I was popping in and out of the media room at CTIA this afternoon when I spotted Michael Selvidge, PR Dude (that’s what his job title says on his card) of VSC Consulting. They do a lot of mobile related public relations and I regularly connect with Michael to find out what’s happening with his roster of clients. It was a surprise to bump into him — he was with client Cellufun — manifested, in this case, by Arthur Goikhman, Chief Executive.

Cellufun has been operating ad-supported mobile games since April 2006 — positively eons in the context of the US mobile industry — and in that time they’ve delivered downloads to over 4 million consumers across the planet. They offer a whole load of games (single, multiplayer, Chess, Sudoku, Casino games and so on) and if you’ve got a wap enabled phone… well, let’s face it, who hasn’t — you can get games at http://wap.cellufun.com.

Arthur was looking pretty happy about today’s news — AOL came a-knocking and Arthur and his team will be providing games for AOL’s burgeoning mobile portal (check it at http://wap.aol.com/games). Good news. Although Cellufun are no stranger to good news. (They won Best Mobile Game at Mobile World Congress recently for their Call of the Pharaoh game).

Congratulations Cellufun!

Hello and welcome to CTIA. Thus, it begins.

Tonight I’m off to Showstoppers:

ShowStoppers at CTIA Wireless is where hot companies with cool products meet reporters and analysts covering all things wireless for work, for home, for play.

CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment is where the innovative world of wireless data plugs into the dynamic world of entertainment.

These invitation-only events showcase wireless, mobile computing and cellular companies, wireless services, the wireless Internet; home networks and the wireless home; multimedia, music, information and network convergence; content providers and carriers; devices, gadgets and PDAs; email systems and software tools; WiFi, WiMAX, and all other things wireless.

Bodes well, eh? I’m going to pop by the event and see what catches my attention.

And then later on I’m popping over to James Whatley’s Mobile Geeks of London Las Vegas event.

Here, then, is some documentary evidence of the bluetooth headset dongle trend.  Worrying.  I took this picture so that folk thought I was snapping the whole of the hall at Mobile Entertainment Live.  

Actually, I just wanted to get that chap in the bottom left in the shot so I could prove it.

He’s typing away on his computer, right?  He’s not talking to anyone.  In the few minutes I was hanging around that particular area of the presentation hall, NOBODY phoned him.  I can’t work out whether a dongle is a brilliant piece of equipment that every mobile geek should have — and wear constantly — or whether it should simply be reserved as a tool for workmen who *need* to use both hands to mend pipes and carry hammers, but who get calls every (literally) five minutes from clients, suppliers and foremen.  I think it’s the latter. 

Here’s yet another chap I managed to snap. I gave the impression I was taking a photo of the big sign.

Well, no. I was taking a picture of him:

Look at that. He’s talking on his bluetooth dongle, right? Yet he is HOLDING is iPhone. Again, this was a continued thing. He hadn’t just brought it out quickly — he was standing chatting, HOLDING his phone. You have to wonder what gets into people. If you’re going to use a bluetooth handsfree dongle, keep your hands free. No need to show everyone your iPhone.

Here’s my badge.  Not ordinarily of interest, I know, except the fact that when the polite chap at the registration desk handed it over, I had to wince, silently.  Billericay.My home town.  For some reason I put on my home, home address on the CTIA media sign-up form.  So instead of proclaiming the fact I’m from London, one of the key centres of mobile innovation in Europe, … well, my badge says ‘Ewan MacLeod, SMS Text News, Billericay’.Right.  Lots of folk have been staring.  One person asked what part of Ireland I was from.  Theoretically I could be from Northern Ireland (the ‘United Kingdom’ bit is a dead giveaway that I’m not from Ireland, but I didn’t say anything).  

I popped by the Mobile Entertainment Live conference and was surprised and delighted to see both Alykhan and James from mega mobile aggregator, MX Telecom manning the booth. Greg Schmitzer of mobile services company Buongiorno was also at the stand — he heads up sales for the marketing and services group there. Buongiorno and MX have been working together for about 4 years — MX take care of their messaging and various other technology services.

MX Telecom have been going great guns in the States. I remember when their US office was comprised exclusively of Alex (in Starbucks)! Now they’re 16 people in their Brooklyn, NY Office (60 people back in the London HQ).

