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Friday, March 25, 2011

This week at The Fonecast: 26th March 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

There was big news from the United States this week as Deutsche Telekom decided to sell T-Mobile USA to AT&T. Was it a shotgun wedding or is this a carefully calculated deal designed to benefit consumers?  Time will tell – assuming, of course, the merger gets approved by the US regulator.

Talking of regulation, Ofcom’s announced plans for a 4G spectrum auction in the UK next year. It’s hoping to start the auction in the first quarter of 2012 – but that’s also assuming everything runs smoothly. Everything Everywhere has already said it’s not happy with some of the proposed rules.

In the mobile-threatening world of WiFi (or should that be ‘mobile-enhancing’?), things are running a little more smoothly. WiFi network operator Fon has just announced a mobile payment deal with mopay, while London Underground is planning a WiFi network that’ll cover its tube stations.

When it comes to manufacturers, you’d have rightly expected much of their news to be coming from the CTIA Wireless trade show in the USA. It’s been described as ‘the American Mobile World Congress’, which isn’t too far off the mark. Samsung revealed a couple of new Android-powered tablets that out-thinned the iPad 2, while LG offered somewhat vague news of a new wireless charger. Pretty much everything else from CTIA 2011 wasn’t really aimed at the UK.

Back to the iPad 2 for a moment. It made its UK debut at 5pm on Friday… and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is right on its heels. The PlayBook will be available in the USA and Canada on 19th April, with a UK release expected to follow in the summer. As well as running its own apps, it’ll be capable of running Android applications as well (albeit with a little help).

While I’m on the subject of Android apps, Amazon opened its own Amazon Appstore in the USA (and was promptly hit with legal action from Apple). No sign of UK availability yet.

Finally – and still with a legal theme – five men were jailed this week for a total of 37½ years after a missing trader VAT fraud worth £140 million tax. HM Revenue & Customs said the men “blatantly deprived us all of millions of pounds for the nation's public services”. Almost sounds like they’re fighting the same cause as UK Uncut, who are planning to occupy Vodafone's flagship Oxford Street store as a tax protest today!


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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.

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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.

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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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