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Telecoms watchdog Ofcom has said customers will save around £800 million through planned cuts to mobile phone connection fees.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Posts Tagged “charges”
• Ofcom targets ‘termination rates’ to connect to network The price of calling a mobile phone is due to drop further over the coming years with Ofcom this week expected to propose new caps on the price operators can charge each other and fixed line companies to connect calls on their networks. The move could cost the mobile phone industry upwards of £1bn and is likely to be challenged by some of the large operators. But the reduction in so-called mobile termination rates will be welcomed by BT and the UK’s smallest network, 3, which have campaigned strongly for the regulator to “terminate the rate”. The regulator is also expected to reduce the time it takes consumers to switch provider while keeping the same phone number. But Ofcom’s preferred route to so-called mobile number portability could fall foul of the EU, which has already mandated that switching should be hassle-free and take no more than one working day. Mobile number portability and mobile termination rates have been argued over by the industry and Ofcom for many years. Last summer, Ofcom suggested the time it takes to switch provider could come down from two days to as little as two hours but the regulator is understood to have backpedalled and opted instead for one day. Consumers will still need to call their network to demand their transfer code. Last year, Ofcom set out six possible plans for dealing with mobile termination rates from the end of the current pricing regime in 2011. While a radical rethink is not anticipated – Ofcom had suggested scrapping the fees altogether – it is expected to dramatically reduce the costs operators can recoup through termination rates. The mobile phone companies are increasingly sharing their networks to cut costs, while T-Mobile and Orange have announced plans to merge completely. The last time Ofcom proposed cutting mobile termination rates, the issue ended up with the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
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Mobile phone card seller faces fine of millions if Ofcom finds grounds for customer complaints The telecoms watchdog Ofcom has launched an in-depth inquiry into Lycatel, one of the largest players in the UK’s booming market for pre-paid international phone cards, which could result in a fine running into tens of millions of pounds. Lycatel’s phone cards, sold under a variety of brand names including Habibi, Cobra and World Call, allow people to make cheap-rate international calls from any phone. But Ofcom said it has received complaints from consumers who believe they have been cheated. Consumer Direct, the government-funded advice service, has also received complaints about the company’s cards. Ofcom said it has discussed Lycatel’s terms and conditions and its advertising practices with Trading Standards and “the investigation will now consider whether Lycatel has engaged in conduct which infringes any relevant consumer protection law”. The regulator is also looking to see whether the company publishes clear and up-to-date information about its prices and terms and conditions. In a statement Lycatel, founded by its Sri Lanka-born chairman, Subaskaran Allirajah, said it “has consistently provided its customers with great quality international calling at competitive prices” and will co-operate with Ofcom. Providing international calls is a lucrative business and Ofcom has been called in to investigate sharp practices in the market before. Back in 2004, it concluded an investigation into discrepancies between the charges advertised by three card companies and the actual charges levied for calls and imposed new rules on the detail that they must include in adverts about connection and handling charges. At the time of that investigation, which did not include Lycatel, Ofcom reckoned around 3.7 million people used calling cards in the UK, with about 150m cards sold each year. But since then there has been a boom in the market, not least because a new wave of immigrants coming into the UK from eastern Europe want to phone home cheaply. The company operates across 10 countries and handles more than 1.6bn minutes of voice calls per month, with over half its traffic heading to Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Lycatel has also moved into the mobile phone market with Lycamobile, which uses Orange’s network to run its service, but faces fierce competition from rival Lebara Mobile, which uses Vodafone’s network to run its low-cost service. Ofcom is probing Lycatel using several of its powers. The regulator has a set of “general conditions” for telecoms operators which require that operators provide clear and up-to-date information about tariffs and pricing, and must not issue bills which contain charges that cannot be explained. Breaking these conditions could lead to a fine of up to 10% of turnover. Lycatel reckons that it is on track to make revenues of $1bn (£662m) this year and while that figure also includes Lycamobile – which is not the subject of the Ofcom investigation – it still means that a potential fine could run into tens of millions of pounds. Ofcom is also looking at Lycatel under the Enterprise Act which protects consumers from unfair trading practices and gives the regulator the power to impose undertakings which would restrict its business practices in future. Finally it will also use the unfair terms in consumer contracts regulations, designed to protect consumers, which could also lead to the enforcement of new undertakings.
