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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Consumer Reports will not recommend Apple’s iPhone 4 to buyers after testing and confirming the device’s well-publicised wireless signal and reception glitches, adding that AT&T was not necessarily the main culprit.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: apple, apple iphone, consumer, iphone, new, phone, test, uk

Reuters’ head of mobile Ilicco Elia has linked up journalists and bloggers, as well as bringing social media to the news giant

Job: global head of mobile, Reuters Consumer Media, Thomson Reuters
Age: 39
Industry: digital media
New entry

As news giant Reuters’ global head of mobile, Ilicco Elia is responsible for getting news to people on the move. Elia has looked to pioneer a new relationship between professional journalists and bloggers, sharing technology and incorporating social media techniques into its newsgathering operation.

A Reuters veteran at the age of 39 – he joined the company in 1990 after studying civil engineering at Manchester University – Elia has helped change the way consumers receive mobile multimedia news with Reuters’ news apps.

He has also worked closely with journalists and bloggers to help them adopt new digital technology and techniques in the field, as well as inviting prominent bloggers and Twitter users to Reuters’ social media events such as election news conferences with the three party leaders.

“You might not know the name but he makes things happen,” said our panel.

“Ilicio Elia has championed how important it is for traditional journalists to work with bloggers. He sees the blogosphere as a laboratory for the future of mobile journalism – just as the principles of journalism filter through to the bloggers, so their innovative techniques filter back to Reuters.

“His is a presence behind all facets of mobile technology.”

Elia is responsible for the strategy and production of Reuters’ portfolio of mobile websites, applications and alerts, including the development of the Thomson Reuters News Pro applications and Reuters Galleries, and has established partnerships with mobile carriers and manufacturers worldwide.

His mobile journalism project with Nokia enabled journalists to publish multimedia stories direct to the Reuters wires and website.

Elia has had a variety of roles in his 20 years at the company, including corporate brand manager, head of online experience for Reuters.com and experience manager for Reuters next-generation trading products.

He oversees a team of product managers in New York, Mumbai and Tokyo and works with development teams in North America, London and China and sales teams in New York and London.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, blog, consumer, global, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, phone, phones, three, twitter, uk, world

Giffgaff has rewarded its customers with their first payout – for acting as its sales and technical staff

A new “community-run” mobile phone company, which is offering the chance to earn hundreds of pounds a year by spreading the word about it, has announced its first payments to customers.

One Giffgaff user received £654, and more than 40 others earned at least £200 apiece. Payouts are earned by recruiting and by helping other customers with their technical problems.

Giffgaff, which went live in November as a “sim-only” service (you use your existing handset), is the latest example of a web-based business that gives people the opportunity to make money by, in effect, becoming a salesperson or troubleshooter. The scheme therefore allows the company to save on advertising and call centre costs.

Who’s behind the company?

Giffgaff – an ancient Scottish word that means “mutual giving”, apparently – describes itself as a mobile phone company “where the community is at the heart of it”, and which does things differently to the “faceless” big networks. It is online only, with “no wasteful shops or excessive call centres”.

So some might be surprised to discover Giffgaff is wholly owned by 0₂ – and runs on its network.

While some potential customers might be disappointed that this isn’t a truly mutual, member-owned organisation, others may feel more comfortable signing up with a company backed by a big name.

Mike Fairman, the chief executive, says that while 0₂ provided the capital for the business to start up, Giffgaff operates independently, with its own offices and staff. “It’s very much an arms-length arrangement … this is very different from 0₂.”

The company declined to divulge its customer numbers, but says it has a 6,000-strong online community.

Is it worth signing up as a customer?

If you are looking for a cheap pay-as-you-go service, Giffgaff’s pricing is quite competitive. UK calls are 8p and texts 4p – this matches Asda Mobile’s pricing – with free UK web browsing on your handset until 1 October. After that, mobile internet will be charged at up to 50p a day for most people, says a spokesman. Customers can get free calls to one another.

As the company points out on its website, 0₂ charges 25p for calls to other networks and 10p for texts.

It is offering a range of “goodybags” – a mix of UK minutes, texts and mobile internet that last for a month.

You can order a free sim card online and top up by card or voucher.

What about those payments to customers?

Promoting the company and helping out other customers in Giffgaff’s online forum earns rewards. Promoting the company could include giving sim cards to friends or even making your own video and putting it on YouTube.

One point equals one pence. Sending your friend an email about Giffgaff would earn you 50p. If you send Giffgaff sims to several people, you get £5 for each one that is activated.

The rewards for helping with customer queries vary depending on criteria, such as how the person who asked the question rated the answer.

How is the money paid?

The points earned are converted into pounds, and the cash paid out twice a year – in June and December. You can have the cash paid into a PayPal account (you can’t have it paid direct into your bank account), get it as airtime credit for your phone, or donate it to Cancer Research, the charity chosen by members.

