Would you pay €2 to use Facebook on the beach?

So here’s a question for you. I’d like you to have a wee look at this video and see what you think of the concepts demonstrated.

I came across it in the ‘Demo Lab’ area at MACH Insights 2011. It’s showing off a MACH product by the name of the Data Roaming Engine which enables a massively flexible raft of policies and controls allowing operators to get rather inventive with their roaming deals.

The concept is this. You arrive on to a gorgeous desert island and you immediately put your phone into ‘no data roaming’ mode.

However you then get a text message from your operator encouraging you to browse (for free) the possible roaming options. One of the items in the shopping cart is (for example), the ability to browse Facebook free for a whole day for just €2. When you select and confirm, you can then use Facebook ’til your heart is content, for that hour/day/week/period.

There’s a few other options shown in the video.

This is the kind of inventive thing I’d like to see operators play with, especially given the fact that 42% of travellers deliberately do not use roaming (MACH’s figure) and the vast majority of the rest of the users are ultra careful about what they spend (my viewpoint).

Here’s the video:

And another point I’d like to raise is flexibility. If operators get themselves a decent roaming control engine, then they can easily test and experiment with different options without having to pay crazy amounts of money to change their billing systems for every little marketing test.