Finally Prepaid and Remittances Buzz with Carriers and MasterCard

Cellular Phones as Personal Authentication Devices
This past February at the GSM Congress in Barcelona, Spain, 19 global carriers and MasterCard announced an International Remittances Pilot that will enable subscribers (citizens, people, consumers) to send money credits across countries. The impact of a successful pilot could affect 500M people to send money credits at the cost of a cellular instant message plus a fixed fund transfer fee. Banks, Money Transfer Business Operators and others, beware, your efficiency and close loop archaic infrastructure will be threatened. Fix it or become irrelevant!

Mobile devices are becoming "personal authentication" devices. What this means is that the cellular phone or smartphone, is morphing/transforming into your own very "you" -- that is to say these devices are becoming computing powerful just like your favorite laptop (that you take Starbucks, Panera and the likes) or your desktop at home/office (go mobile with a laptop...for now). So what is going on here? Well, simply people want to take their personal records, diaries, secret black book, password, and all kinds of information in a portable easy to use and accessible device on the go. This is where the use of the word mobility comes into its own; allowing people to walk, run, sit and relax knowing they have "access" to their information that makes them active and functional to carry out their personal lives.

Human Behavior
To understand the effects of International Remittance, we need to understand human behavior and their habits. The one person habit that is constantly a personal transaction that can be a nuisance, is money! This means managing money when the person is in a mobile state of activity (e.g. purchasing a stereo system at Best Buy or at Starbucks buying six Lattes...for the office that is). The fumbling of the wallet (ladies/men) for cash, checks or credit cards to pay for goods and services can be excruciating. But there is another side of this story that does not click with highly enabled tech and educated people who may read this blog. In other words, I deduct from thinking that those readers who are conditionally inclined to read blogs are highly educated, financially stable and are in demanding professions. But what about the majority of the global population that is not as fortunate as us that can freely purchase anything using technology to make better consumer decisions?

This type of population is the global majority and are classified by the financial systems of the world as "unbankable (really? nice word to use by these guys...how about unprofitable...would prefer "unreachable" by financial pundits"). In any event, these people that emigrated from third world countries to first world countries (e.g. Canada, UK, France, Germany and USA) seek out a better financial and secure social position in comparison to their previous home country. Once acclimated into their new first world country, most of them become hard workers and obedient citizens who have adopted their new home and will make relentless efforts to have their offspring continue to flourish as well rounded citizens. The one daily and ritual behavior of these new potential new citizens is their constant thinking of what and who they had left behind and how to take care of them. With that, the immediate help they feel that can create peace of mind and responsibility to their love ones is "money".

If you read this far, thank you. Needed to provide the above paragraphs to make my point regarding global migration and the affect of money movement by these people and how cellular communications has an important role in their lives. The amounts of movements of money sent by these emigrants herein referred to "International Remittances" from first world countries to third world countries has reached in 2006 over $199B (if high-income countries were included, then remittances would be $268B) where Asia (24%) and Latin America and Caribbean (42%) have the Lion's share (source: World Bank - see URL)! This amount is greater than the foreign direct country sanction investments (source: World Bank http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2007/01/22/000016406_20070122114501/
Rendered/PDF/wps4116.pdf); http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070421/FREE/70420019/1007


Making Sense of Cellular Devices and International Remittances
Now here comes the correlation of International Remittances and cellular phones. At the end of 2007 there will be about 1.6B cellular devices (source: CTIA). A high number considering that the world's population end of 2007 will hover at 6.6B (source: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html ) or 25% of the population are carrying in their person these cellular devices! And this number will get higher as global cellular saturation is years away. Now back to these potential citizens. These potential citizens seek two basic life necessities when arriving in their new country: personal security and communications. Once those achieved, all other human life necessities follow (the stone age human clans established this order). Thus by securing these two life necessities, opportunities abound for selecting one or both of these. For now we will select communications, that is personal cellular communications.

With the easiness of activating a cellular terminal by these new citizens, they have met one of the two life basic necessities: communications. There is a sense of exhilaration by them that they can make at anytime and their leisurely convenience make a voice call to anyone. For some this is the first time they use this type of technology; a phone that we in developed countries take for granted. So now that these new potential citizens have secured both life's basic necessities they can conduct their personal and business activities. We will focus on the personal activity of sending money back to the old country.