How much can people make?

Giffgaff claims the amounts people can earn are “limitless”. It says more than 40% of members were rewarded last month. The average user received £14, while 42 people earned more than £200.

One 19-year-old Londoner received £206 for spreading the word among his friends and helping on the community forum. He is putting the cash towards a new laptop for when he starts university in September.

Liam Salomone (pictured), 30, of Northolt, Middlesex, earned £654 for sending emails to contacts, answering queries on the forum, and encouraging friends to sign up.

“It’s much better that a mobile firm pays its customers to market their product than to waste money on advertising,” he says, adding: “I’m saving the money for a trip to South Africa with my mum. We’ve both spoken about visiting there for years, and now we have an opportunity to do it.”

Does anyone else do this sort of thing?

Mobile network 3 runs the “Free Agent” scheme, where £5 is paid into your PayPal account every time a friend with a 3G phone orders a sim from you and tops it up by £10 or more.

You don’t have to be a 3 customer to sign up to the scheme, and the company is offering a number of online tools to help people promote the offer.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, card, charges, consumer, email, free, latest, lg, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, networks, new, phone, phones, service, sim, Sim Card, test, uk

Number ‘porting’ must take place within one working day from April 2011, regulator rules

Mobile phone users in the UK will at last soon be able to transfer their phone number to another network within one working day.

Britain will come into line with European Union guidelines on the matter in April 2011, Ofcom ruled today, following several years of wrangling between the communications regulator and the mobile telecoms industry.

Currently a mobile operator is allowed to take two working days before allowing a departing customer to “port” their number to their new operator. Ofcom originally tried to bring this down to two hours, but lost a court challenge from Vodafone, O2 and Orange in 2008.

Ofcom has also decreed that the code required to switch provider and retain a number, called a PAC, should be issued to consumers immediately over the phone or within a maximum of two hours via text message. This will end the practice of some PACs being sent out by post, forcing customers to wait several days before changing to a new operator.

“Ensuring consumers can switch between communications providers by removing unnecessary barriers is one of Ofcom’s priorities for 2010/11,” said the regulator’s chief executive, Ed Richards. “Being able to switch quickly and easily between mobile providers is an important part of healthy and effective competition.”

But the decision was criticised by 3, the fourth-largest UK mobile operator. It is unhappy that the onus for moving the number still falls on the customer, rather than the operators involved, and accused Ofcom of failing UK consumers.

It said that the system of “recipient-led porting”, where number transfers are handled by the new provider, was “the fundamental platform for choice and competition” in the mobile market. “Nowhere else in Europe is a consumer forced to ask permission to take their number with them when they choose a new operator,” said a 3 spokesman. “The donor-led porting system that Ofcom proposes to keep makes it more difficult for customers.”

But other operators argue that if consumers did not have to request the PAC themselves before swapping networks, they could fall victim to high-pressure sales tactics known as “slamming”, where their mobile phone providers are summarily changed without their full consent.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, consumer, largest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, uk, vodafone

Poll finds email, IM and social networks sell mobile data

HTML5 could take bites out of Apple’s dominance of mobile applications today – provided developers target lucrative niches. A poll of over 4,000 punters points to the old regulars of email, IM and social networks as driving increased mobile data usage. 65 per cent of UK consumers and 74 per cent of US consumers polled said email tempted them to use data on a mobile phone. Just 15 per cent and 30 per cent (respectively) cite games.…

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(Source The Register)

Tags: 3, all, apple, consumer, email, iphone, mobile, mobile phone, networks, phone, source the register, uk

Nokia is continuing to fall behind in the mobile handset market, according to
a new report from consumer polling firm YouGov.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: all, consumer, mobile, new, nokia, uk

Eight days on from the
much
anticipated launch of the iPhone 4, availability continues to be a problem
for consumers, with two major networks, Three and T-Mobile still not selling the
device.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: apple, apple iphone, consumer, iphone, mobile, networks, new, phone, t-mobile, three, uk

Don’t be taken in by the empty threats from the big four mobile operators

Readers of your news article could be forgiven for believing that the prospect of the vast majority of UK consumers paying lower prices for calling mobiles would cause the sky to fall in (Reform of mobile phone charges may leave poorest users worse off, June 22). The four biggest mobile operators have been scaremongering with variations on this theme for years.

You report the end of telecoms watchdog Ofcom’s consultation on “its plans to slash the cost of calling a mobile phone … by reducing so-called mobile termination rates – the price networks charge each other and fixed-line companies such as BT to connect calls”. The article states that O2 has “warned the regulator that its proposals are ‘irresponsible’ and could force millions of people on low incomes to abandon their phones”.

Every time the prospect of lower mobile termination rates is raised, operators have cried that prices would go up and that people would stop using their phones. But a quick glance at the facts shows that when rates have come down the exact opposite has happened.

My company, Three, is part of a broad campaign along with BT and 65 other organisations – ranging from charities to financial advisers – that recognise high termination rates as a barrier to lower mobile prices. Orange, Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile seek to pull off a bold double act by threatening to raise prices yet at the same time quietly introducing more competitive rates every time termination rates come down – as they have done again this year.

The article states: “The industry has warned that the likely shake-up will lead to the reintroduction of controversial ‘expiry dates’ on prepay top-ups.” Again, effective competition will address this threat.

High termination rates have been a net subsidy to the mobile industry from landline users for years, but the bills paid to call mobiles by vulnerable landline users and the organisations that support them never feature in the analysis from the big mobile companies. The Terminate the Rate campaign includes Age UK, Crossroads Care and Carers UK who work with the vulnerable all day, every day and know their experience.

Low termination rates will enable effective competition in the UK voice market. They will drive better value for mobile and landline users alike. Since these threats are being made by those who want to delay this change, then as the only mobile operator supporting it we have to make our own case. While Vodafone claims that changes “could see the end of mobile handset subsidies”, we have committed to continue to offer subsidised handsets. Rather than cutting off prepay customers, we expect to serve more.

That the four major operators don’t welcome change is no surprise. But ultimately it is our firm belief that high mobile termination rates don’t protect low users, they create them.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, charges, consumer, drive, HD, lg, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, t-mobile, three, uk, vodafone

Introduced in April as the result of the Danger acquisition, the Kin phones are already history and will not be sold in Europe. Now everything hinges on Windows Phone

Microsoft has taken the Kin – a shell-shaped mobile that emerged from its purchase of the Danger brand – out to the back and shot it.

Slow sales in the US mean that it’s not going to be released in Europe (sorry, Windows Mobile fans) and that instead Microsoft is going to focus on Windows Phone 7, its upcoming revision to its entire mobile operating system.

In a statement to CNet News, which got the story first, Microsoft said “We have made the decision to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7 and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned… Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones.”

The Kin had a lot of advertising behind it in the US, including TV, web, print and radio ads. But it didn’t make any difference.

The Kin was unveiled only in April, to be sold through Verizon in the US and slated for Vodafone in the UK in Europe in the autumn.

Among the elements that were being pushed by Microsoft as putting the Kin ahead of the pack were “deep social networking integration”. However, it was never part of the main thrust of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, which now revolves around the as-yet unreleased Windows Phone.

Michael Gartenberg, a consumer analyst, said he suspected part of the reason for the poor sales was Verizon’s data pricing plans.

The Kin was part of a project being run within Microsoft called Pink, which was developed in parallel to the Windows Phone 7 project, whose products are scheduled to be released later this year.

However Microsoft’s decision to kill the Kin means that for now it will struggle even further to maintain market share in the smartphone market, where it has been losing out to Apple’s iPhone and especially to Google’s Android platform, while Nokia has maintained its lead, with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, holding its own in second place.

The Kin devices, which had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, were made by Sharp, but Microsoft determined the software, online services and hardware.

At the unveiling in April, Patrick Chomet, group director of terminals at Vodafone, said “Kin has a unique and intuitive way of engaging with the user, enabling them easily to share experiences and stay in touch with their friends.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, Blackberry, consumer, google, iphone, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, phone, phones, pink, released, service, sol, tmobile, Touch, uk, vodafone

Subscribers to discount website Groupola can pick up handset for £400 less than Apple charges – if they are quick enough

A discount website specialising in ‘city deals’ is offering users the chance to purchase the new Apple iPhone 4 on 1 July for just £99, compared to the £499 Apple charges . Groupola.com only has a limited number of handsets available and is offering them exclusively to its email subscribers.

It says it is able to offer such low prices because it relies on group-buying to regularly offer discounts of up to 90% on events and products across the UK’s major cities and tourist attractions.

O2 is selling the 16GB iPhone 4 for £209 if you sign up to an 18-month contract and spend £30 a month, while Vodafone wants £219 for the 16GB version if you also spend £30 a month for 18 months. You can compare packages here.

Mark Pearson, managing director of Groupola, says: “Given that the iPhone 4 sold out through pre-orders alone in just 48 hours through the Apple store, we thought it was only right to offer loyal Groupola.com discount hunters another bite of the cherry. We’ve proved that the concept of group buying can work within the UK.”

To purchase the iPhone for £99 you need to be an email subscriber, so you’ll need to visit the site and sign up to receive daily alerts. You will be sent a link on 1 July which will allow you to purchase the phone on 2 July on a first come, first served basis.

“My advice is to open the link the second the clock ticks over at 9.30am – by 9.31am you may already have been too late,” adds Pearson.

The firm has admitted that the deal is a loss-leader and there is only a limited number of phones available. It has also said that people can easily unsubscribe from the daily alerts should they wish to.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, apple iphone, charges, compare, compared, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, email, iphone, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, o2, phone, phones, prices, sol, uk, vodafone

Cisco today used its Cisco Live event in Las Vegas to announce a range of
energy management technologies and initiatives aimed at consumers, businesses
and utilities.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: consumer, new, uk

The transcript of the phone call earlier this week with Google’s chief reveals the real signals he’s sending out: Android wants to be the Windows of mobile phones

Android is getting too big to ignore. Photo by mathrock on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Below is a transcript (taken with shorthand, contemporaneously) of a conference call with Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, on 23 June. There may be some inaccuracies. After that, there is an analysis of what Schmidt said – and where the mobile market is.

Also on the conference call were journalists from Germany, the UK and Brazil. I won’t indicate here who asked what questions; see if you can work it out.

Call begins

Eric Schmidt: Verizon is just announcing the Droid X made by Motorola, its fourth Android phone. We have seen a tremendous increase in the adoption of Android. This is one of the best phones ever made, on the very fastest network.

We’ve now got 160,000 new users per day. That’s a 60% increase per month [compared to the 100,000 figure per day that was given at the Google I/O conference in May]. If you get an increase like that going on, well, I’ve done the maths, and it looks like an incredible trajectory.

[That equates to 58m per month, a 60% increase month-on-month would mean that by the end of the year there would be about 16m Android phones being activated every day, or 480m per month - which doesn't really sounds feasible. Obviously it is going to tail off or even slow down at some stage.]

Counting the number of apps, there are 65,000, compared to 50,000 a month ago. So the growth is accelerating. OK, questions?

Q: How large is Android in the US market and European market compared to the iPhone, because it hasn’t done too well in Europe?

ES: I prefer not to talk about the iPhone as a competitor. The growth rate is very very strong, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate to make claims about market share.

Q: What’s driving that acceleration?

ES: having multiple hardware partners – LG, Samsung, HTC, Motorola. The thing is it’s a totally open platorm, so open that the source is available too. Any application can run on Android as long as it doesn’t damage the network.

Q: Android is lagging in Europe compared to the US – why do you think that is?

ES: I don’t know that it’s lagging; I would have to look at the numbers. It was launched first in the US but we have enough European partners. The Droid phone was a big driver.

Q: Have you made any contacts with Nokia to discuss Android on Nokia?

ES: We have talked to everybody… I don’t want to talk about any specific companies. [A rather odd response which tailed off amid expectation.]

Q: What sort of revenues are you seeing from Android?

ES: We make zero from it. Because it’s free. (Q: but you get advertising revenue from it…) We don’t break out what our mobile advertising revenues are… [in general] we make money when people have powerful broadband devices so we invest in Android so that people can invest in it. But our mobile revenue growth is very very quick.

We know that there will be a great deal of money made in ads from the mobile industry.

Q: Do you think Android can become for mobile what Windows was for the PC?

ES: well, the thing about Android is that anybody can use it.. Android in many ways is better than Windows because it’s free, rather than Windows which had an ever-increasing price point. So anybody can build on Android, and it’s free.

Also Android has GPS and a full media stack [possibly misheard], so it can do things that even the ordinary PC doesn’t have and might never have.

Q: Who is your biggest competitor in this fight – Apple, Nokia, who?

ES: I try to spend time not focussing on those questions. Nokia has the largest market share, certainly. Apple, I was a proud board member there, I respect them. Nokia and Apple are both highly organised to be competitive.

Q: Isn’t a problem with Android that of fragmentation of the platform – that some handsets can’t update from earlier versions either because of the networks or the phones, so people are stuck on older versions which means you’re trying to cope with a broad range of versions?

ES: That’s a very good question. The first thing to say is that the networks are quite interoperable. Some phones shipped a year ago can’t be upgraded. But most can be, to 2.2, though it might take some months to roll out.

The argument about fragmentation has been used by competitors of open source for years. But we agree to support compatibility at the platform level. It’s important to understand this. Android apps will work on the current generation; any Android app written for one version will run on any phone with that version. That prevents fragmentation. Apps are written on a per-OS basis. But of course not every app written for any version will run on every version of Android – otherwise the platform couldn’t evolve.

Q: A team at Larva Labs estimated that while Apple has paid developers $1bn from App Store revenues, the comparable figure for the Android Marketplace is about $200m. Is enough money going to developers to make Android attractive?

ES: Well, I haven’t seen those figures, so I can’t talk to them. The thing is, developers go where the volume is. That’s the most important lesson from platform economics. It’s about scale and volume. It’s very important that developers get to a scale where they can see the ability to get to a very large audience. We believe we have done so.

