To date, the problems of micropayments have largely remained unsolved. Who becomes that gatekeeper on the web remains to be seen though. Your theories are most welcome via our commenting feature below. The forum will be held on Friday, June 1 in Sydney. The problem with a gatekeeper model is that it treats information distribution as if it was a product.
Information has fundamentally different properties in economic terms.
At the moment the internet is already too skewed towards big business. Not the other way around. While I completely agree that iMode's success rests on their agreements with content providers and their billing 'bureau', this model has limitations. The company I work for offers billing and customer management software for service providers. We know what's going on at DoCoMo pretty well since we have worked with many DoCoMo backed service providers in Japan.