Tech Bitch

New research has estimated that over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011. This is one of the key statistics from a recent study by Juniper Research.

The report found clear evidence that the sector is gearing up for major launches over the next few years. Early trials, mainly led by mobile network operators, are now migrating into commercial services that are controlled by the ticketing issuers themselves.

Benefits for the ticketing issuers include reduced cost, better security to help the fight against fraud and improved environmental footprint by reducing paper. Early use of mobile barcode technology will be gradually complimented by the emergence of NFC (Near Field Communications), in particular for the transportation ticketing sector where there are already commercial deployments in the Far East and important trials in Western Europe and North America.

Most encouraging for the sector is the wide adoption by some of the major organisations that control the issuance of tickets, such as Ticketmaster, British Airways and Tickets.com. This is coupled with the involvement of the key operators and technology providers such as O2, NTT, DoCoMo, Vodafone, Nokia and Samsung.

Key findings from the report include: Savings for the airline industry of $500 million each year by migrating to mobile boarding passes; A total of almost $87 billion worth of mobile ticketing transactions by 2011; NFC will start to create traction from 2009 onwards.

The report summarised that 2007 had been an important and groundbreaking year for the sector with trials and commercial deployments expected to continue throughout 2008 and beyond.

None of us know how much we’ll be charged to make a mobile call to friends abroad or to call back home from holiday. But we do know it’s expensive, which is why we don’t bother. Truphone, the mobile operator for the hippy Internet age has revealed a new pricing structure that means roaming charges have vanished completely for its customers.

From anywhere in the galaxy, Truphone customers can call countries in its ‘Tru Zone’, on their mobile, at the fabulously low rates of just 3p per minute to landlines and 15p per minute to mobiles.

The 40 countries in the Tru Zone together account for 60% of the world’s mobile phones and include most EU countries, Australia, Japan and Russia. Calls to some countries - including China, Hong Kong, U.S. and Canada - will cost even less, at just 3p per minute to both landlines and mobiles.

The potential savings can quickly mount up. At current prices, a 10-minute call home from your European ski holiday to a UK landline on Vodafone’s International Call Saver option (which attracts a monthly £2.50 charge just to be on it) will cost £3.80, while the same call with Truphone costs a mere 30p. Worse still, for those calling home from the U.S., perhaps from your Disneyland hotel, a 10-minute call on the same Vodafone tariff will currently set you back an eye-watering £11 - but the same call with Truphone still costs just 30p.

Truphone has also killed off roaming charges for receiving mobile calls abroad, something that routinely catches us all out as many don’t realise that we pay a high price for inbound calls. Receiving a call abroad costs absolutely nothing with Truphone - yet that same holidaymaker in Disneyland with Vodafone’s International Call Saver option is currently charged 75 pence per minute to answer a call from home. The same customer is only marginally better off accepting an inbound call in Europe, where accepting an inbound call costs 19 pence per minute.

So how does this magic work? Because it routes calls over Wi-Fi and the Internet, Truphone’s tariff structure relates solely to the destination being called, and whether that destination is a landline or a mobile. Where the call is made from becomes irrelevant, making roaming charges redundant. Truphone-to-Truphone calls remain free, no matter where in the world the two parties are.

With mobile broadband sales booming, are home broadband’s days numbered?Based on data from thousands of UK broadband package sales over the past six months, marketing types at Top 10 Broadband are currently tracking a paradigm shift in sales patterns towards mobile broadband and are foreseeing the eventual demise of home broadband.

Top 10 Broadband predicts that mobile broadband as a source of Internet connection will overtake home broadband by as early as 2010 to become the default way to access the Internet in the UK. What a load of toshiba!

Top 10 Broadband says mobile broadband sales have increased by over 50% month on month since adding them to its Web site. Mobile broadband now makes up over 10% of its total broadband sales from 0% only six months ago. Oh, that’s definitive then …

Come on! Even if laptop sales have boomed in recent years, the cost and hassle of mobile broadband means it’s still a long way off for mass market adoption. Even if major mobile broadband providers like Vodafone, T Mobile, 3 and Orange are competing hard, I just can’t see it happening any time soon.