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LONDON (Reuters) – BT Group has defended proposals to increase wholesale charges to plug its gaping pension deficit as rivals called for shareholders to foot the pension bill. Read Full Story…
Feb
26
2010
 
Phone hackers’ soft targets | Brendan MontaguePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The most damning indictment of phone hacking is that it was almost always used to get gossip rather than expose wrong The fact investigators working for the News of the World hacked into my mobile phone to cut me out of a potential £30,000 celebrity scoop is not surprising. If you swim with sharks you expect the odd puncture wound. The fact this process is so simple, swift and apparently routine is shocking. I called the Sunday tabloid one bright afternoon with the name of a celebrity chef and tales of famous London nightclubs, glamorous hotels and sexual impropriety. The reporter I spoke to was Clive Goodman. He promised me the Screws would pay the most – but something about his conspiratorial tones turned me towards a more gregarious Sunday Mirror news editor. The News of the World was not going to let this apparent front page get away. A rapid succession of calls to my mobile followed. These allowed the caller to access my voicemail – I had not set a password. My personal greeting gave them my real name and my place of work while the messages revealed the identity of my then girlfriend, who was the source of the story. Goodman called me on my work mobile and aggressively demanded the name of the chef’s female acquaintance. I refused. It was after that that my mobile phone records were hacked. T-Mobile confirmed a bizarre call where someone pretending to be me failed the most basic security question – my date of birth. Despite this, the caller was able to try again just 15 minutes later and, this time being successful, he was given a full rundown of my recent calls. He then tried to hack my partner’s phone records. Phone hacking in this way was astonishingly easy. A few years ago, it seemed to be the default method of some News of the World reporters to use information gained in this way. While other hacks were busy knocking on neighbours’ doors or visiting relatives found through birth and marriage records, journalists from the Screws instantly had a direct line to make their offers of “a life-changing amount of money”. The true scandal here is not just the use of such illegal methods. The most damning indictment of this chequebook journalism is the fact it was only very rarely used to find real wrongdoing by the rich and powerful. Blagging your way into someone’s phone records would be morally defendable if there was a genuine and compelling public interest. Journalists rightly enjoy more latitude under the data protection act and human rights laws – if there is a real reason for subterfuge. The Press Complaints Commission code states: “Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest.” Muckraking has served the public good: by rummaging through the bins of solicitors Benjamin Pell discovered documents showing the then Tory minister Jonathan Aitken had been involved in Saudi arms deals. But how many of the 100 people targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking will turn out to be rogue arms dealers, corrupt politicians and corporate killers? And how many will be minor celebrities? The full armoury of investigative reporting – GPS tracking systems and hidden cameras, “lilly-whites” and “honey traps” – was unleashed against footballers, Big Brother contestants and It girls. And now public figures of means can turn to Max Clifford as a form of defence and use “pay as you go” mobiles. So the tabloid hacks turn on less wealthy, less protected victims. This is an abuse of power by newspapers owned by one of the most powerful media tycoons in the world, Rupert Murdoch. Moreover, the man in charge of the News of the World when this abuse of power was taking place was Andy Coulson. Coulson, we know, jumped ship as the Screws hit the Goodman phone-hacking iceberg and is now captain of spin for the Conservative party as it sails towards power. This has serious implications. If the Tories win the general election, as predicted, Coulson will be at the very heart of government with an army of civil servants working for him. Yet, by his own admission, when managing a small team of reporters, he was incapable of detecting flagrant criminality on a huge scale.
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• Phones with the new software will appear at the end of the year
Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer is hoping that 7 will turn out to be a lucky number again. With Windows 7 helping to bury the ghosts of the poorly received Windows Vista in its core PC market, the software group is hoping to repeat the trick with a new version of its software for mobile phones, a device that has refused to yield to the firm’s attentions despite almost a decade of trying. Windows Phone Series 7 is the result of a complete overhaul of Microsoft’s vision of the mobile phone. It has abandoned its attempts to turn mobile phones into mini-PCs, focusing instead on giving users easy access to social networking, music, video and mobile phone applications. Coincidentally Ballmer’s presentation, at the mobile industry’s annual trade show in Barcelona came hours after the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia revealed a tie-up with chipmaker Intel that is headed in the opposite direction. The two companies have pooled their software development resources to create MeeGo, a free software platform which they reckon will pave the way for the next generation of wireless communications devices. Both companies have Apple, Blackberry and Google, with its Android mobile phone platform, firmly in their sights. Fierce competition has eroded Nokia’s share of the market over the past year, and Microsoft fears that if it cannot get back in the game now, it may never manage it. Ballmer admitted that Microsoft, which has failed to gain any significant share of the mobile phone market, had been forced to “retool and reform” its mobile phone software two years ago. “There is no doubt that the phone market is highly competitive, highly dynamic, super-exciting,” he said. “There was no question in our minds… that we needed and wanted to do something that was out of the box, clearly differentiated from our past and clearly differentiated from other things that are going on in the market.” “We’re taking a big step,” he added. “I hope seven’s our lucky number.” The first phones using the new software will not appear until the end of the year and Microsoft is being very prescriptive about what they should look like, which has raised questions about whether handset manufacturers will be willing to make Windows Phone devices that they will be unable to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. Manufacturers including HTC, LG and Samsung have, however, signed up, while Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange are all likely to sell the devices in the UK. The proliferation of so-called open source software platforms – such as Android – has raised the question of whether Microsoft, which still charges hardware manufacturers a licence fee to use its Windows Phone software, should adopt the same model. Refusing, as ever, to actually name Apple, Ballmer spoke about “vertical competitors” – companies that make devices as well as the software that sits on them, such as Apple – saying “their model is really clear, it’s sell devices. We sell software to companies that make devices” and that is not going to change. “My mother used to say to me, if something is free, you should take a look and find out what the real cost is.” Nokia, however, has become a convert to the idea of open source platforms. Having bought out its partners in smartphone software developer Symbian and made that available free to all developers and hardware manufacturers, it announced a tie-up with Intel under which it plans to do the same for the next generation of mobile devices. Nokia was already working on an open source platform for so-called internet tablets, called Maemo, which it used in its recently launched N900 phone. Now it is merging it with a similar programme which Intel ran for laptops, called Moblin, into a new platform called MeeGo. “It is the future of how we think people are going to use computing,” said Renee James, Intel’s head of software and services. “From Intel’s perspective, we see expansive growth which brings new users to computing and at the heart of that has always been software innovation and that happens when there is a stable platform that developers can bet on being there long-term. So I consider this critical to the long term growth initiatives of Intel.” The first MeeGo devices will start appearing in the second half of the year, but Intel already has hardware manufacturers such as Dell, Asus and Samsung making laptops for its existing open source platform and they will all be moved over to MeeGo. “They have understood the only way to beat Microsoft, Google and Apple is to do it through scale – get the platform to more devices,” according to John Strand, owner and head of Strand Consult after the announcements at the Mobile World Congress fair. Immediately dubbed MeeToo by some analysts, MeeGo will create an open source software platform which Nokia reckons will be used in a new generation of wireless devices. Both companies want to attract a wide range of operators, handset manufacturers and software developers. “This is not a closed club,” said Kai Öistämö, Nokia’s head of devices. “We are inviting everyone into this. “MeeGo will create a new strong single platform that will drive the future of mobile computing.” The announcement of MeeGo, however, immediately raised questions about the future of Symbian, but Öistämö stressed: “This is very consistent with Nokia’s software strategy. Symbian is the perfect environment for democratising the smartphone, what MeeGo allows is the future of mobile computing … well beyond what can be done with smartphones today.” The deal may raise some eyebrows at Google, however, as Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini has sat on the Google board since 2004.
