ExclusiveConnecting London Car Telephones to TheFonecast.com Opinion The Fonecast - June 4, 2026 It was 1996 when I started working at the Cricklewood head office of Peoples Phone [writes Mark Bridge], initially in a sales support role before becoming part of the Marketing team. The company was an independent mobile phone retailer with a growing network of high-street shops and connected customers. In November 1996 the company and its customer base were acquired by Vodafone, which had already taken over the Talkland retail business and was soon to add Astec to its portfolio.
ExclusiveOfcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges News Mark - November 3, 2024 New rules from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom will protect customers when they use their mobile phone on a foreign network. In addition, customers will be alerted if they are inadvertently roaming, perhaps because they're near an international border.
ExclusiveGlobal smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast News Mark - November 23, 2023 A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.
ExclusiveVodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses Networks and operators Mark - June 20, 2023 Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.
ExclusiveUK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023 News Mark - December 18, 2022 UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.
ExclusiveThe mobile web and your personal information Opinion Mark - March 30, 2010 James Rosewell writes: The mobile techie community has known about mobile networks and indeed some handsets providing unique information about mobile devices and customers for a long time. Collin Mulliner, a graduate student at the Technische Universitat Berlin, has recently bought the issue to the attention of the public during a talk at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver.
ExclusiveAdmit your mobile phone mistakes... and pay for them Opinion Mark - March 22, 2010 Mark Bridge writes: “Take some responsibility for your own actions”. There’s probably not a parent in the world who hasn’t said or thought something similar. But that’s not the message coming from regulators in the USA. We’ve laughed in the past about coffee cups from the United States that warn about the coffee they contain. Now there seems to be a similar movement against mobile phones that connect to the internet.
ExclusiveApple's HTC patent suit could be another reason for someone to buy Palm Opinion Mark - March 11, 2010 This is a guest post from BusinessInsider.com written by Gregor Schauer, who has worked in tech in Silicon Valley since 2000. Gregor has also recently spent two years in equity research at JMP Securities and Jefferies, covering the internet sector and enterprise software.
ExclusiveMobile business applications: the next frontier Opinion Mark - March 4, 2010 Anthony Keyworth, Orange UK’s Director of Product Marketing, has been gazing into his crystal ball to predict which business-focussed mobile applications could change the ways we work in the next five years. His top four future developments, published under the heading “The next frontier for mobile business applications”, are:
ExclusiveIt’s all been done before Opinion Mark - March 3, 2010 Mark Bridge writes: No-one really likes an anticlimax. That was my biggest complaint about the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. Plenty of potential, a nice new interface – but nothing much that wasn’t being done elsewhere.