Is T-Mobile starting a convergence arms race?
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T-Mobile is testing a service that combines VoIP and cellular access in hopes of catching up with its competitors.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.K. startup specializing in offering Internet telephone service via certain Nokia Wi-Fi enabled cellphones is making few friends with mobile operators, signalling tension ahead in the high stakes mobile phone industry. Software Cellular Network, which operates under the name Truphone, has clashed with T-Mobile UK over termination fees, resulting in some calls from Truphone customers not being connected by the mobile phone operator, Truphone CEO James Tagg said Tuesday. The row with T-Mobile follows a confrontation in April with O2 (UK)Â and Orange Personal Communications ServicesÂ over both operators' decision to lock the VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) function featured in Nokia's new N95 phone. Truphone's struggles to establish a VOIP service to compete with mobile operators' cash-cow circuit-switched voice service reflect the tension in the mobile phone sector as the disruptive Internet technology gains momentum. Analysts agree. There's a "big fear of mobile VOIP ripping away large chunks" of operators' ARPU (average revenue per user), said Pete Cunningham, an analyst with Canalys.com. "Voice is the largest contributor to their ARPU." T-Mobile is not accepting calls from Truphone customers using a new range of telephone numbers until the two companies can agree to fees, according to T-Mobile spokesman Simon Marks. Operators charge each other fees to complete calls on their networks. Calls to mobile phone networks in Europe cost more because operators charge a higher fee to receive calls on their networks. The fees are intended largely to help operators recoup their investments in building and operating networks. T-Mobile argues that Truphone hasn't built a network and consequently shouldn't be allowed to charge much, if anything, to terminate calls on its network. Truphone offers a software-based communications service that allows users with dual-mode Nokia cellular and Wi-Fi phones running its application to make and receive inexpensive VOIP calls whenever they are within reach of a wireless network. Calls made to Truphone customers outside a Wi-Fi zone are automatically routed to their cell phones and billed by their mobile operator. To access the Truphone service, customers must access a Wi-Fi network, which may require paying a fee. Truphone's Tagg admits the company has low operating costs, employing a staff of around 30. "Termination rates are meant to reflect the costs of making calls," Marks said. "We don't believe that Truphone's costs are reflected in their termination rates. Their actual operating costs are near zero. They're trying to use high termination fees to make a profit." Tagg, on the other hand, argues that no other carrier except for T-Mobile has required Truphone to negotiate termination fees, which are regulated in the U.K. for calls on 2G (second-generation) networks. Carriers publish their termination prices for 3G (third-generation) networks. "This isn't how the industry works," he said, referring to T-Mobile's demand to negotiate termination fees. "Truphone is a disruptive technology -- it's a threat, and they're scared." T-Mobile initially blocked VOIP service over its handsets but has since supported it. Unlike Vodafone and Orange, the U.K. subsidiary of German telco Deutsche TelekomÂ doesn't block customers from installing and using mobile VOIP services such as Fring on its phones, according to Marks. "We're fully supportive of VOIP service." Although Vodafone continues to terminate Truphone calls on its mobile network and pay the VOIP operator to complete Vodafone calls on its Wi-Fi network, the U.K. mobile phone operator isn't rushing into VOIP. In an earlier statement, the company said it believes that VOIP over mobile is not yet a mature service and doesn't have guaranteed quality of service. Vodafone is reluctant to talk about VOIP over mobile networks. Analyst Cunningham agrees with quality of service concerns but argues that all mobile operators will nevertheless have to embrace VOIP because, he said, "it isn't going away." He expects many operators to lower their voice tariffs to make them competitive with VOIP and also offer high-speed mobile and/or wireless broadband services as part of a multiservice strategy to lock them into one billing relationship.
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I'm getting a new mobile phone :) In the whole spectrum of digital opportunities, mobile is where the next big battle lies and I'll be rejoining the fray. It's eight years since Western Mail & Echo bought my first mobile. Four phones later my new one will bear no resemblance to the first.
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PalmSource is to focus on wireless devices with its new version of Palm OS, but can it succeed against the likes of Microsoft and Symbian?
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Global mobile operators and  device makers are betting that the next level of transmission  technology will ramp up mobile phone usage in a way that  third-generation technology has so far failed to do.
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ESPOO, Finland, February 8  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nokia today announced a collaboration to strengthen T-Mobile's capabilities to bring core services to market and improve the capability of S60 licensees to develop devices for T-Mobile.
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New CDMA-GSM phones are hitting the market. Are they a niche device for business travelers or a bombshell set to rattle the wireless industry?
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Is one mobile device capable of doing all things ever going to be a reality for your pocket? Microsoft's Steve Ballmer seems headed in that direction, even though some realize there are limits to unification.
