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The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its plan to
expand broadband access in the US.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Posts Tagged “line”
Telecommunication firms face a long road to recovery, with revenue growth Read Full Story…
Orange and MVNA partner Transatel target SMEs primarily, with new MVNO deals with fixed line providers Unicom and Axis Telecom, and also with niche operative Catalyst Read Full Story…
Mar
14
2010
 
Google forced to delay British launch of Nexus phonePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Setbacks with the internet group’s first handset will see competing products arrive on the market first Google’s attempt to break into the mobile phone market has hit serious problems in Britain with the launch of its flagship Nexus One device understood to have been delayed until the middle of next month. The setback means that by the time Google’s first own-branded foray into the market this side of the Atlantic is available to consumers, its local network partner Vodafone will have launched a competing product, which analysts say is better, called the HTC Legend. While Google has been working with the industry on the Android mobile phone software for several years, the Nexus One, made by Taiwan’s HTC, is the first handset over which the search engine group has had complete control. But launching a new phone has proved more difficult than Google expected. It was released in the US in January, but Google’s decision to sell it solely through its website immediately came in for criticism as buyers struggled to get help with technical problems, and Google, which has traditionally relied on email for consumer contact, was forced to introduce telephone helplinessupport and the problems it has experienced in the US has given it reason to pause over the phone’s launch outside the US, to make sure it has its customer service operations in place. Last week Goldman Sachs slashed its estimate for Nexus One sales this year from 3.5m units to 1m worldwide. In the UK, Google will not only sell the phone at full price to any customer who wants to put their existing sim card into it, but it has also teamed up with Vodafone, which will offer the device free to anyone willing to sign a £35 monthly contract. But the delay in the launch of the Nexus One, which under Google’s original plan would have been available earlier this month, means that it will come after the launch of rival Android devices that analysts reckon are at least as good, if not better. Vodafone, for instance, will be offering the HTC Legend in April which has the same operating system as the Nexus One but is more stylish: being built from a single piece of milled aluminium. Orange and T-Mobile, meanwhile, will both be stocking the HTC Desire – which is exactly the same as the Nexus One, but has an optical trackpad instead of a trackball – from next month. The delay also means the Google device will be available in the UK only weeks before another hotly anticipated gadget, Apple’s iPad. Several of the UK’s mobile phone companies are finalising deals with Apple to sell the tablet computer to British consumers. Unlike its last mobile device, the iPhone, which was offered through just one exclusive partner for the first two years, the iPad is expected to be available through multiple network operators from the start. Apple will ship two versions of the iPad in the UK, one that can access the internet using short-range wi-fi networks and one that can also access 3G mobile phone networks. But Apple needs to sign deals with at least one UK mobile network, because the iPad makes use of micro-sims, meaning that buyers cannot just put the sim card from their existing handsets into it. In fact, it will be the first device launched in the UK that uses micro-sims. Apple said earlier this month that the device will go on sale in the UK towards the end of April but the mobile phone companies believe that the 3G version of the iPad will not be available until May. Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone all expect to be selling the iPad to customers and they are all locked in talks with the Californian company. Apple, however, has made it plain that it does not want iPad users to be tied to long-term contracts with any mobile phone operator. Instead it wants users to be able to pay for mobile network access on a pay-as-you-go basis.
