Do You Accept Cellphone Payments?

beuges writes "In one of South Korea's latest efforts to establish itself as a technology trendsetter, the country's three telecom giants, major credit card companies and several banks have been working for a year to enable Koreans to pay for everything from groceries to petrol by cellphone."

Comments

Re:Already accepted practice in norway

[Like2Byte]

Perhaps the whole story is not fully understood by those in Norway.

The United States (via a Scottish immigrant) invented the telephone and quickly built upon that technology within the country to enhance it's infrastructure. "By 1878, Alexander Graham Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1884, long distance connections were made between Boston, Massachusetts and New York City." Source

{{Fast forward 130 odd years}}

It may seem feasible, for someone living in a country with a lessor-established technological-infrastructure that never had a system in place such as the existing telephone system in the US, that the US is behind but the US already had a *huge* system established for over 130 years. An entire industry was created because of it and when you have a beast (or a burden) of such a large scale as the US does one does not just throw it out in favor of some other kind of system - such as the cell phone.

In the US, and correct me if I'm wrong, only something like 20-30% of household use cellphones in their daily lives. Look at Indonesia; 95-98% of their populace uses cellphone technology. Does that make them a world leader? In cell phone usage yes. Why? Cell towers. No one needs to spend billions (if not trillions!) of dollars (or dinars, or Euroes) and lay millions of miles of cable to communicate. Erect a few cell phone towers and you've connected thousands of people. Erect a few more and you've connected an entire nation in a mere fraction of the time as it took for technology to advance enough for it to become feasible for these coutries. Even in Norway.

I'm a US citizen and I cut the cord 3 years ago. Cell phone and e-mail only for me.

You want to harp on the US. Go ahead. But while you're harping, look down your nose and see that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.