Q: We’ve seen other companies talking about Android-based tablets – does Google intend to produce a tablet running Android?

ES: We’ve seen a number of announcements from other companies about tablets running Android. It’s a reasonably obvious product extension that people have announced. We haven’t announced any form of Google tablet.

[end of interview]

Analysis: the timing of this announcement – on 23 June, just as Apple’s iPhone 4 was reaching its first customers – was clearly aimed at taking some of the shine off the iPhone announcement by implying that even if Apple activates 1m iPhones in the first sales burst, Android will almost match that in a working week. (Do the maths.)

That of course leaves out all sorts of maybes, gotchas and provisionals: are the activation figures volatile? What’s the churn like – how many of the activations are new customers, and how many are renewing customers? An interesting calculation from the analysts Piper Jaffray, via Fortune suggests that (in the US, at least) 77% of iPhone 4 customers were existing iPhone users.

You can look at that two ways: what an enormous number of renewals! Or you could look at it from the other end: wow, Apple grew its customer base for first-day iPhones by 23% – among people who had to wait in enormously long lines. What’s the last consumer product you recall people queueing through the day for? I recall how Microsoft managed the hype machine perfectly for Windows 95, with midnight store openings; rather less so for every subsequent OS release. The Xbox 360 got some dedicated queuers too.

But in truth, Schmidt really isn’t looking at iPhone sales; he’s not trying here to court buyers dithering between iPhone and Android. This was actually a piece of dog-whistle PR aimed at mobile developers.

Unfamiliar with dog-whistle PR? It’s like dog-whistle politics: aimed at a particular group, couched in terms which don’t say a lot to the average person, but which zero in on that target group and make them sit up. The people who Schmidt wanted to hear this latest bit of PR are mobile developers. He wants them to multiply 160,000 by 5 (working days – perhaps 6), and then by 4, to reach about 4m Android phones being activated per month, and to get them to think that this is a really good platform to be building for.

That’s the point of his “platform economics” answer. Google can only capitalise on mobile advertising once it gets Android to a specific market share. It seems like that it has already crossed it, since it’s by all accounts bigger than Apple in smartphone share in the US (and may even be challenging RIM, though still some way behind Nokia). What the numbers are like for Europe – well, we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for the end of the quarter for all those numbers.

The interesting challenge though will be whether the Android platform will indeed become the Windows of mobile. That could cut both ways: sure, the handset makers don’t have to pay a levy to use Android (as PC makers do to Microsoft). But when they go to the networks (who are the equivalent, in this scenario, of PC purchasers) they may find that they’re forced to bid down, and that their margins get eroded as more rivals pile into the market.

Apple, meanwhile, can be entirely happy with not having the lion’s share of the market, yet making a colossal profit from both the hardware sales (because nobody else can make an iPhone) and the app sales. It does exactly the same in the computer market: it has about 5% market share worldwide, yet makes a stonking profit on every computer sold. PC manufacturers, by contrast, have long since reached the point where price-cutting to win share simply opens a vein in their profits.

Android could thus win – and for Nokia, the idea of using Android must look ever more enticing, since it would cut costs and let it use its heft with the networks to win back share – and yet the hardware makers would lose. That’s a great danger – not imminent, but it exists – for Schmidt, Android and Google. By creating a flourishing ecosystem of app developers, Android could make life better for the handset makers.

Oh, and the company we haven’t mentioned here at all, except in passing? Microsoft. If you look at what the Android and iPhone platforms are now doing, you have to ask how on earth Windows Phone – which will have a paid-for licence – is ever going to attract any handset makers. Schmidt’s Android dog whistle might be loud for iPhone developers annoyed at the company’s capricious treatment of their apps, but it must be loudest for developers considering whether the shrinking, forwards-incompatible pool of Windows Mobile phones is really worth bothering with.

Between the handset makers pondering the economics of paying for a Windows Phone licence, and developers wondering why they should write code for a platform, Windows Phone, that’s presently activating zero phones a day – because it hasn’t been released – versus one doing 160,000 per day, Microsoft has a real problem with Windows Phone. Apple can survive Android because it has that 77% base of loyal customers. Android has an expanding customer base.

But what on earth has Microsoft got?

* I asked the questions about fragmentation and Larva Labs.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, best, compare, compared, consumer, deal, drive, free, google, growth, HTC, iphone, largest, latest, lg, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, moto, motorola, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, released, sam, samsung, sim, sol, test, uk, update, world

NEW YORK (Reuters) – With its technology already in smartphones like Motorola Inc’s Droid X, start-up Swype is setting its sights on helping consumers type more easily on billions of phones, including iPhones.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: consumer, iphone, moto, motorola, new, phone, phones, uk

Sending mobile data over your broadband with paid-for femtocell will count against monthly tariff

Vodafone has a nasty shock in store for would-be users of its “femtocell”, which boosts patchy mobile signals indoors by sending the voice and data signal over the customer’s home broadband. Any mobile data sent over the home broadband connection will still be charged against customers’ monthly usage, the company has told the Guardian.

