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BT and Communications Workers Union reach 39-month pay agreement that sees team members receive pensionable pay rises worth three per cent each financial year from April 2010 to March 2013

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(Source Mobile News CWP)

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BT has reached a deal with the CWU union for an “unprecedented” three-year pay deal worth over 9 per cent, the company has announced.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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The pay dispute between BT and the
Communications
Workers Union (CWU) has been settled.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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BT has announced it has reached an “unprecedented” deal with the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) worth 9% over three years.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Google OS to eclipse Redmond

Android’s share of the US smartphone market surged 4 per cent between February and May, according to research outfit comScore, putting Google on the verge of overtaking Microsoft for the number three spot behind RIM BlackBerry and Apple.…

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(Source The Register)

Tags: android, apple, Blackberry, google, phone, source the register, three

Samsung was the big winner in the notebook market during the first quarter of this year,
as the world’s top three vendors gave away a combined three points in market
share.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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With iPhone and iPad sales responsible for the majority of Apple’s revenue, the company is losing interest in what was once its keystone product

In the technology world, the name Mary Meeker is one to conjure with. Her official job title is managing director at the investment bank Morgan Stanley. Unofficially, her title (granted by Barron’s, a specialist financial publication) is “Queen of the Net”. This is mainly because her regular research reports on “internet trends” have become required reading for anyone interested in understanding what’s going on in the networked economy.

But it also has something to do with the fact that she’s been around a long time. In August 1995, for example, her employer was the lead manager on the Netscape IPO which triggered the first internet boom, and she was the firm’s leading research analyst. In August 2004, Morgan Stanley also led on the Google IPO – and guess who was their leading analyst then too. Given the seven to one ratio between internet and calendar years, this means that Ms Meeker has been watching the industry for about 105 internet “years”.

Her latest “internet trends” presentation is a powerpoint essay so overloaded with data it would cause Edward Tufte, the celebrated expert on data visualisation, to faint. For me, two charts in particular stood out. The first shows sales of smartphones and PCs on the same timescale. It suggests that, sometime in 2012, sales of the phones will exceed those of PCs. The second chart contains two pie-charts which capture the distribution of Apple’s revenues in 2007 and 2010. The differences are striking.

In the second quarter of 2007, for example, 47% of Apple’s revenues came from its Macintosh range of computers. The iPod accounted for 29% of revenues and iTunes for 11%, while “Others” accounted for the remaining 11%. The iPhone brought in 0% for the simple reason that it didn’t go on sale until that summer.

Spool forward to the first quarter of 2010 and, according to Meeker, the iPhone now brings in 40% of Apple’s revenues, while the iPod and iTunes together account for 24%. Sales of Macintosh computers are now responsible for only 28% of the company’s sales. These are the numbers which underpin Steve Jobs’s recent assertion that Apple had become a “mobile devices” company.

He followed up with a new metaphor, likening PCs to “trucks” – ie things that companies need to have but which few individuals own. This kind of talk prompted journalists to wonder whether his long-term strategy was to get out of the computer business altogether. In a nicely ironic touch, a blogger wrote a “Dear John” letter from Steve to the Mac (you know the genre: “It’s been lovely knowing you but I feel that the time has come for us to realise our individual potentials separately…”). This triggered a terse, irritable response from Jobs. Suggestions that Apple was thinking of dropping the Mac were, he emailed, “completely wrong. Just wait”.

Well, we’re waiting. Some seasoned Mac users are beginning to get impatient. Dan Gillmor, the prominent Silicon Valley observer and evangelist for “citizen journalism”, has been a Mac user for many years, but recently announced that he’s moving to Linux running on the beautiful new ThinkPad laptops emerging from Lenovo. Other Mac users are beginning to mutter about whether Apple has essentially lost interest in what was once its keystone product. Sure, the company continues to make incremental improvements in the MacBook, Mac mini and iMac lines, but somehow the fire has gone out.

In a way, that’s not surprising. Companies go where the commercial opportunities are. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Apple’s recent history is that the spectacular growth opportunities are in mobile devices, not deskbound computers or even laptops. The iPad is selling at a rate of a million a month. More than 1.4 million of the new iPhones were sold in the first four days. And the pace seems to be increasing. It took the first iPhone 74 days to reach its first million. The iPad got there in 28. Only things like the Nintendo Wii (13 days) shift faster. Then there’s the small matter of the 40% contribution the iPhone now makes to Apple’s bottom line. In those circumstances, if you were Steve Jobs, what would you focus on?

