Although sales of Apple’s iPhone did not exceed 5.5 million units until 1Q08, its launch clearly changed the dynamics of the smartphone market, raising the bar for user experience by delivering a range of desirable, easy-to-use features.

Consequently, a number of “me too” device models were launched, in an attempt to compete directly with the iPhone, among them Samsung’s F700, HTC’s Touch and the LG Prada KE850. But although these phones have a similar industrial design, the majority of them have failed to reproduce the user experience. That’s because the iPhone’s real value, and the ease of use that distinguishes it from competitors, is delivered by its software. And that cannot be quickly or easily matched, given the rich legacy of Apple’s experience in developing the Mac OSX used in its notebooks - on which the iPhone’s OS is based - and the search engine used in its iPod series of consumer-electronics products.

The iPhone platform seamlessly integrates touch-screen technology with multitouch-user-interface (UI) software, the search engine and motion sensors. It offers a consistent UI experience for a number of applications, such as voice mail and playing music.

No other OS offers such a high level of functionality. Will Nokia’s next-generation S60 platform be able to?

The next-gen edition of the S60 is expected to hit the market in 2H08. It works on top of the Symbian OS and is the first generation of S60 to offer touch-screen and multitouch capabilities comparable to the iPhone’s. It is also equipped with a sensorial user interface, to enhance the look and feel of the UI; ScreenPlay functionality, which enables multiframe exposure on the display; and enhanced graphical acceleration for multiservice support and better video streaming and telephony functionality.

S60 third-edition applications can run on the new edition, and Nokia plans to provide tools to its developers to optimize their applications to support the new features.

Informa Telecoms & Media says the addition of such capabilities to the already feature-rich S60 portfolio will enable Nokia to bring touch-screen capabilities to the mass market. And other factors make this likely: the openness of the platform, which enables the creation of more content and applications for S60-enabled phones; Nokia’s strong brand and manufacturing and production scale; its widespread distribution channels; and its deep understanding of mobile handset segmentation. Mobile phones powered by this version of the S60 OS are also likely to be used to support both the open Internet and Nokia’s Ovi service.

If Nokia manages to avoid any patent conflicts with Apple, the next-generation S60 phones will compete strongly with the iPhone when they appear on the market by end-2008. They are also likely to be dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular devices that support mobile broadband access, including EDGE and HSPA, and come with advanced features, including Bluetooth, a camera with resolution of more than 3 megapixels, Java multimedia-application support, a Flash player, GPS functionality and probably TV-output connectivity.

Will the iPhone still be the smartphone with the best end-user experience? Even today, the iPhone’s advanced UI does not, by itself, guarantee the best experience for all mobile data users. To enable end-users to have a truly mobile broadband experience, the iPhone has to be able to support next-generation mobile access technologies, including HSDPA/HSUPA and 1xEV-DO Rev. A and B. Also, the iPhone OS has to be opened to the developer community and to other application environments, such as Java, Flash and AJAX. Unfortunately, the current version of the iPhone - developed in a closed environment - lacks many of the features and applications enabled by the Java and Flash environments that users have come to expect and rely on.

Apple wants to enable the iPhone OS to offer 3G services and make it more open to the developer community. In March, Apple finally released a software-development kit (SDK) designed to encourage the development of a wealth of applications that could run in current and next-generation iPhones. Apple said that the number of downloads for the SDK topped 100,000 in the four days after its launch.

Sun Microsystems and Adobe welcomed the release of the SDK and stated that they would port the Java virtual machine and the Flash framework, respectively, to the iPhone. But the two companies also said they would need more support from Apple than is available in the current SDK and the license around it. IPhone users will therefore not see many multimedia and video applications using Flash or Java - including those that run on popular networking sites, such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace - any time soon.

The second version of the iPhone SDK is scheduled for release in June. Perhaps this version will provide further support for Java and Flash.

The current version of the iPhone is hobbled by Apple’s decision not to make it a 3G device, made because 3G chipsets were immature when the iPhone’s hardware was being designed in early 2006. 3G chipsets then came in the form of discrete components that would have taken up a lot of handset real estate and were power-hungry to boot. Also, AT&T, Apple’s main partner for the iPhone, was not ready to roll out its 3G services at the time of launch, prompting Apple to go with GSM/GPRS/EDGE to gain the largest possible market for the iPhone in Europe and North America.

Today, the majority of mobile operators - including Apple’s main partners - are aggressively migrating their subscriptions to 3G networks. Dozens of more-power-efficient 3G single chips are available from Infineon, Broadcom, Qualcomm, TI, NXP and Freescale. In fact, the shortage of iPhones in US stores and the price cuts in Europe suggest that Apple is about to launch a 3G iPhone. So it does seem to be preparing for the coming Nokia challenge.

The question is: Will being first to market be enough to counter Nokia’s manufacturing scale, established distribution channels and expertise with market segmentation? With both companies aiming to launch their products in 2H08, time to market will most likely determine whether the second-version iPhone or the next-generation S60 becomes the most popular smartphone.

You know what it’s like when you get dumped by that beautiful woman, or handsome man (or both, the Informer’s not judgemental). You feel like you’re never going to be happy again. You keep hearing that song on the radio, the one that was playing when you first met. Everywhere you turn, happy couples shine the blinding light of their contentment into your eyes, which are red and sore from the sleepless nights of weeping. It can be a time of low self-esteem. The danger is always that you’ll throw yourself into a new relationship; anything to prove that you can still be loved.

When strapping Nordic billionaire Nokia walked out on his German Frauline Bochum for a lower rent Romanian - not unlike a handset manufacturing version of Lembit Opik - the town got a little upset. It badmouthed its one-time lover, demanded a substantial payout, vowed never to use its products again and honked noisily into its handkerchief in a public display of anguish.

But someone new has come along. Ok, so maybe he’s not as rich as Nokia. Maybe he doesn’t have 40 per cent handset market share. But maybe he’s more dependable, a nice solid Canadian. That’s right, Research In Motion, having eyed Nokia’s departure, has announced its intention to establish itself in the German town, in the form of an R&D centre that will employ 140 locals, with the possibility of a further 500 jobs being created down the line. It seems to have cheered the spirits of the German town, and the North Rhine Westphalia region in which it sits. The Informer’s only advice to Bochum is to make sure it gets a cast iron pre-nup.

