One of the central themes of this issue's cover story is the question of who owns the customer in a content-rich mobile market. Is it the company that operates the network and provides the underlying technology that supports transmission of applications over that network? Or, as mobile customers — particularly those in the mass market — increasingly go outside the boundaries of their service providers and acquire content from third-party developers, do those entities begin to develop an affinity with end users and lay claim to their loyalty?

Let's set aside the possible answers to that question for a moment and ponder the question itself: Just a year or so ago, the wireless industry's discussion of mobile multimedia still centered around the promise of still-developing networks and the dearth of applications with revenue-generating potential. The idea that the ownership of the customer already is being called into question is a strong testament to how rapidly this market has evolved.

And it's not just the content development and distribution market itself that has changed — it's also the next-generation network technologies that are quickly becoming so firmly entrenched in today's wireless networks that it's almost passé to refer to them as “next-generation” anymore.

So, who owns the customer? As Kevin Fitchard explores in his article, which begins on page 24, customer ownership is still in flux, but service providers are so confident about the strength of networks and customer ties that they are allowing the walled-off nature of their content efforts to erode.

On the subject of advancing network technologies, this issue also features analysis of one of the hottest new technologies for next-gen wireless networking: HSDPA, or high-speed downlink packet access technology. The platform is prevalent in carrier labs, and as Dan O'Shea points out in his story (page 18), it's about to become a fixture in network trials as well. Also in this issue, Jason Ankeny examines the evolution of the tower sector (page 14), and Vince Vittore reports on what wireless devices and trends dominated January's Consumer Electronics Show (page 22).

One final note on the evolution of the mobile multimedia sector: The most important method service providers have for protecting their ownership of the customer relationship is still the underlying operations and business systems that control and manage content distribution and billing. That trend hasn't changed as technology and applications have evolved — and as long as it remains top of mind for carriers, it likely never will.