The iPhone 3G S is now available to pre-order here.
At up to two times faster than its predecessor, the first thing you’ll notice with the iPhone 3G S is how quickly you can launch applications. Amazingly, this increase in processing power actually helps to improve battery life. The iPhone 3G S features an enhanced 3.0 Megapixel camera with autofocus and is also the first iPhone to include video recording. Elsewhere, a built in digital compass offers true turn by turn navigation, HSDPA and Wi-Fi offer high speed web browsing, iTunes puts all your music at your finger tips and everything looks as good as ever on the beautiful 3.5 inch touchscreen display with multi-touch technology. Available in 16GB or 32GB memory capacity.
FREE CALLS FOREVER
You already know that the 3 network has been designed and built for the mobile internet. And you already know they can offer customers internet calls and chat with Skype for free, without needing to top-up.
But now they’re at it again. They’re making things even bigger and better for their customers and this time around it’s their Pay As You Go customers who are grabbing even more benefits.
Free text and internet with every Top-up.
We love freebies. Free calls and free ‘chats’ forever. And just when you thought things couldn’t get better, they’ve gone and decided to give away loads of free stuff with every Top-up.
So when customers decide to top-up they get all these goodies, straight away:
A bundle of free texts that get bigger, the more they top-up
A generous allowance of mobile internet access
Free 3-to-3 calls
Free voicemail
Free Windows Live Messenger (on 3 compatible mobiles)
Free stuff for 90 days.
Want to know the best bit? All this free stuff lasts a full 90 days even when a customer has no credit left. And as soon as they decide to top-up again they’ll get all these freebies…again. That’s Pay As You Go. And Go. And Go…
Vodafone’s magnanimous gesture in waiving roaming charges over the summer amounted to a nifty bit of misdirection – few noticed that it also slipped out some radical changes to the price of data for the traveller who can’t be without their email.
The changes to the cost of roamed data were posted onto the company website without press release or notification. However, one keen-eyed Reg reader noticed a footnote on their bill and decided to check out the changes, only to discover the details are obscure and the company support was unable to clarify how much it will cost to use data abroad from July 1.
In general the changes seem for the better, though you wouldn’t guess it from the company’s explanation. The world is split into three zones, and users into those with a laptop-connected dongle and those on a phone.
Zone one covers Europe and surrounding area, and will cost a fiver per 25MB for a phone, doubling to a tenner for the same amount of data downloaded to a laptop using a dongle. Zone two includes most of the rest of the world including America, and will cost three times that: £15 for a phone, £30 for a laptop. Zone three includes some of the more obscure destinations and remains at a fiver per megabyte.
The confusion arises when it comes to users who don’t touch those figures – the BlackBerry user who downloads an email on the Eurostar, or the lost walker who checks Google Mobile Maps while in Germany – with Vodafone’s support being singularly unhelpful when it comes to how much such minimal usage will cost.
Even we had trouble getting figures out of the company, whose people just wanted to talk about how great Voda is at cutting the cost of voice roaming; but we eventually established that in zone one users will pay 50p for each 100KB (or part thereof) of data while roaming, up to a total of 1MB at which point the fiver-for-25MB rate automatically kicks in. Those figures double for zone two and don’t apply to zone three.
Overall the deal seems good, and should make using data abroad less of a crapshoot for those who didn’t check tariffs before leaving, as well as putting the cost of data well below the €1-per-MB wholesale rate mandated by the EU. All of which makes Vodafone’s reticence to discuss it, even with its own support staff, all the more mysterious.
Carphone Warehouse is to buy the UK assets of Italian internet service provider Tiscali for £236m.
The deal, which is expected to be completed by the end of June, will create the UK’s largest home broadband provider with 4.25m subscribers.
Tiscali had previously been in talks with BSkyB, but negotiations broke down earlier this year.
Carphone Warehouse currently provides broadband services under its TalkTalk brand and via AOL Broadband.
Carphone chief executive Charles Dunstone said that the company would eventually just have a single brand.
But he added that Tiscali e-mail addresses would survive.
“We know the business well and the fit with TalkTalk is perfect,” Mr Dunstone said.
Completion of the deal will give TalkTalk more than 25% of the residential broadband market.
Carphone expects it to boost its earnings by 10% in the next year.
Shares in Carphone Warehouse were up 3.8% by midmorning.
Tiscali shares, which were earlier suspended in Italy pending the statement, were up 8%.
‘Competitive UK market’
Tiscali has struggled with its debt, which stands at about 600m euros ($805m;£535m).
It is the fifth largest internet service provider in the UK, with 1.45m broadband customers.
“The transaction should be considered in light of the strong consolidating trend in the highly competitive UK market, evaluating Tiscali UK activities as a whole, thus preserving the value of its industrial assets and know-how within the Carphone Warehouse Group,” said Mario Rosso, chief executive of Tiscali.
Carphone announced plans last month to separate its mobile phone business from its TalkTalk fixed line and broadband operations.
