The free music streaming service could also be coming to 3 Mobile’s entire range of handsets.

3 is currently in talks with Spotify with the aim of bringing a mobile app to every one of its 4.4 million customers. According to New Media Age, possibilities include pre-loading the app on all new handsets, as well as making available as a download.

via Spotify app coming to 3 Mobile? | Electricpig.

Now this is interesting. Very interesting.

What now for Omnifone’s MusicStation? It looks like Spotify is well placed to completely nail them to the wall — as, from the demonstrations I’ve had of Spotify Mobile — it’s incredibly similar, yet a heckuvalot more compelling to the standard consumer.

3UK have a history of innovation in the operator sphere — they have to, they’re the ‘challenger’ brand. It was 3UK who first ‘officially’ brought us the likes of MSN, Yahoo, Skype, eBay via ‘X-Series’. They were the first mobile operator to introduce those well known dotcom logos into their store-front literature and signage and they did benefit quite substantially from it.

As far as Spotify is concerned, the up-sale value (you’re rumoured to have to have a premium account in order to use their mobile services), will be pretty welcome — and the fact that 3′s customer base is reasonably manageable (we’re not talking a 15-20m behemoth yet), the deal could be hugely useful for them.

But what for 3UK? I think they’d benefit from a lot of consumer attention. Would you swap to 3 to get Spotify Mobile? Potentially, I’m sure. It’s such a compelling offering. It’s going to really eat into 3′s existing music offerings (they were, if memory serves, one of the UK’s largest retailers or digital music).

Spotify on 3UK? Bring it ON.

And if you haven’t checked out Spotify, if you’ve been hearing all about it and not bothering looking, now is definitely the time. Download it, type in Michael Jackson and double-click to play a song. Think iTunes without the payment bollocks (and a whole lot more — once you start getting into sharing of playlists).

We’ve already got the N-Series — the multimedia computer style handsets such as the N95, N97 and so on — and of course, I’ve been a user of many of Nokia’s ‘business’ devices from the E-Series range (E61, E61i..)

What, then, will the C-Series devices do? And the X-Series?

And should they be written with a hyphen or a altogether?

I imagine that X-Series is now perfectly fine to use in the UK. 3 or ‘Three’, the UK mobile network, was a big user of that monicker for its data plan services.

I was — and, actually, to my knowledge, still am — an ‘X-Series Gold’ customer.

Indeed, xseries.three.com is still accessible and operational:

You can see how old it is though. The N73 is but-a-glint in the eye of mobile historians nowadays (unless you’re from Italy where they seem to still be in use daily).

Nokia’s use of the X-Series brand name could be useful in the UK. I only have positive associations in my mind. It was 3′s X-Series data plans that really kicked off the mobile data revolution in the United Kingdom.

Back on the 11th of January 2007, I posted a blog to demonstrate that my copious use of mobile data in December (a paltry 77mb!) wasn’t billed at all. I even took a picture with my ‘top-of-the-range’ Nokia N93 to demonstrate:

Exciting times.

So what, then, will Nokia be unleashing upon us? Fancy new AndroidSymbian smartphones? Some Maemo gorgeousness? Will we all be walking around with Nokia C-Series netbooks in a little while?

I’ve used it for an hour and decided it’s going back to the shop.  I may just throw it through the door and hurl abuse, but I hope to have calmed down enough to go in to collect a refund.

On paper it’s an appealing device – you insert your USB broadband dongle and it creates a WiFi access point…  Ideal for the MIR crew when we’re out and about.  Every operator will offer one – we saw T-Mobile’s effort recently.  So what’s wrong?

It doesn’t have a battery! It was advertised both in the marketing materials and on Three’s site as having a battery (UK Gadgeteer has the story)…. many sites wrote this up. It doesn’t.  It needs a power supply.  Three have changed their site without any comment and it’s confused customers. £70 for something that’s tied to a power supply? Bah!

It’s slow. Oh my god it’s slow. Speed tests are notoriously hard to do, but I never managed to get the router to operate faster than 25% of the speed achieved by using the dongle directly.  Pages crawl down.  T-Mobile’s unit didn’t feel this bad.

I love Three – the Skypephone, X-series and cheap broadband, but this really is a massive disappointment

If the lack of the promised battery doesn’t bother you, I’d still recommend waiting for reviews of a few other models to come in – I couldn’t live with it.

For those interested here’s some more pictures and interface screenshots:

The fresh round of leaked photos of the device we’ve all been calling the ‘Tube’ which first made it’s fleeting public appearance in that Batman movie has got everyone (including the usually-calm Financial Times on Tuesday) talking about Nokia’s new ‘smartphone’.  Some of the more breathless coverage is already referring to it in the same league as T-Mobile’s Google-powered G1 and the Xperia X1, in ‘three new iPhone killer’ terms.

But look at it [photo credit: MobileCruch].

Nokia are singing to their own hymn sheet here.  Sure, it will be the first ever S60 Touch device, but it’s on a 5xxx-series music phone and that’s all it will be.  When the music and video party-tricks are done reviewers expecting ‘the next big thing’ are going to left scratching their backsides wondering what to write about next.

It’s not an N-series device – the camera will be so-so and the processor won’t be up to the toughest jobs -  and it certainly won’t have the enhanced PIM features of recent E-series devices… The most recently released E71 and E66 didn’t event make it to the expected FP2 release of S60 3rd edition in the interests of platform stability (probably wise given the ‘missing VoIP stack‘ issues with the N96 / N78).

Why aren’t Nokia going hell-for-leather and slapping this new S60 edition in a N-series ‘king of the smartphones’ unit?  Well, I think they probably will and fairly soon too, but right now either the need to focus on ‘comes with music‘ in the run up to Christmas or the desire to knock a few rough edges off this young interface (or both) means it’s going in a music phone.

It might be good, but flagship smartphone it won’t be.

In April, of course, I was on the ‘unlimited’ 120mb data plan. So I was whacked for the cost of 155mb of data at ridiculous rates (totaling an extra 220 pounds).

As of the 1st of May, this inclusive data bundle headed north to 500mb. So, theoretically, provided I keep my data usage highly restricted, I will be fine. I won’t be billed extra.

I’m not sure how to view this.

Yesterday I took four photos on my Vodafone E90 and used ShoZu to upload them to Flickr. That took about 3.5mb of my data allowance. Just sending four photos. Now if I do that daily, that’s 105mb per month. That’s hardly a lot of photos, either.

I’m massively restricting myself when I’m out, you see. I don’t take any photos unless they’re for ‘business purposes’ and even then, I severely restrict what I upload, because of this inhibiting 500mb limit.

I also panic like no tomorrow when I’m using services like QIK. You’ll note that I rarely do more than 2-3 minute videos because of the stupid limitations on Vodafone. The 10 minute interview I did with Adam from Esendex (coming soon) took 32mb. THIRTY TWO MEG. Nothing if you’re on 3 or T-Mobile’s data plans.

Ah. Hold on.

I’ve just realised what I did. Idiot. At the very end of April, I went to Internet World and produced a series of QIK videos from the show. I interviewed a lot of people and must have done, what, 50-60 minutes worth of streaming video (so much so that my battery went flat in that period). A rough fag-packet calculation of 3.2 meg per minute x 60 minutes = 192 meg. There’s your problem.

Or, more specifically, there’s my problem.

How do I respond to this then?

Well, I didn’t go nuts at the kind and efficient Jackie. I could just hear her waiting for me to demand a refund. I could sense she wasn’t looking forward to telling me there was nothing she could do. There isn’t. I signed the contract, I knew the limitations. I’m the idiot who’s using Vodafone for data. I’m responsible for the costs.

I think that’ll do it though.

220 pounds? Ridiculous. Absolutely 100% ridiculous. My fault, obviously. But it’s ridiculous that I was exposed to that. It’s ridiculous that Vodafone can look me in the eye and take that money from me.

I knew this though. I knew it when I signed up.

I can’t simply rely on them not to screw me again. I *need* to use data on my handset (NOT just my USB modem) as it’s part of a requirement for my business. I understand — as Jackie from Customer Services explains — that the 500mb is fine for most people. I am not ‘most people’ though. And Vodafone’s utter, utter, UTTER failure to recognise the subset of their subscriber base who NEED these kinds of services, shouldn’t be rewarded.