Maybe Sony Ericsson should relocate to Romania as well, spurred on by the drab results that it had already promised would be forthcoming. The fourth ranked handset vendor posted net profit of Eur133m for Q1 this year, not much more than half of what it made in the same period in 2007, which was Eur254m. Sales were down by only eight per cent, to Eur2.7bn, while shipments - at 22.3 million units - were up two per cent on Q1 last year. It’s all about the margins, right?

We shall remain slumped listless in the handset doldrums for a few desolate paragraphs as we move onto Motorola’s results. What with Motorola announcements starting to resemble the telecoms equivalent of an endless Leonard Cohen song, you won’t be expecting a lot of sunshine, will you? So, with a cold and a broken hallelujah, here we go:

There was more pain for shareholders, with Moto increasing its net loss for the first quarter to $194m from $181m in the same period a year ago. Sales also dropped from $9.4bn in 2007 to $7.4bn in the three months to the end of March.

The handset division almost doubled its operating loss from $233m to $418m, as sales dropped 39 per cent to $3.3bn. During the quarter, the company shipped 27.4 million handsets, down from 39 million in the final quarter of 2007.

There’s nothing like taking joy in the happiness of others for a spiritual boost, and Sony Ericsson and Motorola alike will doubtless be gladdened by the news that Apple has boosted its Q1 profits by 30.5 per cent this year, hitting $1.05bn. Revenues were up 43 per cent to $7.5bn. Q1 saw Apple shift 1.7 million iPhones (worth $378m), understandably down from the pre-Christmas quarter total of 2.3 million.

Samsung Electronics was doing well, meanwhile, turning in Q1 profits up 37 per cent to $2.4bn, not least because of solid handset sales - which the firm reported were in excess of 46 million units.

This is the sort of thing that should bring a smile to the face of a company chairman. Unfortunately, the chairman of Samsung Group, Lee Kun-he, resigned this week after he was charged with having what will from here on in be known as a Snipes Moment, and evading taxes. He has admitted nothing, of course, but conceded that it wasn’t particularly hot PR. Samsung meanwhile, while admitting nothing, has pledged to clean up its act.

Now here’s one of those things that makes the financial community seem a bit daft. Ericsson turned in some pretty rotten Q1s this week, reporting a drop in profits of 55 per cent to SEK2.6bn. But its share price surged by 21 per cent, purely because things weren’t as bad as they could have been.

This is a tactic often employed by children during exam times, of course. You come home shaking your head, telling your parents you think you had a disaster. Then when your results come in - adequate if not distinguished - they’re overjoyed that you didn’t fail and they see the results in a positive light, not as a disappointing performance from someone who could have done really well, if only they’d tried harder. So there you go, the financial community works like the mind of a child.

Ericsson president and CEO, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said that sales in the Networks division grew by two per cent year on year despite a negative impact from the decline of the dollar. The company witnessed increased sales of GSM in high growth markets, especially China and India. The company also benefited from ongoing 3G rollouts, including major rollouts in Russia and Latin America.

Ericsson will be cashing in on several major operators’ plans to upgrade their networks to 14.4Mbps and the company will introduce 21Mbps during the second half of the year. “Our business developed well in the quarter, considering the present market environment and the declining USD,” said Svanberg. “We still find it prudent to plan for a flattish mobile infrastructure market in 2008. The ongoing cost reductions as we adjust to such a scenario are running according to plan.”

Managed services continued to do well, with revenues increasing 20 per cent year on year, while sales in Professional Services grew by eight per cent.

Perhaps the managing expectations trick is what Blyk was up to with its subscriber forecasts. This week the ad-funded UK MVNO announced that it had hit its 100,000 subscriber target six months ahead of schedule.

One handset that would be absolutely no use to Blyk subscribers is that produced by Hop-on. It’s a disposable device without anything so new-fangled as a display, that should sell for around $20. The firm said this week that it had received orders for 150,000 units in Europe, although it didn’t name the interested party. Peter Michaels, president of Hop-on said, “We are getting so many inquiries about the ‘disposable cell phone’ in Europe and the Middle East, we will be hiring additional support to meet the market demands.”

Michaels said the firm lacks the resource to target the US market at the moment, where this week AT&T wireless was concentrating more on disposable staff than disposable phones. The carrier is downsizing its workforce by 1.5 per cent, which translates to 4,600 heads. It said that the redundancies would primarily affect workers not in customer-facing roles, which could see some middle management in the ejector seats.

Vodafone, meanwhile, is focused more on reducing its carbon footprint than its headcount. The Big V said this week that it is targeting a 50 per cent cut in its CO2 emissions by 2020, from the 2006/7 figure of 1.23 million tonnes. Instead of carbon offsetting, which many people feel simply shifts responsibility rather than actually solving the problem, Vodafone is going to look at direct action.

“We have reviewed the options, including carbon off-setting, and have concluded that the most effective strategy is to cut our CO2 emissions directly. There are no simple solutions to what is a complex challenge, but through operational changes and technological innovation we will focus on improving energy efficiency in our networks, which account for 80 per cent of our emissions. We will use renewable energy when and where we can,” said CEO Arun Sarin.

Sarin, was this week named in a survey as the most powerful person in British telecoms and technology. On Thursday, UK newspaper The Telegraph ran a Top 100 list of the most powerful people in British business, which placed Sarin at the top. The list is dominated by telecoms executives. Sarin was followed by Ian Livingston, future chief executive of BT, and Charles Dunstone, co-founder of the Carphone Warehouse.

Cable & Wireless executive chairman John Pluthero takes the fifth spot, followed by O2 UK chief Matthew Key, outgoing BT leader Ben Verwaayen, Orange UK chief Tom Alexander and another Cable & Wireless chairman, Richard Lapthorne.

Back to the US, where changeling NextWave is looking to sell off a bunch of spectrum that it never used. There can’t be many aspiring operators that move into manufacture, but that’s just what Nextwave did. Originally, NextWave fancied itself as a wireless broadband player but got into trouble and only emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2005. The company switched tactics and began developing chipsets and related network and device products based on the IEEE 802.16e WiMAX standard.

Now it wants to monetise its spectrum assets - not really necessary for a manufacturer, after all - and has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to maximise the revenues. The company’s spectrum footprint covers over 251 million people and includes major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Detroit. NextWave holds spectrum licenses in the 1.7/2.1GHz band, the 2.3GHz band, and the 2.5GHz band.

