Exercise 25: M-commerce and the e-wallet: Innovation and mobile devices

Explore some of the problems associated with mobile technology or their suppliers.

1. What is meant by a location based service?

According to (Wikipedia) a location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device.

LBS services include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS services include parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location.

2. Visit an airline Web site and search for information on WAP or SMS access to booking airline services. Do the same for WAP or SMS services in banking. How do both industries compare?

Olympic Airways provides a wap service at http://www.olympic-airways.gr/wap to allow users to

• keep an eye on all Olympic Airlines Flights
• Get information on Departures from and Arrivals at the Athens International Airport as if you were before the Flight Information Display at the airport
• Check your actual miles if you are a member of our Frequent Flyer program


Southwest Airlines utilises WAP http://mobile.southwest.com/ which allows passengers to

• book flights
• Check Flight status
• Check In
• Cancel Flights
• view schedules
• etc

Apparently at some time prior to 23 October 2004 Westpac had WAP banking services enabled. However according to an article on ITWire on 13 October 2004 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/182/2/ from 23 October 2004, "the Westpac banking site will no longer support wireless application protocol (WAP) internet banking through your mobile phone"

Until recently according to (AustralianIT) mobile banking services have not been provided by Australian banks. They had provided services in the earlier parts of the decade but closed them down in mid to late 2004 due to poor patronage. But things seem to have turned the corner with the banks now re entering the mobile market.

3. Lucent Technologies designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks at: http://www.lucent.com

According to http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/wps/portal/aboutus

Alcatel-Lucent is the trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users.

A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry

4. Visit the W3C website and find the status of the VoiceXML project. When do you think it will affect business on the Web and what will its impact be?

The current standard for VoiceXML is v2.1 which was released on 19 June 2007. The current working draft as at 2 June 2009 is Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0

5. Investigate CDMA, GSM or other network technologies for mobile phones and circuit-switched and packet-switched data capabilities.

According to (Wikipedia) Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method utilized by various radio communication technologies.

One of the basic concepts in data communication is the idea of allowing several transmitters to send information simultaneously over a single communication channel. This allows several users to share a bandwidth of frequencies. This concept is called multiplexing. CDMA employs spread-spectrum technology and a special coding scheme (where each transmitter is assigned a code) to allow multiple users to be multiplexed over the same physical channel. By contrast, time division multiple access (TDMA) divides access by time, while frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) divides it by frequency. CDMA is a form of "spread-spectrum" signaling, since the modulated coded signal has a much higher data bandwidth than the data being communicated

(Wikipedia) suggests that GSM (Global System for Mobile communications: originally from Groupe Spécial Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM differs from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital, and thus is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication was easy to build into the system. Newer versions of the standard were backward-compatible with the original GSM phones. For example, Release '97 of the standard added packet data capabilities, by means of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release '99 introduced higher speed data transmission using Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE).

6. According to Nokia:

   “The Nokia One Mobile Connectivity Service provides easy and secure access to email, calendar, directory and more from a mobile phone, PDA, PC or fixed-line phone - take your corporate applications mobile.”

   Why is a company like Nokia – http://www.nokia.com – described as having end-to-end expertise?

According to (Nokia) it takes innovation to win new business. Yet by its nature, innovation is hard work. The promise of a novel service is fulfilled through a complete understanding of all its components.

Nokia Siemens Networks, in collaboration with our parent companies Nokia and Siemens, offer end-to-end expertise and capabilities to create seamless, personalized end-user experiences delivered by streamlined business and network solutions.

We offer five key steps to create competitiveness through end-to-end innovation:

• conduct the research
• identify the opportunitiesfor innovation
• specify the solutions
• implement your plans
• evolve your services portfolio

References
The Australian IT. Suncorp dials into mobile banking. Retrieved 19 July 2009, from http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25194759-24169,00.html
Nokia Siemens Networks. End to end expertise. Retrieved 27 July 2009, from http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/cn/Insight/end-to-end/end-to-end-expertise.htm?languagecode=en%20topic%20End-to-end%20expertise%20-%20our%20offering
Wikipedia. Location-based service. Retrieved 14 July 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service
Wikipedia. Code division multiple access. Retrieved 19 July 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_division_multiple_access
Wikipedia. GSM. Retrieved 19 July 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM