CompareMobiles.com

Only a tiny number of people use huge amounts of data – which means that many more have seen ‘unlimited’ contracts killed off. It’s a tragedy of the commons for mobile data

So the free lunch – otherwise known as the unlimited data tariff – is over. O2 said on Thursday that it will no longer be offering new or upgrading customers its “unlimited” tariff for smartphone users – principally, it’s believed, the iPhone users, whose numbers connected to O2 have grown from 1m to 2m in a year.

O2 isn’t the first: Vodafone ended its “unlimited” offering last month, and Steve Jobs had barely sat down after delivering his WWDC speech before AT&T announced that it too was ending its “unlimited” offering, replacing it with a tiered set – $15/month for 200MB, $25/month for 2GB. Orange is expected to follow suit in the next few weeks, though when asked the company simply says that it “constantly reviews its pricing”. However the noises we’re hearing from parts of the company suggest that a review will see it follow O2 to dump the “unlimited” offering.

Why? Because a tiny number of users are slurping huge amounts of data. And because the mass of users are demanding more and more data (though lots less than the real slurpers). There’s all sorts of interesting information that we can pull out of this – especially with the help of O2′s chief executive Ronan Dunne, who signed a lengthy post at the company’s blog with a tortuous justification for why the company has changed its rules. The strange thing is why he hasn’t come out with the simple reason – because it would make O2 a lot more popular at a stroke.

He goes over the points that were made in yesterday – that 97% of O2 smartphone users use less than 500MB, and that only a tiny number use more than 1GB. (Interesting to note that Apple-watcher John Gruber, someone who I’d expect to be a heavy user, says he uses about 500MB per month. So he’s clearly just one of the 97%, even if an outlier there.) Even so, smartphone users are a problem:

“one streamed YouTube video has the same effect on the network as half a million text messages sent simultaneously, the equivalent of everybody in Newcastle sending a text at once.”

Well, yes, but nobody made you offer the iPhone, Mr Dunne. You were the ones who wanted it so much. This makes it sound as though you like getting peoples’ money, but don’t like offering them a concomitant service to go with it.

However it’s more complicated than O2 getting a bit whiney. What we’re hearing here at the Guardian though is that Apple itself helped to kill off the “unlimited” tag, because it doesn’t like it being used with services that call it “unlimited*” and then explain further down the page in tiny print that that actually * means “subject to ‘fair usage’”. (We understand that Apple vetoed Vodafone’s initial pricing for the iPad data plans for just that reason.) It seems that just as broadband ISPs became addicted, when the race to sign up customers was on a few years ago, to the phrase “up to…” for their line speeds, so mobile data networks have gotten too comfy with the “unlimited*” word – where the asterisk is all-important. You could even call it Unlimited™ – which has quite a different meaning from unlimited.

Apple’s weight isn’t the real reason for the change, though. Stay with us.

There’s other interesting stuff in that blogpost: O2 says there that the average user uses 200MB per month; that FaceTime, the video calling offering introduced by Apple with the iPhone 4, will only be available on Wi-Fi (at least from O2); and there will be regular texts to let you know how you’re doing on your data allowance. And if you go over it without buying more, you’ll see your data speed slow down.

Given those numbers, let’s make some assumptions. There are 2m iPhone users (and even more if you add in Android users). That’s a large enough population that you can treat it as a random sample. I’m told by one of the networks that data use follows the normal distribution (aka the bell curve – that mathematical prediction of where the members of a random population will be: it applies for things like height, for example). It’s probably not a perfect normal distribution – there will be a low-end cutoff, because any device connected to the network will use a least a little data. But for modelling, it’s a start.

So: 200MB average; 97% use less than 500MB. Plus those numbers into a normal distribution calculator and you discover that those 0.1% who are annoying O2 so much consume more than 690MB of data per month. That’s about 23MB per day – roughly a megabyte every single hour. What, you think, are those folks doing? In fact, one network tells me that those people are downloading many gigabytes per month. That’s quite hard to do on a smartphone.

Is it because of music streaming services like Spotify or We7 or (in the US) Pandora? The networks say no: audio doesn’t take up that much bandwidth (certainly compared to video), and they haven’t seen much takeup. So those gigabyte users aren’t listening to streams. (The iPlayer is only available via Wi-Fi on most networks.) Yet O2 says that while it has doubled the number of iPhone users, mobile data use is doubling every 4 months, equivalent to an eightfold growth every year.

So: lots of growth, but some real extremes. What is causing it? Closer investigation suggests that this is a sort of collateral damage from the rumblings that preceded the Digital Economy Act – that it’s caused by peer-to-peer users who were perhaps worried about the “three strikes” talk, and figured that their landlines (if they have them) might be monitored or throttled if they download a lot of P2P data; or they might be surcharged. For as we’ve pointed out before, “unlimited” doesn’t mean unlimited on landline broadband.

So those wary folk – put by one network as numbering “in the few hundreds” out of millions – have signed up on “unlimited” plans, taken the SIM out of the phone, and then use it in a 3G dongle to download stuff. Because it’s unlimited, they can get what they want. And as they don’t mind how quickly it arrives, the speed isn’t a particular issue; they’re just after volume. O2 says that 0.1% of its smartphone users – that’s about 2,000 people – are consuming 36% of its data. Other networks indicate the same.

It’s also a bit foolish on the part of the downloaders, because the Digital Economy Act does actually allow for measures to be taken over illicit filesharing over mobile networks. But possibly the people doing it don’t think they’ll be noticed.

