Wireless Federation

Smart Communications & Rural Bankers’ Association of the Philippines (RBAP) are in an agreement, aiming to liberalize access to the Smart Money Platform, allowing financial transactions at the speed of a text message. This enables rural bank depositors and borrowers to use their Smart SIM cards for payments and loan disbursement, among others. Smart head for services hub Reynante Banico, said, “By sealing this partnership, RBAP member rural banks now join the ranks of our esteemed Smart Money partners, allowing them to reach over 34 million Smart subscribers; to connect to the country’s more than 7,000 automated teller machines; and to access more than 100 Smart Wireless Centers and thousands of MasterCard and Smart Money fulfilment partners across the country and all over the world.” RBAP-member banks all over the country will be accredited as Smart Money Centers, allowing them to convert electronic cash from their Smart Money wallet into physical cash, or the other way round.
“By liberalizing access to Smart’s tried and tested mobile commerce innovations and solutions, we are optimistic that our partnership will enable us to reach out to more unbanked and underbanked Filipinos in the countryside, and even around the world,” Smart Chief Wireless Advisor Orlando Vea said.
“The RBAP welcomes this partnership with Smart as it will provide RBAP and our member rural banks with more and better opportunities to enhance our services to our clientele. Smart’s advanced mobile commerce technology combined with RBAP’s strong countryside network, will provide our customers with a fast, secure, and efficient way of transmitting funds anytime, anywhere,” RBAP President Tomas Gomez IV said.

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The Court of Appeals (CA) has denied Filipino telecoms operator Multi-Media Telephony Inc (MMTI) application for a 3G licence. Fourteenth Division of the court dismissed the operator’s case, filed last month, mentioning ‘technicalities’ as the reason. The court notes that MMTI identified the NTC as the sole respondent in the petition when, in fact, there are other entities involved, including the four successful winners of 3G frequency spectrum.

MMTI has raised question on NTC’s December 2005 decision of awarding 3G concessions to Smart Communications, Globe Telecom, Digital Mobile Philippines and Connectivity Unlimited Resources Enterprises (CURE).

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Smart Communications, Philippines largests mobile operator has allocated USD199.9 million to improve telecoms access in underdeveloped parts of the country. Smart is planning to deploy and maintain a nationwide data communications network and to that end has filed an application with the regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). Piltel, sister company, followed the same suit and is looking to invest  PHP7.57 billion over a five-year period to roll out networks capable of delivering voice, internet and multimedia content via wireless broadband technology in the targeted rural areas.

Smart is anticipating to acquire PHP3.68 billion worth of customer premises equipment (CPE), as well as buying a mobile service switching centre (PHP2 billion) and PHP1.8 billion worth of base transceiver stations. Smart expects to sign up  266,786 subscribers in year one, rising to 679,594 users by year five. ARPU is expected to reach PHP700 - PHP800 per annum.

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Mobile users in Philippines are anticipated to grow at an annual growth rate of 15 percent to reach 73 million by 2010, according to the latest report. The driving factors for the rapid expansion of the mobile market are the improving service quality of two leading telcos Smart Communications and Globe Telecom. It is forecasted that mobile broadband market will also expand hastily due to the slow spread of fixed-line telephony.

Mobile Communications, SMS text messaging are growing at a faster rate compare to fixed-line telephony due to country’s geographical features. Currently, 55 million or about 60 percent of the population, have subscribed to mobile services. The distinctive feature of the Philippines’ mobile market is that there are many services available for overseas Filipino workers as the country’s economy relies heavily on their remittance. Telcos are continuously contributing to the improvement in the communications revenue. An improved roaming and remittance services for the overseas Filipino workers will be introduced in the future.

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Philippine cellcos have notified that they will increase end-user SMS charges if the government insists on taking half the revenues generated from them to fund new health and education initiatives in the country. Froilan Castelo, head of regulatory affairs of Globe Telecoms and Roy Ibay, senior manager for regulatory and telecom relations of Smart Communications said, Senator Richard Gordon’s bill would effectively increase production costs which would ultimately have to be passed on to consumers. In the end this will add up to our cost. Part of our cost of production is the tax being paid, the income tax etc so this will be another imposition, added Castelo.

Cellcos are not against the spirit of proposal but they hesitate at the idea of the state raking in 13.5 centavos of the 27 centavos currently charged, arguing that once other taxes and costs are taken into account, it gripes their margins too much. ‘We are looking at it as part of our social responsibility programmes of helping education and health. What we are proposing is a technical working group so that we will not resort to imposition of levy, taxes but on how the telcos can further help,’ added Castelo. Legal representative of Smart Communications advised that the government should instead automatically divert the tax being paid by telecoms to help fund health and education initiatives.
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Are Filipinos ready to accept advertising on mobile phones? Yes, local marketers said.

According to its own market research, Smart Communications has found that most of the subscribers it surveyed were open to receiving advertising messages on their mobile phones.

