The mobile phone as a clear precedent of technology

The socialization of the network that currently runs through the Internet lies in the configuration and effective participation of users in what the network itself offers. While this analogy has also appeared in mobile phones, so far it has done so more at the hardware level than at the software level, unlike what has occurred on the Internet. That is, user demand has forced transformations primarily in elements such as screen size, button layout, battery life and weight, memory capacity, and device connectivity, rather than in programs and applications in general.

The convergence of mobile phones with the new Internet will therefore involve a double movement. On the one hand, active mobile users will increasingly participate in the development and creation of applications specifically designed for phones, including Internet access. On the other hand, Internet users will bring the current Web 2.0 or participatory wave to the physical configuration of computing devices themselves, which will undoubtedly force manufacturers to pay closer attention than ever to rapid changes in demand, or else disappear, given that the loyalties of the new consumer are as fleeting as the industry’s own offerings. The idea of the mobile phone as a universal service platform—or, as Rheingold puts it, “the remote control of our lives”—underlies this new process of convergence. It is people who have freely decided to place this device in their hands until it has become universal, and once this has happened, it makes little sense to continue attempting convergence from other technologies, no matter how much governments or sectors of industry may insist.

From this point on, once it is clear that the convergence process is either mobile or it will not be, the only truly relevant dilemma comes from the supply of services. Based on current data, user demand in mobile phones is focused on entertainment content, mainly music and video games. At the same time, third-generation networks are expanding rapidly in most global markets, including Latin America, and their deployment involves new pricing policies by operators for customer access to data services such as Internet connectivity, a factor that has so far constrained market development. Uncertainties regarding service offerings on mobile phones include issues as significant as the existence—or not—of a universal public service, that is, the extension of the traditional logic of fixed telephony and broadcasting networks to the mobile sphere. While it is true that mobile phones are de facto the most universal of services, and that this universality has emerged independently of state intervention, it is equally true that once the paradigm of one person, one mobile device is reached, it becomes necessary to define which minimum services—and therefore affordable ones—every citizen should have access to.

This principle directly affects the large European public broadcasting companies, once paradigms of audiovisual public service and now immersed in an identity crisis in the face of the indifference of new audiences. The modern concept of public service must seek its potential users wherever they are, regardless of the technology they use, rather than waiting for taxpayers to rediscover the benefits of its offerings tied to a single technology, such as television, and to a mode of dissemination that reflects the interests of a single point of origin rather than those of a dispersed mass now transformed into a multitude of points. The existence of national and global media groups with interests in the multimedia market is not, by itself, sufficient to produce convergence around the mobile phone. Production technologies and modes of access to networks have become so universal that any market actor can become a competitor, regardless of the sector from which it originates. The temptation to leave the development of mobile multimedia content entirely in the hands of the market is strong, particularly in regions where a universal public service has never truly existed. However, this approach must be tempered by the need for openness and absolute transparency in this new market, allowing free user choice—as has happened so far—to determine what is essential and what is expendable.

At the same time, this freedom of content choice must be accompanied by the free selection of networks by mobile users. This means users must have the effective ability to use whichever network best suits them, at any place and at any time, according to their interests. The integration of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and WiMAX connectivity into the latest mobile devices, alongside cellular connectivity, reinforces this principle of free network choice, which is a true sine qua non for the existence of a universal service. The preliminary conclusion, therefore, is that either a universal service exists in the sense described, or convergence will be reduced to a purely strategic business move by corporations from mature markets that do not wish to be excluded from an emerging but limited market. Convergence, regardless of the numerical labels used to describe its stages, now starts from users who are, for the first time, aware of their power to prioritize uses, applications, and networks. Consequently, the challenge for the industrial sectors potentially involved in this process lies in knowing how to respond to and satisfy this new demand, at once individual and universal.