Link: Rebtel Blog » Blog Archive » Rebtel research: Cheaper to fly than to call
Some interesting research courtesy of Rebtel - in fact UK Sunday tabloid News Of The World found it so interesting they wrote an article all about it.
SKY-HIGH international mobile phone charges can make it cheaper to FLY abroad for a chat with a pal than to call them up.
Industry insiders have told the News of the World that UK customers are charged up to 50 TIMES what the networks actually pay for international mobile-to-mobile call time.
You got to feel a little sorry for the operators of late. If it’s not one thing it’s another.. but on the flipside, if they really are making such a ridiculously high margin, they’ve only got themselves to blame if the Government and EU decide to launch an investigation into it.
Link: Remember 63336: Free AQA 63336 gig
Bit short notice, but if you’re in London tonight and fancy some great music and wicked cocktails pop along to the AQA 63336 party in Camden.
It’s being held at UNDERSOLO, which is downstairs at Bar Solo, 20 Inverness Street, NW1. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start, and kicking out time is 2am. They’ve got some of the bands and artists involved in the AQA 63336 album appearing live, including Emmy the Great, My Albatross and The Brent Flood.
Registration is free - just follow this link.
Link: BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire | £3m mobile phone raid near M-way
Masked men have stolen £3m worth of deluxe mobile phones which sell for £2,500 each after forcing a van off a link road to the M3 in Hampshire.
A van from mobile phone firm Vertu was targeted near junction 4a of the M3 in Farnborough on Wednesday.
If someone offers you a Vertu phone for cheap in a pub car park, I’m sure Hampshire Police would be grateful for a call. Although they’ve made a couple of arrests, it appears the phones are still out there on the missing list.
Loss narrows at Vodafone Group - International Herald Tribune
Despite posting a second consecutive year of staggering losses, Vodafone Group on Tuesday forecast strong growth in emerging markets and was bullish about 2008, sending its shares to a five-year high.
The company, a European mobile phone giant, said it had a net loss of £5.43 billion, or $10.75 billion, in the 12 months ended March 31, a marked improvement from its loss of £21.9 billion a year earlier. Revenue increased 6 percent to £31.1 billion.
And here’s what Arun had to say..
Vodafone’s chief executive, Arun Sarin, said the company’s prospects looked brightest in high-growth emerging markets like Turkey and India. But he said mature European economies like Britain and Germany, where almost everyone has at least one mobile phone, would be squeezed by competition, government regulation and narrowing profit margins.
Link: Live poetry with SMS projector tool SMS Chatwall
Poetry has gone all high-tech recently, with a recent SMS love poem contest and now a ‘poetry slam’ by text in Germany.
The locally well known livelyrix poetry slam took place in Dresden last Friday again. Ten poets presented their poems and texts in the sold out event centre Scheune. Additionally, every guest was invited to send its poem as a text message from its own mobile during the show breaks.
Link: Government restricts SMS news services
The government has been restricting some SMS news services and blocking certain media websites, said journalists and opposition parties. “SMS news service via mobile networks are facing a legal challenge, and I call on the government to make laws to issue licenses to the companies who want to offer this service,†said Chairman of Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, Nasr Taha Mustafa. Mustafa asked the Ministry of Information to settle the problem of the restricted SMS services with al-Nass Mobile and Without Chains Mobile, in accordance with the journalism law.
Looks like another government getting jittery about freedom of speech, following on from the news a month or so ago that Iran is planning to filter MMS traffic.
It’s been one of those weeks this week.. With Ewan sunning himself on distant shores and me (Alex) in the midst of moving house, it’s been a busy time.
Apologies for the lack of posts for the past day or so - got plenty of good stuff to come shortly, so watch this space!
I was having a look at Google Calendar-to-mobile sync service goosync earlier and my eye was caught by the screenshot they used of the E61. It’s showing a Good Mobile Messaging calendar, you see.
Anyone know if it works with Good? I might just download it and see, eh?
It’s voting time — so reckons Technokitten:
Link: Musings of a mobile marketer: Vote George Kidd NOW!!
It’s dead easy to vote for George so there’s no excuse. You just text NMA 4 (there’s a space between NMA and the 4) and send it to 83338. Get your votes in before the 1st June. Winner announced on the 28th June at the NMA Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel
Yes, that’s right, you can cast your vote in the New Media Age awards.
I just did. It was a bit annoying having to type out NMA. It isn’t in your T9, you see. I’d have chosen MEDIA as the keyword, or maybe NEW. But that’s because I’m often picky like that.
I got a text straight back acknowledging my vote. I presume it wasn’t a premium one 
I sat next to George once at a meal — a very nice chap.
I have, incidentally, got over my personal boycott of New Media Age. Last year I was trying to link to one of their articles only to find out that they were still arsing around with passwords and user accounts on their website. That all appears to have gone now. Excellent.
Link: webitpr | Latest Mobile Local Search Index Shows Tech Savvy Consumers Want Wireless Internet
m-spatial have just released their Winter/Spring Mobile Local Search Index, which features some interesting results.