The big news for them is the fact that MMS has come of age in the States and that WAP Billing is now active in the States — and with MX’s rather substantial UK experience with Payforit, they’ve got quite a lot of companies calling upon them for help. In fact, whilst I’ve been sat here for the last few minutes by their stand, Aly and James have been interrupted at least six times by suppliers hunting for assistance. Good news!

In the picture above: Aly, Greg and James.

I was chatting away with Greg from Buongiorno about the sorry state of the mobile advertising industry (well, in truth, there are a lot of exciting things happening) when Paul Smith, CEO of mPulse came by.

“What d’ya do,” I asked him?

“Mobile communities for TV,” he said, putting it nice and succinctly. He then went on to describe just how their service works. Essentially you’re sat watching MTV, right? You bring up the mobile community on your handset and you start chatting away — as you would perhaps do with your PC (but your PC isn’t always on your sofa) and mPulse know that you’re a) watching that show and b) interacting on your phone with their service. So when an advertisement for Pizza airs on television, the mPulse service pops up a local-based call-to-action ad on the mobile. Your experience isn’t massively interrupted — but you do get the opportunity to order pizza from your local supplier, right away. Nice. I could see myself using that…!

I need to take a closer look at this but I really like the concept. I’ll try and get some demo links and screenshots soon.

It’s not actually CTIA Wireless today.  The show starts on the first of April — tomorrow — but I popped down today to have a poke about and to see if I can connect with the folks at M:Metrics after a recommendation from regular SMS Text News contributor Ed Cave who’s just joined them.  They’re exhibiting at the Mobile Entertainment Live exhibition across the road at the Las Vegas Hilton.  I think my badge lets me get in.  We shall see.

I would, at this juncture, publish various photos of folk setting up and looking stressed and whatnot.  Unfortunately thanks to British Airways and their screw up at Terminal 5, my little USB device for reading pictures on my Sony camera is in the middle of my suitcase somewhere in London.  Ergo, pictures soon, once I have found somewhere in Las Vegas to buy a Sony camera card reader.

I’m sad to report that I am surrounded by Blackberry-in-holster people.  Everywhere.  And what’s more, bluetooth wireless headsets have been breading big time.  Twice in the last 30 minutes I have turned round thinking someone was asking me a question only to find that people were talking away on their sodding bluetooth headsets.  The trouble with those is that it doesn’t mask your voice.  A phone — even a RAZR — gets in the way of voice projection.  You usually speak *into* the phone.  With a bluetooth dongle hanging out your ear, you chat to the open world and make it very difficult to quickly ascertain whether you’re being talked to. 

I will see if I can take some pictures — some documentary evidence.  It’s all highly unnecessary.  I know this is a Wireless conference but there is a) no excuse for phones in holsters and b) LITTLE excuse for the use of bluetooth dongle things when you’re not driving or fixing a leaking sink.

There’s a huge Nokia Siemens Networks van outside the convention centre sporting a rather large satellite dish.  That’s next to an array of mini Smart Cars covered in WiMAX livery.  I shall investigate that.

My first takeaway from CTIA is this:  There are far too many executives with Blackberries in holsters.  I’m reasonably confident that each of the polo-shirted chaps I’ve walked by today wouldn’t know a mobile application (for example) if it slapped him across the face with a wet fish.   There’s nothing wrong with the Blackberry platform.  I have one.  The issue I have is that these folks *have* a Blackberry because they’ve been given it.  They smile weakly when challenged and explain that they have a shitty Pay As You Go at home in the drawer but that ‘the Blackberry works’.  How then, I want to ask — but don’t, usually, out of politeness — do you profess to speak with authority about mobile stuff when you’re only exposure is to your email — when you don’t even use Google Talk on your Blackberry, let alone the satellite navigation or web browser functions.

Perhaps my immediate opinion is wrong and here’s hoping.  I will take a random sample and report back.

Only seen one guy wearing socks and sandals so far.

I connected with Jesse of zzzPhone, the custom-configured mobile handset producers.

I last wrote about zzzPhone a few months back — when I heard about them, I went straight to the site and was overcome with a geeky compulsion to browse then buy right away. There is something hugely refreshing about being able to check a few boxes on an order form and specify your phone configuration, just like you do with Dell online.