I feel a fool — a total fool — for rewarding it and trying to go-with-the-flow. I was doing the worst possible thing you can do in business: Hope. I was living in the hope economy, hoping that if I did use more than my allowance, it’d be gently shrugged off. I was hoping I wouldn’t be billed for every extra byte. I was hoping that Vodafone’s price plan setting chaps recognised that 120mb (and 500mb) are brilliant for normobs but an utter joke for people like me. I was hoping that the Vodafone response would be better than ‘Well, if you use more than 120 or 500mb a month, then you’re clearly a power user and what’s more, you can probably afford it, right?’

Well I can’t afford to take the risk that if I interview someone on QIK or take a few too many photos or use Nimbuzz or Palringo a little too often, I’ll be spunking TWO POUNDS and THIRTY FIVE PENCE (PLUS VAT) per meg over my bundle.

No, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

I am enjoying the audio quality on Vodafone. That’s it though. The data, particularly from my E90 has been abysmal. This is in part because the E90 won’t do 3.5G. But more often than not, when I’m out and about in London, I continually get 2G coverage. Great for audio but piss-poor for data. Now and again the 3G icon will pop up … only to swap back to 2G. Usable for Google, for contact and calendar syncing, or for IM. But shit for QIKing and uploading anything fast. Shit compared to 3 and T-Mobile. Unlike most, I’ve got direct, real time experience of the other networks, every day. I’ve accounts on every network except Orange. I’m not comparing an idealistic grass-is-greener experience. I’m comparing reality. I’ve been putting up with it up until now, but it’s really quite annoying. And now I have to massively limit my usage to avoid being screwed every single month.

What next, then?

Do I dump Vodafone? Jackie from Customer Services has got someone there working on a price-plan review.

“You are on one of our biggest tariffs,” she says.

“Jackie, that’s so I don’t get surprises. 3,000 minutes, unlimited landline calls, that’s so I don’t ever go over it.”

“Ah,” she says. I reckon she was hoping the price-plan analysis person would suggest I drop to a lower voice call tariff. Not if I’m anywhere near in danger of being billed 35p a minute for calling my friends on different networks. No sir-eeee.

“Do you do custom data plans?” I asked. I’m a business customer with Vodafone, so I thought perhaps, there is something they might be able to do.

“How much,” I said, “Would you charge me for a gig of data per month? Or can’t you do that?”

“We can give you 6GB on a USB modem,” she replied.

Yeah. But they can’t or won’t give me anything better than 500mb on a handset. WHO is it that sets this limit? They need their head examined. They really do. I’d pay more. Like 3′s X-Series (1GB) or T-Mobile Web’N'Walk Max (10GB).

Half of me reckons stay with Vodafone and get a Nokia 6500 to make voice calls and get an N95 8GB/N82 on 3UK and use that as my workhorse.

The other half of me says don’t bother rewarding this 500mb limitation and pull my business entirely from Vodafone. And put up a prominent advertisement on SMS Text News telling everyone and anyone not to use Vodafone for data.

Viewpoints?

The Skype calling integration is a piece of genius. Try it out. It works very similar to the 3UK Skypephone or their X-Series Skype offering (that is, the application initiates a call to a local number in your geographic territory, so that cost comes out of your bundled minutes — and connects you to the other party via a VOIP connection). Works brilliantly.

There’s also a file library feature that I haven’t yet played with. Loving it. I’d appreciate your perspective.

I discovered I was still on a 75 pounds per month T-Mobile price plan. So I phoned them up and switched that down to a 15/month price plan. No need to pay them more than necessary, right? Especially as they have the gall to try and charge me $0.18 per minute roaming fees on the Starbucks WiFi for my US account.

I also swapped my other T-Mobile account — the one that keeps on screwing up with their billing system — down to nothing.

Then, on to Three. Or 3UK. I always refer to them as 3UK because once or twice I’ve written a story about them only to have some people using 3Italy or 3Denmark email with enquiries.

I’m on a 30 quid a month price plan. Plus X-Series Gold — which I put on as a gesture of support for them. But you see I’m using Vodafone more and more. So I thought I’d move the Three handset down to a 15 quid per month deal and swap to X-Series Silver.

Turns out you can’t.

“What about the 15 pounds/month price plan?” I ask the nice Indian lady.

She explains that this is (effectively) for ‘brand new customers only’.

Right, but my contract us up in August. I’m more than half way through it. Let’s do a deal. I want to reduce my total cost down, I say.

You, er, can’t. Is what I was told.

I asked the lady to repeat the reasoning. Turns out I *CAN* change my price plan to something lower if I want, but there’s a charge.

Of course.

I’ve written about that before.

At least 50 quid if I want to reduce my price plan. That’s the deal.

Deary me.

Ok.

I thanked the lady and hung up.

We’re definitely going to have a reckoning come August.

Leave the house: I’m getting a lift to the airport, but my friend’s TomTom Sat Nav is being slow to get a signal so I check the journey duration on Google Maps; we have just enough time. During the journey as the conversation lulls (it’s 4am by now and neither of us are feeling chatty) I try the location sensing service on the iPhone and even at speed it’s uncannily accurate. I find myself using it much more frequently than I thought – in this case it’s just to check the remaining journey time (we’re dropping the car off at another friend’s house and getting a taxi to the terminal – a brilliant plan for free parking except that we need to be there before the taxi driver to prevent an unrequired wake-up call for our parking host!) but it’s also saved me from getting lost on a few occasions recently.

Gatwick airport: I’m always pleased to get through security unscathed (the chap on the x-ray machine looks twice at my bag, but there’s no extra search). I’ve learnt to divide my electronics evenly between a few trays and it seems to draw less attention… Having checked (thoroughly) that there wasn’t much that needed buying in the duty-free electronic shop, my iPhone automatically jumps onto a Cloud hotspot and I look up some last-minute details – I wish every handset’s connection switching was this seamless. Previously I’ve also used this time before a flight to download new music to keep me entertained, but I’m well stocked with podcasts for now so there’s no need on this occasion. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more tie-ups with hotspot providers and the iPhone networks internationally. I would never have considered a hotspot subscription previously, but having had it for ‘free’ I can really see the benefit now and would subscribe in future.

As we wait normob friend #1 taps enthusiastically at his Blackberry. The device is barely 2 months old, but he’s well addicted. He travels a lot and wanted to stay more up-to-date with his e-mail, but I fear it’s an opportunity wasted as he doesn’t use the phone, contacts or calendar functions. I’d talked him through getting a hosted Exchange server and an E61i, but the T-Mobile lady did a sales job and he came away convinced anything other than a Blackberry would be too hard. Perhaps it’s true but it pains me to see the device so under-utilised.

On the plane: Disaster! No mobile devices to be switched on… even in flight mode. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this, but this is part of the safety briefing script so sounds like it’s a regular feature. No music for me. I get the laptop out to kill the time and wonder what the airline hopes to achieve by this. It seems too inconsistent – I don’t have one, but my laptop could easily contain a 3G card or even have it built-in yet I’m allowed to use it. On landing phones are beeping and chirping long before we’ve taxied in to the stand or the engines are stopped, but the crew (bar scowling at us) don’t say anything. If ever you wanted a clear demonstration of how universal mobile ownership is watch people leave an aircraft.

Collecting the baggage: It dawns on me – for the first time in a while I am without any mobile data. 3 don’t have a network in France so I can’t benefit from using my x-series inclusive data (via ‘Three like home‘ as I do in Ireland) and this airport doesn’t have any WiFi. I double check all my roaming data is switched off on the E61 and the iPhone – I can’t justify the pounds per megabyte 3 (£3) and O2 (£7) want. Normob friend #1 is tapping away at his Blackberry again. I ask him what the roaming costs are – is it inclusive? He has no idea…

On the bus: We have a 3 hour transfer… It’s too tight in here for the laptop and Google Reader doesn’t yet have a version of Gears for Symbian or iPhone so I’m pretty fed up. I’m also unable to settle an argument about whether the other airport we were offered is closer as Google Maps won’t identify its location without data switched on (it seems) and predictably there’s no mapping of France cached so it would be an expensive download. I find myself becoming irritable about not being able to use my devices and worry if this is really a good thing. All I can think of for the next hour is that I’m going ‘cold turkey‘ and it’s not pleasant.

