The companies behind the planned U.K. telecom joint venture for mobile payments have worked together before with little resulting success.
Telefonica UK, Vodafone UK, T-Mobile and Orange parent Everything Everywhere, the companies behind the recently announced venture, also joined forces in 2003 to create the Mobile Payments Service Association. The 2003 venture also attracted interest from European mobile operators Debitel AG, Hutchison 3G, KPN NV and TMN SA.
But that venture failed to get off the ground, and this year's venture could share the same fate if the companies cannot agree on the details, Nitesh Patel, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, a multinational consulting firm, said in a phone interview last week.
"Historically, mobile operators have their own agendas and strategies, and they'll have to have consensus," Patel said. "Sometimes — or, oftentimes — it doesn't actually play out."
The companies hope to launch the joint venture by yearend, assuming they get antitrust clearance, which Patel said he doubts will be a problem.
"They will almost certainly have some provision in there to be able to differentiate from each other," he said.
There is not enough information to know what will happen, but the joint venture could become the most comprehensive European mobile initiative by going beyond payments and into marketing and coupons, Patel said. This potentially would enable customers to use discount offers at the point of purchase.
"There's a long way to go for that kind of thing to be a wide-scale reality, but they're making more steps," he said.