It’s massively refreshing actually. I’m so used to having to ‘take what I’m given’. I’m used to reading through Stefan’s reviews at Intomobile and feeling a little notch of disappointment clock up when I find out that some new device only has so much memory, or whatever.

So I ordered one a while back. I’m still waiting — but for good reason. Jesse tells me they’ve been working hard with their source suppliers and putting right a few things. The handsets-are-a-coming. No word on a specific date but he’s promised to keep me informed. The moment I get it, I’ll post up pictures and some video here. Earmarked launch … April 7th! Woooo!

The US Distributor, by the way, is Unified Telecommunications, at www.unifiedtelcom.com — all orders can be processed through this site.

3G could potentially kill off wi-fi, according to analysts Infonetics Research, as more and more of us use mobile broadband data cards rather than the wireless hotspots provided by coffee shops and the like as the service becomes “more available, more affordable, and a higher performance choice”

Infonetics says that sales of mobile data cards will nearly quadruple between 2007 and 2011, hitting $2.9 billion. The analysts predict adoption will be driven by lower mobile broadband prices resulting from the launch of HSDPA networks. The report also says that worldwide mobile data subscribers will reach 144 million by 2011.

Anyone who’s used a mobile data card knows they’re a lifesaver. I wouldn’t be surprised if before long mobile data subscriptions are the de facto connectivity for anyone taking their laptop outside their house.

It looks like China’s 3G efforts are inching closer to reality. According to reports, China Mobile will kick off its trials of homegrown 3G standard TD-SCDMA in eight cities from 1 April: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

Forbes says the operator will give away 20,000 TD-SCDMA mobile numbers free and will give way the same number of handsets for nothing, with other subscribers offered discounts of 100 to 200 yuan on their phones.

Things are certainly moving in the right direction for TD-SCDMA - and the Olympics looks like it’s figuring large in people’s minds: five out of the eight cities are Games venues.

I managed to miss most of the launch coverage of O2’s new combined backup and blogging platform ‘Bluebook‘ (technically a re-launch, as another service had existed under that name previously), but spotted the beautiful advert on TV and decided to try it out.

The marketing majors on the backup feature - all your text and picture messages either sent or received will be backed-up, you can also backup your contacts (as offered by Mobyko and others) and share some of this content with friends. On the site itself, ‘Blueblog‘ has a little more prominence offering a Moblog-like mobile blogging platform. On the face of it this is excellent - a network operator is embracing mobile blogging and content sharing whilst providing a really valuable ‘zero-effort’ backup medium for texts and content… However, it’s not quite that cut and dried - I’m giving this a ‘C+ Must try harder’ grade at present.

—-

Sign-up: O2 are really marketing this at the moment and there’s a large advert on O2.co.uk. I follow it and a fairly standard sign-in / register screen awaits. I missed the small-print on the bottom left that explains that if you already have an account on the O2 website (I do) I can use those credentials, so I create a new account. I’m really impressed when I notice the prompt: “You can register any mobile phone for any network”… Good show O2!

I decide to try this and enter the details of my Three handset - it has more content to be backed-up any way. It beeps receipt of a validation SMS and all is going well…

Damn. It appears that ‘any network’ means ‘any network that is O2′. Great. There’s no way around this so I have to start over with my O2 handset. Not impressed - and I’m not the only one. On a second try it completes, but not without a few odd errors:

It also later gives-up on handset selection for contacts backup. This only works for certain Nokia and SonyEricsson models (I am using the iPhone), I’m guessing using the ubiquitous SyncML approach. Disappointing - especially that no other options are available over this (admittedly easier) approach other than manual entry via the website.

In use: Having resigned myself to being without contacts backup (I can iSync, it’s not a worry) the initial screen is pleasant with a Flash animation that, as I add content, shows the pictures and messages I have stored. I immediately flip to the messages tab to test out the backup feature - as a network operator this is where O2 can stand out from the crowd. I send and receive a number of messages and wait… nothing. I send ‘forward’ some older messages to the O2 shortcode (not possible on teh iPhone that lacks a ‘forward’ feature so I just create new messages and pretend) - this works:

Several hours later the ‘automatically’ stored messages still aren’t shown. Perhaps it’s just slow… the whole site grinds along at a painful pace, but it’s not confidence inspiring at all.

