Thread: Latest Mobile,s News

Take my wallet, not my mobile, say consumers
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Mobile phone operators will come under increasing pressure to implement the sort of data management techniques that many businesses demand for corporate mobile devices.

That is the conclusion of mobile device management company Mformation, following a survey of 4,000 people in the UK and US.

The research highlighted the amount of data now held on mobile devices and individuals’ concerns about data security.

Not surprisingly, 94% of users surveyed store telephone numbers while 65% also store address and other contact information. Some 83% have digital photos, 51% have videos, 48% have calendar information and 40% have music downloads.

The volume and type of data stored meant 82% of those surveyed feared that if their phones were lost or stolen, their data would be used for fraud. Some 72% said the information on their devices would be difficult to replace and 40% said that losing a mobile would be worse than losing their wallet.

In a market that has recently seen new much-hyped smartphone releases from Palm (Palm Pre), Apple (iPhone 3G S) and Nokia (Nokia N97), the amount and value of data on personal devices is set to grow.

Rob Dalgety, commercial director Mformation, said, “We have seen on the enterprise side a growing capability to secure the data on mobile devices. Increasingly, consumers are going to want those sorts of capabilities.

Over the next two years, Dalgety said, “there is going to be an opportunity for operators to aggressively roll out these solutions.”

Dalgety said the service could be sold as part of an upgrade, part of a service package or as part of an insurance offering where, if a phone is lost, the operator could lock down data on the device.

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Operators who adopt this technology could also market the service back to enterprise IT departments, Dalgety said.

As smart phones become ubiquitous the job of imposing and maintaining access policies to corporate networks for a variety of devices becomes increasingly complex.

“Much as IT organisations might want to lock down mobile access or limit the support they provide,” this will be increasingly difficult he said. The technology exists to pass some of the necessary control to the network operators, said Bancroft, adding that he expected this type of service to be increasingly attractive to hard pressed corporate IT teams.

Vodafone could increase growth with T Mobile
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When an offer is made for a large part of an international company the whole picture has to be considered and apparently this is exactly what the parent company of T-Mobile UK is doing, after rival Vodafone showed an interest.

The whole T-Mobile UK business is in muddy waters, with the parent company Deutsche Telekom being split over future plans for the company.

Back in May, T-Mobile shareholders, the German government and investment group Blackstone, wanted to sell, while on the other hand the chief executive of Deutsche Telekom was keen to give the new boss of the UK division, Richard Moat, a chance to turn the company round.

He only started this week and has barely had a chance to get his foot in the door.

If T-Mobile UK was put up for sale, another potential buyer would be O2, providing it is a position to buy.

If Vodafone does submit a bid, it is expected to be around £3 billion.

SMS could cause problems for iPhone owners

Apple is preparing to fix a flaw within the iPhone which could allow a hacker to gain control of the device by exploiting a weakness within the iPhone’s SMS protocols.

By gaining control of the iPhone, criminal gangs could then track the device’s location by accessing the iPhone’s GPS feature.

They could even switch on the microphone and listen in to what the user is doing.

Gaining control of the device could potentially also allow the criminals to send out spam, commit crimes and launch denial of service attacks that are quite capable of taking down any website at anytime.

Apple knows about this issue and is in the process of working on a fix, although the company would probably prefer it if less details about this problem were public.

The iPhone is still a secure device, mainly because it does not rely on Flash or Java which are often the routes taken by hackers to get into computers.

O2 may step in with a T Mobile bid

Just as mobile phone and broadband provider Vodafone considers where rival provider T Mobile would fit into its corporate plans another bidder for the German owned Telecoms Company has emerged.

The Spanish owned O2 could be considering a T Mobile bid too, which makes sense because currently both O2 and Vodafone have almost an equal share of the UK market.

O2 has twenty seven per cent, while rival Vodafone has twenty five per cent, but the acquisition of T Mobile would give either of them around forty per cent UK market share and place them in a very strong position for the future.

T Mobile is estimated to be worth between £2.5 billion and £3.5 billion, although the lower figure is probably closer to where the bidding will start.

There may be some issues as to whether this deal could go ahead as a forty per cent of the market share may be considered a step too far.

TalkTalk advertises its good points

With the EU giving the go ahead for the deal between the Carphone Warehouse and Tiscali for the UK division of Tiscali, TalkTalk has started a new advertising campaign to explain why it is the UK largest internet service provider.

The campaign, which started yesterday, will promote TalkTalk as a bright, optimistic and of course British company.