At the apartment: More disaster! They don’t have WiFi as promised (yes, I checked before booking)… it’s only in a nearby bar. Shame – I had Truphone setup on the E61 and was looking forward to keeping in touch with the other half using this cost-effective way. I toy with the idea of getting a French SIM for mobile data, but a quick examination of the local airwaves shows no 3G networks at all so it feels pointless. I consider getting the ski lift to the top of the mountain and making a dash for the Italian border which is barely miles away and where there’s a Three network, but it’s the important weekend of the 6 Nations Rugby so we set off on a search to find a bar showing the games instead. I’m impressed with my 2 normob friends though – in the time it’s taken me to check us in they know which networks are available and where there is (and more frequently isn’t) WiFi…

I top up the various phones using the excellent Proporta USB charger. I haven’t brought any power leads other than for my laptop – the multi-headed adaptor with the Proporta covers all my devices and the battery will probably last the week. This is a big improvement – even from the iGo system I used to have – with its many cables, plug adaptors and transformer which required a travel bag all of its own. This new charger from Nokia is similar and possibly a bit more robust, but the Proporta’s multiple connectors win it for me.

In the bar: No-one can remember the order the 3 games are due to be played in this afternoon – back to the mobiles and the BBC Sport website. GPRS seems unreliable for all the networks we try – we have 1 T-Mobile, 3 Vodafone, 1 O2 and 2 Three handsets with us… The T-Mobile Blackberry gets there first and we settle in for an afternoon hoping English pride can be restored against the Irish. I glance at the E61 from time-to-time and it’s having a really hard time, jumping between networks… still searching for that non-existent 3G signal. It seems to be struggling the most of all the handsets.

Skiing: We all decided to take handsets with us. I swap my main Three SIM out of the E61 and into a Skypephone. I’ve no intention of using the Skype features (I can’t – it doesn’t work on roaming other than on Three’s networks) but it’s a great-sized handset with a decent camera for pictures on the slopes and USB charging means no proprietary adaptor is required. Also at £50 I won’t be too distressed if it’s damaged. The iPhone stays in the apartment – it’s the best phone of all the ones we have with us to use in the glare of the snow with its excellent screen, but I worry about falling on it and the touch interface doesn’t work with gloves on.

During the day I’m further surprised by the normob friends – picture messages are being sent to friends at home and the Walkman phone provides some music when we stop for a break. Once again I’m reminded how useful Spinvox is as I’m able to review my voicemails without incurring any call costs back to the UK. None of them need an immediate reply so I can get on with my holiday – brilliant!

I’m considering if my definition of normob needs to be redefined, but when normob friend #2 takes a picture and the SonyEricsson offers a ‘blog this’ option he wonders aloud what the point of that would be and I feel the balance restored. It’s also notable that neither of them use any features on their phones other than the built-in ones – it’s something I take for granted.

When we get back to the apartment, normob friend #2 connects his Archos video player to the TV – none of us are a big fan of French TV. I’m frustrated that I have a similar amount of video on my iPhone, but it doesn’t yet provide video out as regular iPods do [update: It does - how behind the times am I??? Shame Apple wants £70 for a Universal dock and AV cables though...]. It would have also been cool to watch some of the video clips we’ve taken during the day on our phones – it’s the first time I’ve appreciated the value of the N95′s capability to do this. This new ‘video over USB / WiFi’ technology seems like the next logical step for this – I hope Nokia adopt it across the range.

—-

Overall it’s been strange moving back to a basic device. I just can’t do T9 anymore – I’m out of practice – and it’s been good to see my friends reaching for mobile services routinely at times I never would have expected them to. I worry that we’re in for an unpleasant surprise when the Blackberry bill comes in, but I think this demonstrates that people aren’t well informed about roaming data… perhaps I’m a little closer to understanding those thousand dollar iPhone roaming data bills when they were first released.

On the wish-list for me is definitely a better camera on a handset. The Skypephone’s 2MP is good enough resolution-wise, but the images are often fuzzy or poorly exposed… Also, as it’s not a smart-phone there’s little I could do with them except sync them to my laptop (via OS X’s excellent bluetooth utility which I discovered when I realised I’d brought a faulty USB cable). I really want to stick a few on Facebook so Shozu would do an excellent job here. However, some reasonably priced roaming data would also be called for… I hope Maxroam or a similar service offers this soon – they don’t yet.

Last Friday I made the ultimate switch over.

Oh yes indeedo.

After quite a long on-off love affair, I have committed to Vodafone.

I decided that, whilst I am a huge fan of data services, and in particular, 3UK’s X-Series Gold/Silver offerings, I prized call quality and the Vodafone spectrum above all else.

The sham that was the X-Series blog really struck home to me. Yes 3UK were always just a mobile operator — but the blog there gave me the impression — the absolutely false impression — that the people there ‘lived it’ — that a small dedicated ‘X-Series’ team really believed in open data, smart applications and so on. Then, come January, they just switched the blog off, catapulting them from my ‘shit hot’ to ‘how not to do it’ slide on my How To Do Blog Relations presentation I regularly give. So I was freed from the dilemma of switching to 3UK full time.

The only other decision in my head was whether or not to consider the other networks. I gave serious consideration to o2. I didn’t bother thinking about Orange.

T-Mobile… meh… well, I think it’s only fair that I finally dump them after the amount of ridiculous, ridiculous reporting that I’ve done on the site here over the years.

Data is good and it’s really nice to have unlimited data — but the nail in the coffin for T-Mobile came when I phoned up to ask how I could get a proper unrestricted all-ports-free data service (I wondered if Web’N'Walk Max would let me use IM, properly), and the helpful yet entirely, entirely unknowledgeable customer support lady mangled the issue. She didn’t understand what I meant by unrestricted. Not her fault at all. Network policy. Next.

My decision was ultimately made when, sitting in front of the very helpful Saj, in the Vodafone Oxford Street store, I discovered that my credit check with Vodafone had been approved. After three or four years of wrangling, the system has finally forgotten the issue we shared. I paid up fully after running up a 1,200 data bill … my attempt to object to it caused goodness knows how many problems with Vodafone’s credit people — so much so I was persona-non-grata for years. All fixed now.

Instead of getting a 30-day rolling contract, as I originally intended, I made an executive decision with Saj and hopped on to an 18 month contract. Unlimited landline calls. A paltry 120mb of data per month. 250 text messages. We. Shall. See.

This wasn’t a half baked switch. Oh no. I even took out a 15 quid a month USB broadband modem (3gb allowance). Done.

Here’s Saj sorting out approval for my new modem:

I am lock, stock and barrel Vodafone. And I love it. You can actually PHONE me and you will, provided I’m around, be able to speak to me without crackling, hissing or my calls inexplicably dropping.

I didn’t bother taking my existing number. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see just how well Plaxo works. If you’ve got me in Plaxo, you’ll already have my new number (Add me to your plaxo by searching for ewan@smstextnews.com, I’ll approve you).

If you don’t have my new number, here it is: 07769 658 104

Or, if you’re international, you want: +44 7769 658 104

And what handset did I get?

Five million users are enjoying Orb Networks services. Nice! I suspect quite a few of those will be 3UK X-Series users (Orb is one of the X-Series services).

An overview in case you haven’t caught them recently:

Orb lets users stream — or share with their friends — music, videos, webcams, and any web content, from their PC to other internet-connected devices. Usage patterns indicate that many Orbers use the media center application and service to enjoy their TV, movies and other videos stored on their PCs or on the internet, using game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, Sony PLAYSTATION 3, and Microsoft Xbox 360.

Another popular use of Orb is to stream music from a home music collection (including purchased downloads from Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon MP3, and eMusic) to a mobile phone. With Orb, there is no need for sync-ing or worry about storage constraints on the phone. Orb works with many of today’s popular handsets including models from Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, LG and many more.

