Features

WAP Billing & Mobile Search Seminar in Australia

On March 3rd, Dialogue Australia hosted a WAP Billing and Mobile Search seminar in Sydney, looking at the evolution and growth of WAP billing in Australia as well as the overseas market, including Payforit in the UK, and how these experiences could be applied to the Australian mobile market.

The Seminar featured representatives from Australian mobile microsite specialist Big Mobile, as well as UK-based content provider, K2, who related the company’s experience with Payforit in the UK. 

K2’s UK CEO Steve Kitchen, highlighted several advantages of WAP billing over premium SMS, including fast transaction completion speeds and a dramatic reduction in customer ‘bill shock’, as a trusted third party provides transparent billing information at the time of purchase. Steve also talked about how Payforit provides improved customer experience, significantly reducing complaints, as well as sharing K2’s experiences of using Google mobile advertising in order to maximise Payforit opportunities.

K2 has proved that the knowledge gained working on WAP billing in the UK is transferable to a maturing market such as Australia – the company is now integrated with Dialogue for Optus WAP billing, which is already proving to be more profitable than the previous Premium SMS solution.

The seminar also included a panel session with representatives from the three largest mobile operators in Australia Optus, Vodafone and Telstra. The issues of time lines and revenue share rates with regards to WAP billing in the country were discussed during this. Dialogue believes that this discussion has acted as an impetus to carriers in Australia to move forward even faster with their WAP billing strategies.

Australia–based CEO of Dialogue, Hugh Spear said “Feedback from attendees following the seminar has been extremely positive and everyone we have spoken to found the session very informative.  We hope that this will now translate into increased awareness and take up of this technology in Australia.

”Widespread WAP billing adoption could also ‘clean up’ the mobile payment landscape and entice large content providers and sports organisations who have historically held back from the mobile portal,” concluded Spear.

Dialogue is currently integrated with Optus and imminently with Three for  WAP billing, whilst Vodafone and Telstra are   set to follow suit during 2009. . Dialogue is also actively engaging with the wider industry, working with the Communications Alliance on codes of practice for WAP billing technology and offering trials to other carriers for evaluation.

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