The index, based on searches made from mobile phones in the first quarter of 2007, shows that cinemas, food and accodomation are amongst the most popular things people search for from their handset. Odeon and Cineworld take the top two places with 18% and 17% respectively, and fellow cinema chain Vue grab the number seven position with 8% share of search terms.
Also in the top 10 are Domino’s Pizza (9%), Pizza Hut (9%), Tesco (14%) and Premier Travel Inn (7%).
Global messaging company (and site sponsor) Clickatell have today announced the launch of a mobile terminated (MT) premium rate SMS service in South Africa.
Currently offered by Vodacom and MTN in South Africa, mobile terminated services are used for subscription-based content. Because the networks offer these services in different ways, Clickatell provides an easy-to-use open interface for value-added service providers to access the networks and bill their customers. Uniquely, Clickatell pays out the full revenue share to its customers.
Good stuff, and useful if you’re wanting to enter the South African premium SMS market. Here’s two interesting things I noticed from the press release.
Firstly, the service offers variable billing - so a shortcode isn’t tied to a particular price point like it is in the UK. It’s up to the operators to support such a service, and fortunately both Vodacom and MTN do. Here in the UK a shortcode is fixed to a certain price - so if you wanted to run a service on a particular shortcode at a different price to the one it’s locked to, you’d have to send the reply from a different number. A complete arse when it comes to branding and can confuse consumers.
Second, Clickatell pay out the full revenue share they receive from the mobile operators. That’s a refreshing change - most PSMS service providers take their cut along the way, and have a habit of hiding the true income they’re making from your service. Given a choice between a company who are open with their payouts and one that surrounds it with smoke and mirrors, I’d chose the former.
Link: Bill bans SMS messaging while driving - Haaretz - Israel News
Several bills have been raised in the Knesset lately that address a national scourge: traffic accidents. One would ban drivers from sending SMS text messages from their cellphones while at the wheel.
Ophir Pines-Paz of Labor, the mind behind the bill, suggests an NIS 250 fine for violators. He says that young drivers are especially prone to messaging while driving, and that the habit is causing accidents and endangering life.
Incidently NIS 250 is about £32. Not exactly much of a deterrent in my opinion, but good to see the Israeli Government realise that texting whilst driving is as much as a serious problem as making or receiving calls whilst behind the wheel.
Link: Hutch 3G UK Appeals over Termination Cuts
Hutchison 3G UK has filed an appeal against a regulatory decision to reduce its termination charges by 45 percent, calling the ruling “absurd” and “‘anti-competitive,” the Financial Times has reported. The company has lodged the appeal with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal.
Meanwhile they’re planning to start charging for SMS termination here in the UK from 1st July. A source tells me that certain operators will be paying 4.3p for deliverying texts to Three customers - which is considerably higher than the usual 3p for Vodafone, O2 and Orange.
Link: 160Characters Association
Mobile messaging forum 160Characters have just published the shortlist for their 2007 Global Mobile Messaging Awards.
The categories this year are: User Experience, Messaging Infrastructure or Platform, Innovation in Messaging and Messaging Application or Service in the fields of Public Sector/not for Profit; Business; Consumer.
The winners are due to be announced at the Gala Awards Dinner in Grimaldi Forum, Monte Carlo on the 5th June 2007, immediately after the first day of the Global Messaging Congress.
Congratulations to those on the shortlist, and good luck for 5th June!
Link: BBC NEWS | Business | Deutsche Telekom backs VoIP firm
Deutsche Telekom is backing the internet telephone company Jajah, becoming the first major phone company to support such technology.
T-Online Venture Fund chairman Andreas Kindt said in a company statement: “By investing in companies like Jajah, we will be able to continue to bring users around the world the innovative solutions they are looking for.”
Curious and curiouser. So on one hand you’ve got Vodafone and Orange, in the ‘VOIP is bad for business as people won’t use our network to make voice calls, so let’s block it every way we can’ camp - and on the other T-Mobile’s parent company who’ve just pumped a load of cash into a VOIP related company.
This one will be interesting to watch…
Just had this in from Alfie at Moblog.
LOL!Twitter is a global community of friends and strangers taking the piss out of one simple question:
What are you doing?
Take one Lolcats, mix with Twitter and pictures, send to www.LOLtwitter.com
Send your LOL!Twitter pics in to the site by emailing or MMS’ing to: LOL@moblg.net
Interesting. I’d never heard of Lolcats before to be honest, so had to do a bit of research. The pic on the right is one I found that’s mobile related - there’s plenty more hilarious examples out there if you have a quick flick through Google.
Home Office discusses thief-proof phones | The Register
The UK Home Office yesterday met with handset manufacturers and mobile networks to identify ways in which mobile phones could be “secured by design”.
Most of the ideas revolve around some mechanism for automatically shutting down a handset when it’s been reported stolen - sending a coded SMS or similar - but that opens up wonderful hacking possibilities when the secret code is broken, and given the blacklisting of phone identifiers (IMEIs) it’s not clear how often stolen phones are ever used.
