Mark Bridge writes:

Supermarkets. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Actually, that’s not true. Most of us seem to be happy enough with a half-price bottle of wine but less convinced about globalisation and supplier relationships.

But none of that’s bothering me today. Instead, I’m troubled – as I have been for several months – by the TV commercial for Tesco’s prepay mobile phone tariff.

Mark Bridge writes:

Welcome to TheFonecast.com for this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, an itinerant online publication that contains the best mobile-focussed writing from the previous seven days.

The summer holidays may have reduced the quantity of online commentary for Carnival #234… but the quality remains unaffected.

In recent months there’s been a lot of talk about smart metering and the wider subject of machine-to-machine communications. With well over 100% penetration of mobile phones in the UK, the promise of machines exchanging information over the mobile network offers operators a new opportunity for growth.

To explain more about the technology and the potential, we invited Ross Catley to join us for this week’s edition of The Fonecast. Ross has worked in the utility & telecommunications industries and is now a consultant who advises on smart metering.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

James Rosewell writes:

Mobile network operators have responded en-masse to the success of Apple’s App Store. Apple should be very concerned. The Wholesale Application Community (WAC) has been formed as a corporate entity today with representation from AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, GSMA, KT Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, SK Telecom, Smart Communications, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp., Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone. Not many major Mobile Network Operators (MNO) are missing from the list.

Mark Bridge writes:

They were a proud race. Proud of their individuality. Proud of the simple yet high-tech environment they inhabited.

But their population wasn’t growing as quickly as it had. They weren’t dying out – far from it, because they were committed to the cause – but there weren’t as many bright new faces as there’d been before. And now the Others were moving closer.

Yes, they’d done their best to resist the Others. They’d tried moving into new areas; not running away but expanding. It seemed to work. A new generation – a new race, some said – had been born. Different, yet the same. So why did they still feel as though the Others were getting dangerously close?

That’s not the opening of the worst science-fiction novel of all time. It’s the place where some people think Apple finds itself at the moment.