Mandatory University Cellphone?
Here is this interesting piece from MobileCrunch on a partnership between Rave Wireless and Sprint.
The specialized mobile applications will include class schedules and a school events calendar and potentially commercial services or e-commerce at some point in the future. Both Allen University and University of Maryland Southern Shore are signed to participate; and at both schools students are required to use Sprint phones which are included in the price of tuition at the colleges.
This certainly is an interesting business model. Maybe the smaller players like Sun Cellular and the new 3G carriers might want to launch a service similar to this. In this particular case, University students are a captured market. This is definitely one really fast way to boost subscriber numbers. Of course, for a country like the Philippines, University populations are not very big. However, value-added educational services can also be offered and this can also potentially increase ARPU!