Outlining plans for future deployment, Vodafone senior marketing manager Lee McDougall said Vodafone is confident that consumer uptake of femtocells will be high. However he declined to give figures for sales since the launch in July 2009, or to say what increase in mobile use had been seen by femtocell users.

Femtocells – whose name comes from the prefix “femto”, meaning one millionth of a billionth – are designed to improve mobile network coverage by plugging into a home broadband network and providing a 3G connection to attached phones.

Vodafone remains the only UK mobile operator in the UK to offer femtocells, through two different price plans. The current range – dubbed Sure Signal boxes – are retailing at £50 for existing customers on contracts over £25 per month, or £120 – £5 per month for two years – for those on smaller contracts or pay-as-you-go contracts.

But though femtocells effectively relieve load on the mobile network, and send them via the broadband paid for by the customer, any minutes used calling via the femtocell will be taken from a customers monthly allowance, despite having already paid for the bandwidth in the original package. And mobile data sent via Sure Signal – and through the customer’s broadband – will count against the data tariff for the contract as though the customer were outside using a mobile mast.

In Japan, mobile corporation SoftBank offers free femtocell packages to existing customers. Asked why Vodafone would not be following its lead, McDougall said: “Different markets have different drivers. We know we’ve got a competitive product.”

At a time when data traffic is doubling every four months, according to O2, femtocells are an inexpensive solution to rapidly growing demand. Data transfers over femtocell are also far less expensive to the network operator than other means, as Dave Nowicki of mobile technology firm Airvana confirmed. “The marginal cost of delivery per gigabyte is much lower,” he said. “Femtocells are complementary to Wi-Fi.”

The Advertising Standards Authority last week upheld four complaints from rival mobile operators who said that advertising for the product was “misleading”.

Vodafone’s poster campaign pictured a man leaning out of his apartment window, apparently struggling to get a mobile signal, headed: “Only Vodafone can guarantee mobile signal in your home.”

The most pointed complaint came from rival mobile operator O2 which said Vodafone did not make clear users would have to pay additional costs for a femtocell device. On this, the ASA said it was reasonable for people to infer that a guaranteed signal was part of the original mobile package – but because this was not the case, the advertisement was likely to mislead.

McDougall told the Guardian the campaign would be modified to take into account the ASA ruling, maintaining that Vodafone Sure Start boxes would not be a hard sell to would-be customers.

“Customers have told us the product is lifechanging for them,” McDougall told the Guardian. “They said it had made a significant difference to their life. The more they hear about them the more they’re interested.”

Although he said he couldn’t put a figure on it, internal reports showed a higher-than-predicted uplift in data usage for customers trialling the Sure Signal boxes.

“Feedback from an 8m-leaflet door drop indicated that 90% of potential customers were willing to pay up front; unsurprisingly the desire to boost mobile signal was the biggest driver,” he said.

In the US, AT&T is taking the same approach to mobile data sent through femtocells as Vodafone, and counting it against the customer’s bill. AT&T argues that it is costly to install the systems at ISPs which will collect the voice and mobile data being sent by broadband and route it through its own network.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, consumer, contract, drive, free, line, marketing, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, o2, phone, phones, sam, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone

Broadcast TV could be shown using the existing 3G mobile phone spectrum – without clogging up networks

O2, Orange, and Vodafone have teamed up to test a TV broadcast service which would allow British mobile phone users the chance to watch TV channels on their handsets.

The three companies, who control the bulk of the UK mobile phone market, are testing technology which would enable them to provide broadcast TV over their existing 3G mobile phone spectrum, without clogging up their networks, which are being used by smartphone users to access the web and send emails.

They are working with Ericsson, IPWireless, and Streamezzo on a three-month trial of integrated mobile broadcast (IMB) technology in west London and Slough.

All the UK mobile phone companies offer mobile TV services on their 3G networks but they suffer from congestion if more than a handful of customers use the service in the same place. IMB technology, however, uses part of the airwaves they picked up during the sale of 3G spectrum in the dying days of the dotcom boom which has lain dormant ever since.

This spectrum is perfect for broadcast services as it is “unpaired” – it cannot be used to send and receive signals so it is not used for mobile phone calls. But because it is part of the existing spectrum it works with the phone companies’ systems, making it easy to bill customers. This spectrum is available to more than 150 operators across 60 countries covering more than half a billion subscribers.

The trial, which starts in October, comes after T-Mobile and Orange tested similar technology back in 2008.