Currently, the potential citizen would embark on sending money back home using the traditional and exorbitant expensive money transfer business operators such as Western Union, Money Gram, TransExpress, or banks. Fees from these operators range from 3 - 11% of the transferred value excluding fees paid by the recipient in the home country. Why then is it so costly to send money country-to-country by these simple potential citizens? History has attributed this to perhaps lack of citizen awareness/knowledge, margin greed and inefficient money transfer messaging systems like SWIFT, FedWire, ACH and others, that are not IP (Internet Protocol) standards, but are the standards created by operators and financial systems (archaic and falling apart). So this bring us back of the headline news of this topic that carriers and MasterCard will be embarking on a pilot for transacting International Remittances. The simplicity of this announcement is that telephone operators since the evolution of the Bell telephone system, global operators created harmonious connection standards that are prevalent in more than 180 countries and whereas private and public enterprises have adopted these standards that are lacking int financial system networks. Operators or carriers, have network interoperability that allows them to offer not only voice telephony, but increase their differentiation to their customers by including offers such as messaging, media & entertainment and now remittances services.

In conclusion, I am asked why do I write about wireless payment systems (prepaid, top-off, policy rating, content settlements), specifically credit card associations (Visa, MasterCard) and payment companies (Amex, Discover, JCB)? Simply put, a tired network that has a history of overzealous card associations that goes back to east banks versus west coast banks (and you thought gangsta rap music had their rivalries!).These entities have not evolve to include new type of potential citizens utilizing new methods of moving money between all people and all business. Until these incumbents fix their payment networks, cellular operators will thrive not only in International Remittances, but using remittances to buy good and services via money credits that make sense for multi-industry holding companies like Carlos Slim Helú's group of companies (Grupo Carso, CompUSA, Telmex, América Móvil, Grupo Financiero Inbursa, TracFone, Grupo Sanborns, Sears Outlets). Thus a good balance of physical (retailers) and virtual (telcos) presence. This balance brings a huge opportunity for Carlos and his vision that can truly serve the needs of the unbankable population of new potential citizens of the U.S.A. as well as those in Latin America and Caribbean Nations. Let the games begin!

Privacy and Branding

Well, it has been sometime since I blogged. Had a personal issue with my oldest son who had gone through surgery while balancing to move forward with customer engagements. These engagements have really taken a toll on me personally and these have been intrusive in my personal life do to extreme travel (10 days straight) and long travel delays (lines, bad service, unreliable everything) . Thus, I enjoy the work as it lets me be as creative as I can be to resolve customers' problems and their own challenges, and more so get to speak my mind on what matters most and what is meaningful efforts.

Working on a challenging customer whose business spans in Central America as a processor and issuer/acquirer who wants to process all mobile transactions in the region and at the same time facilitate toll-plaza payments using RFID -- they will succeed. The other customer is really difficult to work with as at time must act as the arbitrator between feuding business units and regions just to move one step further to achieve the buy-in from the rest of the executives in spite having the COO as my executive sponsor! My wife tells me I should increase the billing rate or mark-up the margin on the integration stuff (Hm! she is probably right...I'll do both!)

So off I go to Mexico (five times in one month!) then to Colombia and finally rest in Costa Rica and Guatemala to come home!

Get Done Stop Saying...Mobile Computing or Wireless Thin Computing

My challenges at many enterprises has been for many IT teams to revisit Wireless Thin Computing (-WTC) in conjunction with the lines of business (LOBs) teams who have smart Business IT people - this is an oddity! There has been more Mr. and Mrs. No's than anything else but business as usual. My reason for revisiting thin client was not only has the technology become more richly rewarding (TCO) and certainly the cost/performance blows rings around fat Windows or Linux clients, but a business policy decision to mitigate lawsuits from zealot lawyers and more fragmented consumer advocacy groups pertaining to personal and identifiable consumer data.

