Wireless Federation

Sierra Wireless and M2M Connectivity, a wireless module distributor for machine-to-machine (M2M) products and applications, have signed a deal involving the distribution of Sierra Wireless 3G embedded modules in Australia and New Zealand.

As part of the newly signed agreement, M2M Connectivity plans to distribute Sierra Wireless embedded modules to OEM customers in the region. M2M Connectivity also will offer integration and certification support for the product line.

The Sierra Wireless PCI Express Mini Card modules will give the developer community early access to 3G/HSDPA hardware to develop new M2M applications requiring higher bandwidth, according to the companies.

Sierra Wireless recently struck a deal with Bouygues Telecom to make its Sierra Wireless AirCard 850 wireless WAN card available for use on the operator’s network in France. Orange UK also recently signed up to make the AirCard 850 card available to its 3G customers. Sierra Wireless also is helping to power Sprint Nextel’s migration to EV-DO Revision A technology.

Source- wirelessweek Wireless Mobile Telecom

Yahoo! is once again delving deeper into the wireless space. In its latest deal with Nokia, the company will make additional Yahoo! services, such as e-mail and messaging, available on select Nokia handsets.

The service offers the ability to synchronize Yahoo! contacts, tasks and calendars on the PC and wireless phone.

At launch, Nokia will offer the Yahoo! services on the Nokia 6300, the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5200. The company, however, plans to extend the reach of the services to additional Series 40 devices in the future.

“The Internet has transformed the way we live our lives and communicate with each other, and we expect it to play a key role in the next phase of Nokia’s growth. The next wave of the Internet will be to make it truly mobile, creating new ways for people to connect to others and find information from wherever they are,” said Nokia CEO and President Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at the Nokia World 2006 conference.

Nokia and Yahoo! first began working together in April 2005 in the mobile space. In January, they announced a partnership to make Yahoo! Go Mobile available on select Nokia phones.

Yahoo! also recently unveiled a beta version of its graphical advertising support for its Yahoo! Mobile Web service. Mobile Web is available on most mobile phones across all major mobile operators in the United States, Yahoo! says. The company also recently launched beta search advertisements.

In other Nokia news, the company was awarded a contract to operate Indosat’s W-CDMA 3G/HSP network. As part of the agreement with the Indonesian operator, Nokia will supply the W-CDMA 3G/HSPA radio network, including the modular, high-capacity Nokia Flexi W-CDMA base station in Bali, Batam, East Java and Sumatra. Nokia’s 3G devices also are being delivered as part of the contract.

Nokia also has a contract to provide managed services for the network. Terms were not disclosed.

Source- wirelessweek Wireless Mobile Telecom 

In some of the most popular business and tourist destinations in Europe, many visitors can make a two-minute mobile phone call home for as little as EUR 0.33 per minute, according to a survey commissioned by the GSM Association, the global trade association for mobile phone operators. In France, the study found that visiting Germans can make a two-minute call home for EUR 0.33 per minute by signing up for a bundle of roaming minutes offered by one of the mobile phone operators in Germany. British users in France can make a two-minute call home for GBP 0.35 per minute by signing up for a discount tariff offered by one of the operators in the UK. Both packages, like similar discounted tariffs from rival operators, are available to all mobile phone users. For visitors making calls of 4 minutes or longer, even better tariffs are available, reducing the per minute charge to as little as EUR 0.19 on the busiest roaming routes. Some of these deals have been in place since 2005. In Spain, the same rates apply for Germans and British users as in France, according to the study.The average lowest price across the 25 busiest roaming routes in the EU is EUR 0.46 per minute for a two-minute call. These roaming routes represent almost 50 percent of the roaming traffic in the EU market. The GSMA believes regulation is unnecessary, as the market is delivering on-going declines in roaming tariffs. The average price for making and receiving a mobile phone call when roaming within Europe was 22 percent lower this summer compared with 2005, according to a retail price index compiled by AT Kearney.

Source- telecompaper Wireless Mobile Telecom

US consumers are ready for mobile internet surfing and transacting, but websites are not, according to a national survey of 1,000 adult consumers over 18 years of age, administered by Kelton Research, for Molecular. One out of four American adults (26 percent) say they would use their mobile phone or handheld device to access the web if mobile web pages were easier to navigate. For Americans between the ages of 18 and 44, the likelihood they would use their mobile phone or handheld device to access internet is even higher: 32 percent or one out of three. More than one in four Americans with a mobile phone (28 percent) say that they’d like to use their phone or handheld device for purchases and financial transactions, but the companies with whom they do business make it difficult to do so via these devices.

Source- telecompaper Wireless Mobile Telecom

Indonesian fixed and mobile operator Indosat has launched HSDPA services in Jakarta and Surabaya and plans to add eight more cities at the start of 2007. Services include high speed data and internet access, mobile TV, multiplayer games, video calls and full track music downloads. The company split its HSPA upgrade between Ericsson and Nokia. Ericsson will provide radio and core networks for Jakarta, its surrounding areas, West and Central Java, and Jogjakarta. Nokia equipment and managed services will be used in East Java, Bali, Sumatra and Batam. The eight cities to be added by the start of next year are Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Bali, Medan, Batam, Balikpapan and Makassar. Financial details of the contracts were not disclosed.

Source- telecompaper Wireless Mobile Telecom

The strategic venture capital arm of Motorola, Motorola Ventures, has made a substantial undisclosed investment in French WiMAX chip company Sequans Communications. Sequans develops and supplied mobile and fixed WiMAX semiconductor solutions. The investment extends a recent funding round announced in July by Sequans.