“With the strong growth of data traffic on our 3G networks and the mobile industry’s recent support of this high performance broadcast technology, the time is right to move forward with an IMB initiative,” said Luke Ibbetson, head of technology research and development at Vodafone Group. “By joining our peers in this UK pilot, we expect to be able to explore the potential of delivering broadcast services across available 3G spectrum.”

“Already a leading provider of mobile TV in Europe, our experience shows consumers will take advantage of linear broadcast services if the network experience is consistently good,” said Thierry Bonhomme, head of networks, carriers and research and development at Orange. “Network capability is key for mobile TV roll-out and IMB will enable more operators to maximize the benefits they get from 3G investments with high quality TV service deployments on an efficient, pragmatic and scalable solution that works from country to country.”

“We believe the road is clear for IMB now that it has been endorsed by the GSMA and supported by the wider mobile ecosystem,” said Gavin Franks, head of new business development at O2. “Based on the results of the pilot, we anticipate being able to offer our consumers through our networks a range of innovative new broadcast services such as mobile TV and intelligent broadcasting that will lead to an enhanced user experience.”

IPWireless and Ericsson, two of the pioneers behind the development of IMB technology within 3GPP, have partnered to deliver the end-to-end technology solution for the UK pilot.

IPWireless will supply the core 3GPP broadcast technology that will explore the performance of the TDD spectrum for mobile broadcast services. Ericsson, as the prime integrator, will provide integration services and a media platform. Streamezzo, recently acquired by Amdocs, is a leading software publisher of open mobile development platforms and will provide the rich media user interface for the pilot.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Ofcom aims to cut £800m off UK’s annual mobile bill but networks say proposals will force millions to give up their phones

Millions of British mobile phone users who rely on their handsets to keep them in touch with family but only use them in emergencies could be cut off – because of plans by the telecoms and media watchdog that are supposed to bring down the cost of making calls.

Ofcom will Wednesday end a 12-week consultation on its plans to slash the cost of calling a mobile phone. But the industry has warned that the likely shake-up will lead to the reintroduction of controversial “expiry dates” on prepay top-ups.

The mobile network O2 is understood to have warned the regulator that its proposals are “irresponsible” and could force millions of people on low incomes to abandon their phones.

Orange has already branded the plans as “a backward step”, while Vodafone has claimed that the proposals, outlined in April, could see the end of mobile handset subsidies. As a result, consumers would have to pay for new handsets when they sign up or renew a long-term contract.

Ofcom hopes to save consumers and businesses almost £800m a year from 2015 by reducing co-called mobile termination rates – the price networks charge each other and fixed-line companies such as BT to connect calls – from 4.3p a minute today to just 0.5p by 2015.

BT, which last year teamed up with the UK’s smallest network, 3, to fight the charges, has argued that mobile termination rates are an unjustifiable subsidy for the mobile phone industry. But the mobile phone companies argue that they use these charges to subsidise a service to lower-income customers.

More than half the UK’s mobile phone users have a pay-as-you-go phone, and many of these have handsets only so that friends and relatives can call them. They only make calls themselves in emergencies but the incoming calls generate enough revenues, through termination rates, to make them viable customers for the mobile phone companies. Under Ofcom’s plans, however, it would cease to be economic to provide many infrequent callers with a mobile phone.

In its 155-page consultation document, which comes with 234 pages of annexes, the regulator argues that the networks should only be able to recoup the actual cost of carrying other people’s calls and should look to other ways of generating revenues to cover their other costs. Ofcom suggests the mobile phone companies could impose “minimum monthly spending commitments” on pre-pay users to recoup their costs.

O2, which has 11.5 million pre-pay customers, argues in its submission to Ofcom that this risks a return to the days when pre-pay mobile phone users saw their credit expire after a set period, whether they had used it or not.

When pre-pay services first appeared in the UK more than a decade ago, many companies issued top-up vouchers that had a “use it or lose it” expiry date. After a wave of consumer protests about what came to be known as “the ‘ouch’ in ‘voucher’”, they dumped these time limits. The four main networks now count as “active” any user who has made or received a call within the previous three months, and there is no expiry date on pre-pay top-ups.

Ofcom’s proposals, O2 argues, would see time limits reintroduced. O2 estimates that millions of pre-pay customers do not regularly top up their phones, only making calls in emergencies. These customers would be forced to waste money topping up phones or risk being disconnected.

The fight over the scheme for termination rates that will take over in 2011 has already lasted over a year and is likely to be acrimonious. When the current caps were imposed, the mobile phone companies launched a protracted legal fight that involved the Competition Commission and Competition Appeals Tribunal.

Ofcom says it must reduce mobile termination rates to comply with EU guidelines. The networks, however, believe the regulator is trying to grab headlines to curry favour with the coalition government. Before the election, Conservative politicians made it clear that they wanted to reduce the regulator’s powers.

