Ricky here!

Ewan and the podcast team have been giving Orange a hard time recently about mobile data, especially about their unlimited Bebo. You can read about his rant’s here, here and here.

It seems that Orange have listened to its customer and is now offering all £35+ plans unlimited free data which is 500mb fair usage. This is available to existing customers as well; all eligible customers will be migrated on their July bill date and be sent an SMS and information in their bill. If you want to be upgraded straight away just give customer services a call, and you account will be upgraded to include the extra benefits. There have been reports that some operators are telling customers it is only on new connections, this is NOT true and ask them to check with someone senior. My understanding is this is also applicable if you receive a discount on your tariff i.e. retention offer or online discount as long as your plan is a stupid animal and then 35 or higher you will be eligible.

Not only have Orange improved data on their tariffs they have also altered some of their other plans. The Racoon Plan (god these names are stupid) will get an increase of 75 and 100 minutes respectively on the £25 and £30 tariffs. Canary Plans will increase the amounts of texts by 100 to 500 texts.
Wow, what an improvement last month they were offering customers 30mb for £8 a month, and now they are including data in all their higher tariffs. I am sure the podcast team will be discussing this in further detail, but it seems that orange have now started to take data seriously. Let us know your how you get on upgrading to the new tariffs especially if you are having trouble.

Alltel Wireless has announced that it has signed a deal with Boingo Wireless that will allow anyone to access to its more than 25,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the US.

The deal with Boingo means that you can sign in and pay for usage without having to have a contract with Alltel. The rates are $19.99 for a month and $3.99 for one day’s usage. Or if you are an Alltel customer you can subscribe to the Internet Anywhere Bundle for $69.98 per month which gives you Mobile Internet and access to the Wi-Fi hotspots.

Angela Rittgers, director of product marketing at Alltel described the Internet Anywhere Bundle as “a common-sense approach to network connectivity.”

It looks like the EC’s threats of mandatory cuts to the cost of roaming data and SMS are starting to put the frighteners on some operators. After EC Commissioner Viviane Reding gave the networks two weeks to cut costs before regulation reared its ugly head, T-Mobile looks like it’s already buckled.

It’s announced that from the start of next month, roaming rates within the EU will drop by up to 80 percent for “internet access and mobile broadband”, while the sending a text within Europe will reduce cost up to 38 percent less. Or, to put it another way, the cost per megabyte of mobile data will fall from £7.50 to £1.50 and a roamed SMS will be 25p, down from 40p.

It looks like Reding’s plan is working: operators are doing their very best to dodge the threat of more regulation and if that means 80 percent price cuts, so be it. Hopefully, we’ll now see a rash of ‘me too’ pricing announcements slashing the cost of data use while abroad - and just in time for the summer holidays too.

After Ewan’s rants about Orange and its stupid data plans here, here and here, we’ve had a tip from a reader to say that Orange are looking to introduce new data plans to rival Vodafone’s.

Anyone able to confirm this?

After giving operators numerous warnings to cut the cost of using roaming SMS and data, EC Commissioner Viviane Reding has revealed she’s now going ahead with a plan to cap rates for using data services abroad unless the networks drop their prices voluntarily.

According to Reuters, Reding has given operators two weeks to clean up their act and cut costs. She’ll also start publishing the cost of roaming data services on an EU website from the start of next month. “On the basis of those prices I will then decide if it’s necessary or not to have a regulation proposed,” Reuters quotes Reding as saying.

If history is any guide, expect the European operators to make a lot of noise about how data costs have already come down loads in the last year or two, then cut the cost of data some more when they realise Reding isn’t joking, and then the EC to decide it’s still not enough and bring in the regulation anyway. Good news for anyone texting from aboard, bad news for anyone having to listen to operators whinging for the next few weeks.

It seems Europeans just can’t get enough of mobile data at the moment. According to the GSMA, the market for mobile data skyrocketed by 40 percent to by €7 billion in 2007 while in the year to April 2008, the number of 3G users in the EU doubled to 112 million.

And guess what’s spurred all this take-up? Yep, cheaper prices for both the necessary kit and for the connection itself, with the GSMA reckoning that the cost of data roaming in the EU dropped by 25 percent in the year to April 2008 while European roaming traffic jumped by traffic grew 75 percent in the same time. The GSMA is also predicting that prices will fall further.

All good news, obviously, but with mobile broadband now definitely mature, I’d like to put in a request for the operators: can we have more tariffs where a single data bundle can be shared between a number of devices (phone, dongle, laptop, 3G-connected digital camera etc) with just one bill? Please?