Here’s news: the mobile networks have noticed.

So it’s not really down to the iPhone or Android phones, which are more of an annoyance to the networks, because they make multiple, frequent requests to the network – but those are small amounts; those aren’t the reason why O2 is ending the unlimited package. It’s because some people took it at its word when it said data access was unlimited.

At this point, your – and our – reaction is “so tell that 0.1% to stop being data hogs – shape their bandwidth, send them letters, that sort of thing. Because obviously you’re not going to want to burden yourself with having to set up new billing for millions of customers just because you’ve got 0.1% who are a bit annoying. No, that would be silly.”

It’s certainly puzzling that O2 isn’t being clearer about the reasons. But the networks say they don’t want to annoy those big downloaders. That’s because they want to keep them as customers; but as paying customers. Yet the unlimited contracts aren’t being withdrawn; they’ll simply not be renewed. “At some stage, people will want a new handset or a new contract,” an O2 spokesperson said yesterday.

I wouldn’t be so sure: someone who’s using their iPhone SIM as a dongle really isn’t worried about upgrading; they’ve probably got a PAYG SIM stuffed into their iPhone for their phone calls. They’re not stupid. Unless O2 – and the other networks – start taking some aggressive action, such as throttling their connections, then the faux-iPhoners will carry on. It’s a tragedy of the commons, mobile data-style. Just like spam and comment bots, the tiny number of P2P mobile downloaders are screwing it up for everyone else.

It’s odd that internet evolution is going in reverse here: I thought that ISPs had learnt that offering broadband was far better for retaining customers than the penny-per-minute dialup nightmare of 1990s internet connectivity (yes, children, we used to have dialup modems, and paid per minute we were connected. And you couldn’t use make a phone call while you did).

It’s a retrograde move – and even though the networks insist that most people won’t be affected, the fact is that we’re data-hungry. Eventually, we’ll all be over the limit. Will the P2P donglers still be on their unlimited contracts even then? One feels that it’s time for the networks, if they’re really serious about offering a good service to all their customers, to have a think about that “fair use” clause.

Meanwhile, the 97% get a little inconvenienced, plus the constant worry that they’ll go over their limit. That’s actually the worst thing about what’s happening here: that the confidence that you can use the mobile internet anywhere is suddenly gone, replaced by a nagging worry that this page or that service will land you with a big bill. The mobile internet shouldn’t be like that: it should be like the landline version, where you don’t worry about the megabytes. It’s not a free lunch – but it’s not a system where the person in front is treating the buffet as an all-you-can-eat either.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, blog, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, connections, contract, free, growth, HD, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, o2, orange, payg, phone, phones, review, reviews, sam, service, sim, sol, tariff, tariffs, three, uk, vodafone

Network operator says that most customers will see no difference – but that 1% of users consume 36% of data

O2 is telling its smartphone customers – notably including users of Apple’s iPhone – that it is ending its “unlimited” data plans, and that those who use a lot of data will have to pay up in time.

Unveiling its new data tariffs ahead of the launch of the iPhone 4 on 24 June, the mobile operator insisted that 97% of users will not notice the difference – and that its changes were really aimed at about 2,000 users who use extraordinarily high amounts of data every month.

Instead, it said that a tiny number – just 1% of smartphone users – are using 36% of its total mobile data traffic, and that they needed to be encouraged to change their behaviour.

The new tariffs replace the “unlimited” data tariffs offered with the iPhone on O2 in 2007 with a new tiered set, including 500MB, 750MB and 1GB data packages, along with unlimited Wi-Fi time via The Cloud and BT’s OpenZone services. However existing users with iPhone contracts will still be able to use “unlimited” amounts of data, O2 said.

“97% of our smartphone users use less than 500MB per month, so they won’t notice a difference,” said a spokeswoman for O2. Existing O2 customers can find out their data consumption on the O2 site.

She said that O2 was seeing dramatic growth in the number of smartphone users, especially iPhone users, but even more rapid growth in mobile data usage. “Total mobile data consumption on our network is doubling every four months,” she said. “And the number of iPhone users on O2 has grown in a year from 1m to 2m.”

That suggests that individual smartphone users’ data consumption is growing rapidly and that O2 is now trying to slow it down by putting up barriers to greater use. “At the moment the tap is running all the time and we don’t know where,” suggested the spokeswoman. “The model for data provision is broken, and data consumption is growing. We’re looking at ways of how to charge people for data.”

O2′s spokeswoman said that rebalancing the tariffs would mean that the company could plan its network capacity: “as soon as people know how much data they’re consuming, they can make a decision about whether to use their phone.” But that is not borne out if 97% of users will see no change – because their surfing habits will persist as before.

Some have suggested that O2 is worried about the growth of music streaming services such as Spotify, which is now available for the iPhone and other smartphones: if more people adopt it, that will put a heavier load on the phone network, yet O2 receives no money from Spotify for providing the service. O2 denied this, though. “If people have a phone, they can use it for whatever they like,” said the spokeswoman.

Instead, O2 suggested, it is trying to change the behaviour of a tiny number of users – reckoned to be just 1% of iPhone users – who use very large amounts of data. “There’s only 3% [of smartphone users] who use more than 1GB of mobile data per month. But actually it’s just 1% [of smartphone users] who use about one third – to be precise, 36% – of the network data traffic. I suppose they must be streaming all the time or something.”