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Microsoft built a custom Windows Mobile user interface for a new phone that T-Mobile USA expects to announce on Monday, evidence that Microsoft may be getting more serious about pursuing the consumer mobile market.The phone, built by HTC, will be the first in a line of phones from T-Mobile using the new Shadow brand, said David Sholkovitz, marketing manager at T-Mobile.While Microsoft has worked with operators to help modify the operating system to fit their needs, this project represented a new level of partnership, said Doug Smith, director of marketing for Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business. &quot;I&#39;d say this was one of the deeper partner involvements we&#39;ve had on a new product,&quot; he said.The Shadow, which will hit stores on Wednesday, features a home screen that looks very different than other Windows Mobile phones. Users slide a wheel to navigate through icons on the screen that take them directly to e-mail, their music player and photos. The idea was to make it easier to use increasingly complicated phones, said Sholkovitz.The operator approached Microsoft about ways to alter the home screen in order to simplify it and prevent &quot;feature fatigue,&quot; he said. &quot;We wanted to create a product with the feature set that Windows Mobile products have but deliver it in a simple fashion that was user intuitive and icon based,&quot; he said.T-Mobile, Microsoft and HTC began working on the new user interface in November of last year. &quot;I think this was rare for [Microsoft],&quot; said Farah Houston, product development manager, T-Mobile. &quot;We had access to a lot of resources I don&#39;t think they normally make available. Microsoft is trying to show they&#39;re serious about the consumer market and this is what they&#39;re willing to do.&quot;Windows Mobile, which works in tandem with Exchange to push corporate e-mail to the phones, has a reputation primarily as an enterprise tool. T-Mobile hoped to avoid that image with the Shadow and the keyboard design is meant to help. &quot;When users see a full keyboard they think business and productivity,&quot; said Sholkovitz. &quot;So we made it a hidden slide-out keypad.&quot;During a keynote speech at the CTIA I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described what Microsoft thinks will attract consumers. &quot;Consumers will want phones that span all of their life personas,&quot; he said. &quot;My work life, my personal life, my life with my family, my life with my friends. People don&#39;t want to pull out multiple devices.&quot;Another Microsoft executive echoed a similar thought. &quot;We can do multiple things in parallel,&quot; said Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile group, also speaking at CTIA. &quot;We can do both consumer and enterprise... You will see more devices appeal to the consumer side.&quot;The talk of consumer needs shows how the iPhone is likely affecting Microsoft&#39;s strategy, one analyst said. &quot;There&#39;s no doubt the success that Apple had with the iPhone in terms of appealing to the mainstream end user market as opposed to the business market has not gone unnoticed,&quot; said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. &quot;Microsoft has built these devices to service and solve business needs but Microsoft understands the intersection of business and consumer.&quot;The declining price of Windows Mobile devices will make them more appealing to consumers, said Smith. The Shadow, as an example, will retail for $150 with a two-year voice and data contract. It will work with a new data plan from T-Mobile that costs $20 per month and includes unlimited data use and Wi-Fi access at T-Mobile hotspots.The phone will be displayed in T-Mobile stores along with other lower cost feature phones, not with the higher end smartphones, said Houston.Neither Microsoft nor T-Mobile would comment on intellectual-property ownership for the new software interface on the Shadow.
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Cingular, the largest mobile phone operator in the US, is to launch a high-speed third generation (3G) network from next year. Mobile phone firms have been seeking new areas to boost revenue - and Cingular&#39;s
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The enterprise customers doing cell-phone business with the confusing mix of AT&amp;T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, and AT&amp;T now have a future roadmap, after the three companies
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Operators have trouble finding customers for combined deals offering fixed and mobile services, industry executives said at a convergence conference in Amsterdam.
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(InfoWorld) - Some of the world's biggest cellular operators have gotten together to promote their vision of what next-generation mobile technology should look like. Sprint Nextel Corp., Vodafone Group PLC, China Mobile Communications Corp., Orange PLC, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Royal KPN NV and T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG announced Thursday they have formed the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative. NGMN, a nonprofit group based in London, won't push a particular type of network but rather a set of guidelines that future technologies should follow, said Steve Falk, vice president of global standards at Sprint. "We think that we can speak with a more organized and concerted voice that we have in the past," Falk said. Vendors and standards organizations had stronger voices in the development of 2G (second-generation) and 3G systems. Carriers will represent the interests of their customers, the end users, he said. The group, which is already consulting with equipment vendors but will only include carriers as members, may be pitting itself against Qualcomm Inc., which developed much of the current 3G (third-generation) technology and has been criticized in some quarters for its royalty and licensing practices. The NGMN is looking toward the technologies to follow 3G systems such as HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). Carriers are still deploying and upgrading those networks, which are based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) respectively, but even faster technologies are coming down the road. Sprint, for one, has called WiMax its 4G technology and plans to roll it out across the U.S. within the next few years. In choosing WiMax, the carrier used some of the guidelines NGMN was formulating, Falk said. Among NGMN's recommended features are the following: - high data throughput with low latency - low operation and maintenance costs - support for authentication, security and differentiated quality of service Carriers also will favor technologies covered by FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) intellectual property rules, Falk said. "One of the principles of NGMN is an open and transparent IPR (intellectual property rights) regime," he said. The NGMN would like to see a single technology track and believes greater harmony will lower costs and speed up product development for vendors, too. "In some cases, 2G and 3G vendors have had to do very costly and time-consuming development on three to five different kinds of technology," Falk said. Being able to focus on one or two tracks, in turn, will help bring products and services to mobile subscribers faster and more economically, he said.