Logic has it that fat clients allow their fat and small peripheral friends (thumb drives, CDR's, portable drives) to carry data outside the confounds of the enterprise. Enough has been sensationalized in the media regarding Bank of America, Citibank, ChoicePoint, Dept of Justice, Dept of MV's (lots of these), blaming technology for the cause of "loss data" rather than a loss mind. Which brings me back to the point of thin client computing benefits. Thin client is a browser based LCD panel that gets its data feed from a server (old days mainframe to terminal). The data is never stored/access from a client device, but rather from a centrally managed server farm which removes the concern of data theft or clumsy employee handling of media. So no hands to touch the data, and the probability of loosing data further gets reduced. Now with the increase of bandwidth, many companies are springing into action by using disk-to-disl backup from remote locations only when the data size makes sense (Peta is still a Concern but storage technology and accompanying compression algorithm's will cometh). Hence, the additional savings from diminishing help desk support and application distribution (bye SMS) to start can really make the savings a true realistic ROI.

What does this mean to the public?

Get Vision, Get Organized, Get Going!!

Ha! The eureka moment of putting thoughts of creativity in paper (digital that is!) Started this blog to help me (and hopefully others) who throughout their lives have been great thinkers, idea generators, visionaries (you add more adjectives).

So, at times I will "blink" my thoughts and approaches to issues and challenges that get me thinking, thinking... It is not the intent of writing here to support the way I think as had enough of corporate recycled brains tell me otherwise which brings me to the book by Malcolm Gladwell (among the few thinkers who think with unstructured corporate mindsets), "Blink". I will not attempt to Cliff Notes the book (it’s not my business), though highly suggest to first read it then come back to this blog to dialogue.

My thoughts in this blog are around many issues in technology and how it affects humans who believe are in the role of consumers (antonym "wasters"). The ideal definition of Consumers is through my own definition that should have the following behavioral characteristics:

• Use a product or service with relevant value to the self or others - no evilness
• Clear and present intentions to morally gain benefit from the product or service
• Provide straight forward feedback to the makers of product and services
• Propagate the usefulness of the product or service doing kindness to others
• Respect all areas around oneself when using product or service
• Green attitude and practices to use the product or service
• Retire product and service with respect and moral commitment
  

With the above said, I write about the uses of mobile devices, alternate networks, privacy and branding. Though not ingrained in stone, I will alternate periodically what I consider exciting that motivates me to write my thoughts in this blog. So each Post will have a "headline" consisting of what I write about in technology, e.g. Mobile Devices Uses and Stupidity".

Alternate Networks - Unlicensed Spectrum Relevance for Disaster Recovery
Low costs, and a heap of talent could sustained communications "at time of disaster"

Well, I listened to advice on why I wrote about the Relevance of Unlicensed Spectrum For Disaster Recovery, where I have expanded as to "why my thinking" in using excess commercial real-estate, near-free cost spectrum and COFS (components of the shelf).

A prime example to use unlicensed spectrum to back-up an enterprise or city network for any point of failure, be direct or indirect, is to first remove the stubbornness associated mindset to engender it to business models that resemble that of incumbent carriers and their vendors. Recent hurricanes Rita and Katrina have proven to experts crisis planners that no location is predictable for a direct hit and for that fact have proven and solid recovery plans. How could recovery plans be validated if the essence of recovery is to solidify a pure communications architecture that is robust, and more so "truly adaptively mobile"?

My experience in disaster recovery is both personal and professional. In my lifetime I have experienced the fallacy of solid communications network meltdowns in the cities where I lived and conducted my affairs. Thus I went through the San Fernando and San Gabriel earthquakes of the 70's, race riots in Los Angeles, lived the civil unrest (and guerrilla warfare) of Argentina's junta years (circa 1975-77), the threat of communism in Central America as well as rationed electricity to eight hours a day in Honduras and El Salvador. All in all, voice communications was not robust as presumed to be by carriers and vendors. As more professionally acclimated I became living Florida, I noticed how clumsy Florida's Agency communications was during my own personal experience with hurricane Andrew (circa 1992). The Miami-Dade county agencies and cities two-way radio systems went down throughout the storm where radio failure was the due to radio interoperability between agencies at the local, state and federal levels. This interoperability issue is currently being addressed strongly via the P25 effort for inter-agency communications.

The above references is to provide a historical scenario of how through my own experiences have come to see all types of communications, be it voice, data or video. It is my desire hope and objective that my experiences and thirst to have unique ways to confront these kind of scenarios is through my own creativity and foolish thinking; why not? This brings me back to the current storms that have totally have embarrassed the technology and services providers of those technologies in this great country, The United States of America. I'll explain this as follows.