Source- telecompaper Wireless Mobile Telecom

Maroc Telecom’s 66 percent-owned French MVNO, Mobisud, is launching service on 1 December, targeting customers of North African origin, reports Les Echos. Mobisud, which is also 18 percent owned by Saham and 16 percent by SFR, whose network it uses, has pledged to offer the best prices to the Maghreb for prepaid customers, charging the same rate as for domestic calls. A bilingual French and Arabic customer service will be provided by a 30-person call centre operated in Casa Blanca by Saham subsidiary Phone Assistance. Mobisud, which has a staff of fifteen employees, is led by Cyrille Ferrechat, the head of services and portal content at SFR. Only Budget Telecom has targeted an ethnic segment so far in France, targeting residents in France hailing from English speaking countries.

Source- telecompaper Wireless Mobile Telecom 

The Wall Street Journal looks at the mobile-advertising plans that loom large in Vodafone’s strategy to push ads to subscribers through a partnership with Yahoo. The article doesn’t cover new ground, but it does let us in on Vodafone’s thinking as detailed by Alan Harper, Vodafone’s head of strategy. For one, we have clear confirmation that Vodafone and Yahoo plan to use customer information to target their efforts. Yahoo’s technology, which Vodafone will use as part of the arrangement, enables advertisers to direct their message at people depending on gender, demographic group, location, and user behavior. “We can build up a social-interest profile over time,� Harper said in the article.

Vodafone will deliver ads only to customers who opt in to the service, in which case the mobile operator will collect details, such as the mobile user’s age and gender, at sign-up. Then, over time, it will build a profile of customers’ interests based on their activities over their phones. To sweeten the offer, Harper said Vodafone will offer users discounts on services such as mobile TV and games – but declined to provide details. However, he did indicate the freebies could include offering certain mobile television channels for free or giving a discount on the price of games.

Clearly, Vodafone is moving into mobile advertising to offset price declines and a steep sales slump across its core market of Europe. There are signs that Vodafone is thinking ahead to deliver ads via its fixed-line broadband offer, enabling a fixed-mobile ad approach. Harper said Vodafone is looking to introduce advertising in other countries, but won’t necessarily partner with Yahoo in each case. And Vodafone also has high hopes to deliver ads to users on their PCs.

Amid all the excitement about mobile search offers, promoted by the usual suspects, it’s important not to lose sight of the nimble start-ups that will no doubt give the heavyweights a run for their money. As this article points out, one that has quietly carved out its turf is Webaroo (headquartered in Bellevue, with offices in Santa Clara, Mumbai and New Delhi. The company, which allows users to search from their laptop or mobile device for free, has already signed up Acer to bundle the application on its laptops as a global distribution deal (in which Acer also gets a small share of advertising revenues). Webaroo is also gearing up to announce similar deals with mobile manufacturers.

In a nutshell, Webaroo has essentially put the Internet on a hard drive. Its technology allows users to download the most relevant pages from the Internet to their desktops or mobiles, enabling what Chirag Jain, vice president of Webaroo’s Indian operations, described in the article as a “connected experience but in an offline form.� (Webaroo caches can be synched to mobile phones – it supports only Windows Smartphones; no sign of anything for Symbian.) The company’s business model is based on mobile advertising and allowing advertisers to reach mobile users even when they are not connected to the Internet. What’s more, Webaroo has created Web Packs—large collections of Web pages containing related data for a slew of topics including sports teams, wines, and movie actors (offering brands another channel to users). The packs are filled with fresh content because the software synchronises with the real Web every time the user gets a data connection. The jury is out on this one, but the concept of free mobile search offline is one that has obvious appeal to users – and the opportunities for brands to sponsor content, or reach users through Web Packs, may be too good to pass up.

USA Today has a piece on mastertones and how the top ringtones now outsell the top singles, which is nothing we didn’t know but there are some interesting figures for the US.
“In the week ending Nov. 12, Akon’s Smack That was the No. 1 mastertone, with 164,000 sold. It was No. 2 on the digital chart after selling 104,000 downloads. Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable sold 124,000 mastertones and 79,000 downloads.�
Mastertones now represent 86% of weekly ringtone sales and polyphonic tones make up 12%, which are moving towards seasonal ringtones and movie and game themes. “BMI, a trade organization that distributes royalties to 300,000 member songwriters, composers and music publishers, projects U.S ringtone revenues will surpass $600 million in 2006, up from $500 million last year, $245 million in 2004 and $68 million in 2003. Global sales rose 40% in the past year to $3.5 billion, accounting for 10% of the music market, according to the London-based ARC Group, which forecasts skyrocketing growth into 2008, when sales should exceed $5.2 billion.�
The article states that “a key difference between polyphonics and mastertones lies in profit splits. The former made money for carriers, publishers and songwriters, but not performers�, which isn’t really true. The performers of the ringtones, the people who made them, received compensation. Now however, “artists who don’t write their own songs get a piece of the action. It’s a good revenue generator for the record business�.
The article is based on (or at least, coincides with) a report from Nielsen Mobile that they are launching Nielsen RingScan, “to monitor the rapidly expanding United States ringtone market and issue a weekly report of Polyphonic, Master, and Voice ringtone sales� (press release). This will be used as the basis for the Billboard Hot RingMasters Chart, the top 20 mastertones. Nielsen Mobile has also added Sprint and Boost as sources for its data collection, and USA Today states that “RingScan will track more than 80% of U.S. ringtone sales�. RCR News states that this is “the second carrier agreement for Nielsen Mobile; in September the company inked a similar partnership with Verizon Wireless�. I assume there’s also deals with ringtone vendors.