‘Albums’ can contain groups of images (naturally), but also text messages too. Content can be from stored messages or uploaded via the web interface. It all works smoothly enough, with 1GB of free storage enough to be useful, and testing the sharing feature also works well, albeit the feature set is ‘basic’ at best and the lack of an option to bulk upload or upload via e-mail is frustrating. Any moderately demanding user is going to find Shozu with a service like Flickr a much slicker experience. Reading the Bluebook product manager’s ‘blueblog’ I see a post about a Facebook application and give that a try too. Initially it errors and once refreshed refuses to find my one shared album. I’m getting pretty fed up with this by now. It could, of course, be me doing it wrong, but I manage to do this sort of stuff day-in day-out, so if I am it should be more simple… just sayin’.

Continuing the theme of ‘good idea, executed badly’ Blueblogs doesn’t fail to disappoint either. On the plus side, posts can be made from browser or via SMS. However, any shared content is moderated… I don’t object to that in principle if this is a platform designed for ‘family friendly’ use, but it appears to be a manual process which is slow. Mobile-blogging with an hour’s delay? Hmmmm. Not to worry though, because there’s no RSS feed or e-mail alerts anyway so your friends will have to return to your blog again and again. Comments, the personal profile and the option to have multiple blogs is nice, but given even the featured blogs have only a few posts it doesn’t look like a platform that makes life easy. Oh, and whilst I’m complaining… the layout, particularly for commenting, is grim.

—-

So overall, that reads like a pretty savage kicking for O2 and really I don’t want it to be. I just can’t help thinking that if they’d put a bit more of the money spent on the advertising into the actual product it could have been so much better. The concept is great and continual backups of text and picture messaging is one of the things that only they could do, but it’s executed so poorly (and with a previously documented security gaff that makes me wonder if I really want all my messages logged by this system) I wonder how it launched… and on further reading I wonder how Newbay, the Dublin firm who’s Lifecache product this is based on, feel about this as the product spec seems to suggest O2 have really loused up this well-featured tool in the implementation.

My suggestions:

1. Speed it up and fix the bugs
2. Refine Get some designers to completely re-do the interface a bit
3. Make the blog a proper blog (use Lifecache’s features!)
4. Get your moderation done electronically (if you must have it)

…and I reckon O2 might have the beginnings of a winner here. Otherwise it’s too clunky and limited to have long-term appeal. Shame.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the SMS Text News coverage of the upcoming CTIA conference here in Las Vegas.  Lots of opportunity to think, especially on the 10 hour flight and the 6 hour lay over in LAX. I’m thinking diary style.

 I reckon I’ll post news if I see it or if there’s something that I reckon deserves attention.  But I think I’ll see if I can do a commentary on the experience and my observations.  

  I’m about to sort out my diary of agreed appointments so I’ll post that up.  For those in the UK, I’m going to try and keep the posts flowing during your timezone.  It’s conceivably possible.  I’ll be able to bring you the background and gossip from the Microsoft, Yahoo, Sprint and Accel parties (The Accel invite list looks like a who’s who of the American mobile industry — Bob, CEO of Sonim, makers of the Toughphone is due there too, I read — although I forgot to bring my one to knock people sporting RAZRs on the head with).  

There is, theoretically, wifi in the journalisty/bloggery press area so I should be able to post regularly.  I might do a few one liners with a few links; or maybe a big rant, depending on what turns me on.   We’ll also a have some ‘from the floor’ daily opinion from some executives too.  I’ll get there early and look for some real journalists and see how many of them are pretenders.  There’s nothing worse than coming across someone from a decent newspaper or something like Bloomberg and finding that they use the most basic rubbish mobile handset and that ‘mobile applications’ is just a theoretical concept for them.   To the subject of this post.  I was talking to one particular industry insider, alas anonymous — they couldn’t make it to CTIA (or, er, actually couldn’t face the tacky nature of the location) so they provided this briefing request:

“Keep track of what people are saying, at mwc i was asking everyone what was the most interesting thing they’ve seen and that helped me weed through a lot of the bullshit.” 