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LONDON (Reuters) – Hermes Fund Managers will allow all its investors to claw back performance fees, the group told Reuters, in a move that could herald fundamental change in an industry battling client anger over excessive charges. Read Full Story…
Jan
29
2010
Mobile operators to offer free DWP helpline callsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The Department for Work and Pensions expects all UK mobile operators to end charges for calls to its benefits and pensions lines by the end of April
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You’re through to O2… we’re busyO2 has suspended its popular ‘Mobile Landline’ service temporarily. The service provides business with a landline number that reroutes to an O2 SIM, without connection charges, an attractive proposition for SMEs.…
What is your recession sales strategy? Read Full Story…
Jan
21
2010
Nokia offers free global turn-by-turn sat-navPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
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Jan
15
2010
U.S. court asked to allow prosecution for "sexting"Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A teenage girl who appeared topless in a “sexting” cell phone picture that was distributed among her middle-school classmates should face child-pornography charges, a Pennsylvania prosecutor argued before a U.S. appellate court on Friday. Read Full Story…
Jan
13
2010
Trojan porn dialers make comeback on mobile phonesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
By popular demandAfter taking a long hiatus, trojan dialers that can rack up thousands of dollars in charges are back by popular demand.…
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Jan
12
2010
Letters: Rational response to radiation risksPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
In your report (Radiation health threat overstated – Oxford professor, 11 January), Professor Wade Allison appears to advocate changing the way radiation risk is calculated. In fact, the problem lies with how regulation deals with radiation risk. All radioactive discharges are required to be optimised (ie reduced) so as to be as low as reasonably achievable. This principle has been used by regulators to drive extreme expenditure on reducing minuscule risks. In the work of nuclear site clean-up, many projects have suffered huge cost increases and delays from demands to reduce doses of well below 10 microsieverts a year. The calculated risk from this dose, if that was the only risk you ever took, would give you a median life expectancy of around a million years. The removal of disproportionate expense on radiation dose reduction does not require a change in the process for calculating risk, merely a rational response to the risks that are calculated. Professor Gregg Butler University of Manchester • The experts’ views on the “reason to be fearful” of low level radiation (Report, 11 January) do indeed inspire fear. In particular, Susan Short’s stereotyping of protesters with “high-risk lifestyles” (why have I never met any of them?) neither inspires trust in, nor does it accord with the necessity of, objective scientific appraisal. Val Mainwood Wivenhoe, Colchester • Simon Jenkins (The proliferation of nuclear panic is politics at its most ghoulish, 8 January) is to be congratulated on his splendid article, citing two important books which address irrational horror of “radiation”. He suggests that this is down to decades of misinformation, prejudice and ignorance, which scientists have allowed to continue clouding our judgment, and he is dead right. But a minor example of just such misinformation, amounting to disinformation given the thrust of his article, has crept into his own story, namely the implication that mobile phone “radiation” is the same as nuclear radiation. Radiation is anything that radiates, be it sunlight, x-rays, heat from a stove or waves from a radio transmitter – it is the latter that emanate from mobile phones. Even if these are harmful (unlikely), they have nothing to do with nuclear radiations or the (exaggerated) hazards they might present. This is exactly how misinformation gets around; mobile phones are not mini-reactors, so let’s not get paranoid over nothing. Dr Nick Wrigley Boscastle, Cornwall • The question one needs to ask is why the US and Britain are spending billions of dollars to prevent states such as Iran acquiring the technology to produce nuclear weapons. I am sure the politicians, as well as Simon Jenkins, know that the risk of a nuclear attack by such states is negligible and meaningless. Political leaders in the US and Britain suffer from “colonial arrogance” syndrome. Sufferers are incapable of tolerating such countries having an independent foreign policy. Total obedience is required at all times, threatening military action if those countries do not toe the line. Becoming nuclear states renders the threat of military action by America and Britain no longer credible. I am sure if Iraq had had nuclear weapons America and Britain would not have been so eager to attack. Dr Adnan Al-Daini Exeter • According to your report (Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor dies aged 93, 7 January), the Hiroshima bomb killed “80,000 people instantly and another 60,000 in the months that followed”. According to Simon Jenkins, the threat from today’s far more powerful nuclear weapons is “minimal and containable”, as “their blast areas would remain limited” and “human settlements are resilient to aerial bombardment”. Relentlessly upbeat, he also claims that the death toll from Chernobyl was “no more than 60″ and the risk from climate change is “improbable”. These bizarre assertions would be comical if the subject matter was something other than the fate of millions. Ben Ayliffe Senior nuclear campaigner, Greenpeace UK
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Jan
08
2010
