The key characteristics of Neda's Subscriber Services are summarized in Figure 2.1. In the following sections we describe these characteristics in greater detail.
A very significant aspect of our Subscriber Services business is that it is targeted to the largest possible audience. As noted above, it is targeted to all demographics, all user devices, and all networks. It will include a globally-accessible telephone voice interface, which uses speech recognition, text-to-speech, and IVR in non-data (pure voice) environments on all phones. The Subscriber Services will be infinitely scalable to support unlimited audience expansion.
Throughout the following discussion, we draw a distinction between users of our Subscriber Services, and subscribers. Anyone is free to make use of Neda's Subscriber Services, without paying any fees, and without forming any kind of formal relationship with Neda. We refer to a person who uses our services on this generic basis as a user. A user need not provide Neda with any formal identification or personal information beyond that required to access the services, and there exists no fiducial relationship between the user and Neda beyond that of the customary Acceptable Use policy.
A subscriber is a person with whom there does exist some sort of fiducial relationship, implying certain obligations on the part of both Neda and the subscriber. On the part of the subscriber, these obligations may include the payment of a service fee, and the disclosure of the subscriber's personal identity. On Neda's side, these obligations will include the protection of the subscriber's information and privacy, and guarantees of the qualify of service.
For example, a subscriber may provide Neda with his/her credit card information, and will have the right to specify that he/she receive no unsolicited advertizing. A user, on the other hand, will typically not provide Neda with credit card information, and Neda will be under no obligation to shield a user from advertizing.
A good example of an existing Subscriber Service based on the user-type relationship model, as we have defined it, is provided by Yahoo. A good example of an existing Subscriber Service based on the subscriber-type relationship model is AOL. Our Subscriber Services will accommodate both types of relationship and usage model.
Neda's Subscriber Services will take the form of a highly personal and ever-expanding virtual community. The services will be centered around interpersonal messaging using all appropriate media, including e-mail, voice-mail, Fax, etc. The services will provide users with a comprehensive suite of facilities and forums for interpersonal, communal, and social communications, such as: buddy lists, chat rooms, special interest groups, dating agencies, and multi-player games.
In addition, the Subscriber Services will provide users with various forms of information. This will include perishable information such as news, stock quotes, weather, sports, traffic, airline information etc., and non-perishable information such as white pages, yellow pages, dictionary lookup, etc.
The Subscriber Services will include several characteristics designed to make their usage widespread. First, they will be provided to users free, and will be supported by advertising, content providers, etc.
Also, LEAP software implementations will be given away free, for all wireless data devices and environments.
Initially, our Subscriber Services will emphasize and focus on mobility, and the delivery of time-critical information. The opportunity to manage a user's mobility needs will provide us with frequent access to the user.
We will build a user base by paying carriers to bundle our services, and by sharing revenue with them. In addition, we will provide a cash and equity payment to carriers, providing them with a powerful incentive to open their networks.
One of the key ways in which we will expand our audience is by means of franchise operation. We view our Subscriber Services as a powerful core of computing and communications services which are accessed by users. There is nothing to prevent this entire set of Subscriber Services from being packaged and provided to an independent service provider, who then provides identical services to a particular demographic or subset of users.
For example, a third-world country might have only primitive and undeveloped Subscriber Services available to its consumers. An entrepreneur wishing to provide Neda's far superior Subscriber Services to this demographic could franchise the entire packaged set of Subscriber Services, then take responsibility for delivering them to this particular demographic. Note that the inherent hiearchy of the Internet and its domains provides an ideal structure for the creation and management of such franchises.
Clearly, this is an enormously powerful propagation and growth mechanism. Equally clearly, the financial rewards are enormous for the company that happens to be operating the franchise.
The Subscriber Services will be completely open and free; they will be based on open protocols, and implemented based on free software. In addition, the Subscriber Services will express preference for, and encourage usage of, free client and device software by subscribers and users.
This is an entirely new approach to the Subscriber Services business. The tremendous power of open protocols and free software has not been been fully exploited by any other existing Subscriber Service. The primary beneficiary of the open-source software movement will be the Subscriber Service provider who understands and makes use of it to the fullest. Other service providers have a liability in terms of the assets that they have built.
The Subscriber Services will be oriented first and foremost to the needs and desires of the user, NOT those of the advertizers, content providers, or vendors. Nor will they be oriented to the benefit of Neda itself, the Subscriber Services provider and virtual community organizer. What this means is that the services will remain as passive, silent, and anonymous as the subscriber wishes. For example, if the subscriber wishes to see no advertizing, he/she will see none. If the subscriber does not wish to be presented with unsolicited product and service offerings, then they will not be presented.
Because of our position as Subscriber Service providers and community organizers, during the process of building user and subscriber relationships, we will have access to user and subscriber usage information resulting from users' access activity and experiences. The gathering of such information is often referred to as ``data mining,'' and is frequently used for targetted advertizing. However, we will only use this method and model when the user or subscriber explicitly requests or authorizes this. As an element of our user-oriented role, we will use this information when acting on the subscriber's behalf as a Buyer's Agent in the ``Infomediary'' model [#!Net.Worth!#].
