A dozen years have passed since the first person famously bought a Coke from a specially adapted vending machine in Scandinavia using a mobile phone. But in the intervening time, the anticipated mass market adoption of such “mobile wallet” services hasn’t happened. Alcatel-Lucent hopes to change that, announcing Mar. 23 that it will run a new global hosting service for mobile operators wishing to launch person-to-person payment, remote ticketing, and mobile commerce services.

Analysts say the new service, thought to be the first in this category to be launched by a telecom equipment maker, could be a unifying factor in what today is a highly fragmented mobile payments market. But there’s still a wide gap between vendor hype and the amount of time analysts say it will take for mass uptake of such services.

Alcatel-Lucent’s service is based on a new kind of short-range radio called Near Field Communication, or NFC, that promises to revolutionize everything from payment systems to home networking. In the next few years NFC chips are expected to find their way into cell phones, PCs, consumer electronics, and industrial equipment, ushering in the age of the “Internet of Things,” when real world objects get connected to the Internet and can even talk to each other.