Asked whether the move away from the unlimited to new data tariffs for all forthcoming iPhone 4 users would have been more simply managed by contacting that 1% – about 2,000 people – and asking them to change their behaviour, rather than introducing entirely new billing systems for all future owners, O2′s spokeswoman said: “It’s about educating people. We have 24m customers. But this change doesn’t affect any existing customers.”

Asked what O2 will do if those data-hungry 2,000 do not upgrade to the new limited tariffs, the spokeswoman said: “Eventually they will come to the end of their contract, or they will want a new handset.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, growth, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk

Vodafone has updated its tariffs to offer a choice of flexible pricing
options which it said will suit small businesses and the self-employed.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, update, vodafone

Anyone going to the World Cup or abroad can minimise the cost of mobile calls, text messages and internet fees

As if the thousands of UK travellers trapped abroad after the recent volcanic ash drama hadn’t suffered enough damage to their bank balances, many are now facing mobile phone “bill shock“.

These holidaymakers, many of whom are just receiving their latest mobile phone bills, may be dismayed when they discover how much they have spent on calls and data roaming while stranded abroad. The Observer recently ran a story about William Harrison, a student who accidentally ran up an £8,000 phone bill with Orange while in France by using his mobile to access the internet.

In theory, mobile bills should no longer be too painful for those travelling to Europe, as from 1 March all European mobile operators have been obliged under EU roaming rules to offer their customers a cut-off limit of €50 (about £45) for using the internet on their phones. However, it is still early days and not yet clear whether all operators are complying with this rule.

In a month’s time the regulations will tighten further, as at the moment customers need to opt-in to this limit, whereas from 1 July the cut-off limit will be set at €50 by default unless they opt out.

For those travelling further afield the cost of calling, texting and using the internet on their mobile can still be an expensive pastime. Independent consumer body Consumer Focus warned World Cup ticket holders last week that costs for calls, texts and data use could add up to more than £100 on a match day – more than the face value of a ticket.

Mobile phone operators are expected to start bringing out more competitive overseas mobile phone packages in the next few weeks as the holiday season hots up.

But for now, anyone who is about to go abroad has a number of options: doing nothing and sticking with their operator’s standard overseas charges (expensive); switching to their operator’s overseas calls package (cheaper); buying a global or local sim (potentially even cheaper, depending on usage).

Mike Wilson, mobiles and broadband manager at moneysupermarket.com, says: “Don’t underestimate how easy it is to rack up a hefty mobile bill if you are going overseas and planning to use your phone.

“Before escaping the country be sure to check with your operator how much calls, texts and internet use will set you back when you’re away, because you won’t be charged the same rates as your UK tariff. I would advise asking if there is a cheaper international tariff available.”

Paying as standard

For standard call charges in Europe, T-Mobile and Virgin are the most expensive at 43p a minute, according to moneysupermarket.com, while 02 is the cheapest at 35p a minute. Network operator 3 is the cheapest for receiving calls at 15p a minute compared to Orange, T-Mobile and Virgin, which all charge the most at 19p. Sending texts is 11p a message with all networks, and all are free to receive.

The cost of using the internet is where operators’ charges vary hugely, and where holidaymakers are most likely to run up large bills. T-Mobile, 3, 02 and Orange all charge a flat fee per megabyte (MB) of between £1.25 (3) and £3 (02 and Orange), while Vodafone and Virgin offer the option of either paying per MB, or paying either a daily or hourly fee for web usage (with a cap on how much data can be used).

Virgin, for example, charges £5 a MB, or £4 for a one-hour pass with a 3MB limit and £6 for a 24-hour pass with a 5MB limit.

Whichever package you have you need to be careful about how much data you download. One MB is not much – watching a two-hour film uses about 800 MB.

All these charges when incurred within Europe are considerably lower than in some other countries. For example, if you visit Egypt with your Orange phone you will pay £1.75 a minute to call home and £8 per MB of data used, while in Australia you will pay £1.20 a minute per call and £7.50 per MB of data with T-Mobile.

Package things up

To keep costs down, a good alternative is to opt for your operator’s travel package. Vodafone’s Passport deal, for example, means you pay your standard home rate to call the UK from more than 35 European countries (and from Australia and New Zealand) after paying a 75p connection charge. These calls can be part of your inclusive minutes if you are on a contract. To receive calls you pay the 75p connection charge and you can talk for up to 60 minutes free of charge. After that you pay 20p a minute.

02′s My Europe Extra, on the other hand, is £10 a month for 25p-a-minute calls, free received calls and 11p texts.

Go global – or local

You can avoid your UK operator’s charges altogether by switching your network sim card for a global or local sim using websites such as 0044.co.uk and UK2Abroad.co.uk. A global sim card will work across a number of countries so is particularly good for frequent travellers or backpackers, while a local sim will only work in one country. You can buy these before you travel, but you might need to get your phone unlocked by your operator so you can switch cards.

Most global and local sims cost somewhere between £15 and £30 and come loaded with differing amounts of call credit, which you can top up by credit or debit card at any time. For those travelling to South Africa for the World Cup, for example, 0044′s South African local sim costs £29.99 and gives you ZAR 55 (about £5) of credit.

After that, local calls cost 10p a minute off-peak, calls to the UK are 63p a minute, while texts to the UK are 15p. This compares with the standard pay-as-you-go rates on Orange where charges for local calls within South Africa and to the UK are £1.45 a minute and texts are 50p a message.