Watching the predictions: how did I fare in forecasting 2009?Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Netbooks taking off, 2 million people with dongles, an iPhone upgrade in autumn and the demise of Vonage … where was I right and wrong about the year just gone? Now we can get 2009 into perspective, and the hangovers have worn off (less so the credit card bills, perhaps), let’s see how my tech predictions for 2009 went. Time to tot up … Prediction 1: At least three companies will withdraw from the PC manufacturing business. They didn’t. Did they? That’s 0/1 Matthew Wheeler points out that MPC did. MPC? “Edge PC owned by Micron Tech, then MicronPC, sold to Gores Tech, changed to MPC, sold to Hyperspace of Utah, then Chap.11,” he explained. And of course there’s Psystar, which thought it could put Mac OS X onto generic boxes, and got told by a judge it couldn’t. (These are hardly the big names I was originally thinking of, though.) And Psystar is still offering T-shirts, according to The Register. In fact, companies didn’t withraw from the PC-making business; instead, seeing how desktops and even standard laptops weren’t making money, they shifted to netbooks, which saw explosive growth. Lesson: manufacturers like making things. The shift to making netbooks was a sort of evolutionary episode in the punctuated equilibrium of the computer business. Prediction 2: There will be more “netbooks” – aka ultraportables, aka liliputers, like the Asus Eee PC – than ever, and their sales growth will far outpace that of the PC market. Bullseye. PC market growth: 1.3% (or -7%, depending whose numbers you like). Netbook market growth: almost 100% (by revenue). 1/2 Prediction 3: Sun Microsystems won’t have a near-death experience, but it’s going to keep shrinking. True. Being the subject of a (wished-for) takeover by Oracle hasn’t made it grow. 2/3 Prediction 4: Vonage will die. I’m sorry, guys, but your income statement shows you have debts of $276m, cash of $112m, and are paying “interest” (on the debt) of $5m per quarter, which means losses of $7m per quarter. That’s just not sustainable, and debt isn’t going to get cheaper to service, either. Completely wrong. Vonage is still going. I have no idea how. 2/4 Prediction 5: Palm will come close to death, but advance sales of its Pre webphone, plus a little more money from its venture capitalist backers, will save it. Its latest figures show that it didn’t do well, and the Pre hasn’t actually been fabulous. But the money from the venture capitalists has certainly helped. 3/5 Prediction 6: Twitter will find a way to charge for its service, from at least some users, and so move towards at least revenue, if not yet profit. Its growth will become explosive. Tricky, this. Twitter’s growth did become explosive, helped along by Oprah, and Iranian election, and so on. Is it charging you or me to use it? No. Is it, however, charging Microsoft and Google to use its database for their “real-time” search engines, putting it squarely into revenue and, arguably, profit? Yes. Can we call Microsoft and Google “Twitter users”? I don’t see why not – I’ve previously argued that it should charge for use of its API, and charging those two giants for that is good enough. Prediction 7: Many – as in thousands – of IT jobs will be lost. Lots will go in finance as that industry shrinks; but there’s a general trend now where small companies are beginning to rely on cloud services from companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Those don’t need a lot of people. (Ever seen a job advert to work on a cloud service?). (The point about this was that the jobs were being lost in developed countries, of course, rather than in total all over the world.) Has there been a dramatic uptick in the number of IT jobs? Not thinking so. 5/7 Prediction 8: IT will more and more resemble the building business. Either you specialise, or you’re coordinating the project, or you’re doing simple, low-paid work that someone from another country can and will do for less. This ties in with the one above. Cloud-based services mean that setting up a business that relies on downloads, for example, is simple. (Twitter caches your pictures on Amazon’s S3 service, for example.) Are IT people becoming multi-specialists? Or finding it harder to get general work? We’re still hearing that there’s a skills shortage in IT – but the shortage is at the top end, in the project coordination side, or in getting the services set up. There’s less demand for bodies. These days, you either specialise, or get out. Though I realise that this could be described as my biased view, without data. So let’s call it a half. (Data either way to prove or disprove very welcome.) And now we come to that ever-popular subject, Microsoft. It certainly was pushed out for the end of the year; October 22 is good enough. While you could argue that it’s not perfect, it’s considered by lots of people to be very, very good. And it certainly has corporate customers very interested in an upgrade. Come on, that’s solid. Prediction 10: Microsoft will buy chunks of Yahoo (after being forced to overbid by challenges from Google), which will raise yowls of pain from all over the web. And then in six months people will have forgotten all about it. Microsoft did buy chunks of Yahoo – well, sort of. Specifically, it bought the right to put its ads against search, which it would do. Google didn’t challenge it at all. Though this one sounds right, when you examine the detail, it’s wrong. Prediction 11: XP will finally be declared dead once Windows 7 is released, because a version of Windows 7 will be made to run on netbooks. Yes, Windows 7 is made to run on netbooks. XP hasn’t formally been declared dead (apart from the fact that it’s been declared dead ages ago) but it’s vanishing. Prediction 12: Internet Explorer will continue to lose share to Firefox, Apple’s Safari and especially Google’s Chrome. Oh, yes, that did keep happening. Firefox has reached historical highs. And Internet Explorer (all versions, cumulative) keeps slipping. Prediction 13: No Zune phone, and no Zune in Europe either. Can I claim two? No? Damn. There was a moment in November where I worried – er, hoped – no, worried that there might be a Zune in Europe. But it turned out that Microsoft was just using the name, a bit, for its online video marketplace in Europe. Microsoft hasn’t launched a Zune Phone (it’s doing badly enough with Windows Mobile without trying to make its struggling music player mimic the iPod’s transition into the iPhone) and the Zune remains an idea that has yet to make sense in the US, let alone Europe. UbiquityPrediction 14: Dongles will fall in price, and data charges will too as the phone networks realise that it’s a great way to tie people to lucrative contracts without having to subsidise them with mobile phones. So they’ll become pervasive. Let’s put a number on it: 3 million users, PAYG or contract, by the end of the year. Result: true, and data charges have as well. There are actually about 13 million mobile data users in the UK. How many dongles? At least 3m of them, surely. Prediction 15: Being able to transfer sound and, increasingly, video around your home between different devices will become more important, and more and more products will appear built around the DLNA standard to assist it. It’s an enduring mystery why this hasn’t been more visible. But in fact more and more people are moving video around the home. What do you think the iPlayer is all about? Except, of course, they don’t tend to link it to their TV. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii though are changing this, by offering iPlayer (PS3, Wii) and film (PS3, Xbox) streams. That’s not, though, what I’d imagined, which is people actually storing data centrally in their home and shifting it. Though “more” DLNA products have appeared (I loved the LaCie 1TB NAS drive, for example, which has DLNA compatibility). My feeling though is that this hasn’t happened. Prediction 16: Femtocells – which improve mobile reception inside homes and businesses by providing a mini-cell, and pushing the data over your broadband connection – will struggle because the mobile companies will price them wrong, thinking they should be a niche, and hence expensive, product. I also said during the year that femtocells weren’t going to make it, which brought lots of plangent cries from femtocell companies saying that no, really, 2010 was the year they were aiming at. I was sent a femtocell to try. (Thank you, Vodafone. Afraid I made little progress.) Have you seen a femtocell anywhere? Anywhere at all? (Mobile phone company employees and femtocell manufacturers excluded.) I think this can’t be anything but correct. Prediction 17: Mobile networks will tout phones on the basis that they let you contact your friends on Twitter – rather than last year’s favourite, Facebook – via the data connection. (SMS will remain too expensive for Twitter to use outside the US.) Facebook remained the powerful force and the reason people wanted to connect: plenty of phones were marketed on the basis that you’d be able to check Facebook; none that I saw on the basis on twittering. (A classic case of early adopter over-optimism about Twitter’s penetration on my part – though it has completely entered the language, having been used in a scene in Gavin and Stacey.) And Twitter re-introduced SMS updates outside the US. So wrong on both counts. LinuxPrediction 18: Advocates will declare that 2010 is going to be “the year of desktop Linux” while the bugs are ironed out this year. This was bound to fail. Linux advocates always say that this year is the one when desktop Linux is going to take off. Ubuntu got plenty of fans, especially for version 9.04 in April. Prediction 19: But in fact the sales of netbooks running Linux will mean that it’s best-selling year for desktop Linux ever. Then again, this one was bound to succeed. Desktop Linux has had so few avenues for sale that it wasn’t going to fail to have its best-ever year once a few machines with it were sold. Of course, I overlooked the popularity of Android, Google’s mobile phone operating system, which is Linux. Had I forecast that mobile Linux would have a standout year, that would have been a really worthwhile prediction. Still: ApplePrediction 20: Let’s start with a banker. No self-replicating worm for Mac OSX or the iPhone’s OSX by the end of the year. Correct. It always is, year after year. Prediction 21: Snow Leopard will be released for sale in May 2009 … this date means it will have been slightly more than the average delay for OSX releases since Leopard’s release in October 2007 – which leaves time for an announcement and release schedule. Wrong. Wrongy, wrongy, wrongy wrong wrong. Snow Leopard was released in August 2009. Prediction 22: Snow Leopard squashes down application sizes, and uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) to help processing. But why would you want to do that? It feels oddly as though Apple is imagining a Flash drive-based machine able to run Snow Leopard, with a comparatively weak processor that uses the GPU to hide the fact. Plus it owns a chip design company. Even so, I don’t think it will offer a tablet computer. Or a netbook. Neither fits with its strategy – which is all about the iPhone, and pricey computers. Apple turned up its nose at the idea of a netbook. (Even if I did suggest that it should. Yes, accuse me of wanting it all ways.) It also didn’t announce a tablet computer in 2009. (2010, ah, perhaps different.) Prediction 23: Apple will charge for the Snow Leopard upgrade – just as much as it has for previous upgrades. Yes, it did charge – but not as much as for previous upgrades. That’s a miss. Prediction 24: ZFS won’t be built into the kernel for Snow Leopard; it’ll be an optional install, for server honchos. In fact, ZFS has disappeared from Apple builds. The cause seems to be intellectual property problems. Ah well. It would have been a nightmare. Prediction 25: Steve Jobs will remain chief executive through the year. That might sound like an obvious prediction. It isn’t. Hmm – technically, he was the chief executive, but he stepped aside to have a liver transplant and recuperate for six months. This prediction was made amid all the rumours of Jobs’s illness at the tail-end of 2008. The rumours were that he would have to step down because of the condition (at that time, still a secret). My feeling was that it wasn’t such a big thing. Turns out it was a Big Thing. I think this is half-right – no more. Prediction 26: The iPhone hardware won’t be updated before the autumn. The iPhone 3GS was released in June, and Stephen Fry reviewed it in the same month. June is not autumn, not even in the southern hemisphere. Prediction 27: The iPhone software will be updated to 3.x, which will bring copy-and-paste and photo messaging. About time. It was, and it did. Finally. EnvironmentPrediction 28: Oil prices are diving, but electricity is still not getting cheaper. Expect more companies – even quite big ones – to reduce their in-house server usage in favour of outsourced pay-per-process services offered by Microsoft, Google and Amazon. This is the move to cloud computing, and it’s one-way traffic at present. Do you know of anyone who has brought their computing