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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

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Did 2009 turn out the way we expected?

Mark Bridge writes:

At this time of year it’s something of a tradition – certainly within the mobile industry – to make predictions for the year ahead. It’s a trend we’ve followed with The Fonecast… and we’ve done reasonably well over the last few years.

We’ll be making this year’s predictions for 2010 in our programme on 23rd December. Ahead of that, I’ve been listening to our last show of 2008 to see what we thought 2009 would hold for us.

James said he expected mobile payment trials to become more public and more widespread in 2009 ahead of commercial launches in 2010. That’s certainly happened here in the UK as well as abroad. We’ve seen Square launch in the USA, investment in mobile money from Nokia and the world’s first commercial NFC mobile payment system in Malaysia. In the UK we heard about a partnership between Orange & Barclaycard and saw O2 launch the O2 Money debit card.

I decided not to choose the commercial launch of femtocells – a pity, because Vodafone’s Access Gateway arrived in July – and instead went for the safer option of location-based services becoming one of 2009’s biggest growth areas.

Sure enough, Google launched its Latitude location-sharing service, GyPSii introduced real-time location sharing on social networks, Twitter introduced the option of geo-located ‘tweets’ and the location-specific advertising returned to the headlines through O2 and Vodafone.

But it’s Iain who really hit the jackpot this year. He predicted a year of consolidation – and, my goodness, we’ve seen plenty of that. Orange and T-Mobile was the biggest news for the UK, although we also had The Carphone Warehouse taking over Tiscali, Google buying AdMob plus assorted purchases by Nokia, 2ergo and many others.

Calendar 2010So – our 2009 predictions turned out well. (Rather better than 2008, to be honest!)  Now it’s time for us to start thinking about 2010…

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