Wireless Wave - Spring 2008 - (Page 23)

thing that’s not easy to do without a full keyboard. Future applications, however, could store that information on the phone and access it to complete purchases. “But in reality, the ability to interact with an advertiser, the ability to watch a video or listen to music from your mobile via scanning a code is probably going to be more readily available in the short term than some commercerelated near-field communications or contactless applications,” Stankiewicz adds. Contactless technologies The most promising technology in the m-commerce marketplace is near field communications (NFC). Contactless payment systems using NFC are being pushed by credit card companies and have already been introduced in a fast-food chain (McDonalds) and a few retail outlets. Today consumers simply swipe credit or debit cards with embedded NFC “smart” chips over a special contactless terminal. In the future, such chips could be built right into cell phones, making payment easy and convenient. NFC also offers read back capabilities, so embedded smart tags could provide many different types of marketing and purchasing opportunities. “Suppose you’re outside the movie theater, and there’s a poster for one of the features. You wave your cell phone over the target on the corner on the poster, your cell phone reads that information, and up pops a window in the phone’s browser. You can watch a trailer for a movie, buy the ring tone for the movie’s theme, purchase the soundtrack or buy the tickets right there,” says David Chamberlain, principal analyst with In-Stat. Adoption of NFC will take some time, however. “A key consideration in moving NFC capabilities forward will be timing and participation of the carriers, infrastructure providers, and the retailers and banks that would make this possible,” says Thad Langford, vice president— innovation at Sprint. “Significant investments would be required by each of these groups, and those investments would need to be justified by an assurance that consumers will trust and value the technology and use it.” “We focus on products that we feel will work well for our customers and that our customers will feel excited about and would sign up and use.” Jim Richmond Cellular South A2LA adds new area of A2LA offers the first U.S. broad-based ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation in the field of Information Technology Applications for accreditation are now being accepted… Register online TODA Y! ‘‘ A2LA’s addition of the Information Technology field of testing provides the IT industry with a new and viable way to determine the technical competence of laboratories that test any aspect of hardware and/or software within electronic equipment, not just the encryption functions. —Peter Unger, President of A2LA 369275_A2LA.indd 1 23 ‘‘ Spr 20 0 8 2/8/08i ng2:23:28 PM http://www.a2la.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Wireless Wave - Spring 2008

Wireless Wave - Spring 2008 Contents A Letter from Our Chairman A Letter from Our President Pryor Approval The Promise of M-commerce Moving Targets Foreign Service Multiple Choice Legs, Regs, and Wireless Wireless News The Supplier’s Voice CTIA Welcomes New Members Index of Advertisers Roaming with….

Wireless Wave - Spring 2008

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