Vivo and Generali Launch Pay-as-You-Drive Auto Insurance

Brazilian operator Vivo has partnered with Generali Brasil Seguros to market a personalized and flexible monthly car insurance product, called Smart Auto. Through an app, Smart Auto evaluates the customer’s driving style and generates a discount for the contracting of car insurance. A good driver can be rewarded with a discount of up to 30 percent on the price of their insurance.

Vivo customers who take out the insurance have an exclusive benefit: an additional 5 percent discount that is cumulative with the discount earned on driving style. The app also gives driving tips and shares with the insured guidance on how to improve their driving, contributing to safer traffic.

With the rise of the connected-car sector and the general proliferation of the IoT, there are many opportunities for mobile operators to get involved and discover new revenue streams. This offer from Vivo, in partnership with a Brazilian insurer, creatively utilizes driver data to provide a tailored auto insurance product, with discounts for those users with safe driving habits.

Smart Auto makes good use of new technology and a partnership with an appropriate financial institution to launch a value-added service that stands to make the operator more relevant to its customers’ lives. The operator will be providing something that many of its customers genuinely need, a product that is made possible by the use of mobile technology, not merely tacked on to the traditional services.

However, we feel that there is some danger here with regard to privacy concerns. As cars become rolling computers, they constantly collect data on their drivers and transmit it over mobile networks to third parties. While this is intended to help the auto manufacturers improve their products, and to some extent to help the drivers (as in this case), it has the potential to punish drivers for so-called unsafe driving. That could include higher insurance rates or other impediments and penalties, based on data that is not refined enough. For example, the frequency of sharp braking could be taken as an index of unsafe vehicle operation, but the causes of this behavior will not likely be recorded and taken into consideration.

Vivo is offering a service that could help drivers save money and increase their peace of mind. However, the data collected must be sufficiently detailed, and it must be protected so that it goes only to the places that the drivers and the operator agree upon. Users are understandably worried about privacy, so in order to make this offer work, the operator must guarantee the privacy of its customers’ data. Even if it does that, though, larger concerns about the use of driver data and its implications exist and may not be easy to dispel.

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Notable Developments in Telecommunication Worldwide

Asia/Pacific

Japanese messaging app LINE is partnering with BBC News, the U.K.-based international media service, to deliver short video clips of breaking news to LINE users in 11 countries. In order to receive the service, subscribers of the app in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain and the U.S. must list the BBC’s official account as a friend on their app.

Europe

T-Mobile Austria, the country’s second-largest operator, has announced a new tariff structure that will keep the cost of mobile devices separate from the cost of mobile plans. Subscribers can use an existing device or purchase a new one by paying in full or with a deposit and a payment installment plan. Once the device is paid in full, customers’ monthly bills will only be for the plan. Existing customers can choose this option once their current contracts have expired.

Latin America

Telefónica’s Brazilian mobile operator, Vivo, has launched a new service called Vivo Chamada Patrocinada, a sponsored call service for customers in Northeast Brazil. The service, which was already available to subscribers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, will now enable Vivo customers in Alagoas, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí and Rio Grande do Norte to make free local calls of up to a minute to fixed line phones and to on-net mobile phones in exchange for listening to a 15-second-long advertisement. Twenty advertisers are providing messages on the service.

Middle East/Africa

Orange Money, the mobile wallet service that France-based Orange offers in 14 countries in Africa and the Middle East, has partnered with the Bank of Africa (BOA) to enable the MNO’s customers to transfer money back and forth between their Orange Money account and their BOA account via their mobile phone. The service will enable Orange subscribers to manage their money and perform banking operations, transfer money, pay for goods and services and purchase airtime credit.

North America

U.S. operator AT&T is partnering with Shell, the global group of energy and petrochemical companies, to enable Shell’s 150,000 employees and independent contractors in over 50 countries to be able to connect to one another using PCs, tablets and smartphones. Via a single interface, this unified communications platform will enable employees to interact through instant messaging, voice, web and video conferencing as well as to share applications and data files. The solution is usable with all major operating platforms including, Windows, Windows Phone, iOS and Android in a managed environment. AT&T says it will create an efficient working environment, in which, for example, calls can be made to entire teams of employees in different geographic locations.

The above item appeared in a recent issue of The Tarifica Alert, a weekly resource that analyzes noteworthy developments in the telecoms industry from around the world. To access all of the latest articles and issues:  http://www.tarifica.com/TarificaAlert.aspx

Worldwide Telecommunication Developments

Asia/Pacific

Hong Kong mobile operator SmarTone is re-entering the fixed market with ST Fibre Broadband—a range of broadband plans that offer different upload/download speeds. HomeFibre 200/500/1000 are available at respective monthly costs of HKD 220.00 (US $28.39), HKD 260.00 (US $33.65) and HKD 330.00 (US $42.58) and upload and download speeds of 200 Mbps, 500 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. Users who subscribe to the operator’s Handset Bundled SuperFast Broadband & Voice Plan or the SIM only SuperFast Broadband & Voice Plan, both with at least 5 GB of data, will pay HKD 178.00 (US $ 22.97), HKD 198.00 (US $25.55) and HKD 218.00 (US $28.13), respectively, each month for the HomeFibre 200/500/1000 plans. Plan subscribers will also be able to access the internet through more than 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in shopping malls and restaurants across Hong Kong.

Europe

According to a recent survey of more than 2,000 U.K. residents, a reliable mobile signal is the most important factor that young home buyers (ages 18 to 35) consider when purchasing a real-estate property. To this demographic group, signal strength (45 percent) is more important than concerns about crime (26 percent), transportation (18 percent) and schools (17 percent). Of those survey-takers aged 55 and above, 26 percent said they considered mobile signal strength as the most important factor.

Latin America

Brazilian operator Telefónica Vivo is offering the Top-Up Vivo app to its prepaid and Control plan users. Through the app Android users can top up their accounts using MasterCard, Visa, Diners and Elo credit cards. The app will soon be available for iPhone and Windows Phone users.

Middle East/Africa

Saudi operator Mobily has introduced monthly roaming bundles that subscribers can customize to fit their needs. Users can select the number of call minutes and SMS and the data allowance that they want. Voice minutes and outgoing SMS can be selected in increments of 10 up to 100 units each month. Incoming SMS are not charged. Data can be selected in 50 MB increments of up to 500 MB.

North America

Through its Network Optimization policy, Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. operator, has been limiting the data speeds on its heaviest 3G users for the last three years. The policy is expanding, and Verizon will start to throttle data speeds on its 4G unlimited plans on 1 October. The operator is capping the speeds on the top 5 percent of 4G data users who are connected to a cell site that is experiencing peak usage at a particular time. Throttling will not apply to government organizations and businesses that have major accounts with the operator.

 The above item appeared in a recent issue of The Tarifica Alert, a weekly resource that analyzes noteworthy developments in the telecoms industry from around the world. To access all of the latest articles and issues:  http://www.tarifica.com/TarificaAlert.aspx