Operators can add between 10% and 15% to the bottom line figures associated with pre-pay customers, simply by deploying a system that allows customers to top-up their pre-pay accounts automatically using their credit cards or bank accounts, according to Upaid’s ceo, Ashley Ward.

Upaid’s HIPAAS service provides a secure payment method which can be plugged into by operators on one side and by banks and credit card companies on the other. As such it is capable of a whole range of m-payment services. However, as Ward explains, pre-pay top-up is a necessary and highly valuable starting point. “Operators need an instant payback; customers need educating on using mobile phones for things other than person-to-person communication. Therefore you need a stepped approach and pre-pay is the obvious starting point as the benefits to all are clear.”
For customers that benefit comes in the form of an easy, convenient and secure top-up method. The system send an SMS to alert the user that their account is down to a level set during registration, and all the customer has to do is reply to the text with their PIN and the amount. This is then authenticated by cross-referencing the phone’s MSISDN number and the PIN with credit card details given during the one-off registration process.
For the operator, the benefit is a massive reduction in the cost of the operation. Ward explained that, on average, the production, distribution, commission, fraud and leakage associated with scratch cards worldwide accounts for 10-12% of pre-paid turnover. However, he puts that cost at 25% for Europe due to the higher costs of raw materials and labour. Ward therefore stated that by switching to the Upaid service operators can put 10–15% straight to their bottom lines.
Ward further explained that Upaid, which has been in the m-payment market for some time, has changed its own business model. Ward said, “It was pretty much impossible to sell systems into operators and banks but they are interested in accessing a third party service. We no longer sell technology but are now selling a service.” The change in strategy has so far been well received and Upaid is currently trialling its top-up service with VISA.

Having halted development of its proprietary packet data network, UK mobile data provider, Cognito has instead chosen to concentrate on delivering integrated voice and data services for business applications using GPRS and GSM. Adam Hamilton reports.

Cognito’s md Steve Alderson explained that the change of direction “in these dark times” was due to the prevailing assessment by business users that proprietary networks are intrinsically limited.
Cognito’s growth  in the 1990s was based on a successful packet radio system, but despite large amounts spent on research and development, devices quickly became obsolete. By dispensing with onerous network and hardware costs associated with its previous proprietary system the company expects to leverage profitability in ‘niche’ mobile data markets.
Cognito’s new push and pull packet data service is aimed specifically at field service organisations and allows mobile workers to communicate with central database systems, using GPRS, GSM, PSTN, internet and email, via PDAs and laptops. The inclusion of GSM preserves service continuity and resilience where GPRS coverage is absent. Two-way data is managed by the Cognito Network, which delivers transactions immediately or via a store and forward facility, depending on network coverage and device status. Audit trails and status can be determined and voice, internet and email facilities managed.
Handling voice and a GPRS connection simultaneously is for the unequivocal Cognito md one of “the little details that make a system sing.”
December 2001 saw the system running on the Siemens SX45 using Pocket PC software, with an updated version ported to the XDA, for rollout in April 2003.
The solution aims to eliminate paperwork, data-entry duplication and reduce the amount of time call centre staff spend managing calls. It allows user-specified information to be sent to, and be captured by, remote workers, which is then presented on Windows-based Formsplus user-defined templates, which are streamed to, rather than held on, the device. WTP scripting enables the creation of data stores, templates and processing rules without recourse to complex programming and allows application ammendments and remote updates. Therefore, same day invoicing, up-to-the-minute stock management and formatted printing is possible. The system is also flexible enough to handle a variety of data including signatures and barcodes. “I reckon Cognito invented forms ten years ago,” was the earnest assessment of Steve Alderson, elaborating on the interface with management information systems. Cognito also handles the entire process of network authentication, providing user names and passwords and interrogating them at the point of access.
The company has ample experience of developing end-to-end solutions for field services and supplying all the constituents of a packet data system itself; including the network, mobile data units and the operating system. It has overcome past limited potential for software development and fragile solutions using PC/GSM connectors. Its Messager 111 service with ServiceTec had also proved that costs based on usage were difficult to predict and by charging a fixed monthly tariff (currently UKP45 per month and comparable with the Blackberry), costs were reduced. Developing PCs with embedded GSM units as Panasonic, Motorola and Psion had and providing mobile workers with laptops no longer appeals. Present competition from the likes of IBM and Motorola is not felt to be a major concern because  these earlier technologies are not fully realised. “I don’t see the need… for TETRA in this market,” was the emphatic comment from Steve Alderson, in the light of the data services launch.
Cognito is already considering future partnerships for potential expansion and is particularly interested in companies that operate internationally. It already works with the four major UK operators and has two points of presence in the Vodafone network. Six thousand units have been sold so far, despite the market having seen a reduction in service forces. Customers include ntl Group, Rank Leisure Machines, Avery Berkel and Planned Maintenance Engineering, whose acquisition was primarily due to the addition of GSM capability. Confident of its approach, the objective is twenty thousand UK customers in the long term, with imminent expansion into Eire. Holland is also cited as an “interesting” market to explore. The aim for Cognito is to drive value upwards, for a relatively small but lucrative user base, through improved connectivity, integration and value-added services.