Buying a local or global sim will mean you temporarily have a new phone number, so you will need to make sure people know this before you go.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, card, charges, cheaper, cheapest, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, free, global, latest, latest mobile, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, orange, phone, phones, roaming, sam, sim, Sim Card, sol, t-mobile, tariff, test, uk, virgin, vodafone, world

The Business Choice set of tariffs, aimed at small companies, lets customers mix and match their call and data plans for up to 50 employees

Read Full Story…
(Source ZDNet UK)

Tags: 10, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, launches, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone

• Selling iPhone helps group make £8.7bn
• £2.3bn wiped off value of Indian operations

Vodafone predicted a return to growth on the back of the rising popularity of smartphones and its deal to sell the iPhone in Britain and Germany.

After three years of declining revenues, Vodafone cheered investors by announcing a doubling of annual profits to £8.7bn and predicting that it will generate up to £7bn of cash this year, allowing it to boost payouts to shareholders.

The company’s promise to increase dividends by at least 7% annually over the next three years helped offset news that it had wiped a quarter – £2.3bn – off the value of its Indian operation due to intense competition in the sub-Continent.

When Vodafone bought control of India’s third largest mobile phone company in 2007 there were six nationwide players. There are now a dozen. While it has since signed up more than 100 million customers and become the nation’s number two player, Vodafone has been forced into a fierce price war, which has slashed margins.

The cost of operating in the country looks set to increase further when the authorities auction licences to run 3G services. Prices could run into the billions and the Indian authorities have suggested that companies such as Vodafone could pay even more for the spectrum they already have.

Chief executive Vittorio Colao, however, sent the Indian regulator a stark warning that cash today means slower growth tomorrow.

“Spectrum should not be seen as something that the government can use to squeeze money out of private capital,” he said. “Spectrum is the fuel for future economic development. If you see it that way, every time you take money out of investment you take money out of future GDP growth.”

The company’s problems in India have caused some analysts to question whether Vodafone should remain in the country. But Colao was adamant that “India is a market that when you look at it, all the projections in terms of GDP, population, wealth creation, emergence of a middle class and opportunity for data are very positive. It is a country that, from an industrial point of view, one wants to be in.”

Vodafone announced that while revenues were up 8.4% to £44.5bn, after stripping out acquisitions and foreign exchange movements, they actually declined by 2.3%. The trend has been improving over the year – in the last quarter group service revenues were down just 0.2% – so Vodafone expects to return to growth in the current financial year.

In Europe, Vodafone has been battling against fierce competition in mature markets, regulatory price cuts and the switch from high-margin voice traffic to lower margin data traffic. There has been concern that as smartphone usage takes off, it will lead to an explosion in traffic, which will require increased capital expenditure but bring little actual increase in revenues as many people are on flat-rate data tariffs.

“There is a lot of concern, I think to some extent unjustified, that the move from voice to data will be an unprofitable move for our industry,” Colao said yesterday. “But what I am saying is if companies like ours continue to invest, continue to upgrade the network and quite frankly continue to be more efficient, that switch [from voice to data] can happen at the same level of profitability.”"I think in the very long term people will end up spending more on their smartphones because they will be doing more and more stuff. But already today it is not – from a cash perspective – worsening our profitability.”

Just 11% of Vodafone’s European customers, meanwhile, have a smartphone and the company plans to increase that to 35% by 2013. At least some of that increase will come from the iPhone, which Vodafone started selling in the UK in January and will start stocking in Spain and Germany over the summer. In the UK, where Vodafone endured two years in which O2 had the Apple device exclusively, finally being able to sell the phone has halted a two year long exodus. In the three months to end March, more customers kept their mobile phone number and moved over to Vodafone UK than took their number and left, the first time Vodafone has been a net ‘porter’ of numbers for two years.

“This I can say is probably down to the iPhone,” Colao said. “In the sense that the negative in the last two years was linked to the iPhone: personally I heard a lot of people say ‘I would love to stay with Vodafone but I want an iPhone’. That was a problem and now it is not any more.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, gadget, gadgets, government, growth, iphone, largest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, phone, phones, prices, sam, service, sol, tariff, tariffs, three, uk, vodafone, world

All the networks that will be offering mobile broadband for Apple’s iPad have now set out their price plans

All three mobile phone networks that will be offering mobile broadband access for iPad users have now announced their pricing and buyers of the latest Apple gadget are likely to find themselves choosing between O2 and Orange when they want to access the web on the move.

Vodafone was the last of the three networks that will provide mobile coverage for the 3G version of the device when it goes on sale at the end of the month to reveal its prices. But neither of its two 30-day offers – one of which gives less downloading capability than Orange’s weekly bundle – have any wi-fi component and they are by far the least attractive options.

Orange, meanwhile, does not allow users of its pay as you go, daily or weekly offers to access wi-fi hotspots. The two monthly packages that it offers – at £15 and £25 a month – do come with wi-fi access but that access is capped at a rather paltry 750MB. The reason, it would seem, is that Orange customers can not only access BT’s 3,800 Openzone hotspots, but also a further 150,000 BT Business Hubs, giving users a total of 153,800 places in which they can browse the web over wi-fi.

O2, however, allows anyone signing up to its three tariffs unlimited wi-fi access to BT Openzone hotspots as well as locations operated by The Cloud. In total that will give iPad users with O2 access to wi-fi in 7,500 places across the country.

A spokesman for O2 said there is no “fair usage policy” on wi-fi access but the operator reserves the right to limit someone’s access if they are “clearly abusing the service”. But many early adopters of the iPad are likely to think twice about relying upon O2′s network for a device that requires a fast data connection. O2 came under fire last year for the poor quality of its network, especially in London. UK boss Ronan Dunne admitted in December that the firm had suffered “a short-term blip” in network quality in the capital.