Whatley reporting in…

Founder of Moblog.co.uk and all round friend of SMS Text News, Alfie Dennen, has set up a new blog in lieu of the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit which takes place in London next week.

The weird thing for me (for a start anyway) is the name ‘Mobile Web 2.0‘ - so weirded out was I by this in fact that I had ended up dropping a ‘note’ to Alfie explaining my thoughts.

Well he went ahead and published it:

“When did we have Mobile Web 1.0?

What the hell just happened?
First up: If you ask ANY consumer on the street: Are you using Mobile Web 2.0?
They’ll probably look at you like you’re from Mars.

Second: These naming conventions genuinely drive me nuts. WAP. Mobile Internet. Mobile Web. Internet, made Mobile. Mobile 2.0. Mobile Web 2.0. ENOUGH ALREADY!

We may as well ask: Is this the year of the Mobile?

Just so we can tick every box (and seriously, that question is now, officially, a joke, you know it’s a joke because whenever anyone asks it these days the response is LAUGHTER).

It’s like when people carp on about Web 2.0. More often than not I find myself chiming in with something like: You know people just call it the web now right? …”

And so on. You can read the full post here. There’s a whole bunch of great content up actually (not including my post ), so yeah - head over and check it out!

I’m in Co Kerry, Ireland for the bank holiday weekend, visiting the girl’s family. Good food, good drink and good company - all is well. Except that Three’s data here is abysmal.

The images at the top of this post are the maximum and minimum speeds I’ve achieved over a 3.5G connection… and have validated with multiple other tests. Noting close to the 3.6Mbs that Three say can be achieved. If I weren’t roaming for free I certainy wouldn’t pay for this…!

It seems I’m not alone. How do the Irish mobile firms cope? There’s quite a cluster in Cork.

Gahh. Electronista has news of a new M:Metrics study that puts Britains in their place when it comes to mobile data…

Americans browse the web on their cellphones almost twice as often as their British counterparts even without the help of web-friendly devices like the iPhone, according to a new study by M:Metrics. Despite the reputation of Europeans as more openly embracing smartphones, Americans in March were known to spend an average of four hours and 38 minutes per month on websites using their phones versus almost exactly two and a half hours for British users. The difference is largely attributed to the prevalence of flat-rate data plans in the US, which give customers either a block of data or unlimited access instead of the metering that more often exists in Europe.

No wonder when you recognise that a whopping percentage of the UK runs on Orange and it’s ultra backward, ultra shit, ultra piss-poor data price plans. That doesn’t actually work at the moment.

Gahhh.

Seriously. El Reg has the story…

Orange mobile broadband takes six-day break | The Register

Orange mobile broadband customers have been without internet access since Thursday, and the company cannot tell them when it will be restored.

First to go was access to secure websites like Hotmail and Amazon on Thursday of last week. By Saturday there was no internet access at all.

Read it and weep (as reported by Businessweek):

Orange in the UK is also tweaking its Pay As You Consume standard, per MB rate. Orange Business Services customers who will see the standard rate reduced from £3.50 per MB for data cards and £4.50 per MB for handsets, to £2.55 per MB for both data cards and handsets. Pay Monthly customers will also see prices fall from £8 per MB to £3 per MB; and Pay as You Go customers will see prices fall from £8 per MB to £4 per MB.

Kill me now.

Oh, and they’ve reduced roaming to some other piece of shit rubbish crap rate that is still stupid. Next. Don’t care. Byee.

Could this really be the green light we’ve been waiting for? It looks like, after all the delays and to-ing and fro-ing with partner Clearwire, Sprint’s WiMax network is finally ready for take-off.

Sprint said that it’s now finished commercial testing of its Xohm network, alongside buddy Samsung, and the WiMax network is now meeting all the necessary criteria on “overall performance, handoff performance and handoff delay” after trials in Washington DC and Baltimore, as well as in Sprint’s labs. The two cities will be the first to get to try the service commercially later this year, according to the operator.

It’s now starting to look like Sprint really is going to bring a WiMax network to the US (it was looking shaky there for a while, especially after the departure of former CEO Gary Forsee) but the fuzziness around the timing of the launch - “later this year” - still hints that there could be some quirks to be ironed out yet.

It looks like there’s life in US WiMax yet. US providers Clearwire and SprintNextel have agreed to combine their WiMax networks into a new company, under the Clearwire brand.