As a WiMAX player, NextWave will doubtless be saluting Intel’s decision to hurl $500m at the Taiwanese WiMAX community over the next five years. Taiwan has six regional WiMAX licence holders and it’s understood that Intel will be focusing its spend on ensuring interoperability between them for effective national roaming. In other WiMAX promo activities, Intel has commissioned a reworking of a 1973 song called Radar Love by Dutch rock band Golden Earring. The adapted version is called WiMAX Love.

Fellow chip vendor Qualcomm turned in some characteristically upbeat financials this week, meanwhile. It was a record quarterly score, with net profit up six per cent to $766m. Revenue was up 17 per cent to $2.6bn, and the company shifted 85 million MSM chipsets, which is a year on year growth rate of 39 per cent.

And finally, a firm marketing batteries that emit an interference signal which it claimed would prevent damage to the brain from The Rays!!! has had its UK operation shut down. Exradia claimed this was motivated by corporate streamlining and had nothing to do with the fact that it’s a load of old cobblers.

Troubled vendor Motorola delivered more pain to its shareholders, with the company increasing its net loss for the first quarter to $194m from $181m in the same period a year ago. Sales also dropped from $9.4bn in 2007 to $7.4bn in the three months to the end of March.

The problematic handset division continued to be an albatross around the company’s neck, almost doubling its operating loss from $233m to $418m, as sales dropped 39 per cent to $3.3bn. During the quarter, the company shipped 27.4 million handsets, down from 39 million in the final quarter of 2007.

The company recently announced plans to separate its ailing handsets unit from the networks side of its business and in doing so create two independent publicly traded companies. The announcement came as no great surprise, follows January’s revelation that the company was evaluating the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses.

The move also suggests activist shareholder Carl Icahn is finally bending some ears at the company - he more recently got two of his own nominees onto the board. However, the split might also suggest that no potential buyers have emerged to take the devices business off Moto’s hands.

Earlier this month, the beleaguered vendor announced another 2,600 job cuts, bringing the total reductions since January 2007 to just over 10,000. In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US firm said that the latest round of cuts resulted in a net pre-tax charge in the first quarter of approximately $104m.

 
 
 
 
Attending and chairing the WiMAX Forum Congress Asia recently in Singapore provided an opportunity to take the pulse of the WiMAX industry in Asia Pacific.

One of the most significant developments at the event was the momentum WiMAX is gaining in India, one of the top future markets for the technology, according to our WiMAX Broadband Convergence report. Four of the country’s major operators are deploying or close to deploying the technology, including Tata Communications, Reliance, BSNL and MTNL.

Tata Communications (previously VSNL) has already launched wireless broadband services using 802.16d-2004 Fixed WiMAX equipment running in the 3.3GHz band and sourced from WiMAX vendor Telsima. Tata is aiming to deploy at least 1,000 base stations by year-end to support enterprise broadband services in 110 cities and consumer services in at least 18 cities. Tata says it aims to have 200,000 consumer subscribers by 2009-10.

The operator has a shot at hitting the target given that India had a broadband penetration of just 1.5% of households at end-2007, according to Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Broadband Information Service. That represents just over 3 million subscribers in a country with a middle class population of near 50 million and total population of more than one billion.

Reliance Communications is also deploying WiMAX fixed services in 3.3GHz spectrum, although it has not yet detailed the extent of its rollout.

At the WiMAX Forum Congress Asia, BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal noted that the state-owned operator currently has 3.3GHz 802.16-2004 services in ten cities. He added that the group expects to get 20MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum this year, which it will use to deploy Mobile WiMAX services in 21 circles across the country. The operator expects to start deployment by end-2008 and expects 3 million subscribers by 2010.

State-owned MTNL is also understood to be evaluating deployment of Mobile WiMAX in the 2.5GHz band, although the plans of both BSNL and MTNL obviously hinge on the timely award of 2.5GHz spectrum, which has been delayed in the past.

Among other developments at the event, the WiMAX Forum announced the first Mobile WiMAX products to receive WiMAX Forum Certified approval. The products are built to the relatively niche 2.3GHz profile used in Korea, but the first Mobile WiMAX product certification is nevertheless an important milestone in the WiMAX industry. This is partly because 2.3GHz product certification will help clear the way for certification of more mainstream 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz products.

KT also announced that its WiBro service had more than 140,000 customers a year after full commercial launch in April 2007, and almost two years after the initial launch in mid-2006. Critics at the event noted the subscriber numbers were well below initial expectations and highlighted the challenges WiMAX will face in highly competitive broadband markets. WiMAX backers cited the recent growth in KT WiBro subscriber numbers as evidence that the service had turned a corner, and highlighted the operator’s goal of landing 410,000 subscribers by end-2008.

WiMAX may have less competition from other broadband systems in emerging markets, but as a new technology it still faces challenges. Rizwan Tiwana, chief technical officer of Wateen Telecom, said the operator now had Mobile WiMAX coverage in 22 cities in Pakistan using equipment from Motorola operating in the 3.5GHz band. However the deployment started in early 2007 and commercial launch took place in mid-December 2007, with one of the key challenges being delivering good in-building coverage. Nevertheless, the operator plans to continue improving indoor coverage and to expand services to at least another 70 cities by end-2008, in the process increasing its Mobile WiMAX network from 460 to 1500 base stations, Tiwana said.

As of mid-April the operator had 15,000 consumers on a broadband plus VoIP bundle, in addition to 1,400 business subscribers. “Our CPE costs are a problem-they’re currently too high to spark mass adoption,” Tiwana said, citing WiMAX CPE costs of $150-200 compared to DSL modem costs of $25. He rightly added that “the only way to drive down WiMAX CPE costs is faster adoption globally,” which will generate the economies of scale necessary to significantly reduce equipment costs.

Content owners ought to collaborate with ISPs.

Content owners’ efforts to get ISPs to disconnect customers suspected of engaging in illegal filesharing activities took a knock last week when the European Parliament voted in favor of stopping European Union legislatures from enacting laws that would ask service providers to do just that.

Parliament members voted in favor of a cultural industries report that carried a recent amendment calling for the European Commission to avoid adopting measures “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights, and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access.” In addition, the parliament’s Committee on Culture & Education issued a comment on the vote in which it said that criminalizing consumers was not the right way to tackle digital piracy.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which wants ISPs to take on fileswappers, took a swipe at the amendment, which it called “badly drafted” and “in contradiction to the rest of the text” which it said stressed the need to safeguard intellectual property.

