Visa Europe has added person-to-person (P2P) immediate payments and multi-currency payments to its Visa Personal Payments mobile service, in a move that could have serious implications for operators and their mobile wallet services.

Visa Personal Payments is a mobile payments ecosystem targeted at European banks keen to offer mobile banking services.

           At the Policy Control and Data Pricing Conference in Berlin on Wednesday, both Amdocs and Tekelec showcased new policy management solutions designed to help operators deal with two key issues around Wi-Fi – offload and monetisation.

First, Amdocs unveiled its Wi-Fi Experience Solution, which allows operators to extend existing data services with Wi-Fi, provided they already have existing infrastructure that supports Hotspot 2.0.

   Samsung seems to be going the extra mile to differentiate itself from just being yet another Android smartphone, with the launch of its new rival to the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S4.

In order to do this, it has pumped its latest handset full of features galore, as well as attempting to gain a share in the OTT, content and apps ecosystem pies with multimedia content store Samsung Hub, app market Samsung Apps and Whatsapp challenger Samsung ChatON.

     In June 2012, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced what it termed “a major milestone” in carrier-grade Wi-Fi technology with the introduction of Passpoint – a single industry-wide solution for access to Wi-Fi mobile broadband.

Based on technology defined in the Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 specification, the Passpoint programme was created to address critical business needs for mobile data, streamline access and to help ease operator data traffic offload to Wi-Fi networks.

     In our preview to Mobile World Congress 2013, we highlighted the fact that enterprises were under-exposed to the best that mobile technology has to offer.

In particular, the emerging enterprise app space is one area that operators could look to explore further, as Ian Schenkel, CEO of enterprise app developer Eurosmartz, revealed.

Networking leader Cisco has thrown down the gauntlet to rivals Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson with the introduction of a new range of mobile solutions designed to aid service providers in monetising “data in motion”- real-time and near real-time data generated by mobile and fixed connections between people, things and processes.

Uniting a whole host of products and services that Cisco has amassed from recent acquisitions, Cisco Quantum consists of four solution suites.

With LTE round the corner, mobile operators must take on OTT players.

They have tolerated networks being used to deliver bandwidth hungry IP based applications with little compensation. That model must change.

Several surprise companies are bidding for spectrum in the UK’s long awaited 4G LTE auctions – one of which is little known managed services provider MLL Telecom.

The company specializes in designing, building and managing bespoke mobile networks and infrastructure for British operators as well as public and private enterprises.

Its goal in bidding for spectrum is to complement existing its existing 32 and 40Gbit spectrum which it uses to build wireless networks.

Orange Business Services has announced today what it claims is the market’s first Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) global offering.

As Mobile Europe can exclusively reveal, the solution enables enterprises to deploy video conferencing, unified messaging, IM and telephony together in an app onto all mobile and desktop devices, via a web portal hosted in the cloud.

O2 has launched a train booking app as it looks to add value to its struggling mobile wallet service.

According to the UK mobile operator, customers will be able to save up to 80 percent on advanced fares with its Train Travel app as it doesn’t charge any booking or credit card fees unlike many of its competitors, such as The Train Line.

   At Mobile World Congress 2013, Mobile Europe was given the opportunity to test out the GSMA NFC Experience.

Equipped with a Sony Xperia T smartphone that came preloaded with €15 of credit, we successfully used the phone to buy lunch at the NFC-enabled payment terminals.

                           At Mobile World Congress 2013 last week, the Small Cell Forum announced its latest market status report, which revealed three key results.

First, the total number of small cells deployed globally increased from 6.4 million to 10.8 million in the last three months of 2012. Second, femtocells number 9.6 million and now outnumber macrocells. 

Nokia was one of several major telcos to launch new smartphones at Mobile World Congress last week.

The Finland-based vendor unveiled the Nokia 301 costing just €15, aimed at first-time smartphone owners in developing countries, as well as the Lumia 520 and Lumia 720 aimed at high-end tech savvy users.

LTE is happening across Europe, bringing with it the need for operators to make important decisions about all elements of network management.

This week in Paris, for example, SFR launched a service in the business area La Défense while France Telecom-Orange said it would start to roll-out services in the Opera region in April and the whole of the French capital by the end of the year.

There is considerable interest in vacant TV white space frequencies released by analogue switch off but European regulators still do not allow their use for telecoms.

Their reluctance stems from concern over possible interference with existing television bands.

Nothing quite like the iPhone had been seen before in the mobile industry when it launched in 2007, writes Bengt Nordstrom. The device radically altered the mobile industry forever.

Apple has turned this success to its advantage.