Employing the C2C Principle for Making the Use of Data Services on Mobile Phones More Attractive

Today, digital mobile phones are still rarely applied for accessing and using data services. Due to their broad distribution, mobile phones would offer a very attractive platform for information retrieval in different areas, like, e.g., traffic channels, public transportation, sports, and many others. Unfortunately, there are limitations, which prevent the average customer from widely using these services: At first, the costs for data transfers through wireless digital phone networks are extremely high, and on the other hand, the handling of the devices usually is very uncomfortable. Here, a new system concept is described, which aims to overcome the before described limitations: In this design, a central service belonging to an individual customer sources the desired information, e.g. from the open Internet, and prepares it for an efficient wireless transfer. Through the second part, i.e. the terminal display software running on the mobile device, the user can retrieve and inspect this information with minimal efforts, because it is automatically transferred from the sourcing service. On base of this construction, the user interface is simplified, the data access costs are reduced, and finally the information access speed can be increased. In this approach, customised information is retrieved through a central client belonging to the customer, and hence, this construction shall be called C2C (customer-to-customer) service.