“If the aim of the report is to protect creative content, including in the online environment, we should be looking at all options available in the fight against copyright theft,” said Frances Moore, the IFPI’s executive vice president. “Instead, this amendment suggested discarding certain options before there is even a proper debate.”

The vote by MEPs certainly strengthens the arm of opponents of such measures. And it follows a recent decision by the Swedish government to reject proposals for ISPs to terminate the contracts of customers using their internet connections to infringe copyright . In dismissing the suggestions, the country’s minister of justice and minister of culture issued a joint statement saying that copyright law should not be used “to defend old business models,” and added that existing Swedish online music and film services did little in the way of providing consumer-friendly alternatives to illegal P2P services.

And those criticisms are bang on the nail. One reason such P2P offerings took off is that they were very simple to use, with the likes of Napster easily able to popularize audio fileswapping on the internet at a time when music companies turned a blind eye to the opportunity the technology offered to improve the distribution of their products. Instead, their knee-jerk reaction was to get legal and to force these innovative newcomers out of business.

And it’s taking the music industry years to come to terms with the digital paradigm - as billions of dollars in revenue have evaporated, only in the last few months have the major labels begun to loosen their tight control over songs by allowing tracks onto the market that aren’t wrapped up in DRM protection. And there’s still a long way to go before these companies see that it really is a positive, consumer-friendly approach if they enable their customers to play the music that they’ve already paid for on the devices of their choosing.

However, the biggest drag on music industry policy is that the labels would prefer third parties to do the work for them in promoting their businesses. Not only do these outfits want governments to wade in and get ISPs to tackle problems of their own making, they want the authorities to swing the tax axe in their favor too.

Earlier this month, the UK-based Music Business Group, a music industry representative body, responded to a recommendation by the Intellectual Property Office to allow private individuals to copy songs and transfer them to devices such as MP3 players and mobile phones - so-called format shifting - a practise that is illegal. The MBG said that while technology companies derive great value from this, the creators and rights owners of the content are excluded from the value chain. It proposed instead a paid-for licensing scheme so that listeners could format shift legally.

Such a levy would be a difficult sell to the device makers who would see the retail price of their gear rise, while consumers would have to stump up for the privilege of copying music they’ve already purchased for to a portable player. It really is a no-brainer to say that a format-shifting license would be deeply unpopular.

And just as MP3-player manufacturers don’t want to carry the can for the music industry, neither do ISPs. UK internet-access provider TalkTalk recently wrote a letter to the British Phonographic Industry telling the association that its proposals for ISPs to disconnect allegedly criminal subscribers were “unreasonable and unworkable.”

“I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer’s account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrong doing,” said Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse, the parent company of TalkTalk. “We believe that a fundamental part of our role as an ISP is to protect the rights of our users to use the internet as they choose.”

Instead of trying to coerce ISPs to do something they are fundamentally opposed to, why doesn’t the music industry work with them instead? There are precedents. Danish carrier TDC announced a new service last month offering unlimited access to music downloads to both mobile and broadband customers after doing deals with 30 labels, including three of the majors. Both parties stand to benefit, with the music companies getting paid for the use of their libraries by the telco, while TDC bolsters its communications and broadband services with attractive content that might just stop customers churning away to rivals’ offerings.

Content owners might well be advised to start looking around for further mutually beneficial relationships they can leverage rather than make more enemies.

Steve Mullins is editor of Converging Media for Informa Telecoms and Media

The stardust is still being sprinkled at Nokia HQ, it seems. Q108 figures for the Finnish vendor were published yesterday and the firm amassed profits for the period of EUR1.2bn - that’s a 25 per cent increase on the same period for 2007. Operating profit was up 39 per cent, while sales were EUR12.7bn.

The first reports out on the figures chided Nokia for missing analyst expectations, but the Informer is guessing nobody will be getting the boot for upping profits by ‘only’ 25 per cent. Unlike the people of Bochum, of course, the loss of whose jobs as Nokia moves handset manufacture from Germany to Romania is just the kind of capitalist inevitability that enables the Finn to boost its profits so vigorously.

Nokia’s share price shed eight per cent in reproach at the lower than expected profits, and also because Nokia ‘fessed up to the fact that it believes the mobile handset market will decline in value this year. This is bad news for other handset vendors, but Nokia plans to keep its income up simply by increasing its market share yet further. Which, let’s face it, it can probably do.

Anyway, in Q1, as always, the handset unit did the business, racking up an operating profit of EUR1.88bn and a fat 20 per cent margin. Lumbering along behind was Nokia Siemens Networks, patting its pockets distractedly and trying to find the EUR74m that it managed to lose. Also nibbling Nokia’s bottom line was EUR81m for the Bochum going away party, a few million that’s related to some pension issue or other and EUR100m worth of NSN restructuring.

Motorola’s done a bit of restructuring as well lately but it’s not going to be enough to fix the old place up, according to Nomura, at least. It’s all about new product, the investment bank said, without which “market share will continue to dwindle, leading to greater losses”.

Nomura reckons the US vendor’s Q1 results will “show that the rot has continued” and speculates about “significant infighting and non-compliance with orders from above” which it says has hamstrung Motorola in terms of new product launches. To top it off, the investment bank added the following ray of sunshine: “We think that another 5,000 [redundancies] might be planned and, if so, would expect these to be announced at the Q1 results.”

One place that Motorola could probably shift a few handsets is Cuba where, now that restrictions on private ownership of mobile phones have been lifted, the countries inhabitants have been thronging to outlets to get themselves a phone. Cuba has a mobile penetration of less than two per cent since, historically, only government officials have been allowed access to services.

They probably won’t be moving an awful lot of iPhones, given the size of wage packets in Cuba. The Apple gadgets are cheaper for Brits now, though, as distributors Carphone Warehouse and carrier partner O2 have both followed T-Mobile Germany’s lead and slashed the price of the handset. The 8GB version of the phone is now £169, dependent on the user shackling themselves to the 3G-less device for a whopping 18 months.

It could be that demand has tailed off now that the hype’s died down a bit, or it could be, as many believe both likely and necessary, that a 3G version of the unit is imminent, in which case consumers would be well advised just to wait it out.