Joe Costello, Orb Chief Executive is, understandably, bullish:

“The public has spoken — content is King. And people want to enjoy their digital content — including locally stored music, photos, and videos, as well as webcams and content from the internet — on ANY device, not just the PC where they have traditionally viewed it,” said Joe. “No one wants to be tethered to their computer in order to enjoy their media. They want all that media, available to them on any screen, at any time.”

Here, here!

We’ll need to add Orb to our Application of the Week group test. Check it out — it’s a free download.

Mark Street over at the Vodafone blog has posted up a new video featuring Jens Schulte-Bockum, Vodafone’s Global Director of ‘Terminals’ (or, ‘handsets’, as we say on SMS Text News), waxing lyrical about the company’s announcement of new handset initiatives. Key points being the introduction of Vodafone OEM handsets (one in six, I think Jens said, of all Vodafone handsets retailed are their own-brand devices) together with perspective on greater alignment between handset manufacturers (e.g. RIM).

I’m very much enjoying seeing Vodafone people talking — and, shock horror, displaying a degree of passion for their company and their activities — on this blog. There’s no media outlet in between cutting and editing away at what they think are the best bits. So when the chap, the interviewer (I’m afraid I still don’t know his name) asks if Jens reckons the Vodafone own-brand handsets are stylish, you can see Jens’

It’s particularly exciting seeing such a huge company experiment with the medium. I’m trying to think of another example of a comparable company doing this kind of thing. SMS Text News reader Ant reckoned I was a bit harsh on my comments about 3 dumping their X-Series blog (read his comment), especially when I described Vodafone as ‘leading the way’. 3 did, as Ant points out, ‘get the blog ball rolling’ only to dump it when they couldn’t be bothered to resource it. I’m very impressed that a behemoth like Vodafone is dipping a toe in the water. It’ll be fascinating to see how they manage and measure ROI and whether they consider introducing a continual blog.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying watching and reading.

Big Red is going all web 2.0 on our asses with the launch of their Mobile World Congress blog. This is very encouraging. The media relations team appear to be getting more and more comfortable with the medium of blogging.

Here’s the announcement from Vodafone:

For the first time Vodafone will be running a dedicated Congress blog. Led by the Vodafone Group Media Relations team, the blog will contain running commentary, interviews with senior Vodafone executives and videos of key events at Congress. The URL for the Congress blog is www.vodafone.com/barcelonablog

This is excellent, excellent work. They’re even using a Nokia N95 to do some mobile video interviews.

I only have one criticism: Individuality.

The chap who’s introducing and presenting the videos does a brilliant job of coming across friendly, adept, experienced and enthusiastic. Here he is:

Alas, I never caught his name. Not once. And the post was published by the phenomenally anonymous ‘Vodafone Team’.

I recognise that in this kind of medium, the PR and marketing professionals go absolutely nuts with worry — because they’re used to producing anonymous (dare I say, bland?) ‘media’ — posters, adverts, flyers… but when it comes to blogging, I think it’s nigh on impossible to do well, as a ‘company’. You need personality. You need ownership. I want to write to the guy and say well done, and tell him that I’m looking forward to his next post or video. But I can’t. I’ll post a comment instead!

So, top work Vodafone! Leading the way, especially when Hutchison (3UK) shut down their X-Series blog the other week because they couldn’t be arsed. Kudos to the Big Red. We’ll be following.

Oh, and one other tiny criticism for the Media Relations team: I’d have posted the videos here, if you’d allowed me to. That’d have widened the audience by about 200,000. How about an embed link? I could obviously cut and paste the source code but you never know how a multi billion pound company will react to you doing that when it’s not explicit and especially when it’s all copyrighted. Screenshots are covered by the fair use provisions but I don’t know about videos…

Link: xseries: Hello, I must be going …

Hello all, well the time has come for the X-Series blog to close its doors for a while. We are going to re-ignite a new blog later in the year, but in the meantime there’s plenty of places for you to say hi, including:

3 neXt
3 neXt on Facebook
3 Skypephone Forum

Strange, very strange.

Why start a conversation with the public and X-Series users only to dump that conversation a little while later? A new blog is coming, eh?

Why not bother keeping the current one going ’til then? Ran out of things to say? Can’t be arsed? Deary me…

Corporate blogging is a fascinating thing to behold — and it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — be held to the same rules as a marketing campaign. I don’t think they should be switching conversation on and off.. That said, the wind seemed to have blown out of the X-Series blog of late (the last post was back in October 2007).

- – -

(Not another mobile web rant, promise.)

Dear Vodafone,

Let’s get one thing out in the open before we start:

I love you.

There. I said it.

It’s out in the open for the entire world to see.

You and I have been together now for over ten years and although there have been a few ups and downs along the way, somehow we have always managed to pull through.

Red, what can I say? The years have been great.

I still regret the affair I had with Orange back in the 90s and I know that my foolish dalliance with 3 is best forgotten. I was weak. Led astray by promises of ‘revolutionary’ handsets and blinded by their multitude of minutes. Ultimately I was betrayed by my own greed. They just weren’t you Red.

After all these shortfalls, you were there for me, waiting to take me back with open arms whenever things went wrong.

I am a card carrying member…

… of your love parade and I am proud to say that I recommend you and your network to anyone looking to change providers, (and often to those that aren’t). Everything from the fantastic customer service to the virtually non-existent drop-call rate, Vodafone you put a smile on my face by never letting me down.

But as the years have gone by (and my monthly spend has slowly gone up) I have felt, lately, a strange detachment forming betwixt you and I.

Thing is, there is some shall we say, room for improvement.

When you rolled out 3.5G? Brilliant! Amazing in fact! But at £2.35per meg you and I both knew that something had to give… and it did! You went and released your own little data bundle… And at the same price as T-Mobile’s too! What a fantastic move… But no, you had to spoil my fun by going and capping it at 120mb. C’mon… You know can do better than that!

Signal strength is second to none. I cannot count the amount of times I’ve been out and about with friends and being the only Vodafone subscriber of the group has meant I was the only one in the with a signal.

However when it comes to your Tariffs, you may have great coverage but it seems that this comes at a price too. You’re, dare I say it, high maintenance.

Admittedly you’ve tried to wean me off my old school 3000mins per month tariff for ages now but you have nothing that comes anywhere near it currently. 1800mins for £75?! Shocking. You’re good but you’re not that good Red.
I’m not budging. Yeah ‘Stop the Clock‘ – is pretty cool but can I have Vodafone Passport?

‘Not on such an old tariff Mr Whatley”.

RUBBISH!

Voda, you know I feel about you. Take me on my word: You need to catch up! You could be left behind! 3, who were once the laughing stock of the UK operator market, now have one of the sexiest offerings around with their X-Series.

See, o2 got the iPhone, (you did well to avoid that), and you went and got the N95 8GB for an exclusive amount of time. Excellent choice. But why did you have to cripple it with your own firmware?
It’s like three steps forward and two steps back sometimes, really.

Hopefully, when the iPhone v2 comes along you’ll be right there waiting to grab it and pass it onto to your loyal followers. Hell, if YOU get the next version of the iPhone, I might even get one.
Now there’s a statement.

Can you imagine? With you Voda and your super HSDPA (3.5G) and solid CS, network etc…

It would be killer.

But hey – that’s the future – let’s talk about now.

Let’s move onto the one thing that gets me the most… and I’m sorry to bring this up… (I mention it every time we speak) the ONE bugbear I have with you? The teeny tiny thing that I just cannot stand?!

MMS

Tell me, Red, why do you not offer ANY MMS bundles?

None. Nada. Zip. Absolutely, positively ZERO. NOT. A. THING.

Videos, sound clips, pictures… all charged 35p-50p a go. It drives me nuts about you. WHY OH WHY OH WHY?!

You offer one of the latest and best phones (the aforementioned 5MP beauty from Nokia) and you don’t offer ANY MMS bundles to support it?!!!!!?!!!

You say that the requirement isn’t there, that the advent of picture messaging has not been the success that the networks thought it would be…
Well, if you charge for every single MMS sent and don’t allow anyone to add anything to their monthly tariffs then what on earth do you expect?!

You gladly give me video call minutes (which I actually use from time to time) every month as part of my tariff, but not video messaging?! Insane.