For the rest of us, the thing to focus on is the way smartphones are overtaking PCs as the gateway that most people will use to access the internet. There are now only three players in that game – Apple, Google (via the Android operating system) and RIM (makers of the BlackBerry). Until recently, I would have said that the (open, permissive) Google/Android system would win out over the (closed, tightly controlled) Apple device. But sales of the new iPhone lead one to wonder if it will be Apple, and not Google, which replaces Microsoft as the company we love to hate.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, email, google, growth, iphone, latest, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, sam, sim, sol, test, three, Touch, uk, world

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

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about three fundamental technology trends: mobile, clouds and networking

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(Source The Guardian)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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

Trim your Sim

Those of you buying an iPhone 4 or an iPad 3G will face the issue of getting Micro Sim card replacements. You have three options:…

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(Source The Register)

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Google claims new software, dubbed Android 2.2 Froyo, could facilitate fivefold increase in performance speeds

Nexus One users can today get their hands on the latest Android software update, dubbed Android 2.2 Froyo. The over-the-air update will be restricted to Nexus One handsets initially, and will be gradually rolled out throughout this week.

Six months after the release of Android 2.1, Google says the new software – revealed at the company’s annual I/O conference last month – could increase performance speeds by up to five times. Good news, too, for those wanting to use their Android-powered device as a portable WiFi hotspot, as the Froyo software upgrade now allows.

What else do we get with the 2.2 upgrade?

Certain mobiles using 2.2 software will be able to share their WiFi connection with up to eight other devices. And you can now use 2.2-powered devices as a 3G connection for Windows and Linux laptops by plugging in with a USB cable. CPU performance has been given a boost, with the software upgrade able to load data two-to-five times faster. An upgrade to the memory should result in faster app-switching and a “smoother performance” on memory-constrained devices, Google said. Performance of the browser has also been bolstered when loading ‘JavaScript-heavy‘ pages and pages with Flash.

Users can now access the three pages – phone, applications finder and browser – from any of the five home screen panels.

The camera and galleries have been given a modest overhaul as well – everything from white balance to geo-tagging to flash can be done with on-screen buttons. An LED flash also lets users film in the dark or in low-light settings.

Apple released its own software upgrade, iOS4, last week compatible with iPhones 3G, 3GS and 4, as well as the new-generation iPod Touch.

Android 2.2 is expected to reach HTC Desire devices by Q3 this year. An HTC spokesperson told Recombu: “We are working hard with our partners to update the HTC Sense experience on Froyo and distribute it to our customers as fast as possible. We expect to release updates for several of our 2010 models including Desire, Legend and Wildfire beginning in Q3.”

Vodafone told the Guardian that it is in the process of getting approval of its own version of Android 2.2, and that the software upgrade will be rolled out to customers in due course. The mobile network also encouraged those planning to make use of Froyo’s tethering capabilities to consider signing up to a Vodafone price plan, saying that 3G tethering would eat into a user’s data tariff.

More follows

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, google, HTC, iphone, latest, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, phone, phones, released, tariff, test, three, Touch, uk, update, vodafone

Chief executive Steve Jobs hails ‘most successful launch in Apple’s history’ despite reported problems over phone reception

Apple says it sold 1.7m iPhone 4s in its first three days, a record for the newest version of its top-selling product, and the company could have sold more but for production constraints. The latest model features video calling and an updated body, although some users have reported problems with reception, apparently due to a design flaw.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the iPhone 4′s launch “the most successful in Apple’s history” but added: “We apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Research in the US by the analysts Piper Jaffray and in the UK by AQA suggests that 77% of iPhone 4 buyers queueing outside stores on the first days were upgrading from previous models – implying that 23% of buyers were new to the platform.

The record sales have come despite shortages of the smaller-capacity 16-gigabyte version of the iPhone, which is coloured white. Apple apologised last week and said it would be unable to fulfil early demand for them. By comparison, the previous iPhone 3GS model, launched a year ago, sold 1m in its first weekend.

Apple is competing for market share in the smartphone arena with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry brand; Google’s Android software, which is used by multiple handset makers; and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of the smartphone market but which has seen its share and profitability shrink since Apple and Google entered the market in 2007.

Analysts reckon Apple will be able to sell plenty more of the devices: Colin Gillis of BGC Partners in New York and Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, project that Apple will have sold 2m to June 26, the end of the company’s fiscal quarter. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, had previously estimated 1m to 1.5m.

