South Africa mulls reining in roaming
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Your personal details, or else The South African justice committee is considering making foreign travellers register their name, passport number, and address with a local provider before being allowed to use the local GSM services.â¦
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One reason that mobile users don&#39;t access more content from a mobile phone, like video clips, is because finding content is cumbersome -- but that should change in the future with intelligent network services, said one expert speaking on a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show.Currently, smartphone users may not be accessing as much content or online services as they&#39;d like because it&#39;s difficult to do so. &quot;If to discover content you have to type in a URL, it&#39;s never going to happen,&quot; said Muzibul Khan, vice president of product management and engineering at Samsung Telecommunications America.He suggests that using voice commands is the best way to look for content from a mobile phone. &quot;Voice is the most natural medium,&quot; he said.But Intrinsyc&#39;s CEO thinks that even voice command technology is rooted in the past. &quot;We&#39;re talking about a paradigm for Web searching that was built for the PC,&quot; said Glenda Dorchak, who is also chairman of Intrinsyc.While there may be a transitional period in the near future when voice or other improved search techniques are used for content discovery on mobile handsets, ultimately a more intelligent system will prevail, she said. In the future, a context-aware, server-driven system will emerge, where the network will forward relevant and useful content to users. The type of content that users will get will depend on their location and other preferences that they&#39;ve set.Key to that vision will be multiple radios in mobile devices working together. She imagines a time when a phone might have Wi-Fi, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPS (Global Positioning System), Bluetooth, satellite and WiMax, each finding and delivering information to end-users, possibly simultaneously. The phones will be smart enough to pick the most appropriate network for delivering the content, she said.But running that many radios in a single device consumes power and requires sophisticated algorithms, so she suggests a few years will pass before it happens. However, the technology already exists to support part of that vision, such as converged cellular and Wi-Fi offerings that roam between the networks without dropping voice calls.In the meantime, operators and content providers are working to figure out exactly how to deliver video to users now. The Tivo generation wants to be able to choose what they want to watch and when, said Jeff Finkelstein, multimedia product manager for Palm. &quot;They don&#39;t want to wait for the headline news to start on the hour,&quot; he said.However, companies building mobile broadcast TV networks around the world like DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld) would likely disagree.Easier sharing capabilities could boost mobile video use too. For about the past year and a half, statistics about how much video people watch online from their PCs haven&#39;t changed much, said Frank Barbieri, CEO of Transpera, a company that provides technology behind mobile video services. &quot;Maybe in five years the phone could surpass the Web in terms of video snacking,&quot; he said.
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European telecom regulator issues proposals that would let passengers use their handsets on European flights.
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Are you local? Review Mobile phone roaming costs have long being a rip off that has hit business travellers hard. Taking a lead from the extortionate prices hotels charged for overseas calls, mobile telcos have long charged way over the odds.â¦
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The wireless service provider seeks growth in emerging markets.
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NTT Communications, T-Mobile USA, Telstra, StarHub, and Maxis Communications have joined to establish roaming arrangements that allow customers to use wireless broadband services from Internet access points -- called hotspots&quot; -- in their countries
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Wednesday marked an unusual entrant into the mobile phone space: National Geographic. The organization launched what it calls the "Talk Abroad Travel Phone," which is designed for individuals circling the globe. But worldwide roaming doesn't come cheap at 90 cents per minute.
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New study points out the potential hazards of long-term mobile phone use.
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Wi-Fi hotspot owners BT Openzone, Singapore&#39;s StarHub, Malaysia&#39;s maxis, Japan&#39;s NTT Com, T-Mobile, Australia&#39;s Telstra and Telecom Italia have entered into a broad roaming agreement to allow each company&#39;s customers to access the others&#39; networks.
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LONDON : It&#39;s crunch time for Europe&#39;s mobile telephone giants. After spending billions of euros on third-generation licences, they now hope to persuade millions of customers to make the switch to the new
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Expect mobile broadband access to be commonplace in the next couple of years. The technologies are here and so is the demand, but spectrum and cost issues remain.
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By Anna Marie Kukec Daily Herald Business Writer  Goodbye, analog.  Or shall we say, good riddance? At least that could be what executives at the mobile phone service providers are thinking.
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If you are in Sudan it is a &#39;missed call&#39;. In Ethiopia it is a &#39;miskin&#39; or a &#39;pitiful&#39; call. In other parts of Africa it is a case of &#39;flashing&#39;, &#39;beeping&#39; or in French-speaking areas &#39;bipage&#39;.
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After forcing Europe's mobile  operators to cut rates for making and receiving phone calls  abroad, the European Union's top telecoms regulator has set her  sights on prices for downloading and surfing the Web  wirelessly.
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There is some concern that roaming fees, which are being waived until the end of the year, will later be reimposed. Ken Dulaney of Gartner does not think this is likely, however, because the agreement
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Price and coverage are the key issues affecting mobile users, a survey of European consumers finds.
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Airline travel has always been a welcome refuge from the incessant chatter of cellphone users, so it is sobering to hear that regulators are thinking of allowing the use of cellphones up in the friendly skies.