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Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

UK service providers must notify customers when they connect to a different network

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.
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Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

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.
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Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

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.
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UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

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.
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Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
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Opinion Articles

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Last week at The Fonecast: 31st October 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

In the world of retail, you can’t move for Hallowe’en puns at the moment. You know the kind of thing. Spooky offers. Frighteningly low prices. Missing our deals will haunt you. There’s not the ghost of a chance we’ll shift these PlayBooks unless we cut the price.

And it’s been another big news week for mobile manufacturing. Nokia has revealed its first Windows Phone devices, along with some S40 almost-smartphone handsets. The WP7 phones are branded as ‘Lumia’ and the S40 mobiles are ‘Asha’. Feel free to write your own “Brimful of...” headline.

Also in the world of manufacturing, Sony has agreed to buy Ericsson out of the Sony Ericsson partnership after ten years. Sony is picking up a mobile phone business with a handful of useful patents, while Ericsson is picking up just over a billion Euro.

Still with manufacturing but very much focussed at the luxury end of the market (wherever that is), Porsche Design and Research In Motion have confirmed they’ll be producing a new luxury mobile phone. Officially it’s called the Porsche Design P’9981 smartphone from BlackBerry – but it’s equipped with an angular QWERTY keyboard that sets it a long way apart from other BlackBerry products.

As well as talking about the stainless steel and leather P’9981 (which, much like Hallowe’en, has an apostrophe in an unexpected place), RIM had two of its smartphones approved by MasterCard for its PayPass NFC payment system. Mind you, it wasn’t all good news from RIM; the company also warned that the next version of its BlackBerry PlayBook operating system wouldn’t turn up until next year.

Quarterly results are still coming thick and fast, with Motorola Mobility, Samsung, LG and Everything Everywhere all publishing their figures. No great surprises, with the exception of Olaf Swantee’s description of Everything Everywhere as “a silly name”.

And Strategy Analytics has calculated that Samsung is now the world’s top seller of smartphones, overtaking Apple (which, in turn, overtook Nokia in the previous quarter).

Mind you, Apple might have the last laugh. Having been granted a patent earlier this year for the pinch-and-zoom touchscreen interface, it’s now been granted a slide to unlock patent. Thank heavens for Android’s new face recognition unlocking, eh?

Last week we spoke to Dr Mark Smith of ipadio about the ways the voice broadcasting service has changed since it launched two years ago. You can listen on our website, via iTunes or by downloading the MP3 file.

Stay up to date by receiving this news summary by email every week. Simply register at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page.

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Recent Podcasts

From higher licence fees to lower roaming charges... and much more mobile industry news

Podcast - 16th October 2013

Product news in today's podcast includes Samsung's curved-screen smartphone, an HTC phablet and an update for Windows Phone 8.

We're also talking about malware, roaming charges, Ofcom's licence fees, a drop in mobile revenue, BT's MVNO and a project that sounds... well... silly.

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The ups and downs of the mobile telecoms industry

Podcast - 9th October 2013

In today's podcast: Samsung's profit, UK mobile ad spending and Vertu's smartphone range are all increasing.

Meanwhile HTC's profit and the proportion of children with mobile phones are both going down. Discover the background to these news stories - and plenty more - in our regular weekly broadcast.

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Accidental app purchases, increasing in-train coverage, Amazon announcements and much more

Podcast - 2nd October 2013

Today's podcast starts with a gentle warning to app developers from the Office of Fair Trading.

We then move on to Amazon's new tablets, HTC's sale of its Beats Electronics stake, Twitter's emergency alerts, UK government plans to improve mobile broadband on trains, customer complaints and the growth in adult content for mobile devices.

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The future of ring-back tones: we talk to Florent Stroppa of OnMobile

Podcast - 27th September 2013

Ring-back tones offers consumers yet another way to customise their mobile phone service. Yet despite this - and the revenue opportunities that can be generated - many network operators don't provide ring-back tones.

In today's special feature we talk to Florent Stroppa of OnMobile to discover why the UK doesn't really seem to be bothered about ring-back tones... and whether the next-generation of interactive ring-back services could change this.

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Two tablets for Microsoft, one tablet for Tesco... and a headache for BlackBerry

Podcast - 25th September 2013

There are big changes on the horizon at BlackBerry. We talk about the company's potential future and also look at the recent tablet announcements from Microsoft and Tesco... plus the rest of the week's mobile news.

There's also a special report from IAB2013 about the sometimes awkward relationship between mobile devices and the television industry.

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