Zong And Boku Launch Carrier Billing with BilltoMobile on Verizon Wireless Network

Zong and Boku, providers of online payments, now are working with Verizon Wireless, using a relationship with BilltoMobile. The move might help both firms leverage BilltoMobile's cost advantages with Verizon.

Historically, wireless carriers have charged roughly 30 percent to 40 percent to process transactions made on the carrier billing systems.

That obviously limits the range of goods, and types of goods, that sellers might be willing to transact using a carrier billing method. Perhaps the biggest potential change is that both firms could move beyond digital goods, at some point, though clearly the immediate incentive is to support mobile digital goods sales.

Mobile Payments Startups Zong And Boku Launch Billing Partnerships With Verizon

Mobile Payment Service Jumio Gearing Up

Jumio, a new online and mobile payment solution, is headed by Jajah founder Daniel Mattes.

Internet pioneers Zain Khan (former Google executive), Mark Britto (former Amazon executive) and Maarten Linthorst (former NASA partner) have jointed the Jumio advisory board.

Internet Pioneers Join Forces to Launch Online and Mobile Payment Service Jumio

IP Carrier: Android In-App Payments Coming "Soon"

Eric Chu, a group manager at Google for the Android platform, says the in-app payment system for Android originally was set to launch last quarter, but it was delayed because of developer distraction (the Christmas and holiday season). The payment function will be available soon, Chu says.

IP Carrier: Android In-App Payments Coming "Soon"

Everything Everywhere To Launch Mobile Payments

Everything Everywhere, the marketing venture between U.K. mobile operators Orange and T-Mobile, has unveiled plans to roll out a mobile payments service by the second quarter of 2011, and is powered by Barclaycard.

The new service will allow consumers to use their mobiles to make purchases at over 40,000 stores.

The platform uses SIM cards and bill build on Everything Everywhere and Barclaycard’s ongoing partnership, which has already produced a co-branded contactless credit card and the forthcoming Orange Cash pre-paid contactless card.

Users will initially be able to purchase items up to the value of £15 by simply swiping their mobile phones across an electronic reader.

The phone uses “Near-Field Communication” technology in addition to the SIM modules.

http://everythingeverywhere.com/2011/01/27/the-uk%E2%80%99s-first-commercial-launch-of-contactless-mobile-payments-by-everything-everywhere-and-barclaycard-set-to-revolutionise-buying-on-the-high-street/

Everything Everywhere To Launch Mobile Payments

Verizon Launches Google Apps Bundle

Verizon is combining its leading broadband business services with a broad range of business applications from Google, featuring Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites.

This new offering, Google Apps for Verizon, is specifically designed to help smaller companies advertise by providing them with a domain name and domain name e-mail, and to boost their productivity by making cloud-based capabilities available to employees, whether in an office or on the go.

Google Apps for Verizon, which provides three free user accounts, is immediately available to businesses that subscribe to a bundle consisting of Verizon Internet service and either Verizon voice or TV service, or both.

The bundles with Google Apps are available in Washington, D.C., and parts of 12 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia. Google Apps for Verizon is also available as a stand-alone service to all businesses across the country for $3.99 per month per user.

Verizon Launches Combo of Broadband Services With Google Apps

Consumers say they are most concerned about sharing their location with people or organizations they have not specified (87%), followed by sharing their location without consent (84%), having personal information or identity stolen (84%) and overall loss of privacy (83 %), a new study by Microsoft has found.


read more hereHowever, perceptions of the risks decline while perceptions of value increase after consumers begin using location-based services. Consumers feel more comfortable if they are given control over who has their location information and how that information is used.

• · 49% would be more comfortable with location-based services if they can easily and clearly manage who sees their location information (US 55%, UK 50%, Germany 51%, Canada 36%, Japan 51%).
• · 62% say they are aware of and 38% are familiar with location-based services. 51% report having ever used a location-based service (US 50%, UK 43%, Germany 47%, Canada 59%, Japan 57%). Only 18% report using a location-based service for location sharing with other people.  

"Context Aware" Call Centers, Other Processes Will Separate Big Winners from Big Losers

"By 2015, context-aware computing will be used to rejuvenate at least 25 percent of “commodity” enterprise processes that are currently perceived as “low value.”

