Free 411 service?
At last month’s Mobile Monday, Jack Denenberg from Cingular Wireless commented that 411 calls accounted for a huge chunk of revenue to the US cellular carriers, with Cingular servicing around 1 million 411 calls per day at an average billing cost of between $1.25 to $1.40. All US carriers combined do around 3 million 411 calls per day, which works out to more than $1 billion per year in 411 fees!
They’re going to be really unhappy if these guys get some traction:
A few weeks ago I met Andre Vanier, CEO of 1-800-411-SAVE (my friend Ajay, the guy with the cool geek car, introduced us). I was intrigued by his new business and he’s on the phone with me announcing his new service that turns on tonight at midnight.
…
We are considerably cheaper, he says. 1-800-411-SAVE is a free call.His service is using the same database that the carriers use to provide 411 information. This service is using the latest data the big phone companies use (they are forced to share that data with other phone carriers), while many of the Internet-based services are using much older and less complete databases.
What’s the business model? 1-800-411-SAVE pays for the cost of the 411 call. The model is to recover the cost from advertisers. Not just any advertisers but specifically advertisers that fit into the overall concept of “save.”
(via Scoble)
Update 11-16-2005 00:41 PST - The corollary to saving $1.50 for listening to an ad from a sponsor before getting the phone number from 411 is that the customer service lines for banks and credit cards should pay me for listening to their upsell message that gets played before getting to the automated response or being put on hold. At least with the free 411 I get to make a choice…
Tags: wireless, 411, mobile, search, cingular, search, startups
