John Carl Villanueva03 July 2009, 1:15 PM
Telcos are starting to think about the money that can be made from giving away "free" netbooks with mobile broadband services -- and Linux is helping make this a reality.
Mobile telcos, who are quite familiar with giving away mobile phones in exchange for a contracted service lock-in period, have been recently challenged to apply the same concept with netbooks. And to make the deal more profitable for telcos, it was suggested that Linux be installed as the default operating system.
The challenge, which is based on an idea that has been circulating around Linux community circles since the dawn of the netbook wars, was brought up by Jim Zemlin, the executive director of Linux Foundation, during an industry forum in Beijing earlier this week.
Many netbooks are priced as much -- or lower -- than many smartphones, making this idea very doable.
Since netbooks work best with web-based apps rather than desktop ones that need CPU grunt, this offer can be very attractive to consumers who want to utilize the full potential of network technologies such as WiMAX, HSPA, EV-DO, and even the older 3G. In Australia, of course, telcos are particularly well set up to offer mobile broadband enabled netbooks, as all the Australia mobile networks offer HSPA, which provides web connections with pretty fast speeds.
Connecting to the Internet through these long-range wireless network technologies plus the help of greatly improved battery lives will allow users to enjoy the full portability qualities of netbooks. Blogging, browsing, chatting through instant messengers, or simply updating your Facebook status can be done practically anywhere for longer durations once this becomes fully implemented.
To give away mobile phones for free, telcos subsidizse the cost of the devices, and slowly get a good return on investment (ROI) during the lock-in period, which is usually 2 years. The low to virtually zero cost of Linux as the software component of a netbook can substantially increase the telcos' potential ROI and thus eliminate a chunk of the financial barriers that can slow this concept down.
In Australia, we've already seen a couple of telcos dabble in providing free netbooks or even notebooks with a mobile broadband contract. In 2008, Optus did a deal with HP/Compaq to offer notebooks at $0 upfront if people took a broadband service. More recently, Vodafone has been exclusively offering the Dell Mini 9 with mobile broadband for $0 upfront.