Meanwhile, mobile VoIP player Fring this week claimed to have established itself as the first VoIP application to be made available on the iPhone. So users will be able to access Skype, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter and the like using the handset’s wifi connection. The problem is that Fring only functions on hacked iPhones. But a full release is due later in the year, after Apple introduces Version 2.0 of the iPhone firmware.

Skype could be up for sale, as it happens, with online auction house eBay considering disposing of the internet telephony operation if it fails to find a better stratagem for integration of the businesses by year end.

John Donahoe, who assumed the role of chief executive officer of eBay at the end of March, said that the company is focusing on the synergies between Skype and its main business. But if those synergies aren’t regarded as strong enough, Skype’s position in the eBay portfolio would be reassessed.

eBay’s acquisition of Skype in 2005 is largely regarded as a $2.6bn blunder. An outlook given further weight after the auction house wrote down the value of the purchase by $1bn last year.

Throughout its lifecycle in the eBay portfolio, Skype has been referred to as a “great standalone business” and it is this ’standalone’ reference that has irked eBay so much. eBay’s efforts to monetise Skype have largely fallen flat, and the unit’s main source of revenue remains user purchases of Skype-out minutes, allowing subscribers to call non-Skype numbers.

Nevertheless, Skype itself continues a strong growth curve. On Wednesday the operation announced $126m in revenue for the first quarter of 2008, representing 61 per cent year over year growth. The VoIP player added 33 million registered users in the quarter, ending the period with more than 309 million registered users around the world. Skype is even expected to turn a profit sometime this year.

Back to the handset world, where Microsoft has wrapped up its acquisition of Danger Inc, which created the Sidekick/Hiptop handset so beloved of Paris Hilton, and has slotted the firm into its new Premium Mobile Experiences team. As a name this has a vaguely “gentlemen’s entertainment” feel, doesn’t it, but that’s by the by really.

Now, when it comes to green issues the Informer is no Al Gore. But he likes to think he’s on message - and not just with a David Cameron green-wash either. Not only does the Informer ride his Penny-Farthing to work every day, he’s been reducing, reusing and recycling gags for years. This week he caught up with Ericsson’s director of corporate responsibility, Elaine Weidman. She was in town to promote the infrastructure firm’s new Corporate Responsibility Report.

Ericsson is not alone in ploughing the green furrow. Think back to February, and World Congress, when a bunch of infrastructure vendors were demonstrating base stations that were powered by bio-fuels, photovoltaic cells and hearty blasts of PR hot air. It struck the Informer as a trifle odd, because this is a collection of firms whose chief objective is to convince operators that the networks they have in place aren’t up to scratch and that they should replace them with shiny new ones immediately. And this doesn’t really fit in with the commonly held view of sustainable development.

Not surprisingly, Weidman disagreed with this standpoint. The upfront environmental costs of rolling out a network might be high, she said, but they’re dwarfed by the Sasquatchian carbon footprint that networks leave over the duration of their lifetime. And since the latest HSPA base stations are so much more efficient than their crumbly old gas guzzlin’ WCDMA counterparts, it makes sense, ecologically, to rip it up and start again. And if reusing lyrics from a song by 1970s ‘punk’ outfit Orange Juice isn’t environmentally sound, the Informer doesn’t know what is.

Looking to expand its footprint this week - geographical rather than carbon - was France Telecom, or Orange as it now wants to be known. Reports surfaced that the firm was sniffing around Nordic/Baltic player TeliaSonera and the reports were soon verified. French newspaper Le Figaro broke the story, with the FT quoting Orange finance director Gervais Pellissier for confirmation. Pellissier said that investigations were not too far advanced, and that TeliaSonera may prove ultimately to be the wrong target. He also name checked Norwegian incumbent Telenor.

The Norwegian player is still spending a fair amount of time in court, by the way, as this week a minor stakeholder in Russia’s Vimpelcom called Farimex slapped it with a suit worth $3.8bn, which is $3bn more than the value of the Fairmex’s stake, according to Telenor. The suit centres on Telenor preventing Vimplecom from buying a Ukranian operation, which Farimex says harmed the Russian player, in which Telenor holds a stake of just less than 30 per cent. All sounds a bit dodgy really - Telenor has an arduous time of it in that part of the world, although it doesn’t look to be running scared on this one.

Back to France, though and an Orange-TeliaSonera tie-up is by no means a no-brainer. TeliaSonera itself was created out of the merger of Swedish and Finnish incumbents and, while the firm has a reasonable international portfolio, there is not universal assent that this merger has proven entirely successful. France Telecom’s absorption of Orange, meanwhile, has hardly been a smooth ride, with widespread criticism that the Orange brand lost its glow beneath the gloomy shadow of an old Europe incumbent.

Then there are the governments. The Swedish and Finnish states still own 37 and 14 per cent respectively of TeliaSonera, while Nicolas Sarkozy still presides over 27 per cent of France Telecom, as well as his supermodel wife. Political issues could raise their slightly uglier heads. Either way, it looks like France Telecom has its eye on some further expansion going forward.

The Informer, meanwhile, has his eye on some lunch, so he will bid you good day.

In the first of a flurry of recent mobile-money-service announcements, Vodafone said last week that it would launch its M-Pesa mobile-money-transfer service in Tanzania later this month in partnership with Vodacom. Tanzania’s No. 4 operator, Zantel, responded by saying it would introduce its own mobile-money-transfer service, beating the launch of M-Pesa. Then the UAE’s Etisalat, which has a majority stake in Zantel, said it was developing an international money-transfer service with Indian operator Idea Cellular, HSBC India and Mashreq Bank.

Next up was Orascom Telecom Chairman Naguib Sawiris, who revealed that he planned to offer mobile banking and money-transfer services to Orascom subscribers through a new company to be set up later this year.

The established services - insofar as any are established in this new sector - are going great guns too. In Kenya, where M-Pesa debuted with Safaricom, more than 1.6 million people have used the service since it was introduced a year ago, transferring a total of KES9.3 billion ($151 million). A trial of international money transfers, between the UK and Kenya, is also under way. And in February, Vodafone launched the service - branded M-Paisa - in Afghanistan in partnership with Roshan. MTN’s MobileMoney mobile banking service, which the operator runs in partnership with Standard Bank, had 250,000 subscriptions at end-2007.