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Mar
11
2010
Pink Floyd score victory for the concept album in court battle over ringtonesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
EMI told not to sell single tracks as downloads in ruling which could mean further losses for music label Pink Floyd, the British rock group behind platinum-selling albums The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, today secured a legal victory for the much-maligned genre of the concept album against the apparently inexorable march of the instant pop download. In a high court ruling that led the band’s fans to proclaim a victory for their heroes’ artistic integrity over the forces of commercial exploitation, a judge ruled that EMI can no longer sell the songs from any Pink Floyd albums as single downloads or mobile phone ringtones. After a case brought by the band’s surviving members, Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, the high court chancellor, Sir Andrew Morritt, said the label must adhere to a clause in its contract with the group intended to “preserve the artistic integrity of the albums” which prevented the unbundling of Pink Floyd’s records. Pink Floyd became one of the biggest rock bands in history with their elaborate and experimental concept albums and highly theatrical live tours. EMI had argued that its deal with the band, reaffirmed in 1999 before the download market took off, related to physical CDs and DVDs but not to online distribution. Pink Floyd alleged, and EMI agreed, that the label had allowed online downloads from the albums and allowed parts of tracks to be used as ringtones despite the clause which “expressly prohibits” EMI from selling songs out of context. The judge granted the band the declaration they sought – that the contract means EMI is not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd’s consent. “This is great for a band who are the masters of the concept album,” said Matthew Johns, who runs Brain Damage, a dedicated Pink Floyd fan site. “Their music is unlike most other artists and listening to a whole album can be an immersive experience if you get into the concepts.” Generations of young people have, like Johns, pulled the curtains and turned down the lights to listen to the whole 43 minutes of 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, in which tracks merge seamlessly, exploring themes of conflict, greed and the passage of time. Each side is a single piece, beginning and ending with a fading heartbeat. It sold an estimated 45 million copies. The verdict means the band’s music may now have to be taken down from the iTunes online music store which requires that album tracks are for sale individually. It could mean a further loss of revenue for EMI, which releases recordings for Coldplay and Kylie Minogue but last year posted a £1.75bn loss. Its chief executive, Elio Leoni-Sceti, this week announced his resignation and former ITV boss Charles Allen will take control of its music business. Yesterday’s verdict is thought to be the first time a band have successfully taken their record label to court over the way it has distributed their music online. It could lead to other cases, music industry analysts believe. Robert Howe QC, representing Pink Floyd, argued that it would have been “a very odd result” if members of Pink Floyd were able to control exactly how their music was sold as a physical product but there was “a free-for-all with no limitation on online distribution”.Elizabeth Jones QC, appearing for EMI, disagreed and said the word record “plainly applies to the physical thing – there is nothing to suggest it applies to online distribution”.
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Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms has defended the government’s Read Full Story…
Mar
09
2010
Free cinema tickets for a year from VodafonePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Our most popular phones qualifying for this promotion are the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the new Nokia X6 and the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which is available exclusively in ruby red direct from Vodafone. Compare the deals hereSony Ericsson’s curvaceous Vivaz is an all round stunner. So is its 8 megapixel camera, which shoots video in HD – just use the dedicated buttons for photo and video. If you want to see everything in widescreen then flip the Vivaz on its side – or plug it straight into your TV. If music’s more your thing, tap the big 3.2″ touchscreen and fire up the impressive music player. The CD cover is there on your screen. FM radio is a tap away. Record a few seconds of a song, and TrackID tells you the artist and title. There’s also a standard headphone socket – so you can use the pair you love. It’s beautiful and functional. An excellent all-round multimedia phone. The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone. It’s pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 16GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many other smartphones in its class. The new X Series range from Nokia with replace the XpressMusic range, it will focus on entertainment and social networking. The Blackberry Bold 9700 has the traditional BlackBerry design with a classic QWERTY keypad and 3G connection, a combination that makes it ideal for emailing as well as quick downloads and browsing on-the-go. It has a sensitive trackpad that helps you glide through menus and a decent camera. It’s a great all-rounder. Terms and conditions: Free cinema voucher available only to new customers purchasing a pay monthly mobile phone contract of £30 per month or above for a minimum duration of 18 months. Offer only available on orders made online and excludes orders of the iPhone. Tags: 12, 3, all, Blackberry, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, Deals, email, free, HD, iphone, latest, latest deal, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobiles, months, new, new mobile, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sol, sony, sony ericsson, test, Touch, vodafone, world, xpressmusic
• Despite the squillions of iPhone apps out there, Apple has worked very hard to keep details of its contract with developers under wraps. No longer: the Electronic Frontier Foundation used Nasa’s iPhone app as an avenue to file a Freedom of Information request to get a public copy of the contract (PDF). And the organisation isn’t happy with what it sees: including a ban on public statements, certain reverse-engeineering restrictions and Apple’s lack of liability in case of something going wrong. • Google is testing a TV search service, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It suggests that there’s a pilot scheme for an embedded set-top search service linked to a US satellite TV provider – not the first time that Google has shown television ambitions (here are two examples in the UK). But still worth watching. • Also in Google, meanwhile, ZDNet brings news of this Goldman Sachs note reducing expectations of sales of the Nexus One – drastically. It now thinks the company will sell 1m handsets in 2010, down from a previous estimation of 3.5m. Why? “Possibly due to limited marketing and customer service challenges” – or, in other words, the decision to sell it online-only. You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, @gdngames or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.
