Mobile Service Affordability for the Needy, Addiction, and ICT Policy Implications

This paper links communications and media usage to social and household economics boundaries. It highlights that in present day society, communications and media are a necessity, but not always affordable, and that they furthermore open up for addictive behaviours which raise additional financial and social risks. A simple and efficient methodology compatible with state-of-the-art social and communications business statistics is developed, which produces the residual communications and media affordability budget and ultimately the value-at-risk in terms of usage and tariffs. Sensitivity analysis provides precious information on communications and media adoption on the basis of affordability. Case data are surveyed from various countries. ICT policy recommendations are made to support widespread and responsible communications access.addiction;ICT policy;communications affordability;mobile service

Privacy Management Service Contracts as a New Business Opportunity for Operators

Recognizing the importance of privacy management as a business process and a business support process, this paper proposes the use of service level agreements (SLA’s) around privacy features, including qualitative and quantitative ones. Privacy metrics are defined by both parties with boundary values on each qualitative or qualitative feature. Their distribution is relying on stress distributions used in this field. The use of service level agreements also casts privacy management into a business perspective with benefits and costs to either party in a process. This approach is especially relevant for communications operators as brokers between content owners (individuals, businesses) and enterprise applications; in this context, the privacy SLA management would be carried out by the operator, while the terms and conditions of the SLA negotiation reside with the two external parties. This work was carried out as part of the large EU project PRIME www.prime.project.eu.org. on privacy enhancing technologies.Content Owners;Enterprise Business Processes;Managed Service Contracts;Privacy Agreements;Service Level Agreements (SLA's);Telecommunications Operators

Mobile operators as banks or vice-versa? and: the challenges of Mobile channels for banks

This short paper addresses the strategic challenges of deposit banks, and payment clearinghouses, posed by the growing role of mobile operators as collectors and payment agents of flow of cash for themselves and third parties. Through analysis and data analysis from selected operators , it is shown that mobile operators achieve as money flow handlers levels of efficiency , profitability ,and risk control comparable with deposit banks – Furthermore , the payment infrastructures deployed by both are found to be quite similar , and are analyzed in relation to strategic challenges and opportunities This paves the way to either mobile operators taking a bigger role ,or for banks to tie up such operators to them even more tightly ,or for alliances/mergers to take place ,all these options being subject to regulatory evolution as analyzed as well . The reader should acknowledge that there is no emphasis on specific Mobile banking (M-Banking) technologies (security, terminals, application software) , nor on related market forces from the user demand point of view.banking;industry structure;mobile networks;operational cash flow;regulations;transaction systems

Discovering the Dynamics of Smart Business Networks

In an earlier paper ,was discussed the necessary evolution from smart business networks, as based on process need satisfaction and governance, into business genetics [1] based on strategic bonds or decay and opportunistic complementarities. This paper will describe an approach and diffusion algorithms whereby to discover the dynamics of emergent smart business network structures and their performance in view of collaboration patterns over time. Some real life early analyses of dynamics are discussed based on cases and date from the high tech sector. Lessons learnt from such cases are also given on overall smart network dynamics with respect to local interaction strategies, as modelled like in business genetics by individual partner profiles, goals and constraints. It shows the weakness of static "business operating systems", as well as the possibly destabilizing clustering effects amongst nodes linked to filtering, evaluation and own preferences.dynamics;network performance;smart business networks;SBN;business genetics