating new technology – please let us know if you’d like to be involved.

You can call Jeff Peel on +44 2892 668389 or email him on jeff@quadco.co.uk if you’d like to meet up with us in London or New York.

It all starts here

It’s a new year so we thought it was time to refresh our website a little to mark the fact.

Over the last few years we have carved out a strong niche for ourselves in the thought leadership market and we figured it was time to practice what we preach and tidy-up our messaging: get rid of some of the clutter.

We have some new projects and clients that we look forward to announce over the coming weeks.  But, in the meantime, we wish all our clients and partners a very Happy New Year.