Gartner said organizations that really understand business processes will explicitly or implicitly tier those processes in a hierarchy of value. Through the use of context-aware computing principles such as presence, historical pattern analysis and emotion detection, up to a quarter of these commodity processes can be rejuvenated, made more customer-centric and contribute even more to the organization bottom line.

Organizations that re-examine and revise commodity processes will find opportunities where none existed before. For example, call center emotion detection can transform stoic automated call routing into a more sophisticated customer experience while context-enriched, rote transactions (such as address changes, billing inquiries, simple information requests and check-out) can be transformed into cross-selling opportunities as new insight is gained into the “state” of the customer (for example, just married, recently divorced, moving, or joined military).

Gartner Says Between Now and Year-End 2014, Overlooked but Easily Detectable Business Process Defects Will Topple 10 Global 2000 Companies

Netflix Streaming-Only Customers Are 33% of All New Subscribers

Netflix now finds 33 percent of its new customers are choosing the $7.99 a month, "streaming only" plan, a rather powerful testament to demand for the Netflix offer. Netflix introduced the offer in November 2010, at the same time slightly increasing the price of existing plans that support both DVD and streaming delivery.

Netflix also says it expects the percentage of "streaming only" customers to grow over time. About 66 percent of new customers elect to buy the  $9.99 1-DVD combination plan, which allows users to rent one DVD at a time, and also allows unlimited viewing using streaming.  "Very few of our existing subscribers are downgrading to the pure streaming plan," Netflix also notes.

read more here

89 of 111 Mobile Providers See Bandwidth Demand Increases, 10 Don't, Says Akamai

The only surprise in the latest Akamai "state of the Internet" report is that there are any service providers at all who did not see average data consumption grow during the third quarter of 2010.

In fact, about 10 mobile service providers, out of 111 Akamai supports, did not see an increase. As you would expect, most did see bandwidth demand grow. Some 89 of the mobile providers saw consumption of data downloaded from Akamai increase on a year-over-year basis.

In addition, 35 providers doubled the average monthly volume of content downloaded from Akamai year-over-year. But the real surprise is that any mobile providers, at all, did not see increases.

Akamai State of the Internet Report

Facebook Acquires Mobile Advertising Startup

Facebook has acquired Rel8tion and the employees of the nine month-old Seattle-based startup, which has been working under the radar to develop a hyper-local mobile advertising service.

“We’re excited to confirm that we recently completed a talent acquisition of Rel8tion, a stealth-mode startup in Seattle," Facebook says. "The engineering team will join our growing Seattle office, and we’re looking forward to having them on board.”

Facebook Acquires Mobile Advertising Startup Rel8tion | Tricia Duryee | eMoney | AllThingsD

Mobile Is Facebook's Top Priority In 2011

Facebook Chief Technical Officer Bret Taylor says that mobile is the company's top priority in 2011.

Taylor said that mobile usage is the fastest growing part of the Facebook experience, with more than 200 million people accessing the site from mobile phones. Those users are also more than twice as active as users who only log on via the desktop Web site.

Mobile Is Facebook's Top Priority In 2011

MetroPCS challenges FCC net neutrality rules

MetroPCS has challenged the FCC net neutrality rules. MetroPCS is the second major carrier to challenge these rules, as Verizon has also filed an appeal in federal court. These carriers believe that the FCC net neutrality rules will impose undue hardships on the nascent mobile data space and this could hurt the business and impact innovation.

MetroPCS challenges FCC net neutrality rules

Google Introduces Number Portability

Service providers now have to worry about Google Voice being the recipient of ported phone numbers. So where numbers once ported from landline to mobile, now they can further port directly to Google Voice.

Barnes & Noble phasing out the 3G Nook

Barnes & Noble may be selling millions of Nook products, but the 3G version hasn't really done its part to help those figures, some would argue. So might the 3G-capable version of the Nook be discontinued? Engadget thinks so.

Exclusive: Barnes & Noble phasing out the Nook 3G -- Engadget

Amazon offers cloud based bulk emailer to SMEs

Amazon is offering a bulk emailer for businesses via its cloud services arm Amazon Web Services.

Amazon's Simple Email Service, called "Amazon SES," allows users to send up to 2,000 emails a day for free, if they come from another Amazon cloud service. The book and services giant says that messages can be sent for as little as 10 cents per thousand.

Amazon claims its system includes scanning of outgoing messages to make sure they meet ISP standards. Any messages that fail this test are sent back to be fixed."

Amazon offers cloud based bulk emailer to SMEs