AT&T goes ‘Green,’ aims to save environment (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: It’s time for the mobile world to go green and after Sprint, AT&T has joined the league to save environment. New standards will be adopted by the operator for its packaging and handset designs with a mission to reduce waste, encourage recycling and reduce its carbon footprint.
Both AT&T and the manufacturers have started working on different methods that could reduce the amount of packaging that goes into its handset boxes, besides reducing the size of the boxes themselves. It has been estimated that 60% less paper and 30% less plastic will be used in its packaging by switching materials from plastic to recycled paper.
Newer and stricter standards are required to be adopted by handset makers to reduce packaging, use non-petroleum based inks and use recycled materials for in-box documentation. AT&T also believes that the GSMA Universal Charging Solution will be complied by majority of new devices, mandating a more energy-efficient charger for new devices. GSMA has already restricted the use of lead, mercury, and other hazardous materials used in electronic equipment and AT&T believes these changes will have a positive impact on the environment.
China Telecom formally joins GSMA
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: GSMA and China Telecom have commemorated a signing ceremony with the formal induction of the operator in the group. According to Sinclair, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at the GSMA, with its compelling, high-speed and cost-effective network architecture, LTE is bringing the GSM and CDMA communities together and GSMA is delighted that China Telecom has joined it and will be among the first operators to launch commercial LTE services.
More than 74 mobile operators from around the world have committed to plans, trials or deployments for LTE.
TeliaSonera in Sweden was the first to launch the commercial LTE network at the end of 2009. NTT DoCoMo in Japan is also set to join China Telecom and Verizon Wireless in deploying commercial LTE services by the end of 2010.
Mobile Money not a buzz in Europe
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The idea of transferring the money via mobile phone has got a tremendous response in emerging markets like Africa, India and Latin America but the move is likely to be a slow and tortuous affair in Europe.
In Europe mobile payments have not moved beyond the trial stage and it is believed by many industry executives that consumers will only make mobile payments in certain niche situations in the short term, potentially denying operators a way to increase customer loyalty and gain additional revenues.
According to Mark Pickens, an analyst at the microfinance centre CGAP based at the World Bank, Mobile money is going to be a longer slog that takes more brain power and maybe more commitment than a lot of the operators are used to putting into value-added services. It has been predicted by the telecom trade body GSMA that operators could make USD 5 billion from financial services by “banking” 364 million unbanked people by 2012.
MWC2010: Zain wins ‘Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service’ award
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The inaugural GSMA’s 2010 ‘Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service’ award at the Mobile World Congress has been won by Zain, a leading mobile network operator in the Middle East and Africa. The Global Mobile Awards in this category has been given for Zain’s mobile commerce service called ‘Zap’.
To recognize innovative mobile banking around the world, the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service has been established, pioneering the roll out of low-cost financial services to millions of people, in countries where traditional financial services are either not within easy reach or unavailable.
Launched exactly one year ago on February 16, 2009, Zap, is the biggest Mobile Commerce service in the world accessible to approximately 200 million potential customers in Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana. It provides the most comprehensive and accessible package of m-commerce features currently available anywhere in the world.
China Telecom, KDDI, Verizon join GSMA
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: GSMA has been given a membership to China Telecom, KDDI and Verizon Wireless after they committed to deploy commercial services based on LTE. All the three companies are CDMA operator and will begin commercial deployments of LTE as early as 2010.
Qualcomm has also joined the GSMA as an associate member.
Mobile operators join force on global apps platform
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An open international applications platform has been launched by a joint force of the world’s largest mobile operators. This marks the largest unified move to date by the operator community into the mobile apps space.
A combination of 24 of the world’s largest mobile carriers, the so called ‘Wholesale Applications Community’ includes America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom Austria, MTN Group, NTT Docomo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, VimpelCom and WIND.
Vodafone, China Mobile, SoftBank and Verizon Wireless in the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) mobile apps initiative are also included in the group. The move has been backed by GSMA, an industry association. The aim of the alliance is to create a wholesale platform for mobile apps providing a single point-of-entry for developers. Operators are also eyeing the revenue-generating potential of getting into the apps business.
The new operator-led initiative has also got the support from the handset vendors including LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
16 million UK people access web through mobile
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3 UK along with comScore have launched a GSMA Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) service in the UK. Anonymous mobile internet usage data will be taken from all five UK mobile operators by the service to provide insights into mobile media consumption.
It was shown by the data that about 16 million people in the UK accessed the internet from their handsets in December 2009 and viewed a combined total of 6.7 billion pages and spending an aggregate of 4.8 billion minutes online in the months.
70 percent of both total pages viewed and total time spent online on mobiles were accounted by the top 10 sites. Smartphone devices have resulted in this rapid growth of mobile internet usage in UK. 29 percent of the UK total mobile internet audience is of smartphone users.
