T-Mobile to offer consumer push e-mail and more
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(InfoWorld) - After rolling out push e-mail service to its enterprise customers, T-Mobile International now plans to extend the offering to the consumer market, in addition to launching a number of new "community" services. The consumer push e-mail service was one of several announcements T-Mobile International CEO Hamid Akhavan made Tuesday during a news conference at theÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona. "We plan a new service that will push e-mail to consumers; this could become a very huge market," Akhavan said. As T-Mobile rolls out new social networking services such as myFaves in the U.S., the operator also plans new "community" pricing plans. With myFaves, for instance, customers can establish a community of up to five people who receive a discounted rate for voice calls, text messages, and more. User-generated content, such as photos and videos, is another social networking service already generating lots of buzz, according to Akhavan. "It's still early days for social networking services over mobile networks but they will drive growth," he said. "I believe the mobile Internet will have a bigger impact than the Internet itself." The company is looking at theÂ new Windows Mobile 6.0. "I don't know yet if our Windows Mobile 5.0 handsets can support 6.0," he said. "If so and if we can use our Web site to allow customers to download the new operating system, then maybe this will be a possibility. I guess the answer is if we can upgrade easily, then yes." T-Mobile meanwhile lowered international roaming fees by 20 percent last year, with further reductions in the pipeline. Because roaming isn't a unilateral business, partner operators will also need to agree to changes, Akhavan said. Enterprises have been lobbying the European Commission for years to pressure European mobile operators intoÂ lowering roaming fees. T-Mobile is moving ahead on its 3G (third-generation) rollout in the U.S., according to Akhavan. He handed the microphone to Ray Nevelle, in charge of the U.S. deployment, who said U.S. customers can expect 3G service this year. Akhavan said he wasn't concerned about the threat of municipality Wi-Fi networks. Users want quality service, "which requires networking expertise -- this is something municipalities don't have," he said. "Governments, you may recall, used to run telecom networks and then decided to get out of that business."
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Don't be using Voip though T-Mobile customers signing up to Web 'n Walk Plus (or Max) will get free access to the operator's 39,000 hot spots from January. So for Â£12.50 a month users can get 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and be allowed to use instant messaging too...â¦
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New service lets consumers access an all-in-one mailbox from anywhere using a phone or the Internet.
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The service lets users make calls over Wi-Fi from their homes as well as T-Mobile hot spots.
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T-Mobile is seeking beta testers in the San Diego, Calif. area to trial a new software application for their mobile phones that tracks user activity without the use of GPS. Applicants would need to reside in the 619, 760 or 858 area codes, and have more than one phone on their account.
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Yahoo said Tuesday it has a partnership with T-Mobile to be the exclusive Internet service provider for the mobile network operator's European users.
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(InfoWorld) - China Mobile Communications, the country's largest mobile operator, will soon offer Microsoft's push e-mail service to its subscribers, the two companies said Monday. The Push Mail service will start operation in mid-December, giving subscribers who use mobile devices running Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 software the ability to send and receive e-mail, the companies said on the opening day of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU's) Telecom World 2006 exhibition and conference in Hong Kong. Pricing for the service was not announced. In addition to Microsoft's push e-mail service, China Mobile alreadyÂ offers Research In Motion's rival BlackBerryÂ push e-mail service. China Mobile offers two service plans for Research In Motion's BlackBerry in China. One plan includes 50MB of data transfer over China Mobile's GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network for 398 renminbi ($51.76) per month. The other plan, priced at 598 renminbi per month, offers 400MB of data transfer for e-mail, including 2MB of international roaming for data access. Telecom World runs through Friday, December 8.
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(InfoWorld) - Idea Cellular, a large mobile services company in India, has introduced a push e-mail service, called Easy Mail, for users of its GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) service. Easy Mail is a clientless service with which any individual or enterprise subscriber can access e-mail via MMS (multimedia messaging service) on their handsets, the company said Tuesday. Critical Path, a messaging software and services vendor in San Francisco, provided the new service's technology. India has been adding about 6 million mobile subscribers each month. But because of a decline in phone-call tariffs, the average revenue per user (ARPU) has been falling for service providers. Service providers are looking at services other than telephony, such as e-mail and music downloads, to boost revenue. E-mail on mobile phones is one of a number of value-added services Idea Cellular plans to offer, in an effort to give customers more options and raise ARPU, said Pradeep Shrivastava, chief marketing officer of Idea Cellular on Tuesday. Hutchison Essar, a mobile service provider in India, announced this month the availability of BlackBerry handsets from Research in Motion (RIM) in Waterloo, Ontario, and related push e-mail services. Another large Indian mobile services provider, Bharti Airtel of Delhi, has been offering BlackBerry handsets and push e-mail services for the last couple of years. Idea Cellular decided to go in for a software approach to push e-mail, as it has adopted a strategy that does not depend on the type of handset a user has, Shrivastava said. Any user with a GPRS handset can use the Easy Mail service, which is the not the case with the RIM technology, he added. With a customer base of over 12 million, Idea Cellular has operations in a number of states in India. Idea Cellular has been offering push e-mail services to corporate customers, using technology that required its service to be integrated with the corporate e-mail system, Shrivastava said. The new Easy Mail technology does not, however, require corporate e-mail system integration, and Idea Cellular can offer push e-mail service to any GPRS user, he added. E-mail on mobile phones is, however, still a nascent market in India, and Idea Cellular does not immediately expect large demand from its current user base. Only about one-third of its users currently have GPRS handsets, and not a lot of these users see e-mail service as a priority, Shrivastava said.
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TechWeb - The operating system is expected to include BlackBerry-like push e-mail and take advantage of features in Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Exchange.
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For those customers who would like to have only one phone at home and away, T-Mobile USA is launching a new service called HotSpot@Home. Those who sign up can use their mobile phone at home over Wi-Fi, and, when outside, can automatically transfer between Wi-Fi at T-Mobile hotspot locations and T-Mobile&#39;s cellular network.
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Customers will be able to download film clips, audio and video, interactive multiplayer games, multimedia music tracks, &quot;push-to-watch&quot; services, as well as access large e-mail attachments.
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Verizon Wireless has launched AOL Mail, a move that will give its Get It Now customers, who are AOL members, wireless access to their e-mail.
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Raketu will add two new features to its social networking service in a move to attract consumers on the go.
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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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The wireless e-mail platform works on more than 100 handsets.
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The company plans to make available an API that lets Palm OS-powered devices work with BlackBerry wireless e-mail services.
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Raketu Communications Inc. will add two new mobile phone features to its integrated communications, entertainment and social networking service in a move to attract consumers on the go.