Adverts are planned in the press and outside in the street where consumers will be shown the benefits of the TalkTalk range of broadband and phone services.

CHI, the advertising agency behind the campaign will be using images of graffiti set against the back drop of popular UK locations such as Manchester’s Canal Street, Whitehall, Primrose Hill and Brighton beach.

TalkTalk is hoping to use ‘Britishness’ combined with its range of services to become a sort of flag carrying provider where hip and trendy people go.

Freeview goes GiGo

Managing the storage on most digital video recorders (DVRs) can become a daily job, but a new device announced by Digital Vision could mean that set top box storage changes from a hard drive to methods that are more portable.

The GiGo DV DTR1 from Digital Vision comes with three USB ports and Freeview tuner.

This allows the user to record and store programming onto any form of USB memory device.

The user can then make a recording of their favourite programmes and play it back on any device that supports the USB device. The laptop seems to be the likely candidate.

As the Digital Vision GiGo DV DTR1 has no hard drive, it is less expensive than most DVRs.

At £69.99 it is around £20 cheaper than the lowest priced DVRs around.

However, the GiGo does offer the user an alternative method of storing content.

Ziggo ups internet access speeds
By Robert Briel
July 6, 2009 18.25 UK

The Dutch cable operator Ziggo has upgraded internet access speeds without raising subscription fees for its 1.4 million broadband subscribers.

All internet access speeds have been upgraded, but the most notable are the top tier packs with current 15 Mbps being upped to 25 Mbps. People who currently subscribe to the 20 Mbps all-in-one service have been upgraded to 50 Mbps download (and 5 Mbps upload) using Docsis 3.0.

The operator is giving away the new modems during an eight week period.

Later in the year, it will start to offer top speeds of 80 Mbps, while people living in the cities of Amersfoort, Enschede, Meppel, Maastricht, Tilburg and Heerhugowaard will be able to buy 120 Mbps services.

Ziggo is the country’s largest cable operator with 3.4 million connected homes, of which 1.2 million are digital TV subscribers.

It is also the largest ISP in the country with its 1.4 million broadband homes

Virgin Media set top boxes seized by police

by David Allen

The Thames Valley Police in Tilehurst, Reading have seized up to sixty Virgin Media set top boxes, in a joint operation with Virgin Media and the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association.

The raids come as Virgin Media attempts to stop the modification of its equipment.

These set top boxes can then be used to view content without having to pay for it which costs the industry and Virgin Media money.

The police say that modifying a set top box is a serious offence under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

According to Virgin Media, it takes the matter of modifying set top boxes very seriously and will work with all police forces around the UK to prosecute individuals connected with this sort of fraud.

Following the raid, a twenty five year old man from Tilehurst was arrested on suspicion of defrauding Virgin Media.

He has been bailed until the 6th October.

BBC offers glimpse of Canvas

by David Allen

The BBC is offering a promotional video showing the proposed Project Canvas, which is a broadband based broadcasting platform, but something that has yet to get approval from the BBC Trust.

The video was shown at a conference, organised by Intellect the consumer electronics industry association.

However, according to feedback, the video does little to impress, in fact it does little to show exactly what Canvas is going to offer the viewer or the industry.

The BBC claims that once Canvas is up and running, it will offer the simplicity of Freeview, with the convenience of the iPlayer all in one easy to use service.

The viewer will simply plug their TV into the broadband service and all the programming that they have ever wanted.

Vodafone to offer VDSL in Germany

Jörn Krieger
08-07-2009
Vodafone will market fibre-optic internet connections (VDSL) from Deutsche Telekom in Germany as of September. An agreement has been reached between the two telcos, said Vodafone’s German head Friedrich Joussen in Düsseldorf.

The wholesale price for using the VDSL lines which the company will have to pay to Telekom is less than €30 per connection per month, said Joussen without giving exact details or a possible end consumer price. With the move, Vodafone is marketing for the first time a product from its strongest competitor. The VDSL access, which Vodafone will offer under its own brand, enables households in 50 cities to access a high speed internet service with a data rate of 50 Mbit/s.

Joussen also confirmed that Vodafone will rename its fixed-line subsidiary Arcor as Vodafone on August 1. As a quadruple play provider of fixed-line and mobile telephony, internet and IPTV, Vodafone has opted for the new advertising slogan “Es ist deine Zeit” (“It’s your time”). According to the company, the motto is designed to invite customers to use the digital communication possibilities on Vodafone’s network through Web 2.0 services such as video portals or social networks