The new content-driven wireless networks service providers are building create new billing complexities.
Now wireless carriers have to bill end users and need to do settlements with third-party content providers.
This isn't really a new service model, of course. Some existing mobile networks as well as the Internet consist of a combination of transport providers and content companies collaborating to deliver services to end users. Still, those companies haven't agreed on a standard way to handle settlements, according to Malcolm Lewis, director of offer management at Lucent Technologies Inc.'s billing and customer care unit. So Lucent, Hewlett-Packard Co., Oracle Corp., Siemens AG and Sun Microsystems Inc. have established the PayCircle consortium to provide mobile device users worldwide a standard means of making mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by merchants or service providers. The initiative stemmed from Hewlett-Packard's Mobile Bazaar, which is aimed at enabling applications and services across mobile networks and devices. PayCircle will take the next logical step in defining how those applications and services are paid for, he adds.
PayCircle aims to define an interface between the merchant, application or content provider and the mobile operator via a payment gateway at that operator. The gateway will be built using off-the-shelf hardware and will have applications programming interfaces incorporating Java and XML technologies, Lewis says. The gateways and APIs will be designed to work in any type of next-generation wireless network using any air interface, says Lewis.
