Corporate Report

Corporate Report

by Sean Roth | Real Estate Editor

Florida's confidence up, UF predicts drop

A new University of Florida study reported a one-point increase in the state's consumer confidence up to 79. But, officials with the Survey Research Center at UF's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, expect the states consumer confidence to further decline based on higher gas prices and the residential demand slowdown.

"In the short run we expect things to get a bit worse before they improve and consumer confidence to decline," Chris McCarty, director of the Survey Research Center, said in a press release. "The obvious culprit is the effect of the now burst housing bubble. The argument that the effect of the declining housing market will be contained has now been proven incorrect. What was a surprise was the extent to which investment in the U.S. housing market had become a global phenomenon. Central banks around the world have discovered that they cannot insulate themselves from this problem."

McCarty says some effect of the slowdown has started to bleed into non-housing related employment.

The slight rise in consumer confidence was attributed to increases in three of the five components that make up the index. Expectations in U.S. economic conditions over the next five years rose four points to 81, while expectations about U.S. economic conditions over the next year increased two points to 72. Perceptions of personal finances now compared to a year ago inched up one point to 73.

The only component of the index to decline was perceptions of whether it is a good time to buy big-ticket items, which fell two points to 83. Perceptions of personal finances a year from now was unchanged.

The research center conducts the Florida Consumer Attitude Survey based on telephone surveys monthly.

nFinanSe, InComm

agree on distribution deal

Tampa-based nFinanSe Inc. has signed a distribution agreement to provide nFinanSe Discover Network Prepaid Cards to InComm, a the nation's largest provider of stored-value gift and prepaid products, which handles more than 145,000 retail partner locations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Puerto Rico.

"We are very proud and excited to have a distribution agreement with the largest retail prepaid distributor in the United States," Jerry Uffner, nFinanSe's senior vice president of sales, said in a press release. "What a great way to deliver our innovative gift and reloadable prepaid card products quickly and efficiently to retailers all over the country, while dramatically expanding the size of our reload network."

NFinanSe Inc. is a financial services company and provider of stored value and prepaid card solutions.

With more than $5 billion in retail sales transactions processed in 2006, InComm deals in gift cards, prepaid wireless products, prepaid debit cards, digital music, content, gaming, software and bill payment solutions.

Syniverse Technologies

handling Saudi Telecom

roaming monitoring

Tampa-based Syniverse Technologies, a provider of technology and business solutions for the global telecommunications industry, reports that Saudi Telecom Co. will implement a Syniverse product designed to offer the advanced roaming fraud protection designed to meet new GSM Association requirements.

STC will deploy Syniverse DataNet, a solution developed in conformance with the GSMA's Near Real-Time Roaming Data Exchange initiative, to ensure data records that track subscriber roaming activity are exchanged more rapidly between home and visited operators.

Replacing the existing, outmoded High Usage Reports system with the NRTRDE standard should reduce data record exchange time from 36 to 4 hours, enabling operators to spot fraud much more rapidly and reduce potential fraud losses by up to an estimated 90%.

"Syniverse was the clear choice for this vital project because it has the necessary roaming systems experience coupled with an outstanding roaming fraud solution developed to be the new benchmark for anti-fraud excellence," Mohamed Alageel, general manager of Information Technology at Saudi Telecom, Aljawal, STC, said in a press release.

The NRTRDE standard was developed by the GSMA to combat international revenue share fraud and to help operators have a more accurate and timely view of how their networks are performing in regards to fraud.

With NRTRDE, the roamed network will be required to forward call data records to the subscriber's home operator within four hours of the call end time. If the visited operator is unable to get that information to the home operator in time, the visited operator will be liable for any fraud associated with those calls.

Saudi Telecom Co. is the largest mobile operator in the Middle East and North Africa and is the incumbent telecom provider in Saudi Arabia. STC has more than 15 million mobile customers and more than 400 global roaming relations.