NEW YORK-In November and December, Sonera zed U.S. Inc. “will dip its big toe into the waters of mobile commerce to see if they’re warm,” and it plans user trials by next spring, said J. Paul Hughes, vice president of business development.
“There are a lot of great ideas no one is willing to pay for, and a lot of simple ideas they would. Knowing the difference makes the difference,” he said at the recent Telecom Business 2000 Conference and Expo here.
“We don’t believe in one killer app. It’s a myth. If it exists, it is usually discovered, not planned.”
Zed U.S. is part of Sonera zed Ltd., which is the United Kingdom-based subsidiary of Finnish telecommunications carrier Sonera Corp. Sonera established zed as a portal designed to transform mobile devices into tools of personalized and custom information exchange and mobile commerce.
Today, zed services are available in GSM short message service and WAP environments. Zed services also are enabled to expand into General Packet Radio Service and Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems.
Zed’s carrier partners include Sonera, its parent, Powertel Inc., in which it owns a minority stake, in addition to Turkcell in Turkey, Hutchison Telecom in Germany, Mobile One in Singapore, Smart Communications in the Philippines and, as of Aug. 15, KPN in the Netherlands.
“In the United States, what is really important is that Americans don’t want to punch numbers into a numeric keypad, and that is one of the issues around WAP,” said Hughes, who is based in Waltham, Mass.
“Because the (wireline) Internet is a very robust experience here, people are somewhat disappointed when they go to use it on a (mobile) phone.”
Security in mobile commerce transactions is another significant inhibitor to deployment of wireless devices enabled as electronic purses.
In Finland, Sonera Corp. pioneered the use of smart cards inside phones as the means to pay for soda vending-machine purchases. However, the popularity of this service in Finland does not automatically translate into the American idiom.
“At some point, we believe the phone will become a ubiquitous form of payment, directly debiting your account. But would you feel comfortable doing this?” Hughes asked.
“There is no question security is an issue. … People are very uncomfortable doing commerce transactions over the Internet, let alone over an (Internet-enabled wireless) phone. The perception of mobile security is wildly out of control compared to the reality of it, but we believe huge strides are being made.”
Beneath the tip of the iceberg represented by that simple vending-machine purchase of soda lie concerns beyond security.
“Just to get the soda machines means lining up many varied alliances. But the distribution and licensing are falling into place, and things will get really interesting real soon,” Hughes said.
While the concept behind mobile commerce is its potential to simplify the lives of end users, the reality is “it is not easy to use a mobile phone to conduct m-commerce,” he added. Therefore, customer service must evolve into the kind of help desks that computer companies offer.
Also, consumers want “the same profiles of information, regardless of the point of query, whether laptop, PC, interactive TV or mobile phone,” Hughes said.
“Multiple interfaces are a source of frustration for the end user, so a synchronized, unified platform is necessary.”
Despite this apparent increase in complexity for content delivery, telecommunications carriers can breathe a sigh of relief about one aspect of this evolution.
“Hardware requirements will be relatively low, given that much of a mobile solution can run on the Internet backbone,” Hughes said.
“Software will be the main beneficiary of the increased need for mobile infrastructure as m-commerce becomes a reality.”