If memory serves me right you can already block some Symbian phones via text? Another way to stop mobile phone crime is don’t take your mobile phone out with you. Taking bets on how long the Home Office will take to trumpet that one as their latest ‘great idea’ 
Thanks to Steve for the tip on this one.
Link: Ding Dong! Avon Calling
The cosmetics company, Avon is reported to be considering launching an MVNO in Poland within the next few weeks. PMR Business newspaper said that the network, under the myAvon name, will use the infrastructure of PTK Centertel, the operator of the Orange mobile network. It will address its offer chiefly to clients and consultants who sell Avon products.
Expand the concept a little further and you’ve got the possibility of a mobile network selling door to door. MVNOs have traditionally relied on their market brand and awareness to sell a service, but it’s usually limited to their retail outlets (eg Virgin, Tesco, Marks & Spencers). A door to door service with local agents would remove the barrier of the consumer having to visit the retailer, and could find a niche in the market.
Link: An awful lot of fuss 4 a B’day card
It’s an awful lot of fuss to go to just to send a birthday card but online service, Remind4u, has just gone mobile. So for £3 any Brit can receive a personalised birthday greeting on their mobile phone.
Sounds good, but the article points out there’s a couple of snags. You create the card from the web - not your mobile - even though it’s delivered to the recipients mobile. You don’t seem to be able to send the card by email instead, and there’s also apparently a bug with the authorisation required that charges you the £3 to your handset via premium SMS.
That aside, it could serve the busy Brit (or typical bloke with a memory like a sieve) quite well.
Link: Online poker goes mobile as Bwin signs up phone operators - Independent Online Edition > Business News
The online poker craze is set to go mobile with network operators T-Mobile and 3 offering British customers access to Bwin’s multi-player application PokerRoom.com.
Since it was launched in 2005, PokerRoom has attracted 11 million registered customers over the internet and hopes to replicate that success in the mobile market. Bwin, an Austrian online bookmaker, has signed up mobile gaming specialist Cellectivity to launch PokerRoom over the T-Mobile and 3 networks, the first time that live multi-player poker has been marketed directly to mobile phone users. The service will guarantee access to poker tables anywhere at anytime. A play-for-fun version will also be launched for those customers put off by the prospect of losing money playing against serious players.
Link: Mobile firms force Ofcom to postpone second 3G auction-Business-Industry Sectors-Telecoms-TimesOnline
A new 3G auction expected to raise £2 billion has been postponed by the regulator after a series of complaints from mobile companies claiming that it was premature and badly thought out.
Ofcom has caved into demands from telecoms and media companies and pushed back the airwaves sell-off into 2008. It had been planned for this year.
Mobile companies complaining that it was ‘premature and badly thought out’? Or was it because they bid silly amounts for the licenses and are now struggling to figure out how to make the cash back?
Mobile operators, which are still smarting at the hugely inflated prices they previously paid for 3G licences, complained that this year was much too early for a second auction. The technology, they pointed out, was fraught with pitfalls initially and slow to take off.
‘Fraught with pitfalls initially’. Hmm. Another excuse? The article touches on the possible real reason:
The delay over the auction, which is expected to raise a tenth of the £22.5 billion raised first time around, comes after sustained criticism about the process and Ofcom’s handling of it.
If I’d contributed part of that £22.5 billion a few years back, only to find that my competitors can now get into the game for a lot less, I’d be a little annoyed. Still, it’s only a year longer to wait. There’ve been many suggestions on how the UK mobile operators can improve their customer satisfaction and service take-up. The clock is ticking, but will they listen?
Link: I’m a freak of nature | Herald Sun
My previous two blog entries have been about Australia. With the New South Wales Government planning to give smog warnings for Sydneysiders by text, and a whole heap of statistics from two recent surveys on Australian texting habits, it all seemed good in the land down under.
But wait.. Apparently the whole country is wasting it’s time - at least according to one journalist.
I’M probably a freak of nature: one of the few Australians who have never sent or received a text message. A Luddite? No, I just think it’s a waste of time. It is bad for our thumbs. And our souls.
Never received a text message? What, not even one from your mobile network, or a spam? Even the wrong number?
Shocking. Maybe he hasn’t actually got a mobile, and spends his time walking around with tin foil on his head chanting ‘the rays of evil, they’re seeping into my mind!’.
Like it or loath it, text is here to stay. A zillion and one surveys - and 250m messages sent per month in Australia alone - can’t be wrong.
Link: Generation TXT | Herald Sun
A Macquarie University study, researching the texting habits of 100 people aged between 18 and 35, found SMS messaging increased greatly when relationships were starting.
Another Australian study found 34 per cent of adolescents admitted using SMS to flirt with someone they were interested in.
Many male adolescents reported they could say things using SMS they would not be able to say in person. Using new technology helped them make the first move in the dating game.
There’s a lot more Australian text stats in the article, which is worth a read if you’re interested in the market down under. But wait, it’s not all rosey when it comes to texting in that part of the world, as the next blog entry will reveal..