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Nokia will be online this week to discuss its environmental track record – post your questions in the comments below Want to know how green the average Nokia phone is? For this week’s You ask, they answer, the Finnish mobile phone giant joins us to discuss its environmental track record and efforts, so start posting your questions below. From humble beginnings as a wood pulp mill back in 1865, Nokia is now the world’s number one mobile phone company, with 37% of the global market share. Yet despite its size, the firm enjoys a good record with Greenpeace, holding the top-spot in the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics. However, Nokia lost points this year for failing to do “proactive lobbying” for the revised RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electronics) directive. Nokia has also highlighted the potential for mobile phones to collect real-time information about pollution and other local environmental data. Henry Tirri, head of Nokia’s research centre, has cited pollution as an area for which “killer” eco-apps might be created. “The things people don’t usually think about with location-based systems are aggregate things like traffic information, and collective information about air pollution and other environmental data,” he said. Nokia is online from Monday to Friday this week to answer your environment questions – please post yours below.
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UK university websites are targeted by criminals peddling counterfeit drugs from fake online pharmacies. Read Full Story…
Mar
05
2010
Apple iPad to go on sale on 3 April in US and ‘late April’ in UKPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies Apple’s touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond “late April” – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations. The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in. US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a “magical and revolutionary product”, from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple’s retail stores. The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in “late April”. All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time. The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple’s hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable “slate” computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple’s iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably “app” creators. In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it “lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more”. The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – “thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook” and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.) In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple’s factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple’s sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources. The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple’s announcement. Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.
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Mar
05
2010
Picking facts from speculation on iPad launch prices and datesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Why the collapse in online advertising might be leading you to read pretty much anything about Apple’s new gizmo Hey, have you heard? Apple’s iPad is having production problems! And it’s not having production problems! Also, it’s going to cost £389! Or possibly less, or more. And in the UK the 3G version is going to be exclusively on Vodafone. As well as being on Orange and O2. Also, it’s going to be released in the UK two weeks after the US, where it’s being released on March 26, or actually 29th, except it’s being released at the same time. And it’s going to cost.. OK, enough breathless murmery. Let’s clear the air. There is an astonishing amount of speculation going on about Apple’s iPad. Very little of it seems well-founded – or even grounded in logic. The facts about the iPad: Apple hasn’t given a precise launch date; “60 days” was the best Steve Jobs had on 27 January. It’s not given one for the UK either. It hasn’t said how much the various models will cost in the UK. It hasn’t said whether the 3G mobile-connected models will be available in the UK (though it’s expected) and it hasn’t said which network(s) it will be going with. Which is about par for the course for some Apple products. And of course is enough for ever so many “news” stories. Let’s start with some of the things where people are prepared to put their names to the claims. The Register reports that Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity analyst, told investors in an advisory note on Thursday that checks with manufacturers suggested “some minor delays” in ramping up production for the tablet. They can only make 200,000 to 250,000 iPads per month at present; production may not hit 800,000 to 1m units per month until at least April. “We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product road map for [Apple],” Rakesh wrote. Earlier this week another US analyst, Peter Misek at Canaccord claimed that “unspecified production problems” will hold initial availability to about 300,000 units – and said Apple may keep the iPad to the US only or delay the launch into April. This was then