Vodafone to Launch its Own Mobile Wallet Globally

Vodafone is launching its own mobile wallet service in 2013, allowing Vodafone’s customers to use their smart phones to conduct a number of transactions, including paying for goods and services at the point of sale, during 2013 CorFire says. 

Near field communications seems to be the technology of choice for the global initiative. 

NFC remains a controversial choice of device to point of sale terminal communications in some quarters, but NFC clearly is the favored mobile service provider communications protocol. 

Vodafone has approximately 406 million customers in its controlled and jointly controlled markets and equity interests in over 30 countries across five continents and more than 50 partner networks worldwide. 

As is often the case, Vodafone also participates in other mobile wallet ventures, including Weve, the newly rebranded "Project Oscar" venture of a U.K. mobile operator consortium  including EE (Orange and T-Mobile), Vodafone and O2. 

New Nexus 7 Pricing

Though the official launch of the Google Nexus 7 tablet is delayed by Hurricane Sandy, pricing news is available because retailers already are advertising them.

The 32GB Nexus 7 is priced at $249 and the 16GB version is priced at $199 at Office Depot,  Droid Life reports. 

The prices are not terribly surprising, given trends in the broader market, especially pricing of Amazon devices in similar form factors. 

Tablet computers will see an explosion in sales over the next four years, selling 60 percent as many units as PCs by 2015, Gartner predicts. 



Most analysts predict that PCs will outsell tablets for quite some time. Forrester Research has estimated that in 2015, PCs, including notebooks and desktop units, still will outsell tablets in the U.S. market by a better than two-to-one margin. 

U.K. Mobile Operators Launche "Weve" Mobile Wallet

The United Kingdom mobile payments venture originally code named "Oscar," and operated by a consortium of U.K. mobile operators including EE, (Orange and Deutsche Telekom), Vodafone and Telefonica’s O2, have chosen the retail brand name "Weve."

Along the way, the consortium has modified its anticipated revenue model, as have others in the young market. Originally, the idea was that the consortium would provide a single network platform for all participating card issuers (banks, for example), and would take part of the transaction fee.

After a European Union investigation of potential antitrust issues, as well as stout opposition from Visa and MasterCard clearing networks, Project Oscar was refocused on mobile advertising and mobile commerce. 

Now "primarily aimed at advertisers looking to engage in mobile commerce," Weve has adopted the "mobile wallet" approach also used by Isis and Google Wallet. 

An Extensive Agent Network Needed for P2P Payments

An extensive agency network seems to be emerging as a fundamental requirement for a successful peer to peer money transfer service in Africa. For instance, Kenya’s M-PESA has more than 40,000 agents countrywide where customers can make and receive payments, payments can be made via Western Union from 70 countries and it has in excess of 900 paybill partners.

Interestingly M-PESA has never really gained traction in South Africa, where it was launched by Vodacom in 2010. Some would blame high fees and a tougher banking environment for that sluggish performance. 

Still, it stands to reason that convenience, in form of lots of places where people can deposit and redeem cash, would be crucial for success. 

Xcel's "Smart Grid" Fails in Boulder, Colo.

The idea of a "smart grid" is sexy. A growing number of communications service providers think "smart grid" projects offer lots of revenue potential for machine to machine communications services. And a recent failure by Xcel Energy in Boulder, Colo. shows why communications service providers should be optimistic. 

Xcel Energy planned to launch "the world's biggest project" in Boulder, Colo., and got started in 2007.  

Xcel's "SmartGridCity" was supposed to manage power flows, allow more wind and solar on the grid, and enable consumers to control electricity consumption.

Among other things, Xcel spent $21 million to build its own broadband fiberoptic network linking homes, substations and central control in Boulder. Xcel it won't do that again. 

Five years later, costs have nearly tripled to $44.5 million, and Xcel wants its Colorado customers to pay for the cost overruns. 

That experience might suggest the advantage access providers have: they can provide the communications network function at a fraction of the cost of a power company building its own network. 

Economic Development Officials Think Broadband Helps

It is not a surprise that economic development executives think broadband helps their local economies. That is not too surprising. Most people probably think so, as well. It is probably quite accurate to say that broadband doesn't hurt. What really is hard to say is how much it helps. 

Consultant Craig Settles conducted a survey in partnership with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) about what 365 economic development professionals think about broadband. The survey was sent to 7,000, so an order of magnitude more officials declined to say whaqt they thought. 

The respondents clearly see upside to broadband, both wireless and fixed. The problem always is that correlation is not causation, and it is impossible to analytically separate all the other factors that contribute to economic growth, from the particular impact of broadband. 

You might say broadband is "hygenic," a precondition for business decisions, but not a sufficient economic driver, on its own. As clean water, waste disposal, air service, rail connections and electricity are likewise necessary, so is broadband. But electricity does not "cause" economic development.

The lack of electricity clearly inhibits potential development, but the converse is not true: electricity does not, by itself, cause development to occur. 

Are We All Becoming Geeks? Is Technology Adoption Curve Shifting?

The ways products are adopted usually are depicted as a bell-shaped curve. The notion is that, at first,  "geeks and nerds" adopt new technology because they like technology.

Only later do people who value the benefits start to adopt. Technology features matter most to the early adopters. Value, ease of use and price matters most to the great majority of adopters. Price matters quite a lot to late adopters. 

But there are signs the curve might be shifting, with more consumers than before paying attention to technology aspects of the products, some might argue. 

Instead of the traditional bell curve, there is a sort of "smooshing" in the direction of earlier adoption.