back in-house from the cloud? Free Our DataPrediction 29: The government will take a deep breath and acknowledge that it must make a significant part of Ordnance Survey’s data available for free unfettered reuse – and will do it. I was there at 10 Downing Street when Gordon Brown, flanked by Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the web, you know) and Martha Lane-Fox, announced precisely that. Actually, I’d have traded all the other predictions for this one – but this one is a great one, a huge year-end bonus to the Free Our Data campaign and to everyone who is going to benefit from it. ProcessingPrediction 30: In 1992 I wrote a feature based on some analysts’ predictions about how in five years we’d all be using speech-to-text input for our computers. We didn’t. … [but] by the end of the year, we should see programs able to turn the ad-hoc spoken to the written almost faultlessly. Er, we didn’t. From the revelation of the people behind the curtain at Spinvox, to the nearly-good-enough-but-not-perfectness of Dragon Dictate on the iPhone, we’re still some way off perfect trasncription. (Believe me, we’re always looking for one so we can turn our Tech Weekly podcast back into words for the hard-of-listening.) So that’s 19/30, or 63%. For comparison, in 2008, my predictions hit 20.5/30, or 68%. Look, what’s a mark and a half between friends? Certainly not statistically significant. Basically, what I think we’re seeing is that you can rely on me to be wrong about one-third of the time. You can decide whether that’s better or worse than a weather forecaster. (The Met Office suggested there was a 1-in-7 chance this would be a cold winter in its long-range forecast.) And what about the things I missed? The biggest was Google – the rise of Android, and the announcement of its Chrome OS for netbooks. That’s going to be huge this year, I think – so come back for my predictions for 2010 next week. Oh, and tell me what other important events of 2009 I missed.
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Dec
28
2009
BT warns of court fight over digital spectrum plansPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
• Pledge for fast universal broadband access in peril The government’s plans to bring broadband within the reach of every home by 2012 have been put in jeopardy by BT. The telecoms operator has warned that it will take legal action if the government presses ahead in the new year with plans to liberalise the nation’s mobile phone spectrum. BT’s move could derail a key part of the government’s Digital Britain programme. The government’s pledge to introduce universal broadband access of at least 2Mb a second in time for the London Olympics was seen as one of the least contentious parts of the final Digital Britain report in June. But universal access requires changes to the way the airwaves are split between the UK’s five mobile phone networks, so they can run mobile broadband services in rural areas where fixed-line services are too slow. It also requires the sale of new space on the spectrum that will be freed-up when the analogue TV signal is switched off in 2012. The government appointed the former regulator Kip Meek as an Independent Spectrum Broker to try to thrash out a deal with the networks. Part of his proposals included letting them run mobile broadband on the spectrum they were given in the 1980s and 1990s for voice and text services. In return, the five networks would have the 3G licences, which they snapped up for £22.5bn in the dotcom boom, extended indefinitely. Those licences are due to expire in 2021. Meek also suggested tying the sale of the old analogue TV signal with the sale of a new part of the airwaves at 2.6Ghz, which is perfect for super-fast broadband in urban areas. He also proposed capping the amount of spectrum that any one operator could own. BT, however, has sent a “letter before action” to the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, raising serious objections to Meek’s plans and threatening a judicial review if they are implemented. The company believes the mobile phone companies are being given an unjustifiable government subsidy by having their 3G licences extended. It also wants the government to be more even-handed with new entrants when it comes to selling off new wireless spectrum. BT is believed to be interested in snapping up a sizeable chunk of the 2.6Ghz spectrum and using it for super-fast wireless broadband in towns and cities. “BT has major reservations around the wireless spectrum proposals from the Independent Spectrum Broker,” said a BT spokesman, confirming that the company had written to the government. “The proposal to extend current 3G licenses indefinitely represents a gift of several billion pounds from the UK taxpayer to the mobile operators and is a barrier to competition and innovation in the mobile market,” he said. “We would like spectrum to be auctioned in a way that is fair to all operators and stimulates competition in the market for both existing operators and new entrants,” he added. “We are discussing our concerns with BIS and are hopeful that these will be addressed.” The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has already extended the deadline for consultation on Meek’s plans by a further month in an effort to appease BT. But senior figures within the mobile phone industry have warned that the new deadline – of 5 February – could leave the government with no time to enact the necessary secondary legislation before a general election. Mobile phone industry executives are also livid at BT’s opposition to changes to the spectrum regime, given that the company itself will benefit from the 50p-a-month telephone tax , which will be in next year’s finance bill. The tax is designed to raise upwards of £175m a year to help pay for the roll-out of the next generation of super-fast broadband networks in rural areas. BT is expected to be the main recipient of the cash. Some senior mobile phone industry insiders have also pointed out that while BT objects to anything that helps out their industry, it is currently fighting for the right to be able to demand that the entire fixed-line telecoms industry helps pay its pensions bill. BT is locked in talks with the regulator Ofcom about trying to narrow its pension deficit by raising the price that its Openreach business charges everyone else for access to its residential phone lines.