Only when the subscriber explicitly requests product, service, vendor, or any other form of commercial information will it be presented to him/her. The subscriber may request such information on a one-time basis, in which case the system will then return to its former unobtrusiveness until called upon again. Or, the subscriber may authorize well-defined and qualified information to be presented to him/her on an on-going basis.
In either case, the Subscriber Services will act in the best interests of the subscriber. The services will make full use of the subscriber's information for this purpose, but will act as a guardian of this information, and will fully respect the subscriber's privacy.
Our initial, practical Subscriber Services implementation consists of two services: ByName.net, and ByNumber.net. As a starting point implementation, these initial services currently provide only a basic set of services to the mobile user. Eventually, the functionality of these services will be expanded to include the full range of capabilities listed in Figure 2.1.
As noted previously, some of the key characteristics of our Subscriber Services are that they are user-oriented, highly personalized, and show emphasis and respect for the user's identity above that of the service provider.
Our initial Subscriber Services implementation reflects all of these characteristics. The domain names ByName.net and ByNumber.net themselves reflect several of the characteristics of our Subscriber Services. First, they reflect their user-oriented nature. One of the aspects of our user-orientedness is that we are attentive to the needs of the user, but discreet - like a good butler. The names ByName and ByNumber reflect this self-effacing discretion: these names include no self-promotion of Neda whatsoever. Rather, the ByName and ByNumber services place primary emphasis on the user's identity; ByName is based on the user's name, while ByNumber is based on a numerical user ID.
The names ByName and ByNumber also reflect the very large intended scope of these services. Note that these names imply no particular type of service (e.g. wired, wireless, fixed, mobile); therefore they imply all types of service. The ByName and ByNumber services also emphasize mobility for the user.
ByName provides a set of free services, based on free protocols which have been implemented as free software. The ByName service provides each user with his/her own personal domain, using a naming convention based on the user's name. For example, a certain well-known television celebrity might be provided with the domain:
homer.simpson.1.ByName.net
ByName thus includes the user's own name as part of the domain. The user can then use this single domain for all his communications needs. Homer can administer, manage and control his personal communications through his personal domain; and through this domain, ByName will provide Homer with a comprehensive set of Mobile Messaging, e-mail, personal web, and other open-ended services. The demand for these sorts of personal services is becoming more and more evident as the users of first-generation and conventional service providers become increasingly sophisticated.
By appending various selectors in front of the @ sign, Homer can be
provided with a number of separate addresses and mailboxes, such as
personal@homer.simpson.1.ByName.net, or
office@homer.simpson.1.ByName.net. Other prefix selectors which Homer
can use are: urgent, public, mobile, pager,
fax and emergency.
This provides our anti-hero with a consistent set of e-mail boxes that he can use for different purposes - one address for personal mail, a different one for work-related mail, and so on. Homer now has control over the routing of his e-mail without having to use a mail sorter or filters.
The user's home page is also based on his name; Homer's is
http://homer.simpson.1.ByName.net
All of the above is in sharp contrast to the way Subscriber Services are being provided today. A conventional service provider typically provides the user with a single e-mail address, usually of the form ``SomeName@SomeDomain.com,'' where the name ``SomeDomain'' serves to identify and promote the Service Provider. This provides the user with a single mailbox, to which all mail for that address is sent.
This becomes inconvenient when the owner uses the account for multiple types of incoming e-mail. For example, the user may use the account for both personal and work-related mail, to subscribe to various mailing lists, and to participate in usenet groups. Over time the user may get onto a large number of mailing lists, resulting in an incoming e-mail stream spanning a very wide dynamic range of importance, from urgent personal e-mail, all the way down to meaningless spam.
E-mail applications typically deal with this by providing the user with tools to manage and prioritize mail. These consist of inbox sorters and filters to eliminate spam and prioritize incoming messages based on the originator or subject.
The ByName.net service provides a better way. ByName provides the user with multiple mailboxes and addresses, each of which can be dedicated to a particular type of e-mail. These various addresses have a simple and uniform naming scheme, based on the one symbol that is most personal to the user: his own name.
To learn more about the ByName service and to apply for an account,
see the website at
http://www.ByName.net.
For more information on accessing Neda Personal Computing and Communications Services, see the subscriber access manual [#!NEDA-104-101-04!#].
The ByNumber.net service provides a complementary service to ByName, based on numbers rather than letters. ByNumber enables devices with digit-only origination capability (e.g. conventional telephone keypads) to send e-mail messages, and provides a unified way of sending messages to pagers, two-way pagers, faxes and e-mail accounts.
ByNumber also includes a telephone voice interface which provides speech recognition, text-to-speech, and IVR capabilities on all phones. In this way the full functionality of our Subscriber Services will be made available through ByNumber, just as they are through ByName. The ByNumber service is primarily accessible through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system using a standard touchtone telephone. At present, ByNumber only supports user origination of messages by way of:
However, ByNumber.net is intended eventually to become a full companion to ByName.net, for voice access.