It’s been like this since September 1st 2006 Vodafone and I’ve let it go month on month on month… This has got to stop!

Voda, I love you, and I think that you love me.
Try this, do it for the sake of us…

Make MMS free for a month.

Yes. That’s right. FREE. Like you did with Mobile TV, (albeit that was for three months), try it. SEE the uptake.

Look after your customers.
Love them.
Save them money.

And above all, save ME money. Help me love you more.

Yours hopefully,

James Whatley

The tools of the Trade – An iPhone on O2 and an E61 on 3′s X-Series
(ignore the Vodafone branding, it’s been unlocked)

07:00 – It’s time to wake up and my E61′s alarm goes off – Bach, Air on the G String (stop laughing at the back, not that type of G String). I’m not particularly a classical music buff, but it’s the least offensive of Nokia’s included offerings at that time in the morning. I hit ‘snooze’ with my eyes still shut with a ninja-like accuracy.

07:10 – The E61 tries again. More Bach. I must find out how that peice goes after the first 8 bars…

07:15 – Across the other side of the room, my other half’s work-issue Nokia 6021 shatters the peace with a beeping that causes actual physical pain. I’m up.

07:45 – Whilst I crash around the flat getting ready, my E61 explodes into action still on the bedside table. Text messages from my bank and credit card provider tell me various payments have been made, received and that payday had better be soon.

08:00 – My keenest colleagues are in the office and the ‘daytime’ profile in Roadsync on my E61 starts the push e-mail service. A few minutes of quiet buzzing ensues and the first e-mail of the day is received. The home screen of the E61 shows my day’s schedule and which office I need to be in. I review the day ahead and anything urgent-looking e-mail-wise.

08:15 – As I get ready to leave, I throw the iPhone into its cradle in the living room. It quickly syncs music, podcasts and any unwatched TV that my Mac Mini has recorded from Freeview (DVB-T to the non-brits) and exported to iTunes. This is a recent addition to the routine (since November!) and it still feels strange to sync by wire. My E61 has not connected to a PC (by wire or bluetooth) for ages.

08:20 – Out of the door and off to the station – it’s a London-office day today. The iPhone goes on and I listen to a podcast as I walk to the station. I’m a particular fan of the BBC offerings.

08:40 – On the train and another quick check of the work e-mail. There’s a few important ones come in so I respond and use Roadsync’s sub-folder syncing ability to file things away in the right place. I try to keep organised with a GTD approach to e-mail so this filing ability is really useful.

08:45 – Back to the iPhone and I skim my personal e-mails. Google Alerts has sent me the previous day’s press clippings relating to my firm and my clients so I quickly browse the summaries and follow the links to any interesting articles, appreciating the ease with which the iPhone’s browser handles the column layouts typically of the newspaper sites. Once done I delete the deluge of Facebook notification e-mails and flip over to the iPhone Facebook site to respond to messages and wall posts which most of my friends prefer over e-mail now.

08:50 – I open Google Reader on the iPhone, again with a customised interface, and read the latest feed updates (about 100 feeds at present), particularly the SMSTextNews comments feed to see where the interesting discussions are developing.

09:05 – At Waterloo, the iPhone automatically switches over to The Cloud WiFi network – it’s included with the O2 tariff and after registering once it’s completely seamless now. I finish my reading on the faster connection and switch back to the podcasts for the walk to the office.

10:00 – I head into a meeting and switch my phone to silent. SpinVox picks up my voicemail as I’m engaged in an especially vigorous white-board session and miss a call; it’s from the garage with a quote for some work on my car.

10:30 – As I leave the meeting, I notice the chap from the garage left a direct-dial number in his message. I select it in the message and call him back directly without needing to write it down. I know I can find it again later in the e-mail copy too.

11:00 – I’m talking to my boss about next month’s holiday booking. I pull out the iPhone and look in the calendar where my Tripit calendar has all the travel details synced from an iCal feed. It’s spotted my outbound and return flights and booked the time in-between as ‘away’ automatically. While I’m doing that, I notice another iCal feed warning me my local rugby club has a home game this weekend – I need to warn our visitors parking will be tight so fire off a text.

12:00 – I need to book an appointment to get my hair cut so I fire up the Nokia Search application on my E61 and search the Yellow Pages for somewhere in the place I’ll be working later in the week. There’s a big chain listed so I click and call the number directly from the listing. I’m sitting at my desk by now, but this is quicker than looking it up on the laptop.

For the rest of the day I’m largely non-mobile, except for a few calls and SpinVox coming to the rescue again as a desperate Spotlight search of my inbox for some information I need turns up in a voicemail – I’d have never found it without transcription.

19:00 – I’m meeting a friend for dinner at the Royal Exchange, but she’s stuck in a meeting and running late. There’s more Cloud WiFi here so I do a little surfing and lookup the restaurant on Google Maps on the iPhone. My work-brain is exhausted for the day so I throw the E61 in my bag grateful that Autolock will prevent any accidental dialing, but wondering why it’s not a standard feature…

20:00 – Over dinner we’re talking about a recent wedding I was at. I don’t have the pictures with me so I fire up the Soonr mobile site and connect back to my Mac. The image preview is a bit flaky, but it’s enough to pull up the important images and I’m pleased I left it running. It’s saved me on a previous occasion too when I was able to email a document I’d left at home direct to someone who needed it from the train.

22:00 – I catch the slow train home and pass the time watching recorded TV on the iPhone.

Other things I use less frequently but wouldn’t do without:

• Shopqwik for Ryanair flight bookings (although it does more).
• 3′s MobileMail for push e-mail from my personal IMAP account on my E61 when the iPhone’s not with me.
• Textperts to settle pub arguments.
• ‘3 Like Home‘ for zero cost, data inclusive, roaming on trips to Ireland.
• Skypephone for ‘pub phone’ use and tethering to the laptop for 3G access, but ironically not much Skype.
• Proporta Mobile Device Charger for ‘in bag’ or ‘in pocket’ recharging of any of my phones from a battery with enough capacity to fully re-charge several devices from something the size of a cigarette packet.

I got word recently that the N95 8GB is now available on 3UK. The first 500 folk ordering one get a set of speakers, apparently.

No word on whether it’s running X-Series.  I imagine it will be.   The X-Series portion of the 3UK  website doesn’t look like it has been updated for a good few months.  And when I had a look on the online ordering page, the N95 had the X-Series icon next to it, whilst the 8GB version just had an MSN Live icon.

I don’t think 3UK would launch such a powerful and potentially exciting handset on to the marketplace without X-Series support. This has to be one of the sexiest and advanced handset/mobile operator combinations available on the planet today (excluding the Far East and their 100mb/sec multimedia style  services).  Unrestricted data, a ton of brilliant applications and a wicked Nokia handset… good work.  This would be my choice.  I’d definitely take a look at Vodafone’s rival offering, but I think I use data far too much to be arsing around with Voda’s silly access policies.

More at www.three.co.uk.

Back in August I reviewed 3′s X-Series tariffs , the ‘unlimited data‘ add-on for contract customers bundled with a range of applications , and rather liked them.

However, I wasn’t able to test the Slingplayer Mobile application and was dubious about its value a part of the more expensive Gold tariff. This option, costing double the basic price at £10 per month in the UK, allowed unlimited streaming of media to an X-Series handset from a PC (via the Orb software package) or from a Slingbox ‘place-shifting’ device. Well, the nice folks from Parys Communications sorted us out with one to borrow and now I’m eating some humble pie…

For those not in the know, a Slingbox is a small electronic box of tricks shaped similar to a bar of gold (or so I believe from watching the ‘Italian Job’). It contains both an analogue and a Freeview (DVB-T) tuner, but can also be connected to a set-top box (for cable or satellite TV). It then connects to your broadband service and allows streaming of whatever is being watched or any channel from its internal tuners to PCs, PDAs and now Symbian phones so you can watch them away from home (hence ‘place-shifting’).

Usefully the Slingbox also provides an infrared transmitter that knows how to control most popular set-top boxes, DVD players and the like so channels can be changed, menus can be operated and recordings started and stopped remotely too. 3 were the first network in the world to introduce the Symbian client coupled with unlimited streaming over 3G and it wasn’t until almost a year later in October this year that Sling made the client generally available.

