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Thursday, April 22, 2010

The iPhone and its data are still uneasy bedfellows

Mark Bridge writes:

Being an optimistic cynic isn’t easy. But, hey, I do my best.

Which is why I smiled benignly when I heard this week that WiFi provider The Cloud was offering a free app to O2 iPhone users. It's a simple tool called FastConnect and it'll make it easy for those O2 customers to find free WiFi access via hotspots powered by (you guessed it!) The Cloud.

FastConnect's features include a directory and automatic connection to all The Cloud's WiFi hotspots.

Lovely.

Except... hang on a mo... O2 UK iPhone customers already get free WiFi from The Cloud. And the iPhone is famously easy to use. So why has The Cloud bothered to create this app?

Here's what Steve Nicholson, The Cloud's CEO, has to say.

“We strongly suspect only a fraction of O2 iPhone customers are aware of this free service and would consequently encourage them to download the app from the app store to get quick and free access to our network.”

A-ha. So most of O2's iPhone users – either through accident or design – don't care about their free WiFi. Yet they're still going online. And that means they're probably hammering O2's data service. Not a good thing, as O2 has already admitted.

Which brings me to today's puzzle. Now, you might think that each O2 customer who didn't use free WiFi was good news for The Cloud. Unused capacity is money saved, right?  Which would mean The Cloud had little incentive to encourage uptake of the free offer. Yet here's 'WiFi made simple', with CEO Steve promoting WiFi as “the only solution in delivering an acceptable service” for mobile video and even daring to knock his mobile network mates by suggesting “that traditional cellular networks will struggle to deliver acceptable quality”.

So... whose idea was this app?  O2, I'm just asking...

 

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Opinion Articles

Last week at The Fonecast: 28th November 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

The really big news last week wasn’t good: 17,000 jobs worldwide are being lost at Nokia Siemens Networks (which, incidentally, is a separate company from both Nokia and Siemens). That’s not far short of a quarter of the total workforce. The company is going to focus on mobile network infrastructure and services, with a particular emphasis on mobile broadband, and is likely to sell off other parts of the business.

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Shared data tariffs, bill shock, net neutrality and mobile traffic management

Mark Bridge writes:

Today’s mobile phone customers want more and more mobile data, which is stretching network capacity. In addition, many of those consumers would rather not be committed to a limit; they’d rather have a mobile internet tariff that is (or appears to be) unlimited. This puts even more pressure on mobile networks.

Author: The Fonecast
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Last week at The Fonecast: 21st November 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

Having read some of last week’s headlines, you might think the UK’s Communication Ombudsman has told mobile phone networks not to describe their data tariffs as ‘unlimited’ unless they really are. However, what’s actually happened is that one of the UK’s communication ombudsmen (ombudspeople?) has asked mobile operators to be clear about any limits, to stop unexpectedly high bills from building up and to tell customers before they exceed any limit. Better than nothing but hardly earth-shattering.

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Top 5 Productivity Apps for Business Owners

Ruben Corbo writes:

As a business owner, you know that being out of the office can cost you customers and productivity. However, in this digital age being out of the office doesn’t mean that you have to be away from your business. By downloading apps specifically for business, you can be productive from anywhere. Here are my top 5 apps for mobile business productivity.

Author: The Fonecast
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Enterprise user, you are the weakest link...

Mark Bridge writes:

Any security process is only as strong as the weakest link. That’s something of a truism. And for many organisations, the weak link is most likely to occur when information leaves the office. Which means it’s often caused by the user’s mobile phone or the user themselves.

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Recent Podcasts

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Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

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We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

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A month of mobile: O2 counts on 3, Microsoft counts to 10 and Apple counts its profits

Podcast - 30th January 2015

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.

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