The poor perception of its network, which O2 has been fighting hard to rectify, is one of the reasons why both Vodafone and Orange have done so well in sales of the iPhone since O2′s exclusive clutch on the device was broken last November. Vodafone, however, is unlikely to pick up many iPad users as it is offering just two deals – £10 a month for 1GB of data and £25 a month for 5GB – both of which are easily beaten by Orange and O2.

Based on the current pricing:

Best for light/irregular 3G usage: Orange’s 5p/MB pay as you go tariff

Best for regular 3G usage: Orange’s pay monthly £15 for 3GB

Best for heavy 3G usage: Orange’s iPad Monthly £25 for 10GB

Best for light/irregular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2′s £2 a day/500MB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

Best for regular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2′s £10 a month for 1GB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

Best for heavy 3G and wi-fi usage: O2′s £15 a month for 3GB (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

O2′s unlimited wi-fi offering makes its offer best for customers who expect to use their iPad on the go.

None of the mobile phone companies are demanding that iPad users sign up to long term contracts. The “monthly” deals from O2, Orange and Vodafone can all be cancelled at the end of the month, given 24 hours notice.

If iPad users breach the usage caps on their tariffs they will be charged an additional fee. For Orange, all its data bundles charge 5p per additional MB used with no apparent pricing cap. The exception is Orange’s 5p per MB pay as you go offer, under which users can only be charged a maximum of £40 in a single month. So once a user has exceeded £40 worth of data (800MB) they will not be charged for any more that they use. But it’s a rather expensive way of getting unlimited 3G access.

O2 customers, meanwhile, can buy the bundle again or switch to a daily rate. So an iPad user who buys its £10 a month for 1GB service and exceeds the 1GB in just a few days can either buy a new 1GB bundle and re-start the 30 days or use the £2 daily option whenever they want to access the web until their previous monthly bundle recurs.

Vodafone, meanwhile, does not automatically charge people who exceed their monthly allowance. It treats the 1GB and 5GB limits as “fair usage” caps and a spokesman said if a user consistently exceeds the limits they can expect to get a call from customer services.

O2 also maintains that it is the only operator that will allow iPad users to easily manage their tariffs, adding and changing bundles directly from the iPad device. Orange and Vodafone customers will have to register their SIM cards, either by calling the network’s customer service centre or going online. The iPad is the first device launched in the UK which makes use of micro-SIMs and according to the mobile phone companies it will be possible for consumers to request micro-SIMs from all three networks and use whichever SIM card they wish. As a result, consumers will be able to switch between networks just by switching SIMs.

Micro-SIMs can be ordered from the operators themselves or through Apple. In fact, Apple’s pre-order site restricts iPad users to just one micro-SIM per device; any customer looking to try other networks will have to deal direct with their chosen alternative network. Apple also charges 20p per micro-SIM while the networks are giving them away for free.

For many consumers the easiest thing to do at first is to order both an Orange and an O2 micro-SIM and experiment with their networks using their pay as you go and daily bundles, before signing up to anything more long term.

Here’s the full list of offers:

O2

£2 a day for 500MB (unlimited wi-fi across 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

£10 per 30 days for 1GB (unlimited wi-fi across 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

£15 per 30 days for 3GB (unlimited wi-fi across 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)

Orange

5p per MB pay as you go (no wi-fi; unlimited 3G usage, but maximum charge £40/month)

£2 per day for 200MB (no wi-fi)

£7.50 per week for 1GB (no wi-fi)

£15 per month for 3GB (wi-fi capped at 750MB/mth but available in 3,800 BT Openzone and 150,000 BT Business Hubs)

£25 per month for 10GB (wi-fi capped at 750MB/mth but available in 3,800 BT Openzone and 150,000 BT Business Hubs)

Vodafone

£10 per 30 days 1GB (no wi-fi)

£25 per 30 days 5GB (no wi-fi)

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, best, card, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, free, gadget, iphone, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, pay as you go, phone, phones, prices, service, sim, Sim Card, sol, tariff, tariffs, test, three, uk, vodafone

UK iPad owners offered pay-as-you-go, daily and weekly deals – kept separate from mobile phone plans

Owners of the 3G iPad in Britain will be able to buy mobile broadband access from Orange on a pay as you go, daily, weekly and monthly basis, the mobile phone network said today.

Prices start at £2 for one day’s 3G access and extend to £25 a month for 10GB of 3G browsing and 750MB of wi-fi usage, through BT Openzone hotspots. Vodafone and O2, who announced last month that they had also signed deals with Apple, are due to set out their pricing plans shortly.

Earlier today, Apple said it will start selling the iPad in the UK on 28 May with prices starting at £429. The cheapest 3G-enabled iPad, which also has wi-fi, will be a 16GB version at £529 including VAT; the 32GB 3G device will be £599 and the 64GB £699.

Orange is launching the device in Britain, France, Spain and Switzerland. In the UK it is offering a pay-as-you-go option that costs 5p per MB. Users of this tariff – which entails registering a credit card with Orange – will be charged a maximum of £40 a month, but can carry on browsing after using £40 worth of capacity (800MB).

Large data users, however, would be better off signing up to one of Orange’s four individual pricing plans, which all require payment up front.