“You’re going to hear operators talking out there ass trying to save themselves from become pipes, then the developers who are more confused than a teenage bisexual as to whether or not they should sell their wares to operators or B2C and finally the handset makers will have vibrating, touch enabled, haptic bullshit that is just thinner and prettier than what they had last year.”

“The smell of fear was in the air at MWC, curious to read what you have to say about CTIA. that is … if you don’t get arrested after you assault a man with a three year old razr and 2 year old treo on opposite sides of his hips, in holsters.”

I’ve already seen the treos, save me.  Save me. 

I made the mistake of going into Cellular Superstore in the Fashion Show Mall, here in Las Vegas.  I would have taken a picture but I seriously couldn’t be bothered to give them more than the attention I’d already wasted on them.I thought I’d go in and buy a pay-as-you-go handset.  My Helio and my Motorola on Sprint are both in my luggage — and that’s still back in London being dicked about with by some entirely inept British Airport Authority / British Airways people at the newly launched-and-failed Terminal 5.I walked in and was surprised to find maybe 90% of the floorspace dedicated to tacky rubbish phone covers, charms and whatnot.  Keep in mind that the Fashion Show Mall is all about high quality international brands — SAKS, Abercrombie, etc — so this was a bit of a sidestep.  No wonder the shop was a bit round-the-corner away from most of the big shops.  Confused, not seeing any actual handsets I scanned the shop until I saw a selection at the back.  [Insert winning American service]“Can I help you?” asks the young lady.  Brilliant.  They’re awfully good at this sort of thing — and Las Vegas, well, they’re specialists at lifting the cash from your wallet.”Prepay handset please?”She pointed to a piece of rubbish unbranded thing, “This is on T-Mobile and it’s $169.”"Er,” I said, “Sorry, 169 DOLLARS is that? Not pesetas?”"Yes?” she said innocently.”You can get a prepay handset for $20 in any other store, and a reasonably good one for $60 odd?” I said, sort of as a question.She looked a bit annoyed.”This one is $169.”OK, I thought. Right, “What about a SIM card?”"60 dollars,”Heh.  I burst out laughing, staring at her, slight incredulity wrapped across my face.I raised my eyebrows, smiled, thanked her for her time and walked out the store.  Then picked up a $60 Samsung, complete with $10 credit, from the Verizon stall.The chap at the concession was really efficient.  He activated the phone for me and I walked away from the stall with my phone activated and ready to use.  Then phoned British Airways 800 number (without sweating at Vodafone’s ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE PENCE / min international rate)  to find out my bag is still in London.  But will be with me… ’soon’. 

12 seconds.

It took me 12 seconds on American soil before I came across someone wearing his mobile phone on a belt holster.

It really, really annoys me.   For a good few years I’ve ‘casually introspected’ in the odd private moment about just WHAT winds me up about it.  The best, most sensible set of explanations I’ve managed to get sound like this:

-  It relegates the handset to ‘tool’ status.  It’s not a hammer.  Other big mobile cultures (I’m thinking Europe) generally frown upon mobile holstering as a result of a more personal connection with their device.  They keep it in their pockets or handbags — closer to their person.

- There’s a degree of show-off-ish-ness that I just don’t like.  Overtly advertising that you’re using a Motorola RAZR isn’t, by any definition at ALL, cool.

-  I don’t like the wannabe-cowboy nature of it.  Just now, sat here in the airport waiting for my transfer, a chap across from me jumped up in delight as his hip vibrated.  He swooped the handset out of it’s holster in a practiced, smooth movement, worthy of Russell Crowe’s baddy in the recent cowboy flick, 3:10 to Yuma.

- The holsters themselves.  Often oversized.  You are either a master tradesman — plumber, electricial or the like (in which case, holster your handset as much as you wish) OR you’re not, in which case, put it in your pocket.

- I hold special annoyance for those holsters that are like little belt pockets.

- The line of the suit. Nothing worse than an executive with a huge Blackberry bulge on his hip.

- Double annoyance, guaranteed:  A phone *IN* a cheapo and torn plastic cover, IN a holster.

- Triple annoyance: Make it a RAZR in a cheapo, torn plastic cover, IN a holster, and my blood pressure shoots off the scale.

