The latest rumor on the launch of a wireless 411 service in the US is that the service is not moving forward.\u00a0 The problem from day one has been the view by the public, press and government of the lack of privacy to the consumer with such a service.\u00a0 This lack of privacy is certainly real.\u00a0 Consumers consider their mobile devices\u00a0as the ‘last bastion’ of privacy, and are loathed when they get calls from people they don’t know.\u00a0\u00a0 Why would I list my name and mobile number in the directory?\u00a0 I certainly would not, and I’m from the industry.\u00a0 Even with opt-in, not publishing the number in alternative databases and not charging not to be listed, these feactures do not provide nearly enough privacy for the individual.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition, the issue of successful connection is a real dilemma since only a handful of people would ever list themselves in such a fashion.\u00a0 And with only a small percentage of individuals in the directory, the chance of success from a caller’s perspective to get the person one is looking for is so small, the telcos will certainly get a backlash of people complaining about not finding the right individual.<\/p>\n
The general problem is that you can’t force a traditional model (directory assistance “DA” to fixed line devices) on a new one (DA to mobile phones).\u00a0 Part of the issues is the perception of the service, given that people automatically think the service will be the same as the traditional one.\u00a0 While I continue to believe there is alternative privacy technologies that can hide the phone number to\u00a0contextual listings beyond ‘name and address’, technology alone is not going to solve the problem.<\/p>\n
The service, if one ever succeeds in the US, has to be driven, in many respects, by the consumer themselves.\u00a0 We see the beginnings of new models every day, in new listings being created by services such as Match.com, Myspace where identities are created, communication is enabled, yet privacy in left intact for individuals.\u00a0 Let consumers drive how they are listed and what devices they want to associate with those listings within the groups\/communities they belong in.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The latest rumor on the launch of a wireless 411 service in the US is that the service is not moving forward.\u00a0 The problem from day one has been the view by the public, press and government of the lack of privacy to the consumer with such a service.\u00a0 This lack of privacy is certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567,658],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contextual-directory","category-wireless-411"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sunnyahn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}