They’ve got some powerful friends on board too: Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have agreed to finance the new company to the tune of $3.2 billion. Sprint will remain the biggest shareholder in the company with 51 percent.

After all the trouble with its Xohm WiMax network Sprint has been having lately, a lot of people had predicted a swift death for the technology. Not so. It seems Google and Intel, both of whom have a lot of clout and a vested interested in seeing the technology succeed, are determined to keep the network going. Hopefully this is the shot in the arm mobile WiMax needs.

I’ve been playing with WalkingHotspot. Does what it says on the tin. Works with Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

When an operator says you can get ‘up to 7.2Mbps’ what sort of speed do you actually expect from your mobile broadband modem? According to the the BBC, 3 has reported Vodafone to the Advertising Standards Authority over the wording of its mobile broadband advertising, contending that ‘up to’ just isn’t good enough.

The Beeb says 3 has accused Vodafone of not making it clear that when it says ‘up to 7.2Mbps’ consumers actually won’t get anything like 7.2Mbps. Vodafone says it tells its customers when they buy a device that they shouldn’t expect to get top speeds.

In first days of wired broadband, this argument came up repeatedly and the regulator pretty much decided that putting ‘up to’ before a speed is enough of a caveat for users. For most man-in-the-street users, as long as they can get a service that lets them browse and send attachments in good speed, that’s enough for them. That said, a bit more realism in speed boasts never hurt anyone.

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.

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.

For those of you who may not be a regular reader of our dear blog, I’ll catch you up to speed.

My name is Krystal, I live in Canada, and our Mobile Industry sucks.

Now that you’re all caught up and sitting comfortably, we’ll begin.

When I heard that Bell was offering unlimited data, I got excited. Super excited. OH MY GOD SOMEONE HERE IS FINALLY CLUEING IN! excited, and I jumped at the chance to demo it on an HTC Touch.

I’m a bit of a normob, not by choice, by necessity. I would happily use my phone to the extent of a James Whatley, but I can’t. Why? 5 cents/kb hurts. Big time.

So after the helpful guys in media relations at Bell (hi guys!) got in touch (get it? touch? ok bad pun.) and said they’d send me one, I was ecstatic and almost started drooling at the thought of having unlimited data all to myself.

The Touch arrived on a Friday and I quickly ripped open the packaging and found myself playing with it. My husband of course sat down with the instruction manual (he’s one of those who has to read the entire user guide first) while I plugged it in and instantly started fiddling. Let me take this moment to say, I hate Windows, and Windows Mobile. I am a Mac and Symbian girl through and through. But for the sake of having unlimited data, I’m willing to sacrifice.

First impressions:

I like the fact that it has a, for lack of a better word, rubbery coating. That was different than any other phone I’ve had. Keeps it from slipping out of my hand. Nice big screen, always a plus for me (considering I’m practically blind without my contact lenses) although it being a touch screen is going to throw me off slightly, I do like having buttons to push. It fits into the cell phone pocket in my handbag (important for a girl!) but alas, Windows Mobile.

Well I’ll deal with it.

First of all, I’ll get it out of the way. The stylus drove me up the wall. (A common occurrence here at SMS Text News) I stopped using it after the first day. I just couldn’t handle it. A) they’re so friggin small and awkward to hold onto and B) I looked like an idiot.

So I ditched the stylus, and thanks to my fake acrylic nails (they’re not just for fashion) I managed to get by. I basically used the qwerty keyboard. The weird Touch version of T9 was annoying, and without the stylus, the transcriber was useless. But the keyboard wasn’t bad, although I had to get used to spelling words out letter by letter. (Which meant I tend to keep emails and text short, much to Ewan’s joy I’m sure)

I won’t get too much into the menus and stuff, it’s Windows Mobile, so you get the idea. Start menu, Internet Explorer etc etc. I tried snapping a few pictures with the camera, but after having an N95, a 2 megapixel camera just seemed like a big disappointment.

I went to work setting up my email account and instantly they started flooding in. Ahh, I think, it’s so simple, they just come to me! I don’t need to connect to my mailbox on my N95, download the message. (Which I usually only do when I’ve got wifi, as I only am allowed 12MB a month currently, and that would get eaten up awfully quickly) I got busy downloading some applications and I sent off my first text message to Ewan who was hiding in San Fran somewhere “Look! A Text from my HTC Touch!” and got a reply somewhere along the lines of “Welcome to the 21st Century with the rest of us.”

Cheeky.

Anyway, onto Unlimited Data!

