By the time Anne Bouverot took up her post as director general of the GSMA mobile operator trade group, in September of 2011, the pioneering NFC program at Orange group where she had worked was already more than five years old. And still there were no NFC rollouts to speak of.
As executive vice president for mobile services for Orange, Bouverot oversaw the introduction of the telco’s services as well as the selection of handsets. So she knew well the challenges facing telcos in rolling out NFC, including the scarcity of NFC-enabled phones and challenges reaching commercial agreements with banks and other service providers to make the NFC business case work.
After she arrived at the GSMA, Bouverot, with the backing of the GSMA board, designated NFC as one of five fast-track programs the trade group would push, along with such others as helping operators gain access to increased spectrum and developing mobile identity services and machine-to-machine applications.