Recently, until my recent departure from Motorola, I led a disaster recovery wireless services business using Motorola's unlicensed spectrum RF offering (not exclusive to MOT), a two-man carrying IT-Closet-in-a-Box, and field services to the financial services industry as a portfolio toolset for the industry's Business Continuity Planning (BCP) framework where we conducted tests in Houston, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, Motorola's heritage in disaster recovery spans over 40 years of global DR efforts involving WWII (walkie-talkie "Combat with Vic Morrow"), voice telephony operations during the symbolic Mexico and Taiwan earthquakes as well as the Tsunami in Asia using similar technologies. The primary focus was to provide peace of mind to victims and first responders of the affected countries by setting-up ad-hoc voice services stations or communications triage's. Now back to the U.S., the human events that took place during Katrina were disheartening such as the separation of children and the elderly from their parents and loved ones ( I have seen this in third-world countries and never thought I would see it in the U.S.) Further compounding the events was the constant cry from these affected victims and rescuers for some form of communication to those love ones be it by TV announcements or by borrowing a cellular phone. It's a deep pity that in our great United States it was not the lack of technology innovation, but the lack of creativity to challenge obsolete reliance on telecom's era business models (thank you FCC!) that prevented technology deployment to such tragedies. It was only non-technology and non-vendor entities who have no ties to these models know how to run their businesses. Good examples of these entities deploying low-tech solutions without the involvement of carriers, vendors and "all governments", are companies like FedEx who provided a fix to fallen radio towers and missing two-way radio handsets; Walt-Mart with its massive supply-chain logistics orange line (a WWII cliche I learned from veterans) that requires five 9's (99.999%) to deliver supplies to the needy in the gulf coast affected areas.

So, if these enterprise entities who are not regulated by the FCC, FTC, DOC, DOT, etc. where they dictate to carriers and vendors alike how "they want" to run their business, then why should the regulating agencies, vendors and carriers dictate how to deploy DR plans? A lesson learned here, perhaps? So the emphasis is on a shareable communications framework that serves the enterprise, governments and quasi agencies (that in a moment). Enterprise customers as well as first responders need a reliable and affordable Business Continuity Planning (BCP) toolset solution that can be made operational within a 24 to 72 hour window. This BCP toolset solution should support data, voice and video services to recovery centers that may house from 100 to 2000 employees, personnel and/or its citizens and mitigate network downtime to hours versus days. Does it exist? Yes, look at the above graphics!

Thus, I believe the wireless technology industry vendors have also lacked the creativity and think-out-side of the carrier mindset to understand the inhibitions of using unlicensed spectrum to mitigate basic voice telephony services when needed most, at the time of disaster. As it usually entails, incumbent carriers are served by legacy vendors who have validated business models predating the Telecom Reform Act and will not deploy today as competitive and innovative offerings may jeopardize (cannibalize) their multi-billion infrastructure, handset and services investments. So, how could licensed carriers (FCC issuer) take the disaster response challenge to use their allotted spectrum if their wireless infrastructure is anchored (CO's) or fixed in-location (radio towers) will prevent their assets to turn to revenue producing assets at the time of disaster? This bring into the focus the use of deployable and reliable unlicensed radio technologies in the 5.2 - 5.7Ghz spectrum as well as other banded spectrum equipment currently available from Motorola, Alvarion, General Dynamics, Ceragon, Raytheon Boeing, Cisco, Navini, ADC, Adtran, as well as mobile disaster services companies such as Rentsys, Agility, ATT and Nextel who have some iteration of COWS and SOWS (satellite on wheels). These UNII band technology offerings can liberate those fixed assets by making them "mobile infrastructure" deployable anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

The point here is to imagine taking underutilized T1 and T3's (the "pipe") to backhaul them 20, 30 and 50 or more miles to set-up a mobile communications triage's that can allow victims, first responders and others involved in disasters to have basic telephony communications. Unlicensed spectrum infrastructure is much more adaptable to disaster recovery responses not only physically and cost wise manageable, but by the sheer available knowledge to deploy such systems in the U.S. that is widely available within the private sector. Furthermore, encourages the entrepreneurship in this great country to mitigate such disastrous planning for telephony BCP.