contradicted by DigiTimes – usually the fount of unspecified vague insights into the Taiwanese and Chinese computer manufacturing insights which turn out to be bang on 50% of the time, and completely off the other 50% – which was told by Foxconn Electronics that everything’s on schedule and that it should be able to ship between 600,000 and 700,000 iPads this month. Apple said.. nothing. Conclusion: they all could be right. The iPad was announced in January, and if Foxconn has been making 200,000 for a couple of months, it’s got a nice stockpile sitting waiting for a container ship. Meanwhile Foxconn could be ramping up production towards that 800K figure. So we conclude: forecasts of a US-only launch unlikely to come true. And “delays into April”? Remember that at the launch (scroll to 7.22pm) Steve Jobs announced that they Wi-Fi only models would go on sale in 60 days, the 3G models in 90 days because they “require approval from carriers”. 90 days from the iPad launch takes you… into April. OK. Assume that it is going to launch in the UK at about the same time as in the US. Two questions: how much will it cost? And which networks will the 3G version be available on? The cost question is interesting. Apple has told us it won’t announce the UK price until it launches at the “end of March”. We’ve done our own calculation (helped by Macworld) which gives us a starting price guess of £424 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only (Macworld suggests £388), ranging up to £705 for the Wi-Fi/3G 64GB model (Macworld: £693). And which operators? No clues. Obviously, we speak to our contacts there; but so far they’ve had little to offer. So what then are we to make of the sudden flurry of emails recently from really small sites (and I do mean really small) which claim to know the launch date and/or chosen carrier? Here’s an example I received recently: “We just got word on Vodafone being the official launch partner of the iPad in the UK, direct from Vodafone. Details in the below blog post. This is from the same guy who provided details that O2 would be the Palm Pre’s UK carrier well before announcement.” And a link to the site. But we’re not going to link it here. I’ll explain why in a moment. Then there was the email from another site which said it had the price for the low-end iPad: “We are pretty confident regarding the pricing, the tip came from a source who works closely with Apple UK, obviously we can’t say much more about this. “We are 99% sure that the base model will be £389, regarding the other prices of the 32GB and 64GB models, our source said that these are likely to be the prices, although he did mention that the prices on the last two aren’t set in stone as yet.” (I should point out that the other site didn’t approach me; I contacted it to ask how sure they were of their sources.) Hmm, so have we missed a trick? Are we getting blown out of the water by dedicated bloggers running niche sites who have contacts in just the right places? Perhaps. But consider another possibility. I spoke to someone who has very good contacts in the mobile phone industry. The reply: “My source at Voda says nothing signed yet but is checking, also it’s kinda weird but [the person quoted in the Vodafone story] left a year ago.” So why the certainty in that story? My contact noted: “There are going to be more and more stories like this as the collapse in online advertising has pushed sites into e-commerce and they need the links from [the Guardian] to push them up the [search] rankings. There are quite a few mobile phone so-called bloggers already in the UK who are actually little more than affiliate channels for the mobile phone operators. That’s often how they get their stories. Watch the links when you click through, it’s often quite instructive. There is, for instance, a very well respected UK mobile phone blogger who gets a lot of very good Orange scoops. Of course he does, my mates at Orange point out, the other half of his business is a retailer for Orange so he finds out about new phones at the same time as the rest of the channel. Is that journalism? Who knows these days.” We conclude: the maths suggests that the iPad will very likely come in around the £389-£399 mark (we like the Macworld number better than ours, which by being above £400 isn’t a marketing-friendly price sticker). Networks? Whichever ones can handle the micro-sims that the iPad uses. Given that Apple is still with only one network in the US, but in the UK has signed up three (O2, Orange and Vodafone; Tesco is a virtual MNO), it’s hard to know whether it will try to be a kingmaker again or prefer to spread the love like butter among them all. Rationally, being on all three (while making them think it’s exclusive until it’s announced) would be better for sales – people could just add an iPad plan to their existing contracts. OK? We hope that puts your minds at rest about prices and operators. As for launch dates… well, Apple traditionally goes with Tuesdays or Fridays. Strictly, 60 days from the iPad announcement puts you on Sunday 28 March, so take your pick: Monday 29th, or Friday 26th? Or might it get pushed further along? As for the 3G version, if there’s a 90-day delay, then you’re not going to see it until April 27 (on the 90-days-from-iPad-ground-zero principle). So even that US analyst could be right. And remind us what you’d be buying an iPad for? We’re interested to hear.
