EVP IT and Business Operations
NFC - five problems, one solution
Alex Leslie - 2 days ago
It is not that we do not like Near Field Communications (NFC). We think it is a very cool technology. We simply believe that it is not the right technology to act as a catalyst for widespread adoption of mobile payments. Mobile payments are doing very well without NFC, indeed it seems that the big payments players are making more out of other technologies than they will out of NFC.
So, where does NFC fit? We believe that if you look at other areas of telecoms where the opportunities are huge, such as M2M, and you add NFC into the equation of solutions for other industries, the picture makes more sense.
Why? Because there are – at least – five big problems that NFC must solve before it has even a faint hope of being the savior of mobile payments. Particularly when you consider that the majority of mobile payments will be made from home, nowhere near an NFC terminal.
Here are our five problems – and one solution:
Facebook Success Index: Benchmarking the Operators
Ed Finegold - 17 days ago
As we dive deeper into our analysis of the BillingViews Facebook Success index, we’ve begun to benchmark operators against the industry and some initial segment averages. We’ve also measured and ranked the major operator groups against each other. Thus far, winners like Vodafone Group and France Telecom’s Orange Group are showing clear leadership.
We’re also finding that there’s a long-tail maturity curve in the industry. So, while everyone is an early stage – including the leaders – the gap between those leaders and those at the back of the pack is significant. The most important point, however, is that the numbers show that Facebook is definitely growing as an accepted medium for customer interaction.
Check out our latest slideshow below and let us know what you think.
BillingViews Introduces the Facebook Success Index
Ed Finegold - 32 days ago
One of the few hard measures of an operator’s effectiveness using Facebook to engage customers is the number of “likes” they’ve accumulated. “Likes” are by no means the only indicator of success, but they are easy to measure. Even more important metrics would be “problems resolved” and “revenue generated” but we do not have access to those numbers, so we are working with what we have.
“Likes” are a solid measure of overall customer awareness of operators’ presence on Facebook and their customers’ propensity to interact via this social media channel.
The BilingViews Facebook Success Index is a new index that BillingViews has created to measure the relative success global communications operators are having as they engage customers via Facebook.
So far, we’ve examined more than 70 operators from all regions of the globe. We started with the world’s largest players and expanded our scan based on those operators that have official Facebook presences (many do) and those for which we could find a somewhat reliable subscriber count.
We are assuming of course that every “Like” represents an individual customer (no, this isn’t an exact science – it’s a best effort).
We had to throw some folks out because of a lack of presence. For example, massive operators like China Mobile and China Unicom aren’t in the game because Facebook doesn’t play in China.
Others weren’t included yet because we haven’t found a reliable subscriber count (all donations of said information gratefully accepted). And still others because an official Facebook presence doesn’t exist or is too difficult to discern from fan sites or impostors.
Finally, we took all of the numbers and ranked a few key things:
1) Top 25 by Facebook Likes as a Percentage of Subscriber Base
We think this is the most telling measure because it gives an idea of how well any operator is using Facebook to engage its customers regardless of its size.
2) Top 25 by Total Facebook Likes
This is slightly less relevant because some of the operators on the list are orders of magnitude larger, in terms of subscribers and revenue, than others. But, the gross Facebook audience any operator can command is significant.
3) Industry Averages and Medians for both sets of stats
These give us some basic industry benchmarks, an idea of how well industry players are performing against each other, and a basis for any operator to measure its progress against its peers.
4) Top 12 Operators who exceed averages in both categories
5) Top 25 Scored by Inverse of Rank
6) Top 10 “Small Footprint” Operators
We rank those with fewer than 5mm subs separately.
And now, our results and champions…
Five more interesting results of our research:
Middle Eastern operators seem to do pretty well on Facebook. We need to look at more operators in this region, but those we looked at thus far are having great success engaging customers via Facebook. In fact, Orange Jordan is our “Small Footprint” champion.
US Operators have big numbers, but small percentages. Given that Facebook is a phenomenon of US origin, we might have thought US operators had enough of a head start to lead in all categories. While the Big 4 US mobile operators all fall in the top 10 in terms of total “likes”, none cracks the top 20 on a percentage basis.
Small European countries score high. You go into a project like this thinking that countries like France, Germany and the UK will jump out at you, just because they almost always do. Then countries like Slovakia, Montenegro and the Czech Republic show their social media savvy.
Don’t count out Latin America. So far, we’ve mostly looked the America Movil operating companies in the region and found customers in countries like Peru, Guatemala, and Honduras have a high propensity to like Claro on Facebook. (In other words, Claro, you’re doing something muy bien).
No one has achieved 6 percent yet. With the caveat that we haven’t actually examined every operator in the world yet, no one has surpassed the 6 percent mark . That’s a measure of how early we still are in Facebook’s evolution as a customer interaction channel. It will be interesting to see how rapidly this changes over the course of the coming year.
Seven barriers to mobile payment adoption
Alex Leslie - 46 days ago
Mobile payments as the ubiquitous payment method is still a dream. NFC is material for hype cyclists but the alternatives – easier, cheaper alternatives – are lining up. Customers, if they want to pay by mobile, want to pay by ‘mobile’ not by NFC. The seven real barriers:
The Payments Puzzle - part one
Alex Leslie - 71 days ago
This is the start of our campaign to understand, analyse and report on the mobile payments eco-system. We will identify possible winners and losers, as well as explore the areas of uncertainty. There are many – the industry is hedging its bets. View the slides below and take part in the easy, kick off survey.