For £2, customers can get a day’s worth of browsing – capped at 200MB. For £7.50, customers can get a week’s worth of browsing – up to 1GB. Beyond those usage caps, browsing is charged at 5p per MB.

There are also two contract options. Both are monthly contracts but can be cancelled at any time. For £15 a month, users get 3GB of 3G access plus up to 750MB of wi-fi browsing through BT Openzone hotspots. For £25 a month, users get 10GB of 3G access and 750MB of wi-fi through BT Openzone.

Consumers who want to use their iPad on a 3G network can pre-register for one of the micro-SIMs they will need in order to get online on the Orange website from Monday next week. The micro-SIMs can be obtained from Orange shops as well as directly from Apple.

The mobile phone companies had hoped to be able to tie their iPad pricing plans in with existing mobile phone subscriptions – so that, for instance, an iPhone customer could get unlimited iPad browsing for a few extra pounds per month. But Apple is understood to have made it plain that it wanted iPad mobile phone pricing plans to stand alone.

In the US, Apple’s wireless partner AT&T offers two contract-free options: $14.99 for 250MB per month and $29.99 for what it terms a month’s worth of “unlimited” 3G access. Customers can sign up directly through their iPad and check how much of their allowance they have used.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, card, cheapest, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, free, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, pay as you go, phone, phones, prices, sim, sol, tariff, uk, vodafone

Orange has introduced range of mobile broadband tariffs which it claims
offers more choice for mobile workers.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, orange, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk

Chiswick, fresh contracts

Orange has tweaked its mobile broadband contracts, adjusting its existing deals slightly and introducing its ‘animal’ branding to the array of tariffs on offer.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

Tags: 10, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, Deals, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, orange, sol, source the register, tariff, tariffs, uk

Holidaymakers are being milked by extortortionate charges to access the internet on their mobile phones

We are planning to go on holiday next month to France. Which is nice. I am also planning to take my phone now that the mobile internet is exploding. Which is also nice. The trouble is that I am actually planning to use my phone in order to access the web (email, Twitter, Flickr etc), and that’s where the problems start. I have been ranting about excessive data charges abroad for years so I was interested to see how things had changed now that “unlimited” data packages are widely available in the UK.

The man in the T-Mobile shop said they charged £1.50 a megabyte in data charges for mobile phones accessing the internet in France. To give some idea of what that means, I recently uploaded a three-minute video to YouTube, which was over 80MB. For nothing. If I had done that on T-Mobile’s tariff, it would have cost me £120. A single song these day could be 10MB, which would cost £15 to download.

I decided to ring my current provider, O2, to get a comparison. An extremely helpful assistant quoted me £3 a megabyte for France – twice the rate of T-Mobile, which was starting to look cheap. She pointed out that “bolt-ons” to my existing tariff were available offering a package of 10MB for £20 or 50MB for £50. A bit better, but still crap.

My final port of call was Vodafone, which used to be my operator of choice until they tried to charge me £250 for the privilege of staying loyal to them when I upgraded my phone. I wondered whether they had changed their spots. The man in the shop quoted me £4.25 a megabyte – which would have pushed the cost of uploading that video to £340 and a single track to £42.50, with no special bolt-ons to bring down the price.

So what is going on here? This is not something happening in a computer game, it is the real world. Unsuspecting people going abroad regularly get milked by those extortionate charges. And savvy people get caught as well. I know someone in the business who checked before he left for eastern Europe that he was not going to be exposed to these charges only to find out he had run up a £600 bill the first morning.

It is happening because the operators have treated their customers with scarcely concealed contempt for years. Not only did they build walled gardens around their phones, thereby shutting out rival products but they also paid content providers a pittance to create games and other stuff for their sites. This was not only bad manners but bad business. If they had paid content providers decent prices and had cheaper data charges they could have built up a market for apps years before Apple came on to the scene. But it took Apple to break their monopoly by popularising “all you can eat” data charges and letting developers keep 70% of the income (before VAT).

But where is the white knight who will ride to the rescue over data charges abroad? The European commission has done much to improve roaming charges, but hasn’t so far made much impact on data. It would be called daylight robbery except that it goes on through the night as well. It is not even in the interests of business because if international charges were capped it would lead to an explosion of data traffic, which would more than make up for the willful exploitation of their so-called customers.

There is an alternative – to use free Wi-Fi hotspots – but not everyone has access to them. The other possibility is that I may have missed something and there is actually a sensible argument for high data charges. Is there anyone out there from the operators who would care to put the argument for the defence? If not, then they should immediately put a stop to this outrageous scandal.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, blog, charges, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, comparison, email, free, line, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, phone, phones, prices, roaming, service, sol, t-mobile, tariff, three, twitter, uk, vodafone, world

Prices will be announced on 10 May, after high demand delayed launch dates outside the US

Vodafone, O2 and Orange have all signed up to supply the iPad to customers in the UK from next month.

Earlier today Apple admitted that high demand for the tablet computer means that its launch outside the US has been delayed until May. The Californian company will announce prices and open pre-orders on 10 May.

Apple is producing two versions of the device – one that only has short-range Wi-Fi technology and one that can access both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile phone networks. But users will not be able to merely insert their existing sim card into the iPad, because it uses micro-sims.

Neither O2, Orange nor Vodafone gave details of the actual prices they will charge iPad users for mobile broadband access.

In a statement Vodafone merely said it will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK”.

O2 said it will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in the UK”.

Orange said it will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in France, UK, Spain and Switzerland”.