3G television tests

Separately, O2, Orange and Vodafone will announce tomorrow that they have teamed up to test a new TV broadcast service that could offer British mobile phone users the chance to watch a host of channels on their handsets.

The three companies, which together control the bulk of the UK mobile phone market, are testing technology that would enable them to provide broadcast television over the existing 3G mobile phone spectrum without clogging up their networks, which are increasingly being used by smartphone users to access the web and send emails.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Motorola has unveiled an enterprise mobile device which it claims will fill a
gap in the market for workers in industries where consumer smartphones have
proved ineffective.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Ofcom has issued a stern warning to London-based phone and broadband provider
Continental Telecom, claiming it has broken consumer protection rules by using a
form of mis-selling known as ‘slamming’ to switch customers to its services.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Apple sees sales of 600,000 units on Tuesday, with demand in Germany 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model

Apple has reported overwhelming demand for its new iPhone 4 model, selling more than 600,000 in a single day on Tuesday which saw ordering websites crash in the US and UK.

In Germany, demand for the new model, which was only unveiled by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs at the start of the month, is running 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model, the iPhone 3GS, reported Deutsche Telekom.

By comparison, when the iPhone 3GS went on sale last year, 1m were sold in its first three days. But that debuted in eight countries, whereas the iPhone 4 has gone on sale only in five.

Apple has apologised to people who tried to order the phone and gave up in frustration, saying demand was far higher than it expected. “We hope that they will try again.. once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”

Since its debut in June 2007, Apple’s smartphone has taken a huge chunk of the smartphone market and forced companies such as RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of smartphone sales, to play catchup. Nokia issued another profits warning on Wednesday, and its share of the smartphone market is falling every quarter.

In the UK, where Apple is offering the phone without a contract through its online store, Apple’s website crashed as people tried to order it. And in the US, where it is only available with a contract from AT&T, the telephone company’s website froze as it tried to cope with an avalanche of orders each of which had to be verified on its own servers. That also led to problems in which some customers saw details of other peoples’ accounts – a reminder of the flaw exposed by a security group last week in which hundreds of thousands of Apple iPad users’ emails were stolen via weak security on AT&T’s site.

As a result of the heavy demand Apple has had to push back the delivery date for phones ordered online, and on Wednesday AT&T suspended orders, citing “unexpectedly high demand”.

Apple said “it was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions.”

Last year in the UK O2 had exclusive rights to sell the new iPhone, and said then that more of those handsets were sold in the first two hours of trading than all handsets in an average day.

This year Apple is selling the iPhone 4 without a contract – at £499 for the cheapest version – and O2, Vodafone, Orange and 3 are competing to offer it on contract terms. However neither O2 or 3 have yet announced prices, or allowed customers to pre-order the phone.

However the new contracts being offered for the phones have sparked anger among web users, who say that the carriers’ use of the word “unlimited” for the amount of data that can be downloaded through the smartphone is misleading. The companies impose a “fair use” cap, while describing the service as “unlimited”.

Now, a formal review by the advertising regulator could be about to put a cap on the practice.

This could mean that fixed-line and mobile operators will not be able to use the term “unlimited broadband” unless they are offering a genuinely unlimited service – and that means nothing in the small print that lets the provider send warnings to customers if they reach a certain threshold.

The review is being led by the Advertising Standards Authority, reports New Media Age, which will work with two ad industry bodies to make a comprehensive assessment of industry claims and consumer complaints on both broadband speeds and “unlimited” tariff penalties.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Claims about misleading “unlimited” broadband promotions have been brewing for years, but a formal review by the advertising regulator could be about to put a cap on the practice.

This is likely to mean two things. Firstly, that fixed-line and mobile operators will not be able to use the term “unlimited broadband” unless they are offering a genuinely unlimited service – and that means nothing in the small print that lets the provider send warnings to customers if they reach a certain threshhold. A Which? study last year found that had happened to 11% of a base of 11,000 broadband users.

Which? also found that increased consuer use of multimedia services is making it harder for providers to keep up with demand.


Photo by Gavin St. Ours on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The second implication is for smartphone tariffs, which are now starting to specify data caps. O2 is ditching “unlimited” data plans with the launch of the iPhone 4 in the UK on 24 June, while Vodafone ditched the term last December, based on feedback ahead of its introductory iPhone tariff. O2 have insisted that only 3% of the heaviest data users will notice the “limited” tariffs and will have to pay a data charge top-up for usage over their tariff allowance.

The review is being led by the Advertising Standards Authority, reports New Media Age, which will work with two ad industry bodies to make a comprehensive assessment of industry claims and consumer complaints on both broadband speeds and “unlimited” tariff penalties.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, gadget, gadgets, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, phone, phones, review, service, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone