The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Archive for September, 2007
South Koreans spend $1.5bn in three years on SMS
Sep 30th
Three major mobile phone companies in South Korea have earned a combined $1.5 billion from their short messaging service from 2004 to 2006, the local media said.
The report indicated SK Telecom Co. as the top SMS earner with $843 million followed by KTF Co. with $417 million and LG Telecom Ltd. with $224 million.
Local lawmaker Kim Yang-soo has said that the three companies have made “outrageous profits” from SMS, and believes that his estimated cost to them of 0.009 cents per text sent they should reduce the end user charge to 2 cents.
New iPhone software bricks unlocked handsets
Sep 28th
Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple iPhone warning proves true
Plenty of chatter around the Internet this lunchtime that the new version of Apple’s iPhone software is merrily bricking handsets that’ve been modified to work on networks other than AT&T.
If you’ve got an unlocked handset, my tip is *NOT* to upgrade the software until things have calmed down a bit. Otherwise you may end up with an expensive doorstop!
T-Mobile buy Orange Holland for €1.3bn
Sep 28th
Link: Deutsche Telekom buys Orange Netherlands for €1.3 billion – International Herald Tribune
As reported here a couple of weeks ago, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom have concluded a deal to buy the Dutch operations and network of Orange for €1.3 billion (about $1.8 billion, or £900m).
According to reports, Deutsche Telekom expects the takeover to result in savings of about €1 billion over the next few years – mainly down to network integration and reduced marketing expenses. The European Commission say that the merger will make T-Mobile the second larged operator in terms of subscribers and third largest in terms of revenue in the Dutch market.
Blyk deploy ID3 security solution
Sep 28th
Recently launched youth-focused MVNO Blyk has deployed GB‘s ID3 solution for customer authentication to protect against ID theft and ensure customer data is accurate for advertiser clients.
As the first ad-funded mobile network in Europe, Blyk has paid extensive attention to its customer authentication process to ensure best user experience and quality of its member data to advertisers.
Working with GB, Blyk is able to maximise the number of new customers they can sign up by offering an instant ID verification process, powered by GB’s ID3 technology. The seamless and totally unobtrusive verification process ensures that Blyk customers are fully and uniquely identified, providing advertisers with access to an ever growing pool of potential customers.
Timo Ahopelto, Head of Strategy at Blyk, comments: “All our technology platform and service partners are proven leaders in their fields, and GB’s expertise in age and identity related verification issues, particularly in the telecommunications market, means we have total confidence in this critical starting point of our customer life cycle process. The quality of the verification process from GB satisfies large part of the requirements in the UK and internationally.”
“We are delighted to be working with Blyk on this exciting, revolutionary service for young people”, says Richard Law, GB’s CEO. “Blyk’s decision to select GB as its partner says as much about the innovative culture of both businesses as it does about the scalability of ID3 technology to meet customer needs.”
O2 unlimited data? Oh dear..
Sep 28th
Link: Consumer Data Bolt On – Tariffs – Mobiles & Tariffs – O2
SMS Text News reader Barry got in touch just now to highlight O2′s rather stupid ‘unlimited’ data offering. They’re trying to hard to match similar options from T-Mobile and Three, but manage to completely screw it up by throwing in loads of conditions and exclusions.
Here’s what they have to say:
O2 Web Bolt On gives you unlimited* browsing through your phone for £7.50 per month
So far so good. What do you reckon their definition of ‘unlimited’ is? 1Gb? 2Gb? Maybe even three? Nope – not a hope in hell. Buried in small print on the page, they say:
A fair use of 200MB per month applies to the O2 Web Bolt On. A fair use of 3GB per month applies to O2 Web Max.
Eh? Let’s compare this with T-Mobile. Web’n'Walk on your phone is £7.50 a month, and gives you 1Gb of data. You can even do pay-as-you-go Web’n'Walk for a quid a day.
However, there is one ray of sunshine in this whole mess. They give you a free trial of data services to all customers before you decide to commit. How much do you reckon you’ll get for free? If you’ve got a tariff with less than 600 minutes, it’s a very generous 100KB. Wow, what a lot. It gets even better if you’ve got over 600 minutes a month on your tariff – you get a whole 512KB to play with.
The bottom line? Utter crap. Sorry and all that, but it is. If these are the basis for the T&Cs for EDGE data on the iPhone, then I’m wondering whether Apple realise they’ve really shot themselves in the foot.
Update: SMS Text News reader Paul got in touch, pointing out that the T&Cs for the Web Bolt On are even more strict than first thought. Witness these points, from the O2 terms and conditions page
The O2 Web Bolt On can only be added to a consumer voice tariff and allows you unlimited use of O2′s 3G/GPRS Mobile Data Services for Permitted Uses only.
Permitted Uses of theO2 Web Bolt On are uses of your SIM Card within a handheld mobile device for the purposes of Internet Browsing and email (excluding BlackBerry® email) only.
Any other use of the O2 Web Bolt On will not be a Permitted Use, including but not limited to:
1. Use with Data Cards or Modems;
2. Instant Messaging,
3. IP Telephony,
4. Point 2 Point file sharing and file transfer,
5. VoIP (e.g. Skype™),
6. Video and TV streaming,
7. Slingboxes; and
8. Use in conjunction with routers.O2 reserves the right to suggest an upgrade to O2 Web Max or to withdraw the O2 Web Bolt On from you at any time if O2 reasonably suspects you of using the service for uses other than the Permitted Uses or abuse of the service, including using an atypical volume of data as compared to normal users of the O2 Web Bolt On, which will normally be less than 200MB of usage within a one month bill cycle (termed ‘fair usage”).
O2 will contact you before the O2 Web Bolt On is withdrawn or upgraded. If for any reason contact is not possible then O2 may temporarily bar the service until contact can be made. In the event that O2 withdraws the O2 Web Bolt On, O2 is not obliged to offer any alternative replacement service. If O2 determines that you may upgrade to an alternative service which is more appropriate for your requirements then, if you consent, O2 will transfer you to the alternative service as soon as is reasonably practicable after you advise O2 that this is what you wish to do.
So basically you can’t use it for IM, VoIP, streaming, file transfer, or anything really useful. Do O2 realise the internet has changed a lot since the early 90′s?
LHM score with Everton FC
Sep 28th
LHM Media, which specialises in mobile entertainment and marketing, is celebrating its second birthday in style after scoring a major contract with Everton Football Club that will see them develop a mobile portal for fans to view goals, images, music and latest news.
Supported by Business Link West Midlands, this breakthrough is the latest in a long line of successes for the firm and will help to increase turnover to the £350k mark for the first time in its history.
Ian Hughes, one of the founding Directors, picked up the story: ‘Football is a very big market and one where the demand for the latest information is growing by the passing day. This means that our technology could make a real difference to clubs throughout the UK and Everton are one of the first to take advantage.
’We have designed a mobile portal that will allow supporters to subscribe to goal alerts, news, ringtones and competitions by the minute. This starts at just 25p for the basic service and goes up to £3 for a video of the game – relayed direct to the phone just 24 hours after it has been played.”
LHM Media was founded in September 2005 by Ian Hughes, Paul McMonagle and Steve Lawrence who support Wolves, Blues and Aston Villa respectively.
The football fans – all experienced in the media and telecoms industry – used expert assistance from Business Link WM to help with initial business planning, market research and the creation of a corporate website.
Orange to offer real-time recommendations
Sep 27th
Orange has signed an agreement with Xiam Technologies, for the provision of its My Personal Offers System (MPOS) which will give customers real-time recommendations across the Orange World Portal. MPOS will help Orange World customers to discover personalised content that is relevant to their own specific interests.MPOS will ensure Orange customers discover and consume a broad range of content and services that are both relevant and meaningful based on their unique profiles. For example a football fan could expect to be offered ‘FIFA 2007′ game and a ‘Chelsea’ wallpaper based on the club they follow, then be presented more subtle, unexpected recommendations based on usage patterns identified by MPOS and filtered according to individual user profiles. MPOS can recommend content across different categories and suggest content that the customer may not otherwise find.
Jim Small, Portal Relevance Manager at Orange UK said, ‘It is the first time our customers will be able to access a diverse range of content services through a tailored recommendations page on Orange World that is based on the intelligence we have gathered from each user’s previous visits. For us it is about enhancing and personalising the customer experience, whilst increasing customer loyalty and content revenues. We believe that Xiam’s MPOS technology will help us do this”.
