Focus On Personal Data Protection
Nowadays, our mobile phone often stores not only our contacts' phone numbers,
but also pictures, Mp3 files, door codes, birthdays, and much more. What happens
if the SIM card is damaged or lost?
A remote back-up service can save data from the SIM card.
A cell phone used simply to be a regular phone you could carry around with you.
Article from 2008 Winter Review magazine
 |
 |
But it has rapidly taken on a host of other roles enabling people to manage their daily affairs as well as to load contacts, pictures, songs, notes and so on. At the same time, the information it stores is now so important that some users are ready to pay more to secure their personal database: it has become their unique link to their home or work when traveling.
• “I always have it with me,
even when I’m not using the phone!”
• “It’s part of my life.”
• “I couldn’t live without
it!”
Obviously cell phones have changed the way we look at our world. And these quotes from a TNS-Sofres qualitative focus group for Gemalto illustrate interviewees’ attitudes to data loss and the possibility of a SIM backup service.
What did the survey show? First up, some facts: cell phones are reliable and useful tools for millions of users. They have become the essential link between people and their social network. Most people have given up on their paper address books–too heavy to carry around and tiresome to update. Now they store all that information on their cell phones, along with quick notes to themselves, their schedule of meetings and events. They also use their cell phones to shoot and store photos, to download and listen to music, as well as call friends and customers.
Personal, Private, Vital
How do people rate all these new things they can store: contacts’ phone numbers, pictures, Mp3 files and so on? Answer: these are intensely private and vital resources. “It’s like my personal diary,” says Elisabeth, 34, about her cell phone. “I’m self employed... all my professional life is inside my phone,” adds Catherine, 37; for Michael, 21, it is now his only diary. Meanwhile Marie-Christine, 50, keeps everything she needs in it for her daily routine, “door codes, birthdays, photos of my children, social security number, business phone numbers, and so on.” And, she adds, she types every new number into her phone, admitting she often doesn’t bother to write it down on paper. “But it’s often hard to know just where to find all the stuff I’ve stored on my cell phone,” complains Julie, 25. But what if the phone or the SIM card is damaged or lost? It’s a nightmare: our trusty companion is now just an unreliable gadget. “I’ve seen so many people feeling miserable because they’ve lost their contacts...” says Jerome, 31. The subject is so sensitive many people say they prefer not to even think about such a disaster. But only the naive are blind to reality. According to a survey carried out by Intervoice in England, 50% of mobile owners reported that their phone had been stolen or lost in the past three years. Yet 54% of those interviewed in the same poll said they had no paper version of their address book or had not saved it to a computer!
Loss of data can mean loss of contacts
People who had lost the data stored in their phone said this has caused them so much hassle they hoped it would never happen again. Masiba remembers that when she lost a hundred contacts which she could not retrieve from her broken phone, she had to e-mail them all to ask for their numbers again. It took Arthur days to re-enter all his contacts, and he had to check numbers and addresses twice to avoid mistakes. Michael speaks for every user that has ever lost their contact book: “Some contacts are lost forever!” And don’t mention to Marie-Christine the possibility of losing her children’s photos!
There are other consequences as well. The study shows that many people don’t even know how much data is stored on their SIM card. Indeed, when they go to change their phone, a frequent occurrence over a lifetime, they lose some of the contacts, pictures, songs or videos they assumed would automatically transfer to the new phone via their SIM card.
“The function of cell phones has changed,” argues Vincent Truffier-Blanc, Telecoms Marketing Director at Gemalto. “They often have a high sentimental value due to their photos, films, etc. The loss of such data can be a real personal trauma and a high inconvenience for professionals.”
Data storage capacity exploding
Personal Data Protection (PDP) is the answer to these headaches. This is a remote backup service that allows users to save their contact numbers and photos and other data from the SIM card over the air to a centralized, protected storage site. With data storage capacity literally exploding, the limits to the data customers can save are fast receding.
PDP offers three convenient functions for this purpose, namely:
• Backup on demand.
• Restoration of data if the phone
is lost or damaged, either directly to the phone, or via the Web
(for instance, each time a new contact is added it can be
automatically saved to an external storage site).
• Plus, this service is available
through a range of customer touch points including the mobile
phone menu itself, the operator’s Web interface or interactive
voice response (IVR).
When told about the phone book backup service managed by their operator, users spontaneously expressed interest. They displayed a preference for automatic backup, although they thought the manual option should be maintained. Those who had personally experienced a loss in the past were especially enthusiastic. “This is paradise!” exclaimed Marie-Christine, 50, still traumatized by the theft of her cell phone. She told the survey she would be willing to pay “5 to 10 euros a month!” “It would give me peace of mind... I’m willing to pay.”
Still more significantly, this demand is translating into reality. Correctly implemented, with the right marketing mix in terms of pricing, customer procedures, packaging and communications, some operators have achieved a 20% uptake rate, compared with an average of around 7 or 8% for a new service. Operators such as SFR and OPTUS have reported customer satisfaction rate in excess of 90%.
Loss of data can spell loss of traffic
But it’s not only customers that benefitfrom a service like Personal Data Protection. That’s because loss of personal data is a major yet underrated business threat for operators. When a customer loses his data this can spell loss of traffic and revenue for the operator, sometimes for many months. Recent studies suggest Average Revenue per User (ARPU) can drop between 13 and 58% during the months following the loss of a phonebook, depending on customer type.
For Vincent Truffier-Blanc, mobile network operators can raise revenue in two ways by offering Personal Data Protection. First they can charge for the transaction of the actual synchronization; or, once installed, they can raise revenue as the service is likely to considerably reduce the rate of customer loss known in the industry as churn. Gemalto is currently investigating this issue.
To date, Gemalto has deployed around sixty Personal Data Protection services, making the company the de facto market leader. An extensive market study has reviewed these deployments to identify the factors of success in terms of pricing policy, type of data storage, and type of advertising.
Benefits for operators
To enjoy Personal Data Protection, a subscriber needs to renew his SIM card. In Europe, explains Truffier-Blanc, “the customer renewal rate is around 20 to 25% per year. Which means that between a fifth and a quarter of MNO subscribers could be equipped with the system in the course of a year.”
Clearly there is strong customer demand for Personal Data Protection, and the service promises many benefits for mobile operators too. Its commercial success, though, depends on aligning a whole set of factors, including service features, pricing, distribution and promotion policy.
Personal Data Protection is still new. Currently, Gemalto is working on ways to manage personal data regardless of their type (calendar, MTM files and contact details) and whatever their location (handset or SIM). But it is also working with some of its clients to imagine new types of service—such as connections with community websites, to enable users to exchange data stored on their mobile device with those sites.
No doubt about it, Personal Data Storage is the “natural service” for anyone with a cell phone. After all, who wants to run the risk of losing all or part of one’s most vital data?
 |
 |
PDM
Video
(7,37mn - size: 10Mb) 
Play the video