Mobile money is well suited to emerging markets, such as those in Africa, because a large number of people in such countries do not have access to conventional financial services but do have access to mobile handsets and services. International remittances - the sums of money that people send to their families in developing-world countries - represent just one potential part of the mobile money market. But the sums involved are large: international remittances totaled $230 million in 2005, according to the World Bank, equivalent to four times the size of all foreign aid budgets.

For mobile operators faced by declining ARPUs, mobile money services on which they can earn transaction-based fees - and which might not require major network investment - are an ideal value-added service. Sawiris was candid about this, saying that he hoped to earn an additional $1 a month from each subscriber through mobile banking services. Orascom had 58.8 million subscriptions on a proportionate basis at end-2007, so mobile-money services could be a big earner for Orascom if they are taken up widely.

Conveniently, governments and aid agencies are often eager to support and even fund the development and introduction of mobile money services because of the perceived economic and social benefits they bring. The UK’s Department for International Development gave Vodafone £1 million ($2 million) to support the development of M-Pesa.

Although the opportunity and attractions of mobile-money are clear, there are potential obstacles too. One is that of regulation. As a money-transfer system, M-Pesa escapes being classified as a banking service, which usually involves deposit-taking for the purpose of investing or lending. Other mobile money services might be considered to be banking applications, in which case operators will require a banking license and be subject to financial-services regulation. One way to meet those requirements might be to partner with a bank, as MTN has done. Operators will have to consider carefully whether what they plan to offer constitutes a banking service. That might vary from country to country. Regulations that are designed to stop money laundering might also have an effect on international money-transfer services.

But these are problems to be addressed rather than insurmountable obstacles. The GSMA’s Mobile Money Summit in Cairo next month is likely to be a hot ticket.

 
 
 
 
Along with giants China and India, Thailand is one of the few major mobile markets in the region that has yet to launch 3G services. But after years of gridlock in the licensing process, Thailand’s 3G market might finally be on the move, albeit at a potentially heavy price to operators.

The problem for local mobile operators is that the arrival of 3G services is taking a hazardous course, with operators being offered the possibility of a quicker-than-expected launch if they use already allocated spectrum.

Local operators have been waiting patiently for several years for the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to issue 3G licenses in the 1.9-2.1GHz spectrum bands, and the regulator had been expected to finally issue licenses in 4Q08, after overcoming numerous regulatory and legal hurdles.

But in recent weeks a new plan has emerged - with the clear support of newly appointed communications minister Man Patanotai - that would see the big three mobile operators, Advanced Info Service (AIS), Total Access Communications (DTAC) and True Move, launch 3G services in the 850MHz and 900MHz spectrum bands.

Second-ranked DTAC is planning to use some of its dormant 850MHz spectrum to launch trial 3G services, and, not to be outdone, market leader AIS is planning to use its 900MHz spectrum to launch its own trial 3G services.

Meanwhile, third-ranked operator True Move has eagerly accepted the not-altogether-altruistic offer from its concession holder, the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT), to lease it spectrum in the 850MHz band in which to launch its own trial 3G services.

DTAC also receives its operating license from the CAT, and AIS receives its license from the Telephone Organization of Thailand.

The big advantage for the CAT and TOT if the operators launch 3G services using their existing spectrum is that they would remain key players in the local telecoms market.

If the NTC were to allocate 3G spectrum in the 1.9-2.1GHz band to the big three operators, the move would most likely freeze the CAT and TOT out of the mobile sector, with the three operators likely to migrate services completely to the 1.9-2.1GHz spectrum bands and break their links with the CAT and TOT.

In the often indistinguishable world of Thai commerce and politics, where the government’s influence can never be understated, the communications minister and several other key ministers are enthusiastically pushing the new 3G plan at the expense of the NTC’s long-delayed 1.9-2.1GHz-licensing process.

Local observers say that as a result, the NTC has taken heed of the political winds and is likely to try to pass the buck on 3G licensing to its successor, the National Telecommunications and Broadcasting Commission, to avoid a potentially messy political fight.

But with the NTBC not expected to come into being for at least a year, local market observers say licensing for 3G spectrum in the 1.9-2.1GHz band could be delayed until at least 2H09, and the launch of services could be delayed until 2H10, if it happens at all.

Some senior mobile executives from the big three operators have already publicly backed the new 850/900MHz plan, saying that it would enable them to introduce 3G services sooner than if they were to wait for the NTC/NTBC 3G-licensing process to play out.

But although the thought of launching 3G services after years of missing out on potentially lucrative mobile data and wireless-broadband revenues - particularly since fixed-line broadband has low penetration in Thailand - would be enticing, the operators might be missing the larger picture.

Despite the frustration of waiting for the spectrum to be allocated, the operators must remember that the 1.9-2.1GHz band is the de facto spectrum band for 3G deployments on a global basis and that the 850/900MHz bands are being used by comparatively few operators worldwide.

As a result, the economies of scale that operators would be able to benefit from are much greater in the 1.9-2.1GHz band than in the 850/900MHz bands, and that will be crucial in terms of handset pricing and the cost of network deployment.

Affordability is a major factor in low-income markets, such as Thailand, and if 850/900MHz handsets are even US$25 a unit more expensive than their counterparts on the 1.9-2.1GHz band, 3G take-up could take a huge hit.

Speaking off the record, some operator executives have speculated that their public support for the 850/900MHz 3G launch could actually spur the NTC to speed up the 1.9-2.1GHz-spectrum-allocation process.

That bet is a risky one, given the political weight that is already behind the 3G-launch process for the 850/900MHz bands. And if early indicators are correct, the NTC might actually be relieved if responsibility for the 3G-licensing process is taken off its hands.

If the operators do end up launching services in the 850/900MHz bands, there is a real possibility that the political will for the NTC/NTBC to continue with 3G licensing in the 1.9-2.1GHz band will disappear and that Thailand will end up launching 3G only in the 850/900MHz bands.

The big three operators, all of which have suffered to various degrees from the complex and anachronistic licensing and regulatory structure under which the CAT and TOT act as both license-granting bodies and industry players, should also question whether they really want to keep the CAT and TOT as part of the game.

One of the biggest advantages of launching 3G services in the 1.9-2.1GHz spectrum band via the NTC’s licensing process would be the chance it provides to cut the CAT and TOT out of the loop and have operators licensed and controlled by a single, independent regulator. Launching in the 850/900MHz bands means keeping the CAT and TOT in the game.

After such a long wait, the temptation of launching 3G services before year-end must be enormously appealing to mobile operators, but the likely risks of such a move also need to be taken into consideration before they take the plunge.