It operates 2,400 mobile phone shops across Europe in a joint venture with the US retailer Best Buy.
With T-Mobile’s financial results coming this week and expected to show big losses, will a merger with 3 be the next move for owners Deutsche Telekom?
In anticipation of T-Mobile’s first quarter results this week, rumours are rife that the UK arm of German company Deutsche Telekom will have to be sold, or at least merged, to survive.
Losses for the company, estimated to be worth £3.2 billion, are expected to go into the billions this week with estimates settling around the £1.6 billion mark.
It has been reported that Deutsche Telekom’s shareholders, the German government and private equity group Blackstone, are putting pressure on the company to get rid of T-Mobile as it is bringing its profits down.
The most likely outcome seems to be a merger with mobile firm 3, according to reports. The two companies have worked together since 2007 with 3G base stations across the country so to grow this partnership would seem logical.
Also Timotheus Hoettges, chief financial officer at T-Mobile, said on Friday: “The British market is highly competitive and has comparably low margins. In our view consolidation is a means to take excess capabilities out of the market. Nothing is unthinkable on our side.”
Unthinkable, however, could also mean rumours of selling to one of the other top providers such as Orange move from fiction to fact.
When approached for information by IT PRO on the acquisition and merger rumours currently circulating, T-Mobile declined to comment.
T-Mobile is not the first mobile phone company to suffer this quarter with recent reports from IDC and Strategic Analytics that the industry has seen its worst shipping figures since it began 27 years ago.
Because our network has been designed and built for the Mobile Internet, we can give you free Skype-to-Skype calls and Instant Messages (IM’s) from your mobile, something that the other networks aren’t doing.
HOW DO WE OFFER IT FOR FREE?
On other mobile phone networks customers have to pay for using the internet data needed to access Skype. But we’ve got it set up so that it uses the same network as regular calls. This means Skype is completely free and it’s a better quality call.
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
Because we believe in a future without restrictions and making Skype available on our network for free is just the beginning.
WATCH OUT FOR US
From today we’ll be shouting about our free calls from the rooftops – on TV, radio, in newspapers and of course, online.
We’ll be providing you loads of creative so you can plaster your sites to help take advantage of our campaign and join us in letting customers know.
It really is free calls, free for all of us, free forever.
Samsung launches I7500, The Company’s First Android-Powered Mobile Phone.
Seoul (Korea Newswire) April 27, 2009 05:08 PM — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a leading mobile phone provider, today unveiled the I7500, its first Android-powered mobile phone. With a launch of I7500, Samsung became the first company among the global top three mobile phone manufacturers to unveil an Android-powered phone.
“Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward to introduce the most innovative Android mobile phone,” said JK Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Mobile Communication Division in Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung’s accumulated technology leadership in mobile phone industry and our consistent strategy to support every existing operating system, I believe that Samsung provides the better choices and benefits to our consumers” he added.
The Samsung I7500 is a cutting-edge smartphone, featuring a 3.2″ AMOLED full touch screen and 7.2Mbps HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, giving users access to Google™ Mobile services and full web browsing at blazing speeds.
The Samsung I7500 offers users access to the full suite of Google services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Calendar™, and Google Talk™. The integrated GPS receiver enables the comprehensive use of Google Maps features, such as My Location, Google Latitude, Street View, local search and detailed route description. Hundreds of other applications are available in Android Market. For example, the application Wikitude, a mobile travel guide, allows consumers to access details of unknown sights via location-based Wikipedia articles.
Based on Samsung’s proven product leadership, Samsung I7500 comes with latest multimedia features. The large and vivid 3.2″AMOLED display ensures the brilliant representation of multimedia content and enjoyable full touch mobile experience. Along with supporting a 5-megapixel camera and various multimedia codec formats, the I7500 also provides a long enough battery life (1500mAh) and generous memory capacity up to 40GB (Internal memory: 8GB, External memory: Up to 32GB) to enjoy all the applications and multimedia content. The phone also boasts its slim and compact design with mere 11.9mm thickness.
The Samsung I7500 will be available in major European countries from June, 2009.
3 just made Skype on its mobiles completely free: the network’s just announced a new pay as you go SIM card with no monthly subscriptions that’ll make Skype calls for absolutely zilch. The best bit of all: it’ll cost just £2!
T-Mobile might see VoIP integration in to phones as inevitable in future, but 3 is embracing cheap internet calls right now.
Starting next month, you’ll be able to buy a Skype friendly 3 SIM card for just £1.99 that will let you make Skype to Skype calls and IMs for free over 3G, not just Wi-Fi like the Skype iPhone app out at the moment. There’s no subscription, no monthly top ups required, that really is it, and the 3 SIM cardwill work in any unlocked 3G handset from the Summer.
If completely free calls sounds like business suicide, think again: 3 is looking to nab customers from other networks with the offer, and get them spending on other 3 services. We’re sold: the other networks need to start looking over their shoulders. Skype has 433 million users worldwide, so at a price point like this, there’ll be no holding VoIP fans back.
