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Author
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Topic: Purchase/reservation of tickets over Mobile phones.
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Kamakshipalya Dhananjay
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 190
From: Bangalore, India
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 03-11-2004 09:08 AM
When people wish to use their mobile phones to buy or reserve movie tickets, do your area theatres and Mobile Service Provider (MSP) have any service that caters to such requests ?
To illustrate, here in India, the mobile technologies that are licensed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India are CDMA and GSM. GSM has been in operation for nearly a decade while CDMA services were rolled out just 1 year ago. The CDMA platform is claimed to be 1x EV-DO (generation 1, Evolution Data Only – meaning the mobile phone should permit transmission downstream of upto 1.5 mbps). In practice, the actual speeds are not even 1/10th the claims. So, the speeds do not support transactions such as movie ticket purchases or reservations over phone. Currently.
On the other hand, the GSM platform is not even worth talking about. With speeds supported of only 9.6 kbps, GSM MSPs are years behind in providing any value added services like this.
However, some multiplexes in Mumbai offer reservations through SMS and I have heard this has not been successful.So, to answer the question I posed earlier, there are none in India.
However, with so many forum members here from Europe and with 3G services rolled out in most parts of Western Europe, how is the scenario there ?
Any body here knows the situation in South Korea ? With the fame that it is the most broadband enabled nation in the world (nearly 1/3 of its population has access to broadband internet) and with CDMA services there actually performing at speeds like 1.5 mbps (offered by Korea Telecom, the first company in the world to so offer and since followed by other MSPs too there), it would be very interesting to know how these technologies are harnessed in relation to movie going there.
We don’t often hear from anybody in Japan in these forums. How is the scenario there ? With PDC (Personal Digital Cellular, the reigning cellular standard there) at its helm, I am sure Japan has some interesting lessons to impart.
What about China ? With confusing reports of what they actually use there (last time I heard that they use W-CDMA with the Government requirement that all mobile phones support SIM cards), how is the situation there ?
Finally, how is the situation in the US. I have read that an overwhelming number of MSPs in the US continue to operate on analog, it must be somewhat unlikely that such services are widely offered. However, some MSPs like VERIZON that offer GSM connections at 1900 Mhz must also be offering 3G services. In any case, there cannot be any MSP not offering such services in the US. How are they ?
Well, the significance of this discussion is based on the just announced development of a consortium consisting of corporations like Vodafone, Orange, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and others petitioning the ICANN (International Council for Assigned Names and Numbers) for separate Mobile TLDs. That is, ICANN has invited applications for granting new level domain names and this consortium has applied for permission to operate a MTLD, that is, for managing urls that will mostly end with an extension .phone or .tel. This is widely seen as an effort to facilitate better internet access on the mobile phones of the future.
If all goes well for this consortium, by mid 2005, we may very well have an url named MOVIETICKETS.PHONE and when an user keys in this url into his mobile phone, his MSP should be able to locate the user (using GPS, Global Positioning System or other method) and offer instant information on
1.movies at theatres that are nearer to the user's current location.
2. availability of tickets for a movie that the user prefers
3. quite possibly, the seating layout for the ticketed show may also be displayed on the user's screen
4. facilitate the instant reservation or purchase of tickets
5. provide driving directions to the movie theatre.
What do you say ?
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