Setting up the Slingbox is easy, even with the spaghetti of cables under my TV the instructions had me hooking it up to my Sky box in 5 minutes with all the various cables needed included. An annoyance I hadn’t anticipated was that the Slingbox requires a wired connection to your broadband router so I had to move that closer to my TV (Homeplug-type devices can work around this – Sling even sell their own), but otherwise it worked straight away.

Once connected to my home network and switched on, I loaded the PC client and configured its network settings. Again this worked first time and I was able to start watching and controlling TV on my PC. Exciting as this was though (read reviews here, here, here for more on its basic features) I wanted TV on my mobile and moved straight on to my N73 handset to download the Slingplayer Mobile application from 3′s portal.

On running the application for the first time I entered the details of the Slingbox I wanted to view (the application can remember several if you have more than one) including a long number and letter sequence that I had written down during the initial PC-based config. Then I hit ‘start’ and held my breath… Around 10 seconds later the client indicated it was connected and starting to stream. Another 20 seconds or so passed and then voila! TV… on my phone. I threw on a hands-free kit to get the best out of the sound and settled in for a play…

I’m not sure what I expected, but the quality was simple amazing. I would have believed it over a WiFi connection, but over 3G streaming from my ropey home broadband? Wow. Although I had the option to switch it off I also left the sound set to highest quality stereo and it was as good as listening to FM radio on the device. I was astounded. Control of my Sky box was slick too… the client received the configuration of the set-top box I had entered on my PC earlier and through a ‘remote control’ menu I was able to access all of the features of my Sky box including the menus – the options appeared to have been customised for my device. Intuitively the mini-joystick on the phone controlled channels and menus as if using my remote control and I selected a couple of buttons I used regularly to add to a shortcut bar.

Showing colleagues at work many wouldn’t believe the video wasn’t being played from a memory card.

However, sat at home or in the office I already had access to TV when I wanted it so I set about testing it properly… on the move. I figured the train was as good a place as any. As a rule, anywhere with a reasonable 3G signal was absolutely fine, but there was nothing doing on 2G. On a 20 minute journey into Waterloo the picture would stutter on 2 or 3 occasions, but even if lost completely it recovered well without intervention after 10 seconds or so. One problem tunnel where only a 2G signal is available routinely caused the connection to fail, but otherwise I was surprised by its reliability. Off public transport and sat in coffee shops or waiting for an appointment the experience was much the same as at home – seamless. The picture was sharp, the sound was stereo and always synchronised with the picture and even text was crisp and clear (if not a bit small).

Although greatly impressed there were a few areas for improvement… The free Slingbox client that 3 gives away presents the image across the width of the phone’s display. This felt like a real waste of screen space as my N73 turned sideways has an almost wide-screen aspect. I eventually solved this by downloading the newer, generally-available client from the Sling website. Although not free (£20) it adds this crucial feature and allows the image to be scaled to fill the screen or displayed fully with letterboxing. However, it is a shame that 3 have not updated their client. Another cause for complaint was the start-up speed of the connection. This varied depending on signal and was a little slower on the move – at it’s slowest (over a minute from clicking ‘start’ to viewing an image) it was frustrating and particularly so if re-connecting after one of the rare disconnections. However, my biggest complaint doesn’t really relate to the Sling product at all… it’s TV.

There’s nothing on. Well, nothing worth watching….

The problem is that I normally only sit down to watch TV when something I want to watch is on. Having mobile TV was great but at 8am on the train into work all I could watch was painful breakfast TV… It was at this point that it dawned on me why so much attention to detail had been put into the remote control features. A Slingbox really is at its best paired with a DVR such as a Sky+ box. I went home, re-wired and configured the Slingbox to work with my hard-disk recorder (no Sky+ in my flat!) and bingo… telly nirvana. With the ability to watch shows I wanted from disk, to pause them when I was interrupted and rewind TV if the signal dropped the Slingbox was complete. Rather than being something to idly fill the time, I looked forward to commuting to catch up with the previous night’s Sopranos. On other occasions I’d watch live TV on the train home, pause it at the station and finish the program on the TV once I arrived. ‘Showing off’ my girlfriend called it, but she always says that when she’s impressed…
So would I recommend a Slingbox and Slingplayer Mobile? Absolutely I would – particularly if you’re a regular traveller. But there’s another factor to consider too… the price. Although not making much effort to publicise it, 3 offer a free Slingbox to Gold tariff subscribers. These normally cost about £95 from internet retailers, but if you intend to subscribe to Silver tariff anyway upgrading to Gold for an 18 month contract will only cost an additional £90. That’s pretty good value for a Slingbox and unlimited media streaming in my book.

Update: Since I started this review Sling have released 2 new products in the UK – primarily adding High Definition features. The original model is now referred to as the ‘classic’ but continues to be available for sale and free from 3. Although I haven’t tested them, reports indicate the new models are compatible with the Symbian client, but that there is no noticeable improvement in quality of mobile experience – that requires a PC or Mac client.

At 5.55pm I arrived at the Number3Bar to setup for SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks December – this time held in the site’s spiritual home of the city of London, centre of Her Majesty’s Empire.

“You can’t come in yet, we’re still setting up,” the huge, tall bouncer blurted out when I walked up to the bar.

“Er,” I said, momentarily taken off guard, “I’ve paid for it, I’m Ewan?” I said.

“Oh, right, come on in,” replied the chap, simultaneously changing from double-hard-bastard bouncer status to friendly giant.

It was a relief to get into the warmth of the bar. I got the ubiquitous Unlimited Drinks banner set up and proceeded to the bar and relaxed when I saw fridges filled to the brim with chilled Carlsberg. Right on. Ready for the onslaught!

First in through the door was Rax Lakhani, social media expert and digital PR genius, from Splendid Communications. Rax has been helping me understand what Blyk are up to (he arranged for me to ‘become Antonio‘).

Rax and I headed to the bar whilst I explained how delighted I was to get a picture message from Blyk suggesting I might want a McChicken sandwich. The message was sent to my handset at midday yesterday.. just when I was thinking about getting something to eat. Unfortunately my 30-year old metabolic rate doesn’t quite compete with that of a 22 year old; so I’m being careful about what exactly I eat nowadays. But… mmm… a McChicken sandwich…

Whilst I was giving a bit of thought to the food I’d arranged for the evening, Oleg Podsechin of technology services company Ionsquare arrived. Ionsquare specialise in providing IT consultancy services for start-up companies and spin-off ventures — they do quite a bit in the mobile sphere. Definitely worth talking to them if you’re on the hunt for some tech assistance.

Dean Elwood, newly appointed Platform Director of Truphone (congratulations Dean) arrived along with, if memory serves, Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano — also very well known as Mr VOIP Watch. It was excellent to connect with them both as I’ve been reading their posts for some time.

James Body, Research Director at Truphone arrived in good form. I pointed him out to another attendee just as he was (I kid you not) shuffling his iPhones looking for one of them. I think he had three or four of them, as well as a whole host of other devices. It’s nice to see someone definitely living the dream, eh? I suspect that we should see some announcements from Truphone related to the Apple device soon.

Nick Booth of Late4work arrived. I didn’t get a chance to congratulate him on the Late4work concept. It’s brilliant! You can have a rant about being late for work thanks to Nick’s service. You call +44 151 266 9513 and you record your rant (e.g. “The sodding Victoria Line has stopped working again…”) and Spinvox‘s Spin-my-Blog-Post service converts the voicemail to text and posts the rant on www.late4work.co.uk. Smart.

Mark Tynan, bursting with energy, arrived. Mark runs ShopQwik, one of the most innovative and most valuable mobile services I’ve seen, ever. You can book a flight, a hotel room (or car hire) anywhere in the world within 60 seconds, from your mobile phone. It’s utter genius. Think Expedia on your mobile. Mark was excited because they’ve almost finished adding nearly every single airline on the planet to their service. They have also built one of the world’s most ubiquitous mobile payment gateways by dint of developing ShopQwik. They will no doubt be snapped up shortly. I’m going to be using ShopQwik a lot when I’m in the States.