I will see how I get on at CTIA.  I think there will be a significant amount of holsters on show.  I will see if I can get some classic demonstration pictures.

Just a quick reminder about Ricky/Christina’s live wedding webcast via FlixWagon and their Nokia N82s.  Happening nowish.  See it all here.

My other half wasn’t impressed.  You know when I was spending shitloads, courtesy of what I assumed was a Vodafone Passport style service?  Well I was getting the full details.  She was out with her sister shopping during the afternoon.  She paid for parking via the Verrus-powered pay-via-mobile service for parking in the Westminster area.

Despite giving the helpful operator the correct numberplate for her sister’s car, they returned and found it clamped.

A few further calls later and she established that the operator had (mistakenly?) paid-up parking using the numberplate that she signed-up with her account for, a little while ago.  My car.   Not her sister’s car.

So she’d paid for parking.  Just not for her sister’s numberplate.  Operator error.  They must have just seen the numberplate on her account and not bothered checking when she gave a different one.

Regular SMS Text News contributor Ben Smith had a bit of a problem with the same system a little while ago (the Verrus chaps managed to fix it promptly).

Broadly speaking, I think the Verrus system works ok.  In these kinds of situations though, the end users go absolutely nuts.  Now my other half’s sister is going to have to ‘go through the system’.  She’s going to have to write letters and explanations, all the while the rather obsessive Westminster Parking Folk do their best to nail her to the wall for contesting the parking fine.

Might be quicker to just pay the fine.  Well, she’s already had to pay for it, I think, to get the clamp taken off.

Paying by mobile hits all my geeky-efficiency buttons, but there’s no accounting for human error.  It happens.  It’s an arse…

Quad-Arse MacLeod. That’s me.

First arse: I flew out of the British Airways Terminal 5 this morning (Saturday morning, that is). Whilst I was sitting waiting to board, I heard a rather stressed sounding lady continually announcing that (”Er, check-in has, er, closed.”)

It seems that things are pretttttty bad with BA and their newly launched Terminal 5. So bad that they just ‘closed’ check-in. Luckily I was already at the gate waiting to board.

Second arse; About three plane loads of happy, eager Chinese folk had just landed in Los Angeles ahead of my flight. Unfortunately it was taking the immigration people about 75% longer (yes, I counted and calculated, the queues were that long) to process them compared to those flashing a British passport. I stood and read my book in the queue.

Third arse: My luggage wasn’t there. Nowhere to be found. Possibly in London, possibly… who the hell knows.

Fourth arse: Vodafone.

I don’t know WHAT I was thinking. I really don’t. For some reason I thought I was on ‘Vodafone Passport’ when I came to the United States. So I merrily called home after I cleared immigration and debriefed as I walked all the way to Terminal 7 in the pleasant LA sunshine. Then I phoned the BA ‘800′ helpline for reporting lost bags. I hung on for a good 20 odd minutes until… until I got that sinking shock of a feeling. You know the one. The one where you think ‘is this… is this? No, it’s ‘Passport’ right? 75p and my normal rates, yes? Or… let me just quickly do a Google and… oh shit.’

Yes. I’ve been blowing 125p a minute for quite a long time. Chump. YOU TOTAL CHUMP, MACLEOD!

I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.

Well, I thought that America is a first world country (Forgetting that debacle in New Orleans). I also thought that Arooon and his mates OWN Verizon. They OWN it. Vodafone OWNS one of the United States’ biggest networks. Yes it’s CDMA but you know, they OWN it, ergo they sorted out roaming, yes?

No.

So that’ll look good on the bill..

Meantime, I’m pleased to say my Vodafone USB broadband modem is working perfectly (I haven’t had the balls to check what the costs will be yet). Lucky, because the shit-rubbish-crap T-Mobile Wireless Internet has gone ‘Bulgaria’.

My father’s had to travel to Bulgaria regularly for quite a while and he was initially really annoyed (and now delights in telling anyone) about the fact that the best hotel in the city — I think it’s Bulgaria we’re talking about — has wireless throughout the building. Just, the wireless router isn’t actually plugged into an internet connection. So, strictly speaking, the hotel has wireless. It does. Just, no *internet*. Exactly like Terminal 7 at LAX. Thank you Vodafone.