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Dec
28
2009
Vodafone joins the iPhone crowd on Jan 14Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
After exactly two years of iPhone exclusivity enjoyed by 02, Orange stepped up in November 2009. Now Vodafone has joined the fray – Tesco also put in an appearance in December – with pricing plans for the iPhone 3G 8GB, the iPhone 3GS 16GB and the iPhone 3GS 32GB, with the phones free as part of selected contracts. The iPhone is a true phenomenon of the decade just ending: it is available in over 80 countries worldwide, with the promise of more developments to come. The App Store broke new ground, too, providing access to more than 100,000 applications (from games and social networking to financial planning and health management) and has already generated over two billion downloads to date. With its network of 20 dealers (some 400 outlets) in the UK, indirect partners such as The Carphone Warehouse and Phones4u, plus Apple’s own retail outlets, Vodafone is confident it can deliver something extra – presumably in term of speed and reliability – to its iPhone customers. Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone UK commented: ‘We started preparing our network over a year ago so that iPhone customers will really feel the advantage of being with Vodafone.’ We await to see how Vodafone’s network, along with the competition, copes as consumers get used to relying on internet-enabled smartphones and mobile dongles for broadband data. Compare all iPhone 3GS dealsTags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, App Store, apple, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, drive, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, networks, new, new mobile, orange, phone, phones, phones4u, sol, test, uk, vodafone, world
Dec
01
2009
Mobile directory enquiries service undercuts competitorsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
68 100 service charges a flat rate 35p for connecting to required number or text messaging the user A mobile-only directory enquiries number that claims to be 70% cheaper than its rivals has been launched this week. 68 100 is available on all mobile phones and costs 35p to use, the pay off being that anyone wanting a number will first have to listen to a 20 second advert. The 35p is a flat charge and does not increase if the caller is then connected to the number, or for a text message containing the required number to be sent. The cost compares well with other services such as 118 118, which charges an average £1.13 when called from a mobile. Other services including Maureen (118 212) and YELL (118 247) cost £1.08, while BT (118 500) costs £1.38. However, those numbers do not require users to listen to adverts. Calls from a landline to directory services companies are cheaper, and even free if you use 0800 118 3733. This service is the free number from the company behind 118 118, but again users have to listen to an advert before they can be connected. The 0800 service is also automated, meaning users have to talk to a machine to get their required number, which does not always give the correct results. The directory services market was deregulated in 2003 and was supposed to deliver cheaper replacements. At the time dozens of companies vied for the 118 numbers but now only a handful remain and costs have shot up. In its last market survey Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, found that the average cost of calling directory enquiries had risen 8% in a year to 54p. Earlier in the year, research by consumer group Which? found the true cost of getting the right number via a directory enquiries service is three times higher than most Britons believe. A survey of its members came back with a guesstimate that calling a 118 service costs 33p from a landline and 64p from a mobile. But the consumer group said the true cost of a typical call from a landline to the two most-used services – 118 118 and 118 500 – is around £1 from a landline and £2 from a mobile. In October, BT put up its directory enquiries costs for the second time in a year, alongside other call cost increases. Customers ringing 118 500 are now charged 99p a minute up from 77p. Earlier this month The Number, the company behind 118 118, reported a £58.6m pre-tax profit for last year, despite a decline in call volumes. It said it had offset the decrease by cutting costs and pushing up prices.