On Sunday I was up early and off to a bowling tournament. (I will take this moment to interject with, yes, I am a professional 5-Pin bowler) So I drive there, convinced I know where it is, because I do, although I haven’t been there in at least 5 years. We pull into the parking lot, I scan the plaza and hmmm, where has the bowling alley gone? They must have moved it! I know it’s here! Hmmm. I know! I pull out the HTC Touch and google for their website.

Oh. It’s in the plaza across the road.

Woops.

While I was there, someone asked me a question, which I don’t remember at the moment, and I didn’t know the answer. Normally this would result in wandering around asking a million people if they knew, but never fear! I simply pulled out the HTC Touch and googled for the answer. Simple.

The next day my husband had to go into Toronto to a client and took the train. He sent me a text on the way home to say he was on the 5:30 train. A quick check on my HTC Touch told me what time it came in.

I bought books on Amazon (that were already on my wish list), showed my husband the new jacket I had bought online earlier that day while we were out eating dinner and checked my online banking. Gone was my usual line of “don’t let me forget to show you online when we get home…”

I downloaded ring tones, sent Ewan numerous text messages in San Fran and even did that crazy thing we tend to do with phones and made a few calls.

It was brilliant really, I was getting email anywhere. I could update my Facebook status anywhere, I could read the latest celebrity gossip ANYWHERE. Any time I wanted. I felt like a part of the in crowd, what every one of you have. (Or most of you anyway) Finally.

Don’t read this as me hating the HTC Touch, I actually quite liked it, but am unsure if I could handle it as my everyday phone. It would be great for some I’m sure. I’m just picky. I need buttons. (Upon purchasing an iPod Touch I realized the same thing, an iPhone would drive me crazy)

What I did love was the unlimited data. Anytime, anywhere. I just couldn’t get enough and quickly became an addict. (Seriously, the first couple days I was without the Touch and the Unlimited Data, I actually found myself staring off into space, tapping my fingers when I was out somewhere thinking, my god, someone might have poked me on Facebook and I CAN’T CHECK. My email isn’t coming to me anymore, I don’t know what the current weather is. I felt so beyond isolated. Here I am sitting in the middle of the mall, surrounded by people, and I was alone. Completely lost without it. (I totally understand the crackberry habit now!)

BIG kudos to Bell. THANKYOU. For one, letting me demo the Touch, and two for having the balls to take the bull by the horns, notice we’re stuck in the dark ages and offer unlimited data.

Please fellow Canadians, start demanding what you’re missing. You want unlimited data, trust me. And you don’t want to have to pay a fortune for it, it’s not necessary. Bell’s rate is only $7 a month on top of your existing plan. It’s totally worth it. GO GET IT. If you’re not with Bell, and locked into some hideous 36 month contract while lovingly cradling your RAZR, WAKE UP. Smell the unlimited data coffee and starting demanding from the others (Rogers, Telus, Fido, Virgin, anyone) what you want.

Now if only I could get it on my N95…

NTT DoCoMo has been pushing ahead with boosting network speeds: the Japanese operator says it has notched up a downlink transmission rate of 250Mbps over an outdoor LTE test network.

DoCoMo is now working on testing handover from one base station to another, and how LTE performs in both indoor and outdoor environments, carrying out the trials near its R&D labs in Yokosuka.

It’s great to see companies making bigger and bigger leaps in bandwidth - good news for efficiency as much as anything. The only downside? DoCoMo expects it won’t finish testing the technology til 2009, so we’re still years away from actually getting our hands on devices and networks that can deliver this speed. Why do operators keep teasing us like this?!

Check out this story from Mike Smith — he’s added it as a comment to this post from last April: SMS Text News » Archives » Unlimited data on Orange UK for £8 a month. No, I’m not kidding!

Unbelievable!!! I was on a £4.00 per month unlimited GPRS wap package with Orange for 4 years. When I say unlimited, it was subject to a fair usage policy of 10mbs per month. So much for unlimited!!! I was actually using 400-500mbs per month, on a regular basis, and no one said a word.
I then upgraded to a Nokia N95, not one of my better decisions, but I needed access to Orange internet, not wap. I was offered a £5.00 per month unlimited off peak bundle, or an anytime 30mb bundle for £8.00 per month. 30mbs, I would have got through that in an hour!!! I reluctantly opted for the off peak package, at least I wouldn’t need to re-mortgage the house at the end of the month!

Just by chance I rang customer services (now there’s a breach of the trades description act) to see if any new data plans had become available that would be more suitable. To my surprise, and great delight, I was offered anytime unlimited usage for £8.00 per month. Now that’s a bargain in anyones book, so I grabbed it straight away.

