AOL Mobile....No Really!

AOL Mobile? Can AOL-Time Warner Become the Next Major Wireless Provider?

With wireless providers focusing heavily on multimedia, gaming and converged services, meaning many types of features and services bundled into one product, it doesn't seem as if it would be such a far off idea that your 'wireless' service could be provided by AOL Time-Warner? Think of how many people have ditched their home phones for cellular phones?

AOL ‘Mobile’, well that certainly has an interesting ring to it. Imagine it alongside the likes of major providers such as T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless. Reflect back to the mid 90’s, post 2400 baud, pre 56k dial up. That was probably around the time when you discovered email, AIM and chat rooms? Actually it wasn’t even branded as AIM, it was still known as AOL Instant Messenger. And back then few of us could afford cell phones. We were still sporting the fancy little colored beepers. In the late 90’s we began to see the emergence of the digital phone, a portable phone with voice mail and caller id and what a phenomenon. Then emerged the contractor’s phone, with the infamous Nextel direct-connect ‘walkie-talkie’ feature. Soon after we began to see a host of phones made for all kinds of lifestyles and niches, clamshell phones, gaming phones, branded services, international services, Internet ready and java enabled handhelds. Most recently with the popularity of wireless phones among youth we are starting to see more and more multimedia platform phones.

There are wireless phones with cameras that have flash and zoom capability, phones with video recording capability and now phones with Mobi-TV (Mobile Television). So now there is TV on your mobile phone, TV on the Internet and TV on your TV. Where does it stop or where did it begin?

With wireless companies focusing heavily on multimedia, gaming and converged services, meaning many types of features and services bundled into one product, it doesn’t seem as if it would be such a far off idea that your ‘wireless’ service could be provided by AOL Time-Warner? Think of how many people have ditched their home phones for cellular phones? Many people did it when nationwide calling and unlimited nights and weekends became packaged at a reasonable price into cell phone services. The biggest complaint from most people was ‘I can’t get full coverage in my house’. Well imagine if you had a phone that had Wi-Fi (802.11 Wireless Fidelity) back up built in and in your house you had a wireless router. There would never be such a thing as not having full service nor would you be ever using your cellular minutes. And even better what if you had a monthly service package from your local cable or broadband service provider that was inclusive of all your services, cable TV, Internet and wireless and Wi-Fi? Imagine an AOL Mobile Phone with all your familiar AOL services and features.

So now you would have AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Skype, Wi-Fi, Internet TV, cellular service and unlimited access to all the multimedia content you could ever want or have in one slick device. Actually with all of that stuff on your mobile computing handheld device, traditional cell phone service would be more or less passé. It would probably be regarded the same way as we view analog service today, as a second tier service. Even though AOL-Time Warner seems to have recently fallen into ‘second tier service’ themselves in the Broadband arena, the fact remains they are still the second largest cable provider. With a captive target audience, a full suite of multimedia products and content, AIM and a well branded global name, they certainly could make a fast turnaround and become an emerging leader in the MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) arena.

Now isn’t that an original thought? An ‘AOL Mobile’ Phone with your wireless service provided by AOL-Time Warner? America ‘Online’….again!

©2006 Shonika Proctor is the New ‘IT’ Girl and 14 year veteran. She is revolutionizing the next generation of wireless customer care and help desk support. Her company provides tips, tools and products that help confused and techo-phobic cellular users to overcome their most challenging wireless frustrations, www.cell-phone-account-help.com

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