Exercise 25. M-Commerce

1. Location based service - means the ability to correctly identify the location of a mobile customers and then offer a series of value added services that are of great interest to the mobile users. The exact mechanism of offering this service is based on the premise that the cell sites base station can actually track the users using their bearings when mathematically calculate through three or more base stations transceiving the signals for a mobile phone being switched on. In theory, there are always overlapping signal coverage to a mobile but only one is providing the actual signal path at a time via a contention algorithm. So there are also other signals providing a mobile phone even though it is not engaged in the active mode per se.

By using the other passive base stations' and its signal strength and additional information about the direction of the signals, these informaiton can help a mobile operator to identify approximately where a mobile user will be. And based on this assumption, a mobile operator or a value added service provider can therefore offer information or service coupons or offers that is based on these geographic locales.

Restaurant and shopping guides, coupon offers, and similar call for action type service are the most common services.


2. WAP or SMS services for an airline website and a bank will be significantly different. The banking industry will have more details and audit trail since banks are required by laws and regualtion for certain money laundering activities, and this touch point or channel for completing a transaction would be perceived as the same as going to the bank. Although the services that can be viewed (ie. Informational base) such as real time or not is irrelevant, the substantial consequence of using WAP and SMS as a channel in a banking environment would be definitely be governed the same way as a bank teller window.

3. W3C website has specific micro sub site on VoiceXML. http://www.w3.org/Voice/
Voice based hypertext markup languages is the original thought for VoiceXML is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a human and a computer. It allows voice applications to be developed and deployed in an analogous way to HTML for visual applications.

According to W3C, the VoiceXML 3.0 is being implemented now since Dec 2008 published. Many applications have been deployed, processing millions of telephone calls per day. These applications include: order inquiry, package tracking, driving directions, emergency notification, wake-up, flight tracking, voice access to email, customer relationship management, prescription refilling, audio newsmagazines, voice dialing, real-estate information and national directory assistance applications.

Most of the applications todate appears to be at inbound or outbound calling related applications typical of a customer call center, tele-marketing, operator-assisted environment and perhaps used for "software agents".

4. Nokia is predominantly a hardware manufacturer from mobile switch CO, base station related BCS, BTS, software, handphones, drivers for handphones, open application interface - they have also invest resources in the development of applications of mobile devices. When being described as end-to-end expertise.

Companies that are involved in mobile telephony market today may not necessary have the expertise and intimate knowledge of the necessary technology at the back end - the ones that actually provides the call, the call transfer, the location based advisory service, etc. Although a common protocol are often followed using industry standards such as GSM MoU, 3GPP, ITU, IEEE, etc.

As a leading mobile technology provider, Nokia offers the infrastructural domain expertise more than just the "handphones" we see today. Most of us have never seen a BTS, BCS or mobile switches in their entire life.