In the UK, Vodafone, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile have all been chasing after the iPad and executives from the four networks are understood to have mhad meetings with Apple to discuss the device. T-Mobile was unavailable for comment.

In February, Vodafone’s boss, Vittorio Colao, said: “Anything that improves the customer experience with mobile data is welcome and as such I would be very interested in having it.”

The mobile phone companies want to be able to tie iPad pricing plans in with their existing tariffs. So a customer on a long-term iPhone contract, for instance, would get a sim card for their iPad for an additional monthly fee.

Apple, however, is understood to favour giving customers the ability to pay only for the mobile access they need, on a pre-pay basis.

As a result, O2, Orange and Vodafone are expected to offer both pre-pay and contract deals.

In the US, Apple’s network partner, AT&T, is offering 250MB of data for $14.99 a month and unlimited data for $29.99, with no requirement for customers to sign long-term contracts.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, Deals, gadget, gadgets, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sim, Sim Card, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone

T-Mobile has enhanced its Business Unlimited tariff by including free conference calling and compatibility with its Boosters

Read Full Story…
(Source Mobile News CWP)

Tags: 10, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tmobile, uk

Small businesses will be able to add flexible boosters to business package

Read Full Story…
(Source Mobile Today)

Tags: 12, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, mobile, mobiles, new, sol, t-mobile, tariff, uk

New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Here’s an exclusive deal for you from e2save. A free Samsung C3050 with a free Samsung 32 inch LCD TV and an extra £20 automatic cash back. It’s on an 18 month contract with Vodafone, 300 mins and unlimited texts for just £30 per month. Your Samsung TV will be sent out at the same time as your phone and your £20 cash back will be sent 28 days later.

The Samsung LE32B450 is an excellent TV (I have one!). It has a slim build with rounded edges and a glossy finish. It has a Freeview tuner built-in as you’d expect, and 3x HDMI sockets plus SCART and Component. Resolution is 1366×768 and you can plug in your PC or laptop using a VGA cable. The TV swivels on its pedestal or it can be wall-mounted. The picture quality is brilliant, blacks are black and images are bursting with colour. For a mid-range TV, motion is good with no noticeable lag on fast-moving action scenes. The LE32B450 is equally as good for gaming with a dedicated game mode that enhances images on your Xbox 360, PS3 or Nintendo Wii.

The Samsung C3050 is one of the best entry-level sliders and it’s higher spec’d than most of the other phones we see with these low cost, free gift bundle deals. It has a camera, music player, FM radio, GPRS, an organiser, Bluetooth and built in hands-free. With the Samsung C3050’s expandable memory, you can store up to 8GB of music, photos, videos and more. It’s all right there in your pocket, wherever you go.

Click here for the exclusive deal

Tags: 3, all, best, compare, contract, deal, Deals, free, free gift, HD, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, phones, sam, samsung, sol, tariff, test, vodafone

MVNO launches new pay as you go tariff

Read Full Story…
(Source Mobile Today)

Tags: 12, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, launches, mobile, mobiles, new, pay as you go, sol, tariff, uk, virgin

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.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, card, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, government, HD, largest, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, orange, phone, phones, prices, service, sol, tariff, tariffs, three, uk, vodafone, world

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.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, free, google, iphone, largest, line, marketing, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, three, uk, vodafone

Despite Google’s protests, its entry into the mobile phone market will change the game – and makes operators ‘dumb pipes’

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, tried to reassure operators this week that the search engine’s direct entry into mobile phones through its Android platform was designed to make telcos money, not to turn them into “dumb pipes”.

He told anxious operators at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Google had no intention of building broad infrastructure to compete with the operators. Google’s protests that it is helping others to make money will be taken with a pinch of salt by other businesses such as newspapers and sat-nav operators (who have been undermined by Google’s free alternative) but welcomed by consumers.

Of course Google isn’t going to build a rival infrastructure. It is going to bypass it altogether by using Wi-Fi as it becomes increasingly available and letting users choose which operator they might use in conjunction. A week ago I bought Google’s new Nexus mobile device from its US website as my main phone.

Make no mistake, it is game-changing in two important ways. First, it turns the operators from arbiters of how you can use your phone into the equivalent of finance companies. I paid $529 (£338) for a SIM-free phone. I could have left it at that and just used it at the increasing number of Wi-Fi hotspots around town – but that would deprive me of incoming calls and the ability to use services such as mapping in places where there is no Wi-Fi. So I signed up with O2 for a pay-as-you go Sim plus an “unlimited” data package for a very reasonable £7.50 a month. If that isn’t turning the operator into a “dumb pipe” then I don’t know what is.

Others have offered Sim-free phones in the past. What makes this different is that it comes with Google’s integrated suite of services, giving an easy user experience. One click and my Gmail comes up, another one and the day’s calendar, or Twitter or whatever – appears to fill the ample 3.7in screen.

The game-changing part is the way Google is bringing voice back to the telephone in a way that hasn’t happened before. A few months ago I tried the company’s voice search out by speaking an inquiry instead of typing it in and was amazed that it got it right the first three times. Now, on a more extensive test, while well under 100%, it is highly impressive and I intend to use it as my default method of searching for standard queries. It beats the otherwise impressive Vlingo (on my BlackBerry) for speed and accuracy.

