Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks have changed, haven’t they?

Once they were all about delivering service. Coverage. Quality. Price. Now it’s much more about branding.

Everything Everywhere has announced it’s to become EE, an obvious abbreviation that’s been used in mobile industry briefings pretty much since the company was created two years ago. It joins the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hennes & Mauritz, British Home Stores, Independent Television and Marks & Spencer, although all of these took decades to transition into businesses that were just described by their initials.

Everything Everywhere, which was given the go-ahead to use its existing 1800MHz spectrum for next-generation mobile services last month, has revealed its 4G plans for the UK. It’s also said it’ll be branding the new service - and the parent company - simply as ‘EE’.

Its EE 4G LTE network is being switched on for testing from today and is expected to be available to customers in 16 cities by Christmas 2012, covering a third of the population.

UK virtual network Ovivo Mobile, which launched its ad-funded mobile phone service earlier this year, has admitted it’s had to change its pricing model due to consumer fraud.

In a blog post that was also sent as an email to the MVNO’s customers, Ovivo Mobile CEO Dariush Zand said recent tariff changes were necessary to prevent the company from being jeopardised by a small group of fraudulent users.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s a smartphone autumn, as prophesied a few weeks ago by the Carphone Warehouse and many others. The frenzy of big-name announcements led by Samsung at Berlin’s IFA has given way to stand-alone media presentations from Nokia, Motorola and Amazon.

Google-owned Motorola Mobility has announced three new additions to its RAZR smartphone family.

All support 4G LTE and offer protection against wear and tear by incorporating a Kevlar casing plus Corning Gorilla Glass.