Mobile roaming experts Starhome making Sparx

Starhome is a mobile company that focuses on improving the roaming services offered by operators. The most recent release is unfortunately called Sparx, but don’t let that dissuade you. It’s actually a roaming service that allows operators to serve targeted campaigns to their customers when those customers are roaming abroad.

What’s the service?

Essentially it works by replacing those annoying texts you get every time you get off a plane. You know the ones, that say “welcome to your new network, where you will be charged ludicrous roaming fees for using basic services.”  Arriving in a new country is what is called a trigger event. It causes the network you are now roaming with to send you that text. Sparx wants to make the communications triggered by these events more useful to the consumer. It collects information about a specific roamers usage patterns. Based on this info, it sends the user targeted messages that might actually contain offers or information that is relevant. It’s not just limited to SMS either. Sparx will contact a roamer via MMS, WAP and email as well. Check out this video (although you might want to skip it if you are afraid of incredibly creepy mimes. Just saying):

From the release:

Amit Daniel, Vice President of Marketing for Starhome: “Sparx, an interactive roamers’ marketing and relations management tool, will revolutionize roaming mobile advertising by providing mobile operators with the information and means necessary to accurately target and serve outbound roamers. Real-time reporting and analysis, as well as micro-segmentation, will enable mobile operators to know the optimal times for contacting outbound roamers. This will not only drastically increase operators’ revenues, but it will also deliver a significant improvement in the user experience.”

What we think?

Quite apart from the fact that it’s name is the kind of thing you’d expect a childrens cartoon to be called, this service is pretty interesting. While it could be viewed as functionally just another channel through which advertisers can spam mobile owners, it also highlights some interesting ideas about roaming. There’s no reason that metrics and analysis shouldn’t be able to roam just as easily as a traveller. Targeted campaigns based on your home preferences could be genuinely useful when in a foreign city. It would have to be opt-in, of course, but I would not be averse to receiving advertising for a restaurant that my mobile usage history indicates I would enjoy.