Ken Young, Managing Editor of The UK Mobile Report swept in to say hi shortly afterwards. I’ve been reading Ken’s work at theukmobilereport.com for a long time and it was excellent to actually connect with him in person. Do check out his site and to your feeds if you haven’t already.

Jayant Pimple, Senior Biz Dev for Aztecsoft popped by to say hi. They do quite a lot of mobile related development services, in particular application development and testing. Just as I was talking to Jayant, the doctor arrived. In the form of Dr Tim Snaith, Research Director for OnePoint SMS Surveys. Tim was accompanied by Managing Director, Neil Jessop (who was sporting an ultra sharp pinstripe suit — kudos). I’ve been going nuts over OnePoint’s services for a month or so now ever since they came across my radar. Try out their demo. Text surveys done right. Think Surveymonkey for mobile. In fact, Surveymonkey should acquire them quickly and start offering mobile services to all their clients. I pointed Tim and Neil to Hetty from event networking service Eventscope — via the bar.

The Blyk chaps arrived shortly afterwards — Adam Levene, Interactive Designer, Geoff Wright, Campaign Producer and Tom Gutteridge, Head of Creative. I demanded cards from them all whilst I regaled them with my experience over the weekend of Blyk. I’ve had exclusive short videos from Ratatouille to messages encouraging me to think McChicken sandwiches. They’re definitely doing their jobs well — and I congratulated them accordingly and pointed them to the bar.

Stephen Wadeley from mobile messaging service provider AQL came bounding in to say hi, (Stephen handles wholesale telecoms sales for them) closely followed by another Doctor in the form of Dr Adam Beaumont, Managing Director. I welcomed both and then went quickly to find Michael Day, a Corporate Life Coach to get his card who’d popped along for a drink.

Just then, the Regulator turned up.

A ripple of awareness flew across the crowd as Sam Morris, Head of Communications and Mark Collins, Policy Executive, arrived from PhonepayPlus (the new name of UK premium rate regulator, ICSTIS). Whilst everyone has an opinion on their new name, I think we’re all agreed that it’s a lot better than ‘ICSTIS’. Sam and Mark came along to learn as much as they could about what the mobile industry in the UK is thinking — and how they can structure the regulations for best results for both the industry and the consumer.

“You’ve come to the right place, then,” I said, waving my hand toward the crowd gathering by the bar, “Most people here are either mobile industry executives, mobile applications developers or have a direct interest in the industry.” Sam’s eyes lit up!

I pointed them both to the bar as I welcomed Terence Eden from Vodafone. Terence was sporting a 2-D barcode business card badge that contained his details. Very smart. He got out his N95, flicked on his QR scanner (“It’s big in Japan, this!”) and proceeded to demonstrate it working really well. Genius. I’ll need to look more closely at these QR codes. Although there in an unofficial capacity, Terence was fantastic with the assembled masses who were firing Vodafone related technical questions at him — to which Terence had no shortage of answers. Right on Terence. It’s good to see Vodafone fielding such smart cookies.

Ben Smith, Principal Consultant for Detica waltzed in with software integration engineer colleague Julian Cooling. Julian’s been behind quite a lot of iPhone related opinion comments posted here on SMS Text News – although he sports one of the old reliable P800 Sony Ericssons. Ben, you may remember, has contributed some excellent pieces to SMS Text News about 3UK X-Series (he also runs a blog on X-Series).

A lady came round with some really nice pizza slices at that point. I helped myself to one and was pleased to note other delicious food trays being handed out across the venue. Good news. I wanted to make sure everyone was fed properly!

Kersti Klami and colleague Elissa Fry arrived from Racepoint Group (the new name for Fuse PR, by the way). Racepoint work for some rather cool mobile related clients so I fired questions at them for a little while asking all about the client activities. I’ll hopefully have some news to publish shortly along with some Q&As.

Stephen Holmes of BloodyBigSpider came bounding in. Stephen’s done the branding and image for almost every one of my companies and has some particularly direct opinions on the mobile industry that I always enjoy hearing. As I was chatting to Stephen, Nicholas Shaw, Director of BlinkSystems arrived. BlinkSystems specialises in providing easy to implement Bluetooth based solutions — so if you’ve got a requirement, particularly when it comes to Bluetooth marketing, do give Nicholas a call and tell him I sent you.

Tee Banwait of web based streaming audio service, meTracks, arrived bearing wickedly good quality meTracks headphones for a few select attendees (he’d run out so only had a few to hand out — lucky for you if you got one). Tee’s busy overseeing the first round of finance for meTracks and I’ve been thoroughly approving of their mobile service that enables you to stream your MP3s from anywhere on the planet to your mobile. Smart.

Speaking of streaming, Caroline Teunissen of video streaming services company, Groovy Gecko, arrived. It’s been a while since I caught up with Caroline so it was super to see her — she’s responsible for business development there at Groovy so if you’ve got a requirement, drop her a note. Caroline arrived with other half, Simon Wilcox of Digital Craftsmen. Although specialist in the provision of website design and management services, Simon’s been doing a ton, a veritable ton, in the mobile industry of late. Alas it’s not yet public but when it is, I’ll be posting about it.

Simon Maddox of Spoken Group came bounding in to say hi. He left me with a funky business card showing him and the Simpsons family sat at what looks like a very cheesy American restaurant. Heh. Brilliant! Simon’s companyy, Spoken Group, have been doing some super things with mobile and books. They work with authors to provide them with a mobile platform — something I think is a terrific way of connecting with interested readers. (e.g. You see a call to action on a billboard at a station, text the keyword and get sent back an audio preview. Brilliance. I’m going to do a post on them shortly).

It was good to see Ben Whitaker of secure mobile developer, Masabi. I’m not sure if they’ve got anything I’m able to talk about yet — but from what he was describing the last time we met, it’s all very smart.

Stuart Brown, Sales & Marketing Director of Mediaburst arrived to say hi. I congratulated their publicity campaign. I firmly believe it’s critical for mobile service providers such as Mediaburst to continually tell the marketplace what they’re doing and with what clients. There’s no need to give away trade secrets, but the more and more providers who actually talk about the brilliant work they’re doing, the better.

Speaking of better industry relations, MX Telecom arrived in the form of Mark Hawkins, Communications Manager and Chris Wilson, Head of Systems Development. Every time I meet someone from MX Telecom, I learn about another market moving service addition or improvement. I can still remember when, back in the day, they were amongst the first to deliver a working picture messaging API. We made great use of that. Mark was telling me that MX have been working heavily on their hugely flexible content management system, CMX2.

I was delighted when WebitPR’s social media manager Stephen Davies walked in. Also known as Mr PR Blogger, Stephen is a wickedly nice chap and has just discovered Twitter. He, like me, isn’t entirely impressed with EAT in the context of Pret A Manger.

The real journalists arrived at this point. Jon Corke, Editor of What Mobile, Jonathan Morris, What Mobile Technology Editor, arrived together with Paul Withers and MaryLou Costa, both reporters at Mobile News. It was excellent to welcome them as I read their stuff regularly — I pointed them directly to the bar then proceeded to fire mobile industry questions at them.

Darryl Ashings of Ashings chartered accountants was in good form — he’s been doing my accounts for years and is an excellent chap to talk to if you’re planning on raising any funding or you need some assistance with your financial matters. Darryl had quite a few clients in the room, if I recall correctly! I bumped into Martyn Davies and had a brief chat with him — far too brief — before I had to welcome a load of people who’s just arrived fresh from MoMo London. Martyn, amongst other things, blogs on Mobile for Blognation. Best that I link you to his LinkedIn page as he’s got a lot going on!

Ladi Sansui and Herve Parrin from mobile service provider TynTec presented themselves to say hi although unfortunately I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them as Jason Sharpe, head of software development for Consult Hyperion arrived. Again I was just talking to Jason when Nick Hancock of TagText arrived and shortly after Nick came Dave Bush, S40 Java Sub-Project Leader at Nokia. Before I could grab Dave to find out if he knew anyone I could get to help build me a Symbian wordpress editor, the delightful Vero Pepperrell, head of Blog Marketing for Taptu arrived with Ed Hodges, Dan Lane and Jay Fenton of Howler Tech (the company behind ROK Talk). The chaps were fresh from delivering a stonking presentation on their service to the assembled masses at Mo Mo London earlier in the evening. Joining them was James Whatley representing Spinvox and the always-informed Mike Stead of Hutchison.