A low-cost, portable and simple alternative to GPS satellite location has been developed using mobile phone signals. Overview Mapping’s Verilocation service is based on cell location and can pinpoint a registered phone with signals garnered from the UK’s four major operators. It displays location data combined with Overmapping’s own digital street-level maps on a website and is accurate to one hundred metres. Designed as a pay-as-you-go application, it is aimed at time/service critical industries considering GPS location and telemetry. However, anyone with a GSM phone could utilise the system, which ties location accurately to the road network, without unnecessary sub-two metre GPS precision.

Overview Mapping is licensed by Ordnance Survey and offers a range of mapping solutions to businesses, including internet portals.

Fulfilling the potential of MMS information services can only be achieved if the images received by the user do justice to the subject. This is the view of Brainstorm’s ceo, Craig Massey, who explained that the majority of service delivery systems don’t allow the image to be optimised for each handset. “The key element for content delivery is the user experience, irrespective of handset and therefore we have concentrated on transcoding and image sizing.”

He went on to explain that becuase the screen sizes and resolutions differ dramatically it is imperative that images are re-sized. However, he said, “Most systems re-size images according to pre-set crops.  Effectively what we do is build templates for each and every handset which re-purpose and re-format the image to display it to the best ability. Any cropping is done manually.”
The effect of this was demonstrated by Massey who used the simple example of an image of a goal scored at a football match. The nature of the action means that the vital part of the image could be anywhere on the screen and not necessarily in the middle. It is not predictable and thefrefore an automated crop — centring the image or cropping to pre-set formats — could in a worst case scenario, render the image useless.
The rendering and sizing of images is just a small part of the complete content delivery system offered by Brainstorm and a fuller explanation of this will appear in next month’s content management feature.ETSA ad here

Mobile device batteries, for so long now one of the most constraining features of mobile terminals, could be set for a radical change, according to Jane Dennis of Casio. She said, “Within a year or two battery technology will be capable of re-fuelling.” Following much the same principle as is used with cigarette lighters, (although different fuel) users will be able to re-fuel the battery cells of their mobile phones on the fly, therefore minimising the risk or being left with a useless phone.

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The growth of the public wireless local area networking (P-WLAN) market is set to continue in both the USA and Western Europe, driven by business travellers’ appetite for cheap and fast remote access to the Internet, according to a new report published this week by Analysys.

The report, Public WLAN Access in Western Europe and the USA: market analysis and forecasts, anticipates that revenue will grow from USD10.9million (â‚-9.99m) in Western Europe to USD2.64billion (â‚-2.42bn) in Western Europe by 2007.
Hotspots, which are currently being installed in airports, hotels, conference facilities, cafés, restaurants and rail stations, are estimated to grow from Western Europe’s curent 1400 to 30,000, over the same time period.
“Whilst take-up of public WLAN services has been slower than we anticipated, it still represents a significant opportunity for operators and other service providers,” said Maja Kecman, main author of the report. “In both Europe and the USA, telecomms operators have shown interest in the WLAN market as a complement to their existing networks, but have been cautious about investing in an uncertain market where there are still technological and regulatory issues to be resolved,” Kecman explained.
Market uncertainty is compounded by the fact that no single business model has yet emerged, said the authors. The report outlines five main business models, the most common of which involves the hotspot site owner and operator (or wireless Internet service provider) acting as the main players in the P-WLAN value chain.
“We expect the dominant business models to evolve significantly in the next three or four years,” said the report’s co-author, Monica Paolini. “By 2007, the US market will be characterised by a non-integrated value chain, with retail service providers not having exclusive control of the network infrastructure. In Europe, we expect fixed and mobile operators to prevail as they are able to leverage their existing customer base and backhaul agreements more effectively.”

Basing future fraud prevention on Call Detail Records (CDRs) could leave systems seriously short of the mark, according to Neural Networks.

