Francisco Kattan

I just read that Apple is rumored to be developing a digital payment platorm and this prompted me to post this article about another possible missed opportunity for mobile operators I’ve been thinking about.

For the longest time mobile operators have closely guarded important assets such as their customers’ location, messaging, and billing relationship.   As revenue growth from consumers is slowing, the talk in the industry is that operators should leverage these assets to generate revenue from third parties who value them.  For example, an application developer could incorporate location information to differentiate his application from the 1000’s of other apps in the app stores.   Another application could use text messaging for notifications, and a game developer could charge users on the operator’s bill to upgrade to a new level.

This all makes sense and would enable operators to avoid the same commoditization fate that the internet service providers already suffered.   The problem is that operators are not moving fast enough and these capabilities are now becoming available outside of the operator domain:

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