The Prepaid Press - December 15, 2007 - (Page 17)

INTERNATIONAL December 15 · 2007 - 17 International in Brief Mobifusion Inc., a global developer of premium mobile content, has announced that its India-based ofﬁce, in conjunction with India’s ORG Ltd., has launched a full suite of next generation mobile content applications with Dialog Telekom, Sri Lanka’s leading mobile operator. The new application, Face Morphing MMS, is a suite of face-recognition technologies that offer Dialog customers fun in ﬁnding their celebrity look-alikes or morphing their photos into new images. A face photo or mug-shot photo is sent via MMS and then the program’s advanced face-recognition technology matches the face against a database of international celebrities and sends back an MMS with a morphed sequence of the look-alike. The programs also enable users to artistically create Picasso or Rembrandt-style portraits of themselves, Animal versions or Manga look-alike versions. Mobifusion - www.mobifusion.com Dialog Telekom - www.dialog.lk ORG - www.orgltd.com Mobile Communications in Latin America Gets a Leg Up Low-priced Handsets and Prepaid Plans Give Market a Boost DUBLIN, IRELAND (December 4, 2007) Research and Markets has added Frost & Sullivan’s “Latin American Mobile Communications Outlook I” to their offerings. This research provides an overview of the mobile service markets in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico and observed trends that may impact the current status of the market. Mobile communication in Latin America has grown by 10 percent in the last two years to touch 65.5 percent and is likely to continue on this growth trajectory, at one of the highest growth rates in the world. The low-income social segments’ uptake of new prepaid plans and low-cost handsets is driving market expansion, while the adoption of advanced technologies such as 3G and the increasing demand for premium mobile content is driving revenue growth. However, mobile telephony in this region still has not touched 70 percent, indicating the existence of further opportunities. Due to the prohibitive costs of most postpaid plans, customers much prefer prepaid offerings. Mobile operators are developing low-cost prepaid plans to cater to customer demand and reduce churn rates, despite the low average revenue per user (ARPU) of prepaid lines. In Brazil, most mobile lines are prepaid, as are in Colombia and Mexico. In Mexico, operators offer a series of low-cost, entrylevel handsets to lure ﬁrsttime users. Although their mid- and high-level handsets for prepaid plans are usually more expensive than postpaid handsets, they allow ﬁnancing. users do not have access to premium content applications such as multimedia messaging service (MMS), download music, and images. “To overcome mobile subscribers’ lack of awareness of mobile content availability, operators could offer free demonstrations of basic devices features,” notes the analyst. “This way, non-users could start buying into these concepts, and thereby, increase revenues from mobile content usage.” A case in point, Mexico has seen continuous growth in mobile data usage due to subsidies in the prices of mobile handsets. Greater affordability of handsets has caused mobile data such as multimedia content to overtake the low-priced short message service (SMS) in terms of usage. Source: “Latin American Mobile Communications Outlook I,” Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c76368) Mobile Telephony Operators Need to Encourage Mobile Data Usage to Garner Greater Revenue “In spite of the favorable market conditions, mobile subscribers are still unaware of their handsets capabilities and mobile content services availability,” says the analyst of this research. “Also, many users still ﬁnd it difﬁcult to search for the contents they want, especially on wireless application protocol (WAP) portal.” These issues hamper mobile operators’ revenue and market expansion prospects in Latin America. Moreover, since most handsets are low-end, their Mobile services provider Vodafone Essar has launched the ‘Sambhav’ prepaid card that has been targeted at customers with hearing and speech disability. The card enables customers with hearing and speech disability to use mobile phones primarily for sending SMS. Source: Sify – www.sify.com EPRSS Prepaid Recharge Services India Pvt Ltd—an Indo Israeli joint venture offering electronic prepaid recharge technology for mobile, e-commerce services and applications—announced that it is going to expand its presence in India. The expansion will start in the Maharashtra and Goa circle. EPRS India has been operating in Pune for more than two years and the expansion move will help the company explore new markets. The expansion will also help EPRS serve customers in more than 150 towns in the Maharashtra and Goa circle. Source: TMCnet – www.tmcnet.com Euronet Worldwide Inc. has entered an agreement with one of Italy’s largest grocery chains that will let the Italian company sell wireless minutes electronically. Euronet said the contract marks its ﬁrst entry into the Italian prepaid market, which is Europe’s largest prepaid market and now Euronet’s 14th-largest market. Euronet said it will integrate its payment system with existing electronic cash registers at SMA S.p.A stores. The companies will launch a pilot project at select SMA stores with TIM, Italy’s leading mobile operator, and Euronet said it experts to roll out the service for all four of the nation’s mobile operators in all SMA stores by the ﬁrst quarter. Euronet Worldwide – www.euronetworldwide.com VendTek Systems Inc., a provider of software for prepaid service distribution, has licensed its e-Fresh solution for the distribution of prepaid products in Sudan to Privinvest Holding SAL. Privinvest Holding SAL is an associated company to Vendtek’s license partner in the United Arab Emirates-One Prepay. Sudan, with a population of 40 million, has about 8 million mobile phone users (or 20% of the population). According to Sudanese Governmental and Telecom Sources, the market is growing very rapidly and should reach 20 million users by the end of 2009. Privinvest will work with merchants in the country to convert their hard card distribution to VendTek’s electronic e-Fresh distribution system. VendTek will receive a license fee based on the number of transactions processed. VendTek Systems – www.vendteksys.com http://www.mobifusion.com http://www.dialog.lk http://www.orgltd.com http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c76368 http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c76368 http://www.sify.com http://www.tmcnet.com http://www.euronetworldwide.com http://www.wcgltd.com http://www.wcgltd.com http://www.vendteksys.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Prepaid Press - December 15, 2007

The Prepaid Press - December 15, 2007 GENERAL PREPAID 2007: Prepaid in Review New Prepaid Association? Contents A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Regulatory Rundown: FCC Enforcement, SEC Cracks Down, VoIP Hacking, & Wireless Regulation The Legal Line WIRELESS Prepaid Wireless Roundup kajeet to Offer Horoscopes, Jokes and Trivia Redknee Extends Converged Billing Solution AT&T GoPhone Offers Roaming Option in Mexico Total Call Mobile Introduces Holiday Bonus Wireless in Brief INTERNATIONAL Spot Rates Keycorp to Distribute Hypercom in Canada International in Brief Mobile Communications in Latin America Gets a Leg Up TELECOM & TECHNOLOGY T&T in Brief Phone House Launches New Card Facebook Goes Mobile CVT and Total Call Settle IDT Lawsuit Wireline Capex Grows 7% in Third Quarter PAYMENTS Transcard Selected for Discover Payroll Cards Vesdia and MXT Card Services Form Alliance The Giving Tree Card Gives Back MasterCard Launches Prepaid Travel Card Payments in Brief 7-Eleven Pushes Video Games Capital One and NetSpend Merger Off i2c Launches New Release of Campaign Manager Prepaid Card Dispensing from ATMs Credit Card Design Competition Begins NRF Says Gift Cards Gaining Popularity EXTRAS Classifieds Contact Us Our Advertisers

The Prepaid Press - December 15, 2007

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