But local subscribers currently accept advertising messages that are linked to a promotion, discounts, raffles and tips, said Bong Mojica, head of the wireless consumer division of Smart Communications Inc., in a talk during the Internet Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines forum.

Mojica said Filipino mobile subscribers find incentives like free calls and loads (airtime) downloads the most appealing, he said. In return, subscribers were willing to give information about themselves.

There are now 48 million mobile phone subscribers in the Philippines, sending a billion messages through short messaging system (SMS) every day, and doing 225 million downloads of value-added services, such as ringtones, a day.

Mojica said that about 60 percent of the local mobile phone users are now subscribed to games and tips for self-improvement, while 20 percent are surfing the Internet using their mobile handsets.

“The mobile has become the single most powerful platform for directly communicating on a personal level with consumers,” the executive stressed.

Surveys done by market research firm Synovate in Metro Manila showed that more than 70 percent of subscribers who own or use a mobile phone regularly said they joined mobile promos because they wanted to win a prize, said Carol Ann Sarthou, managing director of Synovate.

More than 50 percent of the subscribers in Metro Manila were also open to receiving advertisement on their mobile handsets, the survey added.

Sarthou said that subscribers especially among the younger age find mobile promos more effective if the prize is attractive; the information or product is relevant to them; they can be heard; and they can make a difference.

The Synovate market research also confirmed the findings of Smart Communications.

“The market is more receptive to promos than to advertising because there is a reward, a choice to ignore or accept them, and a venue to express their views and influence a decision, Sarthou said.

Filipino subscribers, like any subscriber elsewhere, would often ask, “What’s in it for us?” whenever they accept promos, she said.

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The GSM Association has proclaimed to launch a pilot programme in association with Master Card aimed at “tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world’s 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don’t have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable.”

MasterCard also brings a Unbanked and Underbanked Backgrounder, saying that “Under the agreement with GSMA, MasterCard intends to provide various payment card products as well as the international transaction switching, clearing and settlement for the MasterCard® Money Send™ transfer service via its single, globally integrated network.”

The GSM Association states that this programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than US$1 trillion by 2012. The programme is lead by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers.

Various Mobile operators are partnering with local and regional banks to combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems. GSMA is setting up a pilot with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorization, clearing and settlement.

The GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network are planning to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks. The hub will enable migrant workers to trigger international money transfers using their mobile phone and their families to be notified via their mobile phones.

WirelessWeek writes…Philippines mobile carrier Smart Communications soon will begin offering advanced mobile services using Nextcode’s ConnexTo platform.

Smart Communications is the first major carrier to license the product. The package allows carriers to deploy sophisticated barcode scanning-based services to subscribers by providing software that enables camera phones to read codes and tools to create and manage code-based programs for content discovery and merchandising, mobile marketing, commerce, community and other subscriber services.

Nextcode’s technology works on standard camera phones and does not require special modifications to the handsets.

“The code scanning platform that Nextcode provides significantly enhances our ability to bring innovative new services to our customers,” said Napoleon L. Nazareno, president and CEO of Smart.

Under the terms of the agreement, Smart will use a customized version of ConnexTo for mobile marketing, content and promotional purposes.

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 Telecompaper says…Yahoo! has unveiled a new mobile search engine and a string of partnerships aimed at strengthening its position on the mobile internet. At CES in Las Vegas, the search engine giant launched Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, a beta application for mobile phones available from 8 January. Yahoo! has agreed to have the application embedded in various Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and BlackBerry handsets from the first half of this year, as well as distributed by a variety of operators including Hutchison Whampoa affiliates and various Asian mobile networks. The new Yahoo! Go includes services such as e-mail, local information and maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather and photo sharing as well as a new search engine designed especially for use on mobile phones, called oneSearch. The application works on some 70 devices and a commercial launch is expected from the end of January.

Partnerships unveiled by Yahoo! include a deal to offer Go 2.0 to customers of network operator 3 in the UK, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, and Denmark, with other 3 Group markets expected to follow in the coming months. In addition, the companies are extending their partnership to provide Yahoo! Search on the 3 portal to 3 customers in Ireland. Go 2.0 will also be available with Indian operators Bharti Airtel, Hutch and Idea Cellular, as well as Malaysia’s DiGi, the Philippines’ Globe Telecom, Rogers Wireless, Smart Communications and Taiwan Mobile.

Yahoo! has also partnered with handset makers. Go 2.0, oneSearch, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger will be pre-loaded on various Samsung handsets in 60 countries. Research in Motion has agreed to include Go 2.0 on the BlackBerry 8700 Series, 7130 Series and Pearl and also work more closely with Yahoo! on integrating their products. Nokia has agreed to incorporate Go 2.0 on the Series 40 platform, as well as the Nokia 6103, 6131 and 5300 Xpress Music phones. Additional Nokia phones will get the application in the first half. Finally, browser developer Opera Software has agreed to make Yahoo! the exclusive search engine on the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. Opera will also launch Yahoo!’s oneSearch when it goes live later in Q1.

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