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Mar
03
2010
Cisco plugs security into mobile working linePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Secure Borderless Networks aims to combine the features of VPN and mobile security, to protect everything from the datacentre to end devices
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Mar
03
2010
Most smartphone users are disappointed, claims FanfarePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
People are buying increasing numbers of smartphones, but are they living up to the media hype? Fanfare thinks not…. Smartphone sales are growing fast, but “57% of smartphone users are disappointed with handset and application performance,” claims a report from Fanfare (PDF: registration required). However, the results reflect a very small sample: “155 members of the public” and “the survey was conducted online and filled in anonymously,” so don’t bet your lunch on its applicability to the Great British Public. Most of the issues appear to be internet related, with streaming media, web browsers and social networking applications causing the most problems. And then there’s the part that could be important to Fanfare, which offers automated testing services:
Dissatisfied smartphone users typically tell their friends and family (57%) and social networking sites (58%), which could have a negative effect on sales. Indeed, it makes social networks much more of an influence on purchasing than “traditional media” (by 64% to 40%). Fanfare marketing man David Gehringer says: “The Apple App Store and Android Market have served up billions of app downloads, giving smartphone owners the ability to use their phones in new and exciting ways. But now that the novelty is wearing off, users want their applications to be more reliable.” The report says:
I’d like this to be true, but I can’t really see much evidence. It seems to me there’s a big fashion element to smartphone sales and (based on a much smaller sample than 155) people like being one of the first to own a sexy new gadget. How well they can make it work it is another matter. Nor is this a criticism of media darlings such as Apple’s iPhone, HTC and Google Android phones, various BlackBerry handsets and the odd Palm. All of these seem more reliable and usable than what I remember of the Nokia 7110 or 8110 (The Matrixphone), while disappointed iPhone owners seem to be a very rare breed indeed. So, are you happy with your smartphone, and if not, is the backlash about to start?
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HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia unveiled a new C5 smartphone model on Tuesday, hoping to benefit from a booming demand for cheap smartphones and from rising consumer appetite for mobile social networking. 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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Orange relied on iPhone to persuade new customers, while T-Mobile dived back into the pre-pay market
Orange and T-Mobile, who are preparing to merge their UK businesses this year, both had a bumper Christmas, but for wildly different reasons. While Orange relied on the iPhone to persuade people to sign-up to long-term contracts, T-Mobile threw caution to the wind and jumped back into the pre-pay market. But as both companies had to slash prices and offer customers ever more favourable tariffs in order to remain competitive in the cut-throat UK market, they saw margins decline and average revenue per user – a crucial metric for analysts – take a tumble. In the last three months of 2009, third-placed Orange added 404,000 new customers, while fourth-placed T-Mobile gained 571,000. Orange’s figures included 266,000 new contract customers, its best ever fourth quarter performance, and four out of every five of those customers signed up to a 24-month deal, suggesting they were either getting an iPhone or another high-end smartphone, such as one running Google’s Android operating system or a Blackberry. Orange ended O2’s two year exclusive hold on the iPhone in November and sold about 90,000 in the first month. Orange’s revenues in the fourth quarter were €1.29bn (£1.13bn), down from €1.3bn, including its struggling residential broadband business, which lost 50,000 customers in the quarter and now has just 840,000 users. There has been intense discussion within Orange about closing down the broadband business, selling the customers to a rival ISP, such as BSkyB, but management have decided to hold onto the operation and it is now offering a free 32GB iPhone to customers who sign up for its high-end home broadband package. Margins at Orange, meanwhile, declined to 18.4%, down 2 points compared with a year ago, while its average revenue per user – across both contract and pre-pay customers – was £21.41 a month in the fourth quarter, down from £24.25 a year ago. As it does not have the iPhone, T-Mobile, in contrast, put all its focus on attracting new pre-pay users, putting a lot of marketing spend behind its “free texts for life” for any customer topping up by at least £10 a month. In the second half of the year, T-Mobile added 629,000 new pre-pay users, 570,000 in the run-up to Christmas alone. All but 1,000 of its new customers in the fourth quarter were on pre-pay. Revenues, however, were down in the quarter to £737m, from £820m a year ago, with margins of 20.1%, down dramatically from 24.8% a year ago. Average revenue per user (ARPU) was £18 a month, down from £21 a year ago. In the same period, second-placed Vodafone added 410,000 new customers with ARPU of £20.40, down from £21.5 a year ago, and margins of 23.2%, down from 25.9%. The UK’s largest mobile phone company O2 will report on Friday. The fact that three of the four largest players in the UK added almost 1.4 million brand new customers means that either O2 and 3 saw subscriber