You can access the ByNumber Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system by calling 425-644-2972.
To learn more about the ByNumber service, see the website at http://www.ByNumber.net.
To learn more about how the ByNumber service works, see the ByNumber User's Guide [#!NEDA-104-104-01!#].
ByName.net and ByNumber.net provide the starting point for our Subscriber Services. We will build on this starting point, and eventually endow our services with all the characteristics listed in Figure 2.1.
Other service providers are rushing to expand their user base immediately and as fast as possible. However, our business strategy does not call for us to create a user base during Phase I, and we have no plans to begin building one at this time. We will not begin to create and expand our user base until well into Phase II. Until that time, we will instead focus on creating a comprehensive, reliable and rapidly scalable Subscriber Services infrastructure. We are confident that when the time comes, the uniqueness and power of our Subscriber Services model will be a compelling motivation for their widespread adoption.
These are necessary conditions for success; however, they are not sufficient. Even with all those conditions satisfied, two important questions remain. First, the Subscriber Services business is enormous - how can a small company like Neda succeed in capturing this business? Second, established Subscriber Services players such as AOL and Yahoo are already in existence. As newcomers, we clearly are at a disadvantage to these established companies. The fact that Subscriber Services is an inherently increasing returns business places latecomers at a further disadvantage. Why will Neda succeed as a small player in such a huge arena, a newcomer, and in competition with established providers such as AOL and Yahoo?
There are, in fact, three extremely good reasons why we will succeed in the face of these challenges. The first reason is that free and open protocols are an essential component of the Mobile Messaging industry. Any viable Subscriber Services solution must be protocol-based, and nobody besides Neda has the necessary efficient protocols for the mobile and wireless environment.
Without such protocols, all efforts by existing virtual communities to expand into this environment will fail, because they will be closed solutions, they will be in competition with one another, and they will further segment the industry. Other companies who pursue this same goal, regardless of how much money they invest, will only create increased industry fragmentation because of their lack of a common set of protocols. The consumer needs and wants what Neda alone is providing: protocols as a basis for convergence.
The second reason is that, because of our Three Business Units, Neda will be a provider of all three of the key components required to make the Mobile Messaging industry work: protocols, products, and Subscriber Services. The existing players only have the assets to provide the final component.
(Of course, AOL or Yahoo can readily acquire the missing assets, either from Neda, or from a company that chooses to compete with Neda on this basis. However, these companies will be quick to recognize the advantages of in-house ownership of these assets. And an astute businessperson will soon recognize that the quickest and cheapest way to acquire the missing assets is to buy out the company that has the greatest investment in these assets - in other words, Neda.
All that Neda has to do to make this a very real possibility is to become a credible threat to the existing Subscriber Services companies. For this reason, we view buy-out by a larger player is a very plausible and acceptable future scenario for Neda. And of course, this would provide a convenient and acceptable exit vehicle for our investors.)
Both of the above are compelling reasons for why we can compete and succeed in the Mobile Messaging arena. However, they say nothing about why we can succeed in the much broader Subscriber Services arena. For this we turn to our third reason for success: We represent the second generation of Subscriber Service providers, and can benefit from the experiences of our predecessors. Existing installed Subscriber Services evolved into their current model in an unplanned, ad hoc way. A Subscriber Services model designed from the ground up on the basis of the ad hoc blunders and errors of the past five years will have a significant advantage. In particular, history has shown the enormous power and importance of the completely free and open Subscriber Services model. Neda's services will be based entirely on free protocols and free, open-source software. Not only will the software implementations of the LEAP protocols be open-source, but in fact the entire Subscriber Services software architecture will consist of free software.
A new entry into the Subscriber Services business requires at a minimum (a) a new and compelling value proposition for the user, and (b) a method for wide and large scale exposure. LEAP qualifies and provides an entry point on both counts, and also brings the power of open and free into the equation.
Furthermore, our Subscriber Services will be designed to be franchisable and distributed. We will franchise the service by moving computing and communications services closer to the subscriber, and we will gain the trust of the subscriber by putting him in control of the service. Under this model free software is an asset, whereas commercial software is a liability. Also, the current assets, investments and commitments of existing Subscriber Services become a liability under this model.
This represents a radically new way of looking at, developing and maintaining software, and it has profound consequences. What this means is that the entire Internet engineering and technical community who devote themselves to working on open and free protocols and software have in effect become an extension of our own research and development division. The work of this army of talented and committed people can be integrated into our Subscriber Services on an ongoing basis. Our unique, groundbreaking ability to harness the extraordinary power of openness and freedom sets us apart from any other service provider, and represents a further compelling argument for our success.
Furthermore, our Subscriber Services model is based on the Internet end-to-end model. This model places the user squarely in the driver's seat. The user may choose the best access device and software based on competitive features such as performance, price, or whatever criteria are of most importance to the user.
Our Subscriber Services are thus structured in a radically different way to those of AOL and Yahoo. They are structured in a way which is enormously powerful, and which those other companies cannot realistically be expected to emulate. It is on this basis that Neda can enter and dominate the Subscriber Services business.