Just last week we ran a story about how O2 in the UK had ceded control of it’s mobile ringtone portal to a company called Momac. Well, it’s not alone – one of the largest operators in Belgium, Mobistar, has re-launched it’s entire consumer portal through Momac.
What’s the story?
Momac has been doing work on operator portals for 10 years now – its business is based around helping network operators to get their content and services to their subscribers as quickly as possible. Evidently Mobistar liked what it saw, because Momac was given responsibility for managing their entire portal.
What’s the deal?
The Momac offering is cloud-based – it’s a platform called mvovle, that allows the operator to launch a mobile portal without needing to make any upgrades to its systems. Momac just provides a branded version of the mvolve platform and, hey presto!, instant portal. As well as providing Mobistar subscribers with easy access to their CRM systems, the portal will support HTML5 (and hybrid apps) and integrates with Facebook and Twitter. It will also carry the games and music storefronts.
What we think?
Mobistar really has just handed the keys to Momac here – it claims that thanks to this deployment it has reduced the number of service providers it works with on the portal from 15 to 1. Despite that, I wonder if this is such a good thing. I’m thinking about the ringtone portal deal that O2 struck with Momac last week. That was a good move – it took a part of their portal that was pretty clunky, and got it redesigned to be much more lightweight, upgradeable and smartphone friendly. But what Mobistar is trying here is to co-opt the entire mobile internet experience onto their portal – in my experience, people prefer to choose their own service provider. Then again, it’s a good decision from Mobistar to try and keep their mobile internet property relevant in the face of the growing number of smartphones on the market. I just think that while this might see a lot of use from feature phone users, it’s not something a smartphone user wants to be confined to.
Hi Cian,
Thanks for this post. Actually, I do agree with you: operators should not try to co-opt the whole mobile internet experience onto their portal, because most smartphone users like browsing or downloading apps from their preferred brands. Momac has double expertise with telecom and media customers so we see what’s happening from both sides. Therefore, we help operators to transform their portal from a pure content store to a truly personalised hub of services, including “Best of Web” sections, personalised news and useful Self Care services. Operators have great knowledge of their subscribers. Based on this knowledge, they are able to aggregate services and create recommendations better than anyone else, on both webapps and native apps. This next-gen portal approach has become critical for operators in avoiding becoming a bit pipe.