Thomas Wiesenthal offered up an opinion at TechDirt this week that mobile operators might squelch the development of near-field communications (NFC) technology for mobiles due to their inability to not look at technology in proprietary terms.

Thomas says that since using mobiles for payment is not measurably easier than using a credit card, it will be non-financial applcations of NFC that drive use of the technology (such as getting information from objects, or access control). Given that these applications don't readily present a financial transaction from which to take a cut for themselves, operators are likely to be less inclined to support NFC.

The real value, then, may not be in payments, but in other applications of the technology, such as smart signs and kiosks that deliver information to mobile phones. But mobile operators aren't interested in those applications because there's no direct financial benefit. Instead, they envision taking a slice of every payment made over their phones. To do this, they'll try to lock down the technology, even if it stymies the non-financial applications that could really help the technology take off.

Thannks to Timo Arnall and Elasticspace for the link and image.