Gahhh.

So no sodding luggage, a hugely expensive Vodafone handset and LUCKILY I brought my iPhone running my 55p/min T-Mobile account. There’s life in the old girl that is the slightly bedraggled T-Mobile, yet.

Caught this on thestar.com…

Link: Cubans to get cellphone service - thestar.com

HAVANA–President Raul Castro’s government said today it is allowing ordinary Cubans to have cellphones, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the state.

It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.

Some Cubans previously ineligible for cellphones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.

Congrats to the Cubans! (I bet their mobile industry will still be better than Canada’s…)

Mobile ad guru Andrew Grill and SMS Text News friend has this to say about his recent experience via London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

- - -
The UK’s latest jewel in the crown, the new London Heathrow Terminal 5 building was opened for business on Thursday 27th March 2008. As you will all know by now, the opening day turned into a complete mess.

When I learned that my flight back from Moscow would arrive at the new T5 on Thursday evening, I was quite excited to think I might be one of the first to use this new terminal.

In the BA lounge in Moscow, they were handing out glasses of champagne to celebrate this historic event. Then came the news that our flight BA 873 would be delayed “due to operational issues at T5″.

Upon landing and pulling up “on stand” at T5, we had to endure a 30 minute wait until they could find someone to come over and move the air bridge into place. See a shot on the left of passengers waiting inside BA 873. Once inside, I was very thankful that my under 5 day travel strategy has been to only carry hand luggage as the announcement over the Tannoy as we came in was that no passengers would be accepted for travel with hold baggage. The knock on effect was the inbound passengers were waiting hours for their luggage to reach the baggage hall…not a good sign.

I sailed through passport control - thanks to TWO IRIS machines (and they were BOTH working - amazing since 80% of the time I have arrived at LHR T1, the IRIS machine has been broken.

You can see all of the photos I took at Heathrow on my journey from the air bridge to the arrivals and departure halls, and one of these shots even made it onto another blog detailing the T5 issues.

Upon arriving at T5 and clearing immigration etc, I set about having a brief view of this vast building - and it is impressive!

Travelling home via Heathrow Express, and while on a call on my mobile, I was totally amazed that there is no mobile coverage in the tunnels between the new T5 HX station and Heathrow Central (servicing T1,2,3,4). As regular travellers to Heathrow will know, you can make a call all the way from Paddington station to the airport thanks to in-tunnel coverage on Heathrow Express.

I have no idea why they have not enabled mobile coverage on the leg to the new T5 terminal, given this is now the home to all BA flights - think of all the roaming revenue the UK operators are missing out on (and the annoyance factor as calls are dropped on the 5 minute journey to T5). Perhaps this was also a first day teething problem, and perhaps some others may like to leave a comment below - does the in-tunnel coverage work on the way to T5?

Jonathan Jensen, fresh from wrestling with handsets for his son and daughters, has been pondering on the (I suspect, rather large) gulf between Normobs and … well.. us…

- - -

Ewan has blogged about Normobs (”normal mobile phone users”) before. What fascinates me is the gulf between us mobile geeks and the Normobs in terms of what we use our handsets for.

My friends and family all use mobile technology, to varying degrees, but very few of them come close to realising the full potential of the device in their pocket - web browsing, email, GPS, better software, photo sharing and of course social networking. Most of them are happy with calls and texts, a few do a bit of browsing and download some music.

So what’s going on? Are my friends and family visitors from a parallel universe (some definitely are!) or do they represent many of the real mobile users of today? My hunch is the latter.

For all the effort the networks put into marketing the cool stuff you can do on your handset why are so many people not interested? Is all this extra stuff really irrelevant to them or is it just an education challenge? Normobs might, and do, argue that calls and texts are all they need. However they are missing the convenience (a subject I will return to in a future post but in a different context) and value there is in the extra stuff.

Are the networks wasting their time or are they slowly building awareness that will eventually pay dividends for them? I’d like to think it’s the latter but my gut feel is we are a long way from seeing widespread pan generational take-up of all the great stuff current handsets are capable of.

I’ve struggled to get some of my Normobs interested in stuff like Facebook, Twitter and Jaiku on their PCs - forget trying to do it for mobile!

