ITU 03 diary – ringing bells, delighting customers and the constant threat of violins

Have you ever downloaded a ringtone or logo to your mobile phone? No? Well odds are that if you haven’t your son or daughter has. And if you thought they were wasting money on that, wait til you see the next download phenomenon making waves in the Far East.

Or rather, wait til you hear it. An early start at the show – hotel lobbies are so useful when it’s apparently dangerous to admit journos inside before 10:00AM – brought a meeting with widerthan.com, a spin off from Korea’s SK Telecom.

widerthan.com is only just over a year old but it is already a $60m per year company with its COLORing service. The idea is that when you call someone, why listen to a bring-bring (or brrrrrrring, depending on where you are) when you could hear a personalised message? And what if that personalised message were your favourite song of the moment, a joke told by a well-known comedian or perhaps even an ad for something your company sells?

The innovative service has taken off in Korea, adding up to $2 per month to phone bills on average. Trials are going on in the UK and we can expect something in the new year. widerthan.com’s UK offices are in Reading. Now who’s near there?

On a less lighthearted note, the theme of much of the debate has switched from issues of regulation and competition to making sure customers are happy. In fact, according to Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, happy is no longer good enough. He wants his 120 million customers around the world to be "delighted". You might as well aim high at the beginning. For more on his promise of all-networks-together wireless connectivity, click here.

And if you’ve ever been caught out in a conference or a meeting by a ringing handset, or been annoyed at that idiot behind you who then proceeds to have a loud, five-minute chat, Sarin had an idea. After a moderator kindly requested devices be turned off, Sarin took the lectern to encourage everyone to turn them back on again and use them. Always be closing.

Opening that high-calibre session was Cisco head honcho John Chambers. He made another impassioned plea for increased productivity through use of technology and also called for greater simplicity in what’s on offer. He spoke of his college student son who was going to buy a small router after moving off campus - only trouble was that it wasn’t a Cisco router.

"Get a Cisco router – I get a great discount," Chambers said.

"Then it’s still the same price as the Linksys one," came the reply.

"But the Cisco router does so much more."

"I don’t need all that," came the follow-up.

It’s just as well that while Chambers junior went out and bought a Linksys router, Chambers senior could earlier this year go out and buy Linksys the company.

And finally, the PalExpo arena has this year seen one novelty piece of entertainment prosper above most others. On a number of stands, for some reason violin and other string instrument players have been in vogue.

That’s all well and good but spare a thought for the confused marketing director who, when asking for feedback on the show, heard about "all the violence".