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Nov
18
2009
French customers charged tens of thousands of euros for mobile internet usePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Orange says the three men had failed to understand the conditions of the ‘unlimited’ 3G package they had signed up to Opening your bills is rarely a pleasant experience. But mild irritation turned to incredulity for three French mobile internet users when they were confronted with charges running to tens of thousands of euros. The customers, who had all signed up for an “unlimited” 3G internet package offered by Orange, were stunned to receive monthly bills ordering them to pay huge sums of money. Jean Spadaro, a hospital doctor from Fontainebleau near Paris, today said he had been charged almost 160,000 euros (£143,000) by the France Telecom-owned phone giant for four weeks’ use in May. His case came to light after two other Orange clients, cafe owner Eric Gernez and insurance executive Christophe Aupy-Fargues, made public their complaints earlier this week. Having also been impressed by the offer of unlimited access, they had been left with bills for 46,000 euros and 39,500 euros respectively, they said. When Gernez and Spadaro contacted Orange about their astronomical bills they were told they had failed to understand the basics of the internet package: that, while it was unlimited in terms of time, anything downloaded beyond one gigabyte would be charged. The customers insisted this was not explained to them properly when they signed their contracts. Spadaro, who after months of negotiations has avoided paying almost all the money, also claimed Orange failed to inform him that the amount he owed was rising steeply during the period in question. “How is it that I never received any warning or alert as to the size of the bill?,” he asked on French radio today.The cause of the other case stemmed from roaming charges, the fees incurred by using the service abroad. Aupy-Fargues admitted his card was being used by a colleague in Spain, but insisted he had not been told that it would be so expensive. “If we had known that the unlimited package didn’t apply outside France he wouldn’t have taken the 3G with him,” he said. A spokesman for Orange said the user had been repeatedly warned of the rising bill. Gernez, who lives in the village of Petite-Foret near the Belgian border, may also have fallen victim to the roaming fees by accidentally connecting to the foreign network from France. Laurent Vitoux, France Telecom’s regional director, said the company was in a ‘constructive dialogue’ with the customer. “It’s obviously not about fleecing a customer,” he said.added
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Nov
07
2009
Carphone Warehouse pushes all the wrong buttonsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
I have suffered a whole host of problems since switching to paper-free billing Carphone Warehouse has caused me headaches for several months, since I switched to its “paper-free” billing system. Every time I get a notice in my inbox telling me my bill is now available, I click on the website only to be told it has no record of my email address, even though it is the same address used to contact me. At one stage I received a bill for £145 and was told to pay up or face restrictions on my account. I was due to go away and reluctantly paid to avoid being cut off. I then noticed the phone was connecting to the internet by itself, which would probably account for the high bill and, as if to rub salt in the wound, the Nokia E75 handset developed a screen problem. I tried ringing CPW and visited a branch but failed to get anywhere. CPW told me I couldn’t have a new handset because I was two days over the 28-day limit. My attempts to deal with this sorry tale by email have also failed. JL, south-east London You really do seem to have experienced the full set of problems and, despite trying to deal with these in a rational and logical way, you have got nowhere. Carphone’s meaningless 28-day rule has been applied and it now wants to send off the handset for repair rather than exchange or refund. The issue with online billing is also particularly frustrating because, if you could see the itemised bill, you would be able to work out exactly how you came to owe £145. Carphone Warehouse told Capital Letters that when things go wrong, it wants to “show particular effort to ensure that we are there for customers through thick and thin”. Fine words, but in this instance it accepts a failure to live up to expectations and has apologised. To sort this out, it has exchanged the handset, refunded the incorrect web charges (which came to £31.20), resolved the online billing and given you a line rental discount of £10 per month for the rest of the contract. Answering your letters this week is Steve Playle, Trading Standards officer and team leader at Surrey Trading Standards Service. We welcome letters but regret we cannot answer individually. Email: capital.letters@guardian.co.uk. Please include a daytime phone number.
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Nov
02
2009
Buddy, can you spare 84p? That’s your best saving on Orange’s iPhone contractPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Compare the prices all you like: you won’t find even a pound of difference over two years between Orange and O2′s iPhone contracts. Why not? If you wanted to know just how incredibly closely related the pricing on the iPhone from O2 and from Orange is, then take a look at the spreadsheet below, which compares the contract prices between the two networks for the different models of phones, at the different tariffs. Basically, the “best” – as in biggest money-saving – deal, which shows Orange to have really undercut those O2 people, offers you a whopping saving of 84 pence on an 18-month contract for the iPhone 3GS 16GB model. You can also get the same saving – though over 24 months – on the same model but with the £34.26 per month contract. Though hey, you make the saving upfront. Oh, and Orange does offer twice as many minutes and texts on the low-end 18-month £29.38 contract. Though what is this “saving” we’re talking about? There’s nothing, nothing between these two sets of contracts. They could not be closer. Now you can argue that this is because Apple charges particular prices for the iPhone. Or you could argue that it’s because of the horrendous cost of the data downloads that all those iPhone users demand. The latter argument doesn’t hold up, though. Since O2 set its contract prices, the cost of moving data around has fallen – perhaps not a lot, but some. Enough for the prices on an 18-month or 24-month (the latter particularly) to be somewhat lower, given that the cost of data will fall over that period and you’ll still be a money-maker to the network. It might be Apple charging huge bucks for the iPhone, of course, That’s a possibility. Or there’s another one: that Orange looked at the prices that O2 charges, looked at the level of demand there seemed to be for the iPhone (200,000 people registering interest in the first few days of its announcement), and decided that, well, perhaps people don’t mind spending that much. It will be interesting to see how that goes. I’ll admit, my own interest in an iPhone contract with Orange rather diminished on doing that comparison. And I’ll admit too that I was one of the people who registered interest. So – is the 84 pence sufficient incentive for you? Or were you hoping for something else? Note: I haven’t looked at the PAYG options. Perhaps in a later post… PS: yes, I know the table spills over horribly. Sorry.
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Running on Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones, the update provides free voice-guided navigation in almost 75 countries, without data-roaming charges
