3Cinteractive, along with Neustar, was proud to sponsor the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) 2010 Consumer Best Practices (CBP) Public Forum event. The forum, held at the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Boca Raton, Florida, discussed the CBP Guidelines, which are produced by the MMA’s CBP Committee (of which 3Cinteractive is a member). The guidelines provide measures of acceptable and unacceptable practices. Updated regularly, these guidelines set the industry standard for cross- carrier mobile content services, such as short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), shortcode programs, interactive voice response (IVR), and mobile web.

Pictured, left to right: Vic Shroff, 3Cinteractive; Alykahn Govani, MX Telecom;
and Jeremy Martin, 3Cinteractive

Here are some of our insights from the industry forum, which continues its charge of shaping the mobile industry as a viable, profitable market place that provides value to the end user.

The meetings spanned two days (starting with the Consumer Best Practices Committee Meeting at 3Cinteractive’s offices) and ended with a forum at the Boca Raton Resort and Hotel. The forum allowed attendees to hear from MMA executives, carrier representatives, and other industry experts. Presenters shared case studies of 2009’s mobile success stories and offered theories about the future of mobile marketing. Michael Becker, the newly appointed MMA North America Managing Director, opened the meeting, describing the main objective as bringing, “all pieces of the ecosystem together.”

Though the agenda covered a wide range of topics including mobile donations, MMS, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) billing, a common theme quickly emerged: how can we facilitate the growth of the mobile industry in a manner that allows for profitable business models to thrive while also protecting the consumer?

The committee faces the unique challenge of representing the concerns of carriers, who want to ensure the safe handling of their subscribers, and content providers, who fear that rules and regulations will instead weaken their business models. All agreed that self-regulation is preferable to the introduction of a third-party authority, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

With carriers, aggregators, application service providers and content providers present, the open forum format allowed for a lively discussion on the committee’s current progress and suggested future goals. Following are some of the main action points:

     1)   Develop a standard of core guidelines based on proven best practices

     ·   This has been the overall objective of the committee for some time. The highlights of last year’s activities by Ellen Roberson, Director of Consumer Data Products at AT&T Mobility, showcased the great strides the committee has taken towards the unification of rules and regulations.

     ·   Bringing all carrier play books together in one document, creating transparency around carrier rules and merging the commonalities in cross carrier rules were among the committee’s tangible accomplishments.

     ·   Committee members, however, expressed concern at the tendency of carriers to release updates to those rules after the CBP’s document has been published. Many commented this practice reverts back to the original model of a widely diverse and more complex set of rules and regulations.

     ·   A schedule for updates was proposed to allow for ongoing and unpredictable legal issues that sometimes require carriers to change rules mid-year.

     2)   A new concept, Trusted Partners

     ·   When carrier representatives described their upcoming initiatives to open up Location Based Services (LBS) and refund Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), they introduced the idea of “trusted partners.” This concept could be used more generally to address other content provider concerns.

     ·   As expected, the open format led to discussions of long program approval cycles. One proposed solution was the carriers and aggregators begin to recognize trusted or certified partners.

     ·   Such a designation would allow those who qualify to move programs through the approval process at a faster rate.

     3)   Create different rules for standard versus premium rate programs

     ·   Also in the interest of speeding up program approvals, attendees suggested the rules and regulations regarding program submissions and audits be created separately for standard versus premium rate programs.

     ·   Carrier representatives and content providers agreed the increased efficiency resulting from creating a new set of rules applicable to standard rate program only would be beneficial on both sides.

     ·   Carriers could reduce the amount of resources needed to approve standard rate programs that carry only a minimal risk of poor consumer experience. Content providers would enjoy faster approval times and fewer audits for these types of programs.

     4)   A major initiative, WAP Billing

     ·   All carriers represented at the forum, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA, seemed to agree that WAP billing presents an excellent opportunity to provide mobile marketing services that offer the best possible consumer experience.

     ·   Among the most important benefits associated with WAP billing is a format that allows users to pay for content without breaking the experience. They can go from discovery to purchase to download without leaving the mobile website.

This benefits the content provider, who can now offer the user a simpler experience, and the carrier, who is assured the user gets exactly want he or she wants to purchase.

The committee expressed a commitment to use the comments and concerns addressed in the forum as the starting point for the building of their objectives for 2010. While a number of elements make up the CBP, its main product is the CBP Guidelines, published annually with updates throughout the year. People in all parts of the ecosystem, aggregators, content providers, and application service providers, will be looking to this document in future months to assess the committee’s progress in its goal to address the needs of its members.