Mobile commerce moves into strong position

NEWS The barriers to successful mobile commerce are slowly being eroded, according to ecommerce firm, Brokat Infosystems. In an interview broadcast on Silicon.com, Roy Smith, Brokat's general manager for northern Europe, insists that the basic infrastructure for m-commerce is already in place. "The transactions that we're talking about - paying a telephone bill, buying and selling stock, checking on an account balance - are deliverable today using today's GSM technology," said Smith. Smith also feels that problems like call charges and network stability are disappearing fast. "As the competition in the mobile phone marketplace hots up, the tariff structure is approaching wireline tariffs day by day," he commented. "And the cost of delivering a mobile commerce transaction is less than 12p." Phone reception is a "rapidly improving situation", with 90 per cent of the UK now covered, he continued. "The transaction technology we use is based on a store-and-forward mechanism, so you can create the transaction in a poor reception area and the transaction will be submitted automatically when the reception is restored." Ovum analyst, Dan Gardiner, isn't quite so optimistic. "It's important when you're downloading information and you're going under a bridge that your connection won't cut out," he explained. He added that the introduction of the necessary packet-switched environments by the major network operators is at least a year away. "The most important factor is the level to which all the players can integrate the various systems needed to give the user functions that are easy to use," said Gardiner. "And that's still some way off," he concluded. The full interview with Roy Smith is broadcast in the Mobile and Wireless Channel.