The NTC has taken an inordinately long time to get 3G licensing up and running - and there may be more frustrations ahead - but the technical and political advantages of launching in the 1.9-2.1GHz band would be worth it in the long run.

It’s never a pretty sight watching a once happy couple slug it out in court. Compelling maybe, but never pretty. Everyone knows that the only winners in such tawdry scenarios are the bloodsuckers in the wigs. Well, everyone except perhaps Heather Mills and Henry VIII. Perhaps that’s why this week, Finnish love rat Nokia agreed a Eur200m package for the 2,300 workers facing the chop this June at its device manufacturing plant in Bochum, Germany.

The workers are being dumped in favour of cheaper Eastern European counterparts [insert your own Lembit Opik gag here]. The settlement averages out at nearly Eur87k for every man, woman and teaboy employed at the Bochum plant. Though the Informer reckons the teaboys will probably claim the lion’s share. It wouldn’t keep Mills in helicopter flights for very long, but it’s still way more than the Eur60m which the German government gifted Nokia in subsidies when the Finn originally set up shop, so that should keep the G, if not happy, at least placated.

If a potential windfall of Eur87k a pop isn’t enough to keep the Bochumites happy, then the news that they’ll be able to spend all their recently acquired spare time playing N-Gage games surely will. That’s right, Nokia announced that consumers will be able to download N-Gage games to their N81, N82 and N95 terminals. The Informer hasn’t been this excited since he downloaded a Commodore 64 emulator and reignited his Emlyn Hughes International Soccer World Cup 1988 campaign.

The big story at the start of the week though, according to the GSM Association, was that the cellular industry has announced its 32 millionth mobile broadband connection. Thirty-two? Presumably, the person in charge of keeping a count of mobile broadband connections fell asleep when the figure passed 30,000,000. Still, it’s a whopping 850 per cent higher than it was last year, so it’s probably worth shouting about.

The number of networks now offering commercial mobile broadband services has also increased significantly over the past year. The GSMA recorded a 44 per cent increase between May 2007 and March 2008 in the number of HSPA-enabled networks, with 166 networks now available in more than 73 countries around the world.

This news chimes nicely with the latest findings of the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, which this week announced that the number of 3G HSDPA devices on the market is on an annual growth curve of around 150 per cent, with 637 models now available. Apparently, the number of suppliers of HSPA-enabled devices also increased from 62 to 110 over the past year. Indeed, the number of suppliers is poised to jump up by one more according to iPhone hacker Zibri who claims to have discovered, while trawling through the code for the iPhone beta SDK, that Apple’s next gen device will use the Infineon HSDPA chipset.

The apparent boom in mobile broadband won’t come as too much of a shock to anyone who has been following announcements of this nature since Mobile World Congress, and certainly not to Kevin Russell, 3UK’s CEO, who was chairing a mobile broadband media round table event in London this week.

“Mobile broadband is exciting,” said Russell, with the unspoken assumption that it’s all relative. “This is where the industry will go and we will go faster. We’re not focused right now on content. You have to simplify your business, that’s why we’re focusing on mobile broadband.”

The Informer was presented with a 3UK USB dongle so that he could try out the plug and play all around easiness at home. Unfortunately, despite details to the contrary on the dongle’s box, the device didn’t work on either of the Informer’s iBooks. After half an hour waiting on hold on the tech support line (change your hold music guys), the Informer gave up on mobile broadband and turned on his telly to watch Liverpool knock Arsenal out of the Champions League.

All this talk of mobile broadband is bad news for WiMAX. At the media event one hack tried to tempt Russell into publicly poo-pooing the nascent technology. “So, you’re saying WiMAX is dead in the water?” asked the scribe with a wry smile. Russell, being a canny media operator, spotted the ruse. “I wouldn’t be that definitive,” he said. “However, WiMAX has been over-hyped by the vendors involved. It doesn’t have a big advantage, while 3G has a window of opportunity, it’s available now.”

Russell reckons getting muddled up in the content business presents an unwelcome distraction. He plans to focus 3’s efforts on mobile email, IM and VoIP. “These are three areas we’ll push, they’re viral, disruptive and communications-based solutions that go around the MTR [mobile termination rate], so very appropriate for 3,” he said.

All this is great news for Nokia and Ovi of course and great news for Sony Ericsson, whose executive vice president for marketing, Anders Runevad, was sitting next to Russell having just explained to the assembled hacks that his firm plans to focus more on data service application laden devices. “We don’t see customers going into a store and asking for a 3G phone. They’re asking about mobile blogging, MP3 players and web surfing”.

Runevad suggested that at any one time, someone somewhere will be ‘tagging’ a tune using Sony Ericsson’s TrackID service. The Informer remembers meeting the CEO of a music tagging firm some years ago, and being deeply sceptical that punters would pay for the privilege of such a service. Still, there’s one born every minute so they say, and presumably they’re all buying Sony Ericsson handsets.

Staying with 3 and Nokia though, and taking what some might say is a decidedly Tomorrow’s World glimpse into the future, the 3G specialist has announced the availability of a set of Geordi La Forge style wrap-around shades that enable the wearer to view N95 screen images as though they were being displayed on a 62″ screen.

The device brings to the Informer’s mind a gadget that one of his raver mates had back in the days when white gloves, glow sticks and whistles were de rigeuer fashion items down the disco rather than safety equipment for oil rig workers. Apparently, said device could be set to tune into the wearer’s brainwaves and induce a Totally Legal and Healthy High(TM). All it did though was give the Informer a bit of a headache and make him withdraw immediately to the comfort of the ambient tent. Just imagine settling down on the bus to play Tetris on a virtual 62″ screen only to be interrupted by an incoming call displaying a gigantic pixelated image of your dad.

There can be only one thing worse, the Informer reckons, and that’s settling down on the bus to play Tetris on a virtual 62″ screen only to be interrupted by an incoming call displaying a gigantic pixelated image of your dad, and then being able to smell him. But that’s a future which Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo envisages.

If this one had come out last week, the Informer would probably have ignored it as an April fool. However, it seems NTT Com and its mobile unit DoCoMo will be conducting a pilot test on what is effectively a radio-controlled air freshener.

The Fragrance Communication package features a device that has been loaded with a cartridge of essences, or base fragrances, which is controlled by an i-mode site accessible by mobile phone. Users can select recipes for specific fragrances or access Fragrance Playlists, which are then mixed and emitted from the unit as the user watches AV content played back on their phone.

