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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

Monday, January 21, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 21st January 2013

Slip slidin' away

Mark Bridge writes:

There’s plenty of snow disrupting the UK – but, thanks to the mobile telecoms industry, thousands upon thousands of people are able to work from home. We’re all feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now, aren’t we?

Pedestrians may have been skating down pavements but a different kind of trouble on the high street dominated much of last week as music, DVD and occasional mobile phone retailer HMV went into administration. All the company’s shops will keep trading while the search for a buyer continues. Meanwhile EE said it was getting rid of 78 of its duplicate stores; almost inevitable when the rebranding of Orange and T-Mobile left many towns with two places to find Everything Everywhere. Oh, and the Metropolitan Police reckons around 10,000 mobiles will be stolen in London this month.

However there was good news from the UK as well. From next spring, most people with a UK current account will be able to transfer money by quoting the recipient’s mobile phone number rather than a sort code and account details. “Payment by text message” said many of the mainstream news stories, although that’s not exactly the case.

Over in the USA, Facebook enhanced the iOS version of its Messenger application to let users speak to each other without paying call charges. The VoIP feature was launched in Canada earlier this month but there’s no sign of a UK announcement yet.

Financial results from eBay and PayPal suggested they’d had a particularly good year with customers using mobile technology, while a drop in Intel’s profits gave the impression they could do with more mobile sales.

Talking of which, new research says shipments of large-screen ‘phablets’ are expected to more than double this year. Expect 60 million smartphones with a 5-inch screen (or bigger) to be shipped worldwide during 2013. Looking slightly further ahead, more than half of all mobile phones shipped next year are expected to be smartphones, according to ABI Research.

Which prompts a couple of questions. If the majority of devices are ‘smart’, it seems inappropriate to call them ‘smartphones’ any more. What should we call the next generation of smartphones... and how will we spot them amongst their less-smart predecessors?

Every Monday morning we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in our newsletter. To receive it, simply register your email address at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page.
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