“The traditional approach to fraud detection has been based on CDRs but with the introduction of data services these are not the only source of communication informa-tion and they also mean that action is always reactive,” said Jason Lane-Sellers, senior fraud consultant at Neural Technologies.
He further stated that as most systems work by setting rules and thresholds that are designed to trigger alarms, the sheer amount of data being passed to fraud analysts makes their jobs impossible from the start. “It is not unusual for 1500–2000 alarms to be  triggered every four hours. A fraud analyst can process a maximum of 17 of these a day.”
What Neural Technologies has produced is a fraud management system that combats both these issues head on. It takes data from a range of sources, including the data-specific elements in the application layer and authentication server, as well as CDRs. It then runs that information through a two-tier automated analysis process. This brings into the process a high level of behaviour modelling and individual profiling which constantly learns from activity on the network and enables the system to deliver a dramatically reduced number of potential fraud alarms to analysts. “60-80% of the alarms which run through the second stage are fraud. With other, single tier systems, this figure is less than 1%.”
He further suggested that this was not only soul-destroying for those faced with analysing the reports but it also affected customers as they could find their accounts stopped by systems unable to identify whether they were perpetrating fraud or not. This is particularly important as, he suggested, “The best fraudsters also look like your best customers.”
A worst case scenario would therefore be an international traveller who consistently found his account blocked when abroad because the system identified him as making ‘unusual behaviour.’ If the system is incapable of learning and inaccurate actions are repeated then the likely outcome is churn.
So confident is the company in its system, that Neural is now offering it to operators on a performance basis. This means that operators will only pay if savings are made. Neural is willing to offer this as a stand-alone option or in conjunction with more traditional payment methods. Sprint, for example, is paying for its system by a combination of licence fee and a capped performance payment.
However Lane-Sellers, himself a former fraud manager at Vodafone UK, had another word of caution for operators, “80% of fraud can be sourced back to the subscription process. It can be hidden as bad debt and then identified as complicated types of fraud but it all comes from that starting point. Operators need to address this and prevent it happening.”

Additional funding for research into base stations has been announced by the UK Home Office. In one of the world’s first studies, the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme will look at the prevalence of childhood leukaemias and cancers near base stations.

Another MTHR project will consider whether exposure to RF signals is linked to symptoms reported by mobile phone users. The funding will also benefit an existing pilot study of brain cancers and neurodegenerative diseases in users, and research into TETRA radio. An international committee of experts, chaired by Prof. Lawrie Challis, manages the programme and allocates funding. He noted the “public concern” about exposure to handsets, phone masts and RF emissions and called for further “research to investigate whether they could cause health effects or not.” 

Samsung has again demonstrated a willingness to support multiple operating systems with the creation of the SGH-D700, its first smartphone to be based on Nokia’s Symbian-based Series 60 platform.

The phone, which also includes a swivel screen and a digital camera,  joins previously announced Samsung smartphones such as the Palm OS-based SPH-i500 and SGH-i500, and the soon-to-be-released SPH-i600, which uses Microsoft’s Smartphone 2002.
Slated for availability in Europe during the third quarter of 2003, the clamshell SGH-D700 is tri-band, with an integrated digital camera and the first swivel screen seen on a smartphone.
With the 16-bit rotating TFT display comes a camcorder application to make use of its integrated VGA resolution digital camera. Its video messaging features will link with Nokia’s own 3650 and enables users to exchange video clips through MMS and e-mail. It will also be possible to play back streaming audio and video courtesy of a pre-installed RealOne player.
Software-wise, the SGH-D700 shares a number of applications with Nokia’s 7650 and 3650 models, but also offers more functionality in some areas. Full MMS and POP3/IMAP4/SMTP e-mail support are on the list, as is a voice memo function; voice recognition for dialing names and carrying out certain commands; SyncML support (vCard, vCalendar); support for both MIDI and WAV files being used as ringtones; a WAP 2.0 browser; and vibration alert.
Another trait shared with the Nokia 3650 is the SGH-D700’s MMC Card expansion slot which enables storage expansion. Users can transfer and play back MP3 files from both internal memory and an MMC storage card. (See p23-24 for more information on data storage options). However, Samsung did not disclose whether a dedicated player is being used to play back audio or whether that functionality is provided by the RealOne player.
The SGH-D700 will be equipped with 4MB of internal, non-volatile memory, and will come bundled with a handsfree set. Users will be able to synchronize information with Microsoft Outlook, but Samsung did not comment on     whether this — as with Nokia’s 7650 and 3650 models — will be limited to calendar and contacts information. The SGH-D700 does sport one improvement in the area of synchronization, however, as it supports USB connectivity.

In a move designed to provide applications developers with easy and consistent access to its products, Orange has created a global developer site. This will detail how a developer can purchase, unlock and configure an SPV for development purposes, digitally sign their applications and publish applications on the Orange download site.

Orange, which has faced criticism from developers in the past about its failure to provide access to its network and products, now has country-specific developer teams in place, such as the UK’s Orange Developers Forum (www.developers.orange. co.uk) and OrangeLab (www.orangelab.biz) in France.
This new group site compliments those functions, and directs developers to the correct areas within the Orange Group. Commenting Nick Balderson, vice president of Product Infrastructure Development for OrangeWorld, said, “Orange is looking at ways of making it even easier to develop for Orange signature devices and is committed to working with third party developers. We believe that developers and their applications will be essential to the success of the SPV and future Orange phones. Compelling applications provide our customers with more ways to play, work and share.”
To give impetus to the initiative, Orange is offering 100 free application signings to developers with new and unsigned applications for the SPV. Developers can submit their application for selection by emailing orange@handango.com.Â
The 100 successful developers will receive an electronic voucher, which can be redeemed to get their application signed and published on the Orange store, which is supported by Handango.