Google could have another killer app in the rollout – starting in the US – of its own internet telephone system for mobiles. When that is seamlessly integrated into all the other features that 150m Gmail users enjoy then Google could become a major international telephone operator in its own right. And if Wi-Fi ever becomes ubiquitous, then the sky’s the limit. All this will provide competition for Skype and the up-and-coming UK based Truphone, which I use for all my long-distance calls via a downloaded web app from my iPod Touch. Truphone has its own killer app that neither Skype nor Google has – you can get through to a real human being when things go wrong. Miracles can happen.

If the existing operators come under siege in a few year’s time as a result of web telephony, then they have only themselves to blame for the often contemptuous way they have treated consumers. Sure, they have, commendably, invested billions in much-needed infrastructure, but that is no excuse for what they have done.

They have made three major errors of business strategy and are about to make a fourth. First, they built walled gardens around their phones – depriving users of the universality of the web. One early Vodafone smartphone didn’t even have Google on it. When I inquired why, I was told there was no demand for it. As a consequence of their walled gardens of selected products they paid pathetic revenue shares to content providers thereby strangling an embryonic industry at birth until Apple resuscitated it. Had they opened their walls and given developers a fair return they could have created an app revolution long before Apple.

Second, by milking their customers for exorbitant amounts every time they used their phones to access websites, they delayed the mobile data revolution by several years. It was only when Apple insisted on adopting a fixed tariff – though it wasn’t the first – that web access from phones soared.

Third, by treating promiscuous customers more favourably than loyal ones they abandoned the basis of trust that all good brands need. And the next mistake? They are pushing for abandonment of “net neutrality” whereby all customers are treated more or less equally. They hope to make more money by giving bandwidth preference to content they get money from. You can imagine how popular that will be if some customers get slow broadband or none at all to make way for other people to watch Sky or Virgin videos.

As a phone, Google’s Nexus is the usual mixture of pluses and minuses. It has got a great 5 megapixel camera as can be seen here and a much better screen resolution than the iPhone, but the touchscreen itself is less reliable. Although it has over 20,000 apps in its store – and growing – they are not yet near the quality of the iPhone’s archive. Surprisingly, I have been very disappointed so far with Google’s mapping which ought to be its biggest strength. On a cloudy country walk it failed to make any connection with a satellite for a longitude/latitude fix and as mobile reception was flaky it didn’t download complete maps.

Unlike Nokia’s maps, which can be embedded in your phone Google has to rely on a web connection to download them each time. The other thing about it – and most other similar – phones which doesn’t get reported much is that it is actually difficult to read the screen when you most need to – walking in daylight. But one has to admit for all these occasional quibbles the new generation of smartphones offers awesome yet affordable technology. I would not have dreamed it possible 20 years ago.

twitter.com/vickeegan

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, free, google, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, o sim, o2, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, tariff, test, three, Touch, twitter, uk, virgin, vodafone, world

• HTC’s Legend smartphone will come to UK in April
• Analysts hail design classic in same league as Apple
• Vodafone snaps up handset for Europe

HTC has come of age. The Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer, once known only as the maker of Windows phones under the SPV brand, today unveiled a new phone sporting Google’s Android software which analysts are predicting could steal a march on Apple in the smartphone design wars.

The HTC Legend, which runs the latest Android software called Eclair, is made from a single block of aluminium and has a very bright and clear 3.2 inch AMOLED (ultra-bright LED) display. Vodafone has grabbed the handset in Europe, wary of losing out after missing the iPhone in some of the company’s key European markets.

The Legend will come to the UK in April and already analysts are predicting that it will be a design classic following its launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Legend’s clever use of milled aluminium casing could scoop Apple’s direction for the next iPhone design,” said CCS Insight.

Despite its body being engineered from a single piece of aluminium, the HTC Legend has a removable battery – something which the iPhone conspicuously lacks – which slides out from a compartment at the bottom of the phone. The back of the battery casing also contains the phone’s antenna so that its metal body does not hinder signal strength.

HTC has updated the user face – called HTC Sense – that sits atop Android on the device. Alongside refinements to the phone’s address book, so that contacts can be organised into groups such as business contacts and friends, it pulls information from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter into a single Friend Stream of updates.

The Android platform has been the making of HTC. It created the first phone, the G1, using the software, while the Legend is the new version of another successful Android phone, the Hero. The Legend, however, has a rather less intrusive “chin” at the bottom of the device than the Hero.

Alongside it, HTC also unveiled the HTC Desire, which also uses HTC Sense. It had previously been codenamed the HTC Bravo and several UK operators have been vying to get hold of it as it is essentially the same as Google’s own Nexus One device, which HTC also produced. However, it has an optical trackpad rather than a roller ball, and is understood to be cheaper than the Google device.

Orange said it will be stocking the HTC Desire from April and it will be free on selected monthly tariffs. It is likely to be priced the same as the iPhone, a policy Vodafone is expected to follow with the Nexus One in the UK when it launches next month.

The HTC Desire will also be available in the UK on T-Mobile from 26 March.

The Desire has a large 3.7 inch AMOLED screen, like the Nexus One, and contains the 1GHz Snapdragon processor which is also found on the Nexus One. It includes such iPhone staples as pinching to zoom on web pages while it also automatically recalibrates text so that when you zoom into a page, you do not have to scroll left and right to get to the end of a line.

Crucially, it also supports Flash, which Apple still resolutely refuses to back.

HTC also announced the HTC HD mini, which uses the 6.5 version of Windows Phone rather than the series 7 platform launched by Steve Ballmer yesterday.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, blog, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, google, HD, HTC, iphone, latest, launches, line, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, orange, phone, phones, sam, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, test, twitter, uk, update, vodafone, world