Vodafone to support British Gas Smart Meters
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: For the roll out of smart metering in the UK, Vodafone UK is working with British Gas. Both the companies have entered into a multi million pound contract. Under the contract, Vodafone will provide nearly 1 million GPRS connections within household meters.
This will help families to monitor the energy they use, leading to cost savings and reduced CO2 emissions. There is no need for anyone to wait for someone to read the energy meter.
Rather, the bill will be received automatically by them for exactly what they’ve used along with the energy use data sent from the in-home smart meter back to British Gas over the Vodafone network.
Is UK heading towards merger era?
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: European Union has given its blessing to the most talked about deal of the season and the celebration will soon begin with the consummation of the proposed merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK. The telecom sector of UK is vital and highly competitive and the main players have always and loudly protested their support of the benefits of competition.
But with the finalization of the proposed merger, the big five have come down to big four. The current market leader in UK, O2 will be pushed a place down the hierarchy. Vodafone will go further down the order and will be casting around for some way to bolster its fortunes. All these mobile operators will try to cope up with the new and a powerful competition in the form of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK merger and by “competition” they all will mean merging themselves.
Though O2 will not be allowed to merge with Vodafone as the regulators in the UK and in Europe would not allow it too but the two can share their networks on a full fledged way.
The merger is paving the way towards a new trend of merger and collaboration of the entities that have control of two huge networks running the sector by themselves. The new trend will also provide access and services to a variety of MVNOs.
Until and unless a line is drawn by the regulator between the big two, the end user will be disadvantaged by the consolidation.
O2 fastest mobile internet provider in London
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2 has emerged as the quickest provider of mobile phone web page access in London compared to four other operators. 1.7 seconds on average was taken by the testers to access a page on the web when using O2′s mobile internet.
For over 60 days, the speeds of five networks were compared at 150 locations and concluded that the British company was speediest in London in January 2010.
It was also declared to be the fastest for downloading music track in 12 out of 20 British cities.
O2 UK ranks top in mobile web speed in London
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2 UK has been ranked as the fastest provider for mobile web pages in London in a survey of the UK mobile network mobile data download speeds.
In January 2010, O2 offered the fastest average web page access experience in London at 1.7 seconds, over 30% quicker than the slowest operator. Even for misc download, O2 emerged the winner by providing the fastest music download rate in 12 out of 20 UK key cities and was second place in a further four more.
Tests were conducted between 10am and 10pm Monday to Sunday in London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.
MWC2010: T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and O2 to offer Samsung’s Wave
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Samsung’ Wave’ which is first to sport Samsung’s Bada operating system will be offered by T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and O2. The sharper and less reflective 3.3-inch ‘Super AMOLED’ display is one of the exclusive features of this handset.
April 2010 is the official release date of the Wave aiming affordable market and is expected to retail for less than £25 a month.
According to Samsung vice president for UK and Ireland Mark Mitchinson, the quality of the product has meant that all major networks will want to stock the Wave and the device is enabling them to offer customers a smartphone for consumers wanting a feature-rich experience at a lower price point.
Telefonica O2 UK & Shazam sign sponsorship deal
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telefonica O2 UK and Shazam have signed an exclusive sponsorship deal which will allow the carrier to deliver targeted ads for its Priority Tickets service to Shazam users. Relevant ads will be served to the customers for O2 Priority pre-sales based on the music they have tagged through Shazam’s iPhone application.
According to Mark Slade, managing director of 4th Screen Advertising, London, O2 is the first operator in the UK to have the iPhone, so they have the highest market share of iPhone user base, and a high percentage of Shazam iPhone app users are their customers and the campaign is driven around their association with music here in the UK.
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.
O2′s UK iPhone customers doubled to 2m
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Due to its exclusive deal with Apple, the iPhone customers of Telefonica SA’s U.K. business O2 has doubled to 2 million customers over the past year.
The deal also increased sales, customers and average revenue per user, and catapulted the operator ahead of rival Vodafone Group PLC into first place.
The iPhone is O2′s best-selling device, and sales have shown no signs of dipping since the two year exclusive iPhone deal expired in September.
VZ Navigator 5.0 introduced by Verizon Wireless
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: VZ Navigator 5.0, the newest version of map, navigation and local search service has been launched by Verizon Wireless. The latest embodiment of the GPS-enabled service is powered by mobile communication technology solutions provider TeleCommunication Systems.
An updated, easy-to-use interface, improved functionality for identifying points of interest and the capacity to run multiple VZ Navigator functions simultaneously within a navigation session are promised by the new service.
VZ Navigator 5.0 will start functioning on devices including the BlackBerry Curve 8530, LG enV Touch, HTC Touch Pro2 and Samsung Omnia and it is available for $9.99 a month for unlimited access or $2.99 for one-day/24-hour access on certain devices.
Access to premium places of interest, opt-in, anonymous Traffic Crowd Sourcing and graphic notifications alerting users of tunnels, U-turns, traffic circles and toll plazas are some of the other special features of the service.
O2 UK’s mobile, fixed networks to be consolidated by BT
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A five-year multi-million pound managed services contract has been signed between O2 UK and BT Wholesale. With this contract O2 UK aims to consolidate its mobile and fixed core networks into a single, cost-effective network using the BT 21CN platform.
A range of next-generation communications services for customers would be delivered and the capital expenditure would be reduced through a single, consolidated network.
O2 already receives a range of services from BT Wholesale including core network management support for O2′s mobile customers as well as a managed network service that is enabling O2 to serve the UK business market with fixed and broadband services.
