A few days ago, Winston Huang launched a pair of extensions for Firefox that let Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile customers see their remaining minutes from within their browser.
That’s a great idea – but why aren’t Verizon and T-Mobile offering this capability themselves? Telcos need to open up a whole lot more.
There’re two kinds of data locked up in two kinds of dinosaur, that could add immense value to the platform owners and translate into increased convenience for user.
- Banks – my monthly statement is a timeline of events with some financial data; Barclays…can I this have delivered to my Bloglines account?
- Telcos – my monthly BT and Orange statements are a timeline of communication events,..can I have some RSS for my aggregator?
It’s kinda ironic that my money can now be streamed anywhere in the world that accepts my Visa debit card and I can stream my voice globally through my tri-band Orange cellphone…but all the interesting realtime data around that mobility isn’t so flexible.
Opening up could create some interesting new applications and kick start a round of innovation that benefits banks and telcos, as well as the customer.
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