And just when the thought of a fully connected life couldn’t get much worse comes news that the European Commission has given the green light to in-flight mobile calls. We all saw this one coming, but it’s still a bit depressing to realise that flights are set to get even more tedious and uncomfortable. So far Vivian Reding has been firmly on the side of the roaming consumer. One can only assume that Reding and her cohorts spend their time zipping to the Continent on the Eurostar.

Speaking of which, that’s exactly what the Informer did this week in order to catch up with Chinese tech giant ZTE. The Shenzen firm was in Paris to talk about its strategy for Western Europe. When ZTE first appeared on the wireless scene, it was often portrayed - like its domestic rival Huawei - as a company that had little to recommend itself other than the low cost of its products. But as more operators, crucially in the upper tier, have given the firm trials and deals, writing ZTE off as a cheap alternative is no longer acceptable.

Scale built at home and in emerging markets is being used by ZTE to push into advanced Western markets. It’s fair to say the firm as big ambitions, none perhaps bigger than becoming a top five handset vendor by 2010, with targets of 100 million units sold worldwide. This is a big jump from the 30 million units shipped in 2007, but achievable nonetheless the firm’s director for mobile terminals, Wu Sa, told the Informer. “Two years ago when we were talking about growth I couldn’t believe the projected numbers, but we achieved those,” he said, “ZTE is trying to pull itself out just being an infrastructure provider. We want 50 per cent of our revenues to come from devices.”

The Informer suggested that a strategic acquisition might offer immediate top five status, but Wu downplayed any buy-out speculation. “Sometimes people consider acquisitions as a short cut, but sometimes they can bring with them their own risks. It is not something we’re thinking about doing.”

Of course, even if there was a chance of ZTE buying, say, Motorola’s device business, it’s unlikely that they’d tell the Informer. They know only too well about his tendency to gossip down the pub and send 20,000 weekly emails to the wireless community. One man they might come clean with, though, is ex-AT&T chief David Dorman, since he’s just been elected as non-executive chairman of Moto’s board.

The news follows the announcement earlier in the week that everyone’s favourite corporate raider, Carl Icahn, finally got his wish. William Hambrecht, founder, chairman and CEO of WR Hambrecht + Co. and co-founder of Hambrecht & Quist, and Keith Meister, a managing director of Icahn Investment Funds and principal executive officer of Icahn Enterprises, will be nominated for election to Moto’s board of directors.

Staying Stateside, and in further bad news for WiMAX, both of the big winners in the 700MHz auction, Verizon and AT&T, have revealed that they intend to use all that lovely new spectrum of theirs for LTE services. The former reckons it’ll have something in the marketplace by 2010, while the latter reckons 2012 is more likely. Still, according ZTE, Sprint customers will be able to get their hands on ZTE-made dual mode mobile WiMAX/CDMA handset early next year.

Meanwhile, there was some brighter news for open access networks fans in the UK, where Ofcom has confirmed plans for the nation’s largest ever single release of radio spectrum. The regulator said it intends to release the spectrum in the 2010-2025MHz and 2500-2690MHz bands, more commonly known as 2.6GHz band, on a technology and service neutral basis.

A total 205MHz will be made available and the regulator said it expects to start the auction process in the summer. The spectrum would be suitable for a range of mobile broadband and advanced wireless services delivered using WiMAX and 3G technology, Ofcom said.

All licences will be tradable and Ofcom said the release of this spectrum is part of a wider programme to release around 400MHz of prime spectrum to the market over the next few years, creating opportunities for new innovation and new competition in wireless services.

Finally, coming in the same week that a local borough council in England admitted to using counter terrorist surveillance techniques on a family for two weeks in order to make sure they weren’t telling fibs about their school catchment area credentials, is the news that privacy advocates are claiming that the UK’s Information Commissioner has “green lighted lawbreaking” with regards controversial internet ad-targeting platform Phorm.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said it was happy that the, “system does not allow the retention of individual profiles of sites visited and adverts presented, and that they hold no personally identifiable information on web users.”

However, the Foundation for Information Policy Research reckons the ICO has not gone far enough and Nicholas Bohm, general counsel for the organisation claims that, “the illegality stems not from breaching the Data Protection Act directly, but arises from the fact that the system intercepts internet traffic. Interception is a serious offence, punishable by up to two years in prison. Almost incidentally, because the system is unlawful to operate, it cannot comply with Data Protection principles.”

It makes the Informer wonder just what it is these privacy campaigners have got to hide.

There’s been a load of reports flying around about O2 UK limiting connection speeds for its 3G users this week. So far, I’ve resisted from weighing in on this one because there’s too much about it that doesn’t add up and too many of the reports are anecdotal.

That said, as an O2 3G user myself, the reports piqued my curiosity. Sitting at my desk in central London, I get around 650Kbps on a download, where I assume there’s HSDPA coverage. O2 tells me this is as it should be and that most users should be expecting up to 384Kbps or even up to 1.8Mbps in areas with HSDPA coverage, which is apparently most of the UK. Some very lucky users might even be able to get 10.2Mbps, although I can’t imagine you’d get anything like that except maybe in O2’s labs.

What O2 didn’t tell me, but what other sites are reporting is that O2 has two profiles for 3G users, which works in a way that customers on £35 per month tariffs get ‘full’ 3G speeds and those on less expensive tariffs get 128Kbps speeds. O2 was quick to point out that anyone who asks for full 3G speeds will get them regardless, and to be fair, you’re not likely to be spending much less than 35 quid a month if you are an O2 data user anyway. The Unlimited Web bolt on is £7.50 per month for a start.

“While no network guarantees speeds, you should certainly normally get the speed you would expect,” an O2 PR said. When asked what speeds an EDGE user could expect on O2, I was told up to 100Kbps.

That pretty much clears it up for me, but I don’t really see what the palaver was about anyway. It’s well known [in the industry at least] that advertised 3G speeds are a bit of a pipe dream, those promises of 384Kbps are burst speeds, while the constant connection is likely to fluctuate dramatically some way below that level. The problem with WCDMA is that the connection will be affected by how close the user is to the base station, how many people are in the cell etc, etc.

Disappointment over data speeds was probably inevitable when mobile users started migrating to 3G, it’s all a repeat performance of what happened when fixed line broadband took off.