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In 2007, we'll see more types of mobile access start to emerge, which will lead to more applications and more competition among providers.
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InfoWorld - Nokia appears to be trying to work increasingly close with operators as a way to push its S60 mobile phone software. The strategy could result in more Symbian phones available to U.S. users.
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InfoWorld - With much of the growth in the mobile phone market expected to come from emerging markets, Texas Instruments&#160;(TI) has stepped up development of advanced processors designed for low-cost handsets.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite signs that mobile Linux is gaining momentum -- such as the launch ofÂ Motorola's Linux-based Razr2Â -- heated competition, confusion about goals, and slow-moving consortiums may be hindering growth. These developments are an indication of how much may be at stake. Between 2006 and 2012, cumulative Linux mobile device shipments are expected to reach 331 million, said Stuart Carlaw, an analyst with ABI Research. Such predictions are drawing interest to the segment from handset manufacturers, software developers, and carriers. The LiMo Foundation, the Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS), and the Open Source Development Labs' Mobile Linux Initiative are among the new groups formed over the past couple of years to try to reduce the fragmentation in the mobile Linux market and to encourage interoperability. But at least one mobile Linux vendor is critical of their progress. "They're still trying to figure out where to hold meetings," said Jim Ready, CTO and founder of MontaVista, of the activities of some of the groups. Progress at organizations like LiMo has been extremely slow, agreed Dan Cauchy, director of product marketing at MontaVista. "I'm concerned about what that will mean to the actual marketplace because each member company is building phones regardless," he said. Phone makers and software developers don't want to wait for the groups to decide on platforms and standards so they continue to make products that may not ultimately conform to the parameters set by the groups or interoperate, he said. Mobile phones are already plagued with interoperability issues that make it difficult for applications to run properly on all handsets. This problem hurts users interested in applications that are incompatible with their handsets. Also affected are software developers who have to make multiple versions of the same application for different handsets. Some operators, including Vodafone, have said they will soon require that all of their handsets run only two or three specific operating systems as a way to ensure that applications will work across all phones. The operators don't want to introduce Linux devices into their lineup of phones if they only exacerbate the interoperability problem. While MontaVista is active in many of the groups, it is also continuing to work closely with handset makers to meet their needs. According to Cauchy, 90 percent of mobile Linux devices--including Motorola's Razr2--are running MontaVista Linux. Confusion about goals in the industry could also be dragging down progress. "It's clear that the leading operators are telling the industry to consolidate," said Jason Whitmire, general manager of mobile solutions for Wind River, a Linux software developer with products for mobile phone vendors. "They expect to use only one OS stack or maybe two, so they have asked the industry to join together and do something." By his count, there are 22 different flavors of mobile Linux. But MontaVista has a different perspective. "Some of these consortiums are under the impression that they'll provide one stack to satisfy the world and I think carriers are saying, 'I don't think so'," said Cauchy. Choice is one of the main reasons driving the mobile Linux industry. In an ironic twist, Symbian, the mobile phone operating system, was first created by a group of mobile phone makers that feared that Microsoft, which had just entered the mobile market, might dominate like it did in the PC industry. But more recently, Symbian has begun to dominate the smart phone market enough that mobile operators wanted to be sure they had another choice, Carlaw said. Mobile Linux is an attempt to ensure that Microsoft and Symbian aren't the only options, he said. "The whole point is to have choice and alternatives," said Ready. "It's because of this paranoia about having one supplier ... that's why these consortiums show up." Too much choice, however, has been causing problems. At a mobile Linux conference in Madrid this week, fragmentation was a key concern particularly among smaller operators, Whitmire said. Without consolidation, they see costs related to supporting mobile Linux soaring, he said. Wind River, MontaVista, and others have one less potential competitor to worry about. During a keynote presentation at the Madrid conference, Red Hat said it has no intention of entering the embedded device Linux market. Fragmentation is an issue in mobile Linux, but some advancements are happening, Carlaw said. He's seen real progress in terms of different layers of the stack working together. It's been more difficult to improve on "horizontal" fragmentation. But that's starting to get better too, he said. For example, the LiPS Forum recently began working with the Open Mobile Alliance to improve interoperability both between mobile Linux devices and between Linux and non-Linux phones. It's natural to have this amount of fragmentation at this stage of the market development, and companies appear to have the incentive to continue to work it out, he said. "Carriers are still saying they're looking at Linux as a long-term prospect," he said.