Notes from a world tour

Iam sitting in a hotel lounge in Santiago, Chile with just one flight (albeit an 18 hour flight) between me and my home and family in Sydney, Australia. I have just been visiting Dialogue present and future offices on four continents, and I thought I´d put down a few thoughts on how things look from my perspective.

It is nearly 30 years since I first went travelling and twenty years since I last went travelling, so I expected to find a few changes. There was no internet 30 years ago, at least not for civilians. So there were no internet cafe´s. Just normal cafes.
There were no mobile phones twenty years ago, but there was Post Restante and there was a lot of enjoyment to be gained from receiving messages which may have taken three weeks to travel to whatever far-flung corner of the world you were sitting.

So apart from noting that things have moved on a bit, what does all this mean for the business? Well the real change is not the technology but the culture. You used to go abroad from the UK to other parts of Europe and see different cars and different food and drink but that has all substantially changed.

Now I find that whatever country I go to, whatever language is spoken by all the races and religions you can think of. The things which are common are the way in which the mobile phone pervades daily lives.
Everybody has a mobile and everybody is using it in just the same way as they do back home. Calls, texts, mobile internet browsing. Less developed countries have a greater need for mobiles as fixed line infrastructure is just not there. Economies and economics dictate that high proportions of users are pre-pay and that sometimes the cost of mobile data is very high. But guess what it doesn´t seem to matter to the kids on the street. They all have the latest handsets and all know how to do things which must boggle their parents´minds!

Then we look at value added services and we have the same things everywhere (and I do mean everywhere):

• SMS used in TV eviction voting.
• Premium SMS TV Quizzes
• Advertising for sexy chat services
• Mobile content advertised inside the back cover of TV listing magazines.

And if all of those things are  present, then there must be companies out there doing the same thing as Dialogue. Are these global conglomerates who Dialogue competes with in the UK and Australia? No, they are companies that are operating in one or two countries, just like Dialogue but in a parallel mobile universe.

I find it facinating that as well as the obvious homogenisation of our world through the ever growing international footprint of companies like Nokia, Starbucks, Esso and the Accor Hotel group; there is also the halo effect of the ancilliary industries which service the missions of these global giants.

 I could always understand how all parts of the world would separately evolve places to stay, places to eat, clothes to wear and music to listen to. Those things were almost primative common characteristics of being human. I just wouldn´t have included things like SMS chat and downloading ringtones as part of the same genre.

Perhaps it is no bigger deal than Sir Walter Raleigh bringing potatoes to Europe from America. Once the Europeans realised they could grow their own, they didn´t need to import them. Perhaps I´m just witnessing the same principle of good ideas travelling well.

So apart from noting that this is an interesting phenomenon, does it have any business value? Well for me at least it confirms two things:

1. These mobile services are catering for common human desires which are present almost everywhere. Desires to communicate, participate and decorate.
2. My old quest for justification to expand internationally has just got a lot easier. Whereever we find mobile phones we will soon want to find Dialogue.

In 1980 I used to be amazed at how even the most remote parts of Africa had been reached by both Coca Cola and football. One day people will be amazed at how far and wide the short code has spread!

Comments

[Guy.C.Anderson]

Hi Hugh, I look up your blog quite regularily, most of it is over my head of course but good to read your last blog on your world tour, bet it's alot more comfortable than the previous ones. Sad to think that Sudan has been in conflict since we left but I don't think it was our fault, but it does amaze me that mobile phones have enabled so many countries to by pass the whole structural costs of buried cables and exchanges. It tickles me that you are part of it all. Happy New Year to you, Sarah and your boys. Regards Guy.

[Bryan Sharp]

With other companies operating in other territories, meeting the same needs as Dialogue in the UK and AUS, what further does Dialogue need to justify international expansion?

Is it localisation? By localisation I include knowing the country, the people and how to do business natively. I suspect to operate at the right price there will be need to have local interconnects. I imagine in some maturing countries, relationships with power and influence will gain those interconnects.

Is there an international place for being the action behind the transaction, that is the technology enabling the service, taking a slice but allowing a local company dependent on Dialogue operations, to deliver. Other than local hosted/edge kit, perhaps Dialogue would not even need in country presence?

You have already achieved the Australian expansion, perhaps helped/justified by an initial contract, but take that away from the achievement, has the venture been valuable? Where next, USA? I’ll open a Seattle Office ;-).