By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is back on Frank with Sinatra’s Swingin’
Session, and friends, you haven’t heard “Old McDonald Had A Farm” until you’ve
heard Frank’s version:
Axalto, a French producer of microprocessor
cards, has launched a Genuinely Pretty Good IdeaTM: Instant Issuance, a highly secure
end-to-end solution that allows banks to
immediately issue personalized Europay MasterCard Visa cards directly at their
branches, with a design customized on request.
With Instant Issuance, not only do bank customers get their
new microprocessor card on the spot, but they can also have a personal picture
inserted onto it and choose their card body and PIN code.
The Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles has been able to do
this with driver’s licenses for years now, why can’t you go into a bank and get
your ATM card or credit card on the spot?
Today, the usual process to issue a new EMV card may take up to one week after
the customer’s request. Now, Instant Issuance allows banks to provide their
customers with an EMV card in a few minutes, with the same security level and
quality of service that traditional personalization centers offer. Plus if you lose
your card you get another one right away, great customer service.
It lets customers insert a personal picture onto their card, which is a pretty
good anti-fraud idea. They can also choose the card body from a selection background
visuals offered by the bank.
Instant Issuance is based on Axalto’s data preparation and personalization
software suite and high-end EMV banking cards, which security protocol is
compliant with the GlobalPlatform international standard. With this platform
all complex cryptographic calculations are performed beforehand.
We can now add to the list of positive French contributions
to world culture the instantly-issued card to mayonnaise, Louis Pasteur and
Brigitte Bardot.
…
Hutchison 3G Austria has announced that it
will launch what it claims is the first mobile
Videomail service in Austria one month ahead of Christmas, just in
time to send video-greeting to friends and relatives.
The service is facilitated by LogicaCMG’s uOne product. H3G’s
266,000 subscribers
across the country will now have access to this mobile service. It uses integrated
messaging technology to determine quality.
The Videomail rollout, under its consumer brand “3.” is hoped by company
officials to help the company drive high average revenue per user from mobile
data services.
Videomail is the enriched multimedia version of traditional voicemail, using enhanced
capabilities of 3G networks. With LogicaCMG’s uOne platform, when a call is
unanswered, the caller receives a personalized video greeting from the
recipient followed by the option to record a video message in return. The
recipient has the option of retrieving the new videomail message through a
video call to their mailbox or accessing it via MMS, e-mail or a web browser.
3Customers in Austria can also select from a range of Videomail greetings
recorded by celebrities.
…
More than half of
advanced mobile data service users in the UK have switched mobile network
provider in the last three years, according to independent research
announced today by LogicaCMG in Amsterdam.
The research also shows that users of services such as multimedia
messaging services and Internet browsing generate the highest average revenue
per user, creating an annual market churn of over 2.8 billion British pounds.
As operators expand their portfolios to include new and
increasingly complex premium data services, customer care is identified as a
key factor in fostering loyalty and encouraging the uptake of new, high-revenue
offerings.
In the last three years, 53 per cent of MMS users and 58 per cent of mobile
internet browser users have switched operator, compared to an average of 31 per
cent across the UK mobile phone user population. This higher than average rate
of churn, LogicaCMG thinks, is “symptomatic of the fact that users expressed a
growing dissatisfaction with the quality of service delivery and customer care
they received from their operator as service complexity increases.”
Only 47 per cent of customers that use internet browsing are
“completely” or “very satisfied” with the quality of service, compared to 80
per cent of all those using short messaging services. And when reporting
problems to the operator’s customer service
center, 24 per cent of all customer service center users reported a “poor
experience.”
Marieke Effting, product marketing manager at LogicaCMG global telecoms, noted
that a positive perception of customer
services “is the cornerstone for building customer loyalty, because it is one
of few opportunities that network operators have to directly interact with
subscribers.”
In other words, Effting said, in competitive markets customer
service becomes a key differentiator and, as the portfolio of enhanced data
services gets increasingly broad and complex, “can either promote or inhibit
service adoption and new revenue opportunities.”
Chris McDermott, chief executive officer at LogicaCMG global
telecoms, said their research shows that mobile operators are facing a rate of
churn that almost doubles as users adopt new advanced data services: “A high proportion
of this churn is attributed to customer service that does not meet users’
expectations and demands.”
...
Skype hits Singapore: A telco-independent Internet
communications service provider, Pacific Internet Limited or PacNet and Skype
have concluded an agreement to deliver a
co-branded version of the Skype software, providing Skype-based voice
services in Singapore.
PacNet claims to be the first Internet communications
service provider in South East Asia to have signed a co-branding agreement with
Skype. Under the agreement covering both the corporate business and consumer
market segments, the two partners will bring Skype to Singapore through a
co-branded “PacNet-Skype” portal which is scheduled to be launched this year.
PacNet will manage the co-branded website, customer support,
marketing, distribution and sale of Skype’s affordable premium services.
The PacNet-Skype portal will offer Singapore’s Internet users, regardless of
whether they are PacNet subscribers, free and unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice
calls worldwide, and the pre-paid SkypeOut service, which enables users to call
any fixed or mobile phone in the world at local rates.
…
Wireless industry trade association 3G Americas reports that the
GSM family of wireless technologies -- GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA -- added more than 112 million new customers
in three months (Q3 2005), increasing its global market share to 77.6% with
more than 1.6 billion customers.
With 381 million customer additions since Q3 2004, GSM added
more new customers in the one-year period than the entire customer base of any
other mobile digital technology.
The GSM family of technologies is used by more than 670
mobile wireless service providers in 212 countries and territories.
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