O2RSS

Visa m-wallet to launch in autumn

The wallet will ultimately act as a container for multiple payment technologies

Financial services firm Visa Europe has said it will launch the V.me digital wallet on a controlled basis in the UK, France and Spain in the autumn of 2012.

O2 Wallet is “comprehensive m-payments service”

The O2 Wallet is the most comprehensive mobile payments service launched to date by an operator in Western markets. And interestingly, although the service is packed full of cool capabilities, such as text-based money transfers, price comparisons and offers, it is not yet enabled for contactless payments. Unlike other players in the nascent mobile payments market, O2 hasn’t chosen to make NFC (near-field communication) the focus of its mobile wallet’s appeal – not like Google Wallet or Quick Tap, the NFC m-wallet service launched last year by rival UK operator Orange. O2 is waiting until NFC handsets and payment terminals are more widely deployed to switch on that capability – but is not banking on it for the success of the wallet.

O2UK launches mobile wallet service

The O2 Wallet home screen

Telefónica subsidiary O2 has become the first operator in the UK market to launch a mobile wallet offering. The service offers price comparison for online shopping, person to person money transfer and allows the user to digitise cards linked to existing bank accounts, or load money onto an O2 stored value account.

Ofcom claims delay speculation is irrelevant

Ofcom claimed that mobile operators will not be able to roll out LTE until 2013

Mobile network operators will not be able to roll out 4G LTE services until 2013 at the earliest, due to technical issues, according to UK regulatory body Ofcom, rendering speculation about whether the spectrum auction will be delayed as irrelevant.

Regulator approves UK mobile spectrum trading

New Ofcom rules mean UK networks can now plays swapsies with their spectrum

UK regulator Ofcom, has announced that, from June 20th, mobile operators are permitted to trade the rights to spectrum amongst themselves. The new regulation covers 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz spectrum and mean operators will be able to bid for the use of spectrum they believe the have greater need for than other operators.

O2 UK claims LTE spectrum auction is illegal

O2 believes that Ofcom's UK LTE spectrum auction is illegal under EU law

The UK arm of Telefónica, O2, has released a statement blasting UK regulator Ofcom’s consultation over the forthcoming digital dividend spectrum auction.

The operator is objecting to the use of spectrum floors, whereby at least four operators will get at least 10MHz of spectrum below 1GHz. However, O2 believe that these spectrum floors amount to a state aid, which would make them illegal under EU law.

O2 tops UK mobile broadband performance study

The O2 arena in London

UK mobile broadband users accessing the web over dongles and datacards are getting average throughput of 1.5Mbit/s, according to research released Thursday by UK regulator Ofcom. But there were significant differences between the five carriers’ performance, with O2 delivering the best performance, and Orange the worst. 3UK outperformed T-Mobile, with which it shares a 3G network.

Going digital

shurrock-o2

In this video, taken at TM Forum Management World, held in Ireland this week, Steve Shurrock, CEO of O2 Ireland talks about the ‘digitalisation’ of the health sector and the merging of the phone and the wallet as the operators makes its first moves in the financial services space.

Eircom and O2 announce Irish network share

The deal is the first instance of network sharing in Ireland

The second and third-placed mobile operators in the Irish market, incumbent Eircom and Telefonica’s O2, have announced that they are to share networks in a deal that Eircom described as the first of its kind in Ireland. Eircom said that the deal will “result in an unrivalled mobile experience for customers” as the two carriers seek to meet growing demand for high bandwidth services.

O2 switches on 3G900 in London

O2 has launched its 3G900 network in the UK

O2 has staked its claim to be the first UK operator to switch on a 3G network over 900MHz spectrum in London. Taking advantage of recent licensing changes, this latest rollout in London follows on the heels of similar deployments in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester; the London deployment is expected to deliver a 50 per cent increase in capacity and a 30 per cent increase in speed.