Knowing Orange of old, they may suddenly realise just how generous that is and withdraw it, just like they did with my £4.00 wap package. The bottom line is, they can withdraw the offer, but if you are already on the plan, they can’t take you off of it. My advice would be to grab it while it’s available, and if you change your service plan, don’t be talked out of giving it up. Make it plain you keep want to keep the data bundle no matter what. £8.00 per month unlimited internet usage is a very good deal indeed, now if only it was possible to get a connection………………………………:-))

Are you on Orange? What’s your story with mobile data? I always thought Orange was the black sheep of the UK operators with a ridiculous set of data rates.

If you’re a regular visitor to the UK or if you need mobile broadband now and again, but not enough to take out a contract, this might well be a wicked deal for you.

3UK have just announced that they’re selling their USB modems at 69.99 pounds on pay as you go. Genius. Last year, 3UK kicked the mobile broadband marketplace into touch with the launch of their tenner-a-month mobile broadband service (I’ve got one of those and it’s wicked).

Many shops in the 3UK empire couldn’t actually re-stock fast enough, such was the demand. Indeed, a USB modem is no longer the domain of the uber-geek. I come across lots of normobs who have one now.

The other mobile operators here in the UK were caught asleep at the wheel. Vodafone continued to knock along at at 30+ pounds/month price plan until recently — losing many a customer to the very tempting 3UK offer. T-Mobile, too, one of the first to launch mobile broadband, were steeply priced compared to the tenner-a-month deal.

The next stage for domination for 3UK is pay as you go — for causal users, international travellers and those (like me) up for impulse purchases. You can now walk into a 3UK shop — today — and walk out with a USB modem that will work instantly.

All you need to do is top it up. Quoting from 3UK’s release:

With the current Pay As You Go price plan customers can get a 1GB data allowance with a £10 Add-on, 3GB with a £15 Add-on and 7GB with a £25 Add-on. Each Add-on lasts for 30 days.

3’s most popular 3GB package provides users with up to 2000 plain text emails and 100 hours of surfing the web, with an additional 100 two minute video downloads and 200 music tracks.

Reasonable to me, particularly if you’re spunking 20 pounds a day on wifi fees at your hotel.

More details and ordering here.

While AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile were all introducing unlimited voice plans last week, Sprint kept quiet. Now it’s unleashed its own unlimited offering and, to put it simply, it sounds great. For $99.99 a month, new and existing users can get uunlimited voice, data, text, e-mail, web browsing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS navigation and more for $99.99 a month.

Considering the best equivalent offer from rivals has either unlimited voice or unlimited voice and data, Sprint has one-upped its competitors in a big way. That said, it really needs to - the new offer comes on the back of the company’s latest set of financial results which show a massive loss after the operator took a writedown on the value of Nextel, which it bought in 2005.

Sprint has a hard road ahead of it but if anything could turn users’ heads, it’s offers like this.

The S60 Blogs are a source of all types of information, from application betas to marketing thoughts, and every now and again, a gem such as this post from Peter Harbeson. As a bit of an experiment, using his S60 handset, he wanted to see just how much he could do with his phone using ONLY the web browser. Peter was surprised to find that, somehow, he was able to do just about everything.

Peter’s list included being able to:

keep my calendar in any of several web-based calendars (Google, Yahoo, Plaxo, and probably a dozen others)

send and receive email using the web (pharbeson [at] gmail [dot] com, by the way)

send SMS using bigfoot.com

maintain a to-do list

view and edit Office documents using Google docs

listen to music

watch videos

back up data (although most of my data isn’t local, so it’s already backed up)

maintain and use a contact list — this is not as well integrated as it could be, but it’s possible

read ebooks

subscribe to and read RSS feeds

subscribe to podcasts (although I listen to them without the browser)

He goes on to wonder just what the benefits of an entirely browser-based UI would really be. Obviously currently there’s a network connectivity issue, but what if that was solved? How much easier would it be to ‘fix’ the UI or customise it to individual users if it was merely a web page?

NASA and the British National Space Centre are working together to put a network on the moon. The pair have set up a working group and reckon the cellular coverage could be in place within the next decade to help transmit data between lunar explorers and their earth-bound base.

The collaboration is set to result in a lunar exploration called MoonLITE, or Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment, scheduled to take off some time after 2012 and will see a communications link set up between the earth and the moon itself.

Wow. This could be the most remote mobile coverage ever.