numbers fall off a cliff, or the first quarter of this year will contain a nasty surprise for at least one operator. It is unlikely that O2 has seen its winning streak come to a complete halt, given O2 boss Matthew Key’s upbeat statements about life since it was forced to give up its exclusive hold on the iPhone first to Orange then Tesco Mobile before Christmas; and then to Vodafone last month. As a private company, rival 3 does not provide regular figures, but its owner Hutchison Whampoa, which keeps a very close eye on its mobile phone business, would react fast if UK chief executive Kevin Russell had lost hundreds of thousands of customers in the last three months. For the past few years, 3 has had between 3 and 4 million users and will report financial figures at the end of March. It is more likely that because of the way in which the mobile phone companies count pre-pay customers as active or inactive that the first quarter of this year will see a balancing of the books. More than half the new customers added in the fourth quarter so far, are pre-pay users and are likely to have switched between pre-pay providers. But while their new network will count them as a new customer from day one – ie in the fourth quarter – the network they are leaving will not count them as inactive until they fail to make a call or send a text within a 90 day period. As a result, they are not likely to have been identified as customers who have defected until sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
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Feb
25
2010
Premium line complaints drop by more than halfPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Regulation apparently working shockUK punters are more than twice as happy with premium-rate services than they were last year, according to the industry regulator PhonepayPlus.…
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 Document sharing website Scribd to challenge Apple and Amazon in the mobile market Document sharing website Scribd is making a more direct challenge to Amazon and Apple by launching a mobile service that it hopes will make it easier for millions of people to read on the go. The move could put the well-regarded startup – described as “YouTube for documents” – into more direct competition with larger rivals such as Amazon and Apple, which is set to launch the iPad and its iBooks application next month. Scribd already offers more than 10m documents online, including books from major publishers such as Random House and Simon & Schuster, but from today will also begin offering users the chance to read their files on any smartphone or ebook reader. A simple system to send files to their device – regardless of what it is – may help erase complexity and give people easy access to much more content, said Trip Adler, Scribd’s co-founder and chief executive. “Right now people are confused about which e-reader to buy, they’re confused about how to get content onto their devices,” he told the Guardian. “This solves all of that by putting all these devices so you can read any content on Scribd on your device.” At the moment, most ebook readers acquire new titles through applications specifically built by the makers of their gadget – such as Amazon’s Kindle book catalogue. Adler suggested that providing a broad range of material across all devices was largely uncharted territory, but that it should boost the popularity of ebooks and downloads of other types of documents. “This should help increase sales, because if people can read things they buy on the web on their device, they are more likely to buy it,” he said. Amazon already offers access to its catalogue of books through the Kindle, as well as an iPhone application, but Scribd’s 50 million users will also be able to download other documents shared through its site – including how-to guides, research papers and self-published books. The move is part of a wider mobile strategy that the company says will help it tap into the huge mobile devices market. Over the next month, it plans to launch a range of applications for the Kindle, iPad, iPhone and Android handsets, as well as a number of other platforms. It is also launching developer tools that will enable programmers to create their own applications to search and link to any of the documents held in Scribd’s archive. “There are maybe a million ebook readers out there, but there are billions of smartphone users,” Adler said. The launch comes on the heels of a similar effort by Kobo Books, an American ebook retailer which earlier this week unveiled its own system aimed specifically at the UK market. Kobo has agreements in place with most major publishers – including Bloomsbury, Penguin and Faber & Faber – and says it will also offer many titles for free. But while the ebook industry has plenty of momentum, it has also been dogged by controversy. Some publishers have said they will delay ebook releases to protect hardback sales, and Macmillan recently found itself in a feud with Amazon over the price of digital texts. The outlook for sales, meanwhile, remains unclear. High street retailer Waterstone’s, which has its own ebook store, said that just 80,000 titles were sold in the run-up to Christmas and Amazon is still silent on Kindle ebook sales despite continuing to boast that they now make up a significant part of its business. Adler said that platform-agnostic selling was a significant step forward that would not only encourage more people to buy ebooks, but could also convince publishers to sell unprotected files, rather than encumber their products with anti-piracy locks. Scribd has raised almost $14m from investors since being founded in 2007, with backers including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and former PayPal executive David Sacks.
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