Colm Healy, CEO of Xiam explains, ‘Xiam’s MPOS will help Orange Customers to find the content that interests them. It has been developed to address the need to treat each individual subscriber on a one-to-one basis and this is central to the recommendations solution which will present individually customised content suggestions for each customer coming to the Orange portal. Based on the premise that in the fast moving world of mobile content, with a small densely loaded interface, helping the customer to get to the right content in an easy and efficient way is vital in providing a meaningful portal experience.”
Xiam’s system will provide a number of different recommendation mechanics on the Orange Portal enabling customers to access content across all content silos, in their own personal recommendations page, irrespective of their location on the portal. This aids content discovery and navigation by linking together different but related content formats. For example a user could access ringtones, games and wall papers from the same location.
Wireless Broker suite gets an upgrade
Sep 27th
First Hop announced today the availability of new releases of all the key products in the First Hop Wireless Broker suite. The integrated suite of First Hop products form a powerful service delivery platform for personalised content services, 3rd party content provider management, and intelligent promotions.
While new types of technologies and infrastructure, such as Mobile TV and IMS, are making their gradual entry into the market, SMS, MMS, WAP and content downloads continue to form a clear majority of value-added services (VAS) revenues. To help operators further enhance and expand their offerings, First Hop launches substantially enhanced versions of the company’s hit products Message Router, Service Manager, Wireless Internet Router, Business Reporting Module, Campaign Module, and Subscription & Profile Module. The new releases meet the continuously increasing performance requirements as well as add features to drive up the value and usage of mobile value added services.
Timo Ahomäki, CTO, First Hop said: “First Hop’s roadmap closely follows the requirements of our customer base. It is exciting to see how much of the Telco 2.0 promise we can deliver already today with existing messaging and browsing technologies, without a need for a full IMS network upgrade. Our aim is to bring the internet rhythm into mobile operator services, and help our customers move quickly into new areas of growth while leveraging already proven content services to the maximum.”
The product suite that serves a base of over 60 mobile operators provides powerful tools both to create, manage, analyse and develop their services portfolios, while capturing new revenue streams from the advertiser and media communities.
Highlights of added functionality: significant performance optimisations, a new graphical user interface layer for improved user-friendliness of the workflow-based service provisioning and management tools, as well as improved transaction data analytics and a business intelligence extranet.
The new product releases will be available for customer deliveries starting from Q4/2007.
Business medicine on your mobile with Skill-Pill
Sep 27th
I’ve been meaning to write a bit about these guys before – but what with other recent high profile mobile related events it’s been a bit busy around these parts.
Anyway, let me introduce Skill-Pill Mobile Learning. The concept is quite simple – they give you two minute-long ‘pep talks’ on a selection of business topics via mobile video. Whether you’ve got an important presentation to do, need to jog your memory on a particular subject or are about to head into a sales meeting and need a quick injection of knowledge on a new subject, you just grab the relevent Skill-Pill, push the button and watch the video on your mobile.
The service claims to run on any video-enabled mobile, including most smartphones, Blackberrys, PDA, plus the iPod and iPhone as well if that tickles your fancy. I’ve had a play around with Skill-Pill on my Nokia E61 and N95, and it works a treat.
They do personal and corporate packages, and plenty of topics too – so there’s sure to be something of interest. Go have a look and find out more at http://www.skill-pill.com
SaskTel bring SpinVox to Canada
Sep 27th
Voice to text provider SpinVox have signed a deal with mobile and landline operator SaskTel to bring their voicemail to SMS service to Canada.
Available on both the SaskTel cellular network and SaskTel’s wireline telephone network, Voice Mail to Text service automatically converts voicemail messages to text and sends the text message to the recipient for viewing on a computer, a cellular phone or another wireless device. The service is available for $25 per month for unlimited messages, $10 per month for up to 40 messages or 40 cents per message on a pay per use basis.
‘Voice Mail to Text is a revolutionary service and we’re proud to be the first provider in Canada to offer it to our customers,” SaskTel President and CEO Robert Watson said. ‘These new technologies provide customers with incredible new flexibility and convenience when dealing with their voicemail.”
‘Voice driven messaging is about to explode around the globe,” said Christina Domecq, Co-founder and CEO of SpinVox. ‘SpinVox was the first to create the service and SaskTel is the first in Canada to offer it. We believe voice messaging greatly enhances your ability to communicate effectively with the people you interact with on a daily basis – and that’s why we’re both in business.”
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