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Last modified: | Mobile Insight Vol: 8 Issue 325 July 10th 2006Ericsson brings WAP Billing to UKWhile virtually everyone in the mobile Internet space has quietly dropped the WAP word, Ericsson is persisting with its use. It has just launched WAP Billing onto the UK market. The system does do exactly what it says on the label. It allows mobile internet sites to bill for content. So if you have a WAP phone – and a GPRS or 3G connexion – it can bill you for services all paid for via your mobile handset. In reality, most of the sites which can deploy WAP Billing are WAP based but Ericsson's system can cope with mobile sites that are actually HTML based as well. The attraction to WAP Billing is that it acts as the middleman. Ericsson takes care of the interface to all the relevant mobile phone operators. Then it connects to any content providers who wishes to sign up. The whole deal involves revenue sharing. Ericsson shares data traffic revenues with the operators and it shares billed goods revenue with the content providers. Ericsson's Peter Garside reckons that content providers can recover as much as 65 per cent of an item's cover price. Where Ericsson reckons it has a USP is the fact that it has concluded deals with all of the operators in its given markets. That even includes 3 in Sweden. So content providers can finally sell their wares off-portal. There's an upper limit of £5 for an item purchased using WAP Billing. Plus Ericsson reckons its system can cope with situations whereby the purchaser hasn't got enough airtime left to purchase the item. The system is really good news for those who have been struggling to find a means to sell their mobile wares – ringtones and that’s sort of thing – to consumers without investing a fortune. Garside even reckoned one site was up and running in two hours! So what's the big difference between WAP Billing and the well-established Bango? Global reach seems to be one advantage. Once you're integrated into the system, you can sell things to 0.5 billion users in 10 countries. Ericsson even reckons its system confirms to a new standard –pay4it – which provides an Open API standard which all operators will eventually adopt. Sounds great for small to medium sized content suppliers. The full Inquirer story ... Ericsson still likes the WAP word Carphone readying its fixed/mobile offeringThe C Children unnecessarily at risk from perverts The recent conviction of Royce Roberts from Caernarfon in Wales for sending indecent pictures of himself to children's mobile phones exposes how the UK's mobile networks are vulnerable to this kind of attack. The scandal is that such events are entirely avoidable. Firms like Ace*comm have already supplied systems in the USA which can prevent children receiving calls and messages from unknown parties. In fact, operators wouldn't even require specialist software if they implemented networks based on the latest technology – such as IMS. According to Steve Edwards, chief marketing officer with Sonus networks, "With the development of next generation (NG) networks worldwide we're seeing great interest in innovative services like parental controls. At the GlobalComm tradeshow we demonstrated parental controls based on our IMX applications platform that would enable parents to apply filters to their child's phone usage. These filters could have blocked messages from any unregistered user such as those this case [Royce Roberts]." It's a big problem because more than one million children under 10 years old currently have mobiles in the UK, according to the consultancy, DhaliwalBrown. As Jock Percy, a senior analyst with Ace*comm. Put it, "Parents need to protect their children and stop them being able to receive distressing communication of this kind, but they seem much less aware of the need for similar protection on mobiles." Royce's methods weren't even sophisticated. He simply ran up a £25,000 phone bill sending the indecent images to random phone numbers. Evidence provided to the court showed that it was impossible to estimate how many children had received the indecent messages but it could have affected thousands.The full Inquirer story ... Thousands of children vulnerable to phone filth www.acecomm.com ICSTIS fines WIN heavilyA company which has previously won serious mobile industry plaudits for its services has just been fined a massive £50,000 by the UK's industry enforcer, ICSTIS. The adjudication reads, "In its capacity as the company responsible for compliance with the ICSTIS Code of Practice, WIN (Wireless Information Network) Ltd were fined £50,000 and issued with a formal reprimand. In addition, access to the service was barred for a period of 12 months and the service provider was instructed to refund all complainants." So that was a bit of a result for all the 46 people who had complained. WIN was acting as the service provider for Summit Technologies. One of the chief complaints was that one consumer had sent the text 'Stop sending me this message’. The rules are that the Stop command should be interpreted as an indication that the recipient doesn't want to pay for anything else. Summit's response was their software had seen the word ‘messages’ and interpreted the letter ‘a’ in that word as attempt to answer a multiple choice question where ‘a’ happened to be the correct answer. Yeah, right.
The full Inquirer story ... Text enforcer hands out heavy fine France Telecom Orange may buy AOL UKA story in the Sunday Telegraph claims that Orange/Wanadoo - operated by France Telecom, should win the auction to buy AOL's UK internet business. The paper believes that the bid from Orange is motivated by fear of the prospect of arch rival, BSkyB, getting hold of it. However, Mobile Insight believes that Orange would be well aware of the chaos that is surrounding the Carphone Warehouse's offer of free broadband for those on its Talk Talk fixed line service. Mobile magazine reports that waiting times at the Carphone's dedicated Talk Talk call centres have typically reached 45 minutes. It also claims that new customers trying to get the free internet service may have to wait up to two months for the connexion to go live. To avoid a similar situation happening with its Wanadoo internet service – now re-branded Orange – France Telecom may be keen to acquire extra capacity through the AOL acquisition. Mobile Insight recently tried to subscribe to Orange's free broadband service but Orange claimed the handset which it desired as an upgrade – the Nokia N70 – was currently out of stock. The company's IVR system doesn't exactly make the upgrade to broadband easy. For example, the literature says a customer must have a tariff of at least £30 per month. But that figure is including tax (VAT). So if your tariff is £29 per month (before tax), you actually qualify. The Carphone Warehouse is known to have bid for AOL UK, but probably concluded that merging it with its own internet business – Opal Telecom - would be too tricky. Opal recently revealed that it has added some 340,000 new users since the free broadband offer first appeared in April. The full Inquirer story ... Orange may acquire AOL UK SnippetsBenQ Siemens has introduced a whole line of the phones including EF81, EF91, S81 and S88. One of the most eye catching ones was a Blackberry-alike phone branded as the P51 which is about to arrive, says Fuad Abazovic. In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)This week Daily Telegraph - Alex Media companies are finally getting the hang of the mobile Internet. British national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, is offering its humorous carton, Alex, to all those with a WAP phone. More to the point, the site even has an advert. The site's creator is Graphico. You can get the cartoons by texting Alex to 82088. Luckily the Telegraph Web site has a page which explains how you can pay for things on the WAP site. It includes instructions for how to pay via Paypal and Bango. Apparently this works for subscribers on international GSM networks who can't pay via reverse premium rate SMS. http://mobilealex.telegraph.co.uk.
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