I’m going to keep trying but come on friends and family - you know who you are - help me out here please!

- - -

What’s your experience of getting friends and family to use their handsets beyond simple calls and texts?

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

FlixWagon’s live streaming video coverage of Blogger and S60 Ambassador (and former daily contributor to SMS Text News), Ricky Cadden’s wedding, first reported here yesterday, is to be found at the URL http://www.flixwagon.com/wedding/.

All streamed via mobile phone video, live… woosh!

I’ll see you there, virtually, baby.

I notice that everyone and their dog in the mainstream media is getting stuck into British Airways and their teething troubles at their all new Terminal 5 (Greenpeace were there, live yesterday).  Well while that’s going on, I bring you news, courtesy of StrategyEye, that they’re offering free WiFi via BT Openzone in the 6 BA lounges at Terminal 5 (and at another 19 BA lounges across the UK).

Alas you’ll probably need to be a business class passenger, or one of those lucky people with a BA travel card — to get in to the lounge and actually use the facilities.  Smart.  I’d like to see BT look at other ways of financing their WiFi infrastructure.  I’d much rather pay them a tenner a month, like I do with T-Mobile WiFi or The Cloud, rather than a per minute fee.

Anyway next time you find yourself in a British Airways lounge in the UK, try out BT Openworld and write me an email from it?

I am, incidentally, flying British Airways to Los Angeles tomorrow. 10am flight.  6am start.  Even though I’m a stone’s throw from the Heathrow Express.  I’m hoping I’m not sitting next to any a) screaming children and b) exceedingly large people who should really have bought two seats.  And thankfully, BA don’t operate an onboard mobile phone service (as yet) so there should be a degree of peace and quiet.

Critical Path are the daddy when it comes to messaging.  They’ve been in the game a long time.  I remember, back the dotcom days, we were hunting around for the best email provider on the planet to offer whitelabeled email services for our visitors.  We selected Critical Path; alas… we didn’t quite have the budgets of Microsoft and Yahoo, so in the end we weren’t able to do business.  (I secretly longed to be able to offer our audience a decent service like Yahoo or Hotmail though). Critical Path has been around the block though and it’s no surprise they’ve taken one look at the burgeoning mobile platform and nodded an affirmative ‘aye’ and got stuck in.

Memova is their consumer messaging service for mobile operators (and broadband providers) and Hong Kong’s 3 has just gone live with the service offering.  It’s an interesting offering: -

Unlike enterprise solutions, Memova Mobile works on virtually any mobile phone and does not require users to download or install client software. Additionally, the solution offers an easily managed inbox, delivering email messages from approved sources only - eliminating mobile spam and giving consumers complete control over their email experience.

I’m going to see if I can take a look and see exactly how this works.  No clients, no downloads and an easily managed inbox?  Perhaps it works with the handset’s existing ‘email’ functionality — since almost every handset, even a shocking Motorola RAZR — can usually cope with POP or IMAP email access.

No word on whether 3UK customers will be getting a similar offering as yet though.  The full release is here.

The Orange UK handset range is just terrible, isn’t it? Have you taken a look recently. I only just formally recognised this today after talking with reader Amy. She emailed earlier to say she’s due an upgrade on Orange and is thinking about the Nokia 6500. What did I reckon, she asked.

I had a browse through the available selection. Paltry. There’s a Nokia N95 — the first version, not the 8GB one. Great handset but it’s YEARS old. They’re even trying to flog a Nokia N73. Again, still a good phone — but it was top of the range back in two-thousand-and-SIX!

Hugely disappointing. No E-Series. Boring choice of N-Series. Any suggestions for Amy? I was reduced to confirming her 6500 choice. And I reckoned she should negotiate-like-hell with Orange on her price plan.

Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park, North London, is apparently — according to the Daily Telegraph — a one stop shop where up to 40% of stolen mobile phones in Britain are sold. I wonder if that’s where my phonejacked Nokia N95 headed up?

Yesterday, 600 Police Officers swooped on the street and arrested over 70 people suspected of trading in drugs, stolen goods and fake passports. 300 mobile phones, 120 laptops, 110 cameras, 32 iPods and a load of SatNav units were recovered.

Read more.

Or, watch it on Telegraph TV: