New products from BlackBerry, Google, HP and Nokia
Mark Bridge writes:
Last year, the Google I/O developer conference gave us plenty of product announcements: Google Glass, the Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus Q device and the Jelly Bean version of Android. This year’s announcements were less dramatic: a streaming music service, a Google-friendlier Galaxy S4 and some game development tools. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) Apple announced its 50 billionth app download in the middle of the event.
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BT’s WiFi service now has more than 5 million hotspots in homes and commercial properties across the UK and Ireland, having added more than 20,000 new hotspots every week during the past 12 months.
The company says more than 400 million connections were made on its WiFi networks between April 2012 and March 2013.
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BT is building a new high-capacity transmission network as part of a ten-year deal to support O2’s forthcoming 4G mobile phone service in the UK.
The deal between BT Wholesale and Telefónica UK will give O2 the network capacity it needs for 4G.
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...and why Mobile Termination Rates need to fall
James Rosewell writes:
Due to growth in staff numbers my business (51Degrees.mobi) is in the process of moving offices. Coincidentally I'm also moving our home broadband. It’s not been a pleasant experience.
This got me thinking, because a few weeks ago on thefonecast.com we discussed why Ofcom isn’t treating Mobile Termination Rates (MTR) in the same way as fixed-line termination rates. The mobile industry justifies higher MTRs on the assumption that a mobile network costs more to run than a fixed-line network. It was certainly true when the fixed costs of running a mobile network had to be shared across a relatively small number of customers, even if they did pay a fortune for their contracts and terminals. Intuitively I'd say that’s just not true anymore.
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Ofcom has published its eighth quarterly report that show the level of complaints for telephone, broadband and pay TV services, covering the three months until the end of 2012.
The proportion of complaints about fixed-line phone, broadband, ‘pay as you go’ mobile phone and pay TV services decreased, although there was a slight increase in the proportion of ‘pay monthly’ mobile phone complaints.
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