Apple had a difficult time getting enough touch screens to meet demand for the device, said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York, so the early sales figures may not be an accurate reflection of demand. “It’s too early to say if this is negative,” said Kumar.

While Apple has some production constraints, the company “has a captive audience”, he said. “Demand for the iPhone 4 is not yet satiated so it just gets pushed out into subsequent quarters.”

The iPhone sales results follow Apple’s statement last week that it sold more than 3m of its iPad tablet computing device in the first 80 days. With the iPad, introduced April 3, and the three-year-old iPhone, Apple has widened its business beyond the Macintosh computer and iPod media player.

Sales of the iPhone accounted for 40% of Apple’s revenue last quarter. The device has shown an upward trend in sales: the first sold 700,000 on its first weekend in June 2007, despite a high price that was later cut. In 2008, the iPhone 3G sold 1m in its first week.

Apple’s share price has more than doubled since the original iPhone’s release on 29 June 2007, and it passed Microsoft as the largest technology company by market value late in May.

Some iPhone 4 customers have reported trouble with the new antenna design, which uses a stainless steel band on the outside of the casing. The phone signal drops when users cover the bottom left corner of the device with their palm.

Apple responded by recommending holding the phone differently or using a case to solve the problem. Customers in the five countries began lining up days in advance to buy the device. Apple said the iPhone will be available in 88 countries by the end of September.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, Blackberry, comparison, google, iphone, iphone 3g s, iphone 3gs, largest, latest, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sol, test, three, Touch, uk, update

More than 1.7m, apparently

Can 1.7m punters be wrong? That’s how many folk had snapped up Apple’s iPhone 4 by close of play Saturday, 26 June – three days after the handset went on sale.…

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(Source The Register)

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The chief executive of the search giant believes smartphones will empower the poor and is the equivalent to the arrival of TV

Phenomenally successful, but also imitated, envied and feared – Google is the technological icon of our time. But is its ubiquity and influence a force for good?

Chief executive Eric Schmidt has no doubts. He tells the Guardian that Google has been instrumental in a generational shift in democratising information. “Over my lifetime, we are going to go from a small number of people having access to most of the world’s information, to virtually everybody in the world having access to virtually all of the world’s information,” he said. “That’s because of web search, cheap phones and automatic translation. That’s a pretty amazing achievement and Google is part of that.”

Yet with Google active in so many areas, from shopping to video and translation to music, its competitors are becoming more numerous and opponents more vociferous. Schmidt admits: “We try to do everything … We don’t shake off the big goals.”

In an interview ahead of his keynote presentation at the Guardian’s Activate Summit on Thursday, he makes it clear Google is positioning itself for the future through mobile, with the development of its Android mobile system and with subsequent Google-branded handsets. He is keener to talk about this area than the battle with newspaper groupss such as News International, whose paywall model is partly based on what it considers Google’s parasitical attitude to original content.

The mobile battle pitches the three biggest tech firms against each other: Google, Apple and Microsoft. Analyst Gartner puts Android as the world’s fourth most-popular smartphone operating system in the first quarter of 2010 – ahead of Microsoft in a market it joined less than two years ago but behind Symbian (Nokia), Research in Motion (Blackberry) and Apple.

“I believe that the very best engineering is now going on the mobile devices — the hardest problems and the most clever solutions,” says Schmidt. “You know who the person is and where they are, and you don’t get that from a desktop app.” The 50,000 apps built for Android, mostly by third-party developers, cover almost every topic, but the one killer app is still Google itself, says Schmidt.

Schmidt describes how our online lives are now more personal, social and mobile. “When people are awake, they are now online, and that has a lot of implications for society and for Google,” he says. Google’s secret, he adds (though it’s not much of a secret), is that it can handle more data than its rivals because it has larger networks and data centres. Google in effect pulled its business from China earlier this year after moving the operation to Hong Kong, bypassingChina’s censorship regime. Google, whose company motto is “Do no evil” had been heavily criticised for its decision to do business in China and its rethink was welcomed by the industry. It also increased pressure on rivals who still operate there.

“Google doesn’t necessarily do things that other companies do. We have our own set of principles that we work hard on. In the China case, the decision was made not for revenue – it was about what we were willing to deal with. We want to be a good global citizen and we believe very strongly in the openness of information.”

Another key push from Google is encouraging governments to open information to the public, via formats that developers can build useful public services around. One recent victory for open data campaigners in the UK was Transport for London opening its travel data for commercial use, but the coalition government has indicated it may establish a broader public “right to data” that will have to be provided by local and national authorities.Schmidt says Google’s policy is to encourage governments to open their data to the public. The California-based company has teams helping to prepare “non web-resident” archives and databases for the web. “It is no longer acceptable online for government researchers to publish documents read by 500 people in printed form,” he says. “It needs to be web first.

Once that happens, there are lots of interesting things you can do to correlate real-time information, if that is what is needed, or put it on a map … government services are fundamentally about where people are, about what is going on in my town or my school.”

These projects are just as relevant in developing countries, where the introduction of smarter, cheaper phones has created a powerful network. How does Google help developing countries break through the digital divide, and ensure the opportunities of the web are open to all? “Hardware manufacturers are being incentivised to make higher volumes of lower-priced mobiles, and prices have fallen dramatically. But a young person now in pretty much any country, if they have a mobile device, can get access to pretty much all the world’s information and get it translated into their own language.”

Arriving at Google in 2001 after a career spent in Silicon Valley, Schmidt is still excited by its possibilities. “That’s a big news thing – that’s equivalent to the arrival of television.”

For more information on the Activate Summit, visit guardian.co.uk/activate

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, cheaper, deal, global, google, government, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, prices, service, sol, three, uk, world

Authors such as Iain Banks and Martina Cole are increasingly supplementing book releases with apps full of bonus material

The way the books industry is interacting with digital media is developing faster than many had foreseen, with the latest example an attempt to offer fans of author Iain M Banks exclusive unseen chapters, his original notes and commentary for his latest novel.

Mobile software company TradeMobile has worked with Banks’s publisher Little, Brown to develop the free application for the iPhone, which launches this Thursday (1 July). Readers who have bought the paperback of Banks’s latest novel, Transition, will be able to scan a unique barcode on their edition with their iPhone, and companion features for the novel will be transmitted to their screen.

A best-selling author, the publishers also hope the new app may entice readers uninitiated into his complicated universe of difference worlds and civilisations. “For something as complicated as Transition it makes sense,” said Banks. “It’s very much like a DVD extras.”

The app also includes character biographies; after a “slightly anguished” email from his German translator, Banks realised that a character called Bisquitine might need her language and cultural references explaining.

“She appears toward the end of the novel and has an important part to play, and a very eccentric way of expressing herself,” says the author. “It took half a day to write and three to explain.”

Kirk Bowe at TradeMobile says: “You’re able to tap in a page number and get back all the characters, scenes and locations which may be relevant to that page.”

Beyond the iPhone

TradeMobile is currently in talks with Little, Brown about extending the application to other handsets as well as the iPhone. “This helps people who aren’t particularly familiar with an author, especially an author like Iain whom they might not have approached before … it will fill in the blanks that may sometimes scare people away.”

In March the number of books available as iPhone apps passed the number of games for the first time (www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/09/books-overtake-games-iphone-apps). “It was a tipping point,” says digital editor Dan Franklin at rival publisher Canongate. “The plan is now to be creating something you can only experience digitally” — something which, he admits, defies the instincts of a publisher. “It’s our next challenge [but] it’s difficult,” he says.

TradeMobile’s Bowe feels the “companion” approach works particularly well for fiction. “Tolkien for example would be amazing,” he says. “Really for authors with rich, detailed characters and locations it’s great.”

Banks agrees. “It works well for science fiction, especially when you have a universe or place you go back to. These places gradually build up.

“It’s there if you want it – and that’s the beauty of it, it’s an opt-in thing. It’s not being forced down your neck; if you just want the story, you can have it,” says the author. “We’ll see how it does with the science-fiction stuff – if it’s successful it’s the obvious thing to do to extend it to my other novels.”

Added value

Little, Brown is part of the UK’s largest publishing conglomerate, Hachette UK, which has already launched a similar app for popular crime novelist Martina Cole, and has apps in development for authors including Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Holford and Ian Rankin.

“Anyone can replicate the experience of reading a physical book in an app. Our feeling is that just isn’t very exciting,” says head of digital George Walkley. “With Iain Banks and Martina Cole we’ve tried to provide added value and extra material for authors who have very passionate followings.”

At Canongate, Franklin is impressed with Little, Brown’s new app. “What is cool is that they’re getting it to directly interact with a print edition,” he says. “It’s very clever and something we’re looking to do.”

Canongate is no slouch in the digital department itself, however, launching a (paid-for) enhanced iPhone app for Nick Cave’s novel The Death of Bunny Munro in September, complete with videos of Cave and an audio version synched to the text of the book, scored by Cave himself. The app won second place in MediaGuardian’s own innovation awards, the Megas, earlier this year. And in May, it brought out an enhanced app for David Eagleman’s short story collection Sum: Tales from the Afterlives, featuring videos of Eagleman discussing the book, and a synched audio version read by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry and Noel Fielding.

Like Walkley, Eagleman believes it is important for an app to be more than just an electronic version of a book. “An electronic version of a book merely grants portability. But a thoughtful app can open new inroads to explore the material, as well as ways to keep the material updated and fresh,” he says.

“By having the option to explore a book beyond the original text — by dint of videos, living links, and so on — it becomes a living, breathing, updating organism, just like the rest of our technology.”

Banks adds: “Everyone’s feeling around – no one knows what’s going to work. It’s quite a nervous time to be a publisher. They’re trying to do what they can to keep books interesting. We will just see how it goes.”

Eagleman agrees. “We’re at an exploratory period now, and no one knows where it’s going. If you imagine yourself 100 years from now looking back, it’s clear that apps are in their infancy and just learning how to crawl. Once they become adults, they might offer such a different experience of the material that they will speciate into an entirely different storytelling animal — as has happened, for example, with movies.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, best, email, free, iphone, largest, latest, launches, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, sim, talks, test, three, uk, update, world

OMTP sings WAC me up before you go go

Operator talking shop the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) has sketched out its last three papers before it gets absorbed into the Wireless Application Community.…

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(Source The Register)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

iPhone 4 will be available to order in 24 hours, on the 24th of June. Customers will have the option of 16GB/32GB memory options and a traditional glossy black or modern smooth white colour scheme. In addition to this the iPhone 3GS 8GB becomes available with superb pricing entry points and range of tariffs to suit all needs.

T-Mobile and 3 have yet to reveal their pricing and we’ve heard from a reliable source that there could be some cheaper options for business users and self-employed within the next couple of weeks. But for now, let’s take a look at the initial offers from Vodafone and Orange, which will be available to buy online tomorrow, and O2’s deals which will only be available to buy in-store.

iPhone 4 16GB – To buy the handset for just £29 all three networks are offering 1200 minutes for £45pm on a 24-month contract. Here the similarities end though with Vodafone offering 1GB of Internet/Web mail per month, 1GB of Wi-Fi usage with BT Openzone and 5MB of European roaming data usage per day. Orange has offered ‘unlimited’ mobile Internet and Wi-Fi with BT Openzone with a fair usage policy of 750MB per month. Unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone Wi-Fi (fair usage policy in force) is provided by O2 along with 750MB of data usage.

For those wishing to keep the monthly line rental to a minimum, O2 and Vodafone offer £25pm rentals with the iPhone available at £279/£219 respectively and Orange offer a rental at £30pm with a fantastic price of only £169 for the handset. The same data offers apply as above but with O2 lowering their data usage 500MB per month and Vodafone removing their free European roaming data.

iPhone 4 32GB – Things get a little shaken up here so those who desire the high-end memory iPhone 4 can really take advantage of the networks different takes on what the user may want.

Vodafone and Orange tempt those who want a low handset cost with Orange pricing the iPhone at £29 with unlimited minutes, data and Wi-Fi for £75pm whilst Vodafone costs the handset at £59 with 3000 minutes, 1GB of data, 1GB of Wi-Fi and include their 5MB daily European roaming promotion.

Lower monthly line rentals see the handset costs ballooning up to £300+ but O2 provide some nice middle ground. Its £45pm/1200 free minutes and 750MB of data plan have the iPhone priced at £129 with unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone.

iPhone 3GS 8GB – The release of the iPhone 4 opens up an attractive set of offers here for the new 8GB release of the iPhone 3GS. Provided free of charge across all three networks with 600 free minutes at £35pm the iPhone 3GS becomes a tempting, low cost offer. Various amounts of data and Wi-Fi usage are on offer to ensure the best of the iPhones features can be enjoyed without the threat of large bills arriving through the letter box.

A full set of 18 month contracts are also available with Vodafone providing the handsets at the same cost but with an additional £5pm added to the rental. Orange has taken the opposite route with the line rental remaining the same but with a significant increase in the iPhones cost.

We think the networks should be praised for being brave enough to take a range of different approaches to the device and line rental costs as this has ensured that you, the user, can get the very best deal tailored to your own needs.

Compare iPhone 4 16GB deals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3G television tests

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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