In ending, I bring up the matter of the franchise network. Why? What is the relevance? Well there are three relevant business points that matter most at the time of disaster: 1)Brick & Mortar (B&M) network, where it is one brand that can controls the distribution of "its thing", be it coffee, hamburgers, bank branches or ATM machines. These B&M are locations spots for the placements of infrastructure gear, e.g. T-Mobile Hotspots at Starbucks. These locations can be utilized to create a harmonious interoperable infrastructure network a-la-IP,and; 2) Underutilized Leased-Lines. The number of branded B&M's in the U.S. will astound you when visualization is used to interpret data (Google Earth, Microsoft's Terradata, Yahoo! Maps). The top six banks in aggregate have 25K B&M's, top six insurance companies have more than 25K general agent offices, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car/Truck has over 5K locations, Clear Channel and Viacom in aggregate have over 550K billboards edifices. What does this all mean? leased lines (telephony) and electricity (broadband of powerlines) that are underutilized and not fully maximized in ROA (return on assets). These entities could become members to a National Emergency Preparedness Network, a framework under the U.S. president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) that is part of the National Communications System (NCS) that can implement national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications policy (more on that end of this blog), and; 3)Peering Business Networks. I just don't get it. In my efforts in the banking industry, and as response to mitigate downtime after 9/11, I was relentless in convincing IT bankers that the unlicensed spectrum technologies are formidable innovations and should be consider to complement their overall BCP toolsets. It would be of low TCO and high ROI (more on brand management and reputation) if they would stop and think to get the technology right but get themselves to throw-out the arrogance and accompanying jealousy to allow each other's bank to peer networks when a fellow bank edifice obstructs LOS (line-of-sight) for RF to travel to its destination. Incredible that after the gaping hole at ground-zero it vividly shows Verizon's peering tentacles amputated as result of the collapse of the towers. Prior to 9/11, Verizon and its partner carries manifested to have peering arrangements for NYC. It is evident they did not. What they had was a "paper" business model agreement to carry partner's traffic on the same physical Verizon pipe. True peering and reliable peering according to Andy Bach (and I agree), VP Technology Network for the SIAC (the IT arm of the NYSE, AMEX and DTCC), peering should be physical where the pipes are truly routed and separated from a peering common pipe. In other words physical pipes that are "truly separated" from each other by benchmark distances which now brings me back to wireless peering networks. In this case I emphasize point 2 above that its the network of edifices that can truly reduce and mitigate communications by deploying unlicensed gear both in the private and public sector. Physical in wireless unlicensed networks can easily be peered as the equipment does not require miles and miles of wire, repeaters, bridges or the legacy gear associated with telco peering.

Finally, I would hope that the DHS, DOD, NSTAC, DOC and the National Governors Association together with the Mayors of its cities, hold a conference on the creation of a semi-quasi agency that predicates best practices from private industry (e.g. FedEx, Wal-Mart) and the Military, to further adopt business models that are not incumbent to legacy carriers and vendors thereby establishing a national DR Playbook that all should follow (otherwise the lawyers will get a field day!). The NSTAC and its NS/EP together with quasi-agency could establish the policy for known and unknown vulnerabilities to the communications preparedness of the U.S. when confronted by direct man-made events or indirect events like mother-nature. Furthermore, the NS/EP is further emphasized by the NSTAC's One-Stop Shop Services (OSSS) where communications services that support qualifying federal, state, and local government, industry, and non-profit organization personnel must first apply, qualify and subscribe to the following services:

Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS)
Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP)
Wireless Priority Service (WPS)

Intriguing to know if the gulf state leaders and the federal government were perhaps not aware of the NSTAC, its services and resources? I don't think so in looking at the NSC News page
06 Jan 2005 - Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge Announces Completion of the National Response Plan There is no mentioning of NC's referencing its resources and help towards the gulf states tragedy. Then again, a rich country with many resources that are misaligned, mis-ued and only serves the interest of incompetent politicians for creating willingful waste (pork-spending for repeat political office occupancy) would matter most at the time of disaster.

The day of ignorance starts with deliberate ignorants