As I was talking away to Mike I spotted Patrick Smith of Sonus PR at the bar chatting away animatedly to Ed from ROK Talk. They stopped chatting as Dan and Jay got out their phones ready to participate in another ‘Type Off’ — this is an exercise designed to test user interfaces. Now while it’s far from scientific, it’s always interesting to see what device is able to type the sentence ‘testing testing one two three’ quick enough (remembering that each chap is classed as an ultra-geek and therefore expert at using them).

If you’d like to see the results of the Type Off (including the winner), check out this (rather dark) YouTube video filmed by Dan Lane:

Right. Now for some pictures.

First, you can get the Flickr gallery here. I’m going to pull out a few here:

James Whatley of Spinvox, Abul Hussain of Mobile9, Dan Lane of ROK Talk and Vero of Taptu.

Me. Ewan. The usual stand-in-front-of-the-banner picture.

Ed & Dan from ROK Talk

The well stocked fridges behind the unlimited bar

Trying to type as fast as possible on a N95

Ed of ROK, Patrick from Sonus PR and Me

Dan from ROK demonstrates some Vuzix eyewear that plugged into his Nokia N95 camera enabling him to view the back of his head in real time. Nice.

The AQL chaps

Me, Dr Tim and Neil from OnePoint Surveys

Right!

Thank you everyone who took the time to come along. I had a super time. Lots more follow-up to do. Please do send me your news and I’ll be back in London soon for another event in 2008.

Alfie and his team have just gone live with CityClickers — a pan-European moblogging service launched in conjunction with the LG Viewty. I grabbed him for a few minutes and fired these questions at him to answer:

1. What is CityClickers?
City Clickers is a Pan European moblogging competition, asking people to send in images of people they feel reflects the true style of their country. The site has been launched in Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, and France. The site has a big blog partner network specifically for this competition, co-ordinated and arranged by the lovely folk at Shiny Shiny. This is the first competition of it’s kind I believe, a Pan European moblogging competition with some amazing prizes.

2. CityClickers is based on your moblog platform — was it a ton of work to create the CityClickers microsite?
Well, the moblog:UK site is the hub for all the promotional work we do with clients, where essentially they have a branded promoblog (promotional moblog) within the site, and it is promoted to our site users. City Clickers is the first use of a new product we have developed, which provides clients with a seamless moblogging microsite for one off promotions, or for an ongoing presence. The software allows us to create a client promoblog at a specific URL, with the user journey being entirely contained at that address. At the same time this is a great solution for a brand to run a promoblog competition in a microsite fashion, the moblog still benefits from promotion to our audience and members at moblog:UK, so we think it’s pretty nifty. Working with a client like LG means that there was certainly a certain amount of to’ing and fro’ing to get everything just so, and there will always be that element of one on one work.

3. You must be pleased?
The site has gone down a storm, and we’re really pleased. Using moblogging at the core of a promotion like this is a great move, for any brand. Moblogging has always traditionally been a bit niche, but with flat rate data, widespread understanding of MMS, and applications like Shozu or Trutap for one touch moblogging, the practice is really poised for widespread adoption. We’ve worked with some incredible folk over the years who have helped us really spearhead moblogging out of the niche -whether it’s a moblog for Ronan Keating (http://ronankeating.com/moblog) or an activist moblog for Greenpeace (http://moblog.co.uk/blog/greenpeaceuk), these efforts have, I hope, driven moblogging forward in the UK.

4. I saw you’re doing this in conjunction with Shiny Media — how are they involved?
Shiny Media came to us with the idea and requirement. We’ve worked with Shiny on a few things in the past (http://moblog.co.uk/blog/mychemicaltoilet) and they also have their own personal moblogs with us, so they really *get* our platform and what it’s capable of. They are coordinating all the partner blogs throughout Europe on this as well. I think that’s what’s interesting about this is that the ‘blogosphere’ is so often dominated by our cousins across the Atlantic that this is a great example of a cohesive European approach, harnessing the power of blogs, as well as mobile.

5. There are a lot of mobile marketing companies reading SMS Text News. What’s the rough cost for them to deploy a moblogging microsite with your technology?
We have different solutions for different sorts of clients and their requirements, with full platform builds such as The Big Art Mob for Channel 4 (www.bigartmob.com outreach activist moblogs within moblog:UK such as those for Actionaid (moblog.co.uk/blog/actionaid) or Greenpeace, and promotional moblogs such as those we do for bands, either run from a seperate URL like Maximo Parks, at www.maximoblog.com , or/and within moblog:UK. The cost is quite variable, but clients can get a full branded moblogging site with promotion at moblog:UK beginning at £2k, so it’s an enormously affordable and customisable solution.

Without giving away the particulars of our City Clickers build, our microsite solution is around 5k (UK Pounds) for a 3 month campaign, which includes a technology license, design, promotion at moblog:UK, URL registration and administration, as well as an MMS keyword for the UK. At this price point it’s something which even a marketer who hasn’t yet done much in the mobile blogging arena can try out.

6. What benefits is the technology realising for the brands you’re deploying it with?
Where do I start? Clients are able to include their own advertising in sidebars, they are creating databases of users who MMS into their moblogs, reach a high end tech savvy audience who are actively engaged in mobile blogging in the UK, and are reaching into the ‘content as advertising’ ethic, which it seems is where so much of our engagement with brands is heading these days. Clients can customise a message to be sent to those taking part in a promotion direct to their handsets as soon as that person has sent some content, closing the web/mobile gap.

7. How’s it going over at Moblog.co.uk?
We just launched today, but I think it will go down well. We haven’t done a competition yet which had this European scale, so prizes and participation are open to all and not only our UK members, which is ace. We’ve always had a great engagement from members, since the competitions we run are always closely in line with what people enjoy and can get into, ordinarily with a bit of a tech. slant.

8. What handset are you sporting at the moment?
I’ve been using the Nokia N95 on 3′s X-series gold for a while now. Can’t believe how great the phone is to use (well, battery life), and there is something incredibly novel and somehow amusing in being able to switch on GPS wandering down the street and watching your position change X-series on this device is also where it really comes into it’s own, so I can’t wait for flat rate data to be the norm rather than the exception in the UK.

—

Alfie, thanks for taking the time!

If your company’s doing something nifty in mobile, drop me an email and let’s do a Q&A!

I’ll be there, possibly liveblogging, although Stuart Dredge of TechDigest will probably be there too, MacBook in hand, typing away big time — so I might leave that to him. I watched him briefly at the Blyk launch and he was knocking out the words almost as they were said, straight into what looked like the TechDigest publishing system. I’m definitely bringing my camera though…

It’s going to be an interesting set of announcements, I’m sure.

Everybody’s favourite mobile media company, 3UK, triumphed.
Here’s the gossip:

Mobile media company 3UK was recognised at the Mobile Entertainment awards as the Best Network 2007 on Tuesday evening. The Mobile Entertainment awards shine the spotlight on the entire content business, recognising excellence in the space. For the second year running, 3UK was accredited as the leading network in mobile entertainment in the UK.

3UK was recognised for consistent innovation and success in mobile content – specifically for the X-Series. Comprising a flat rate, all inclusive monthly tariff, the X-series is akin to home broadband and has brought together a series of partnerships with some of the biggest names in the internet world. Customers signing up to X-Series from 3 benefit from unlimited use of Google, Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger on the mobile as well as access to Skype, Sling and Orb all within the X-Series monthly tariff.

In addition, April this year saw the launch of a new mobile content business model, a range of free to access content for customers on its Planet 3 portal. Working in partnership with Rhythm New Media, this service is supported by personalised advertising from major brands, meaning content that was previously paid for can be viewed for free.

John Penberthy-Smith, Marketing Director, 3UK, said: ‘The Mobile Entertainment awards are recognised as the industry benchmark for excellence in mobile entertainment; so to be acknowledged as the best mobile operator two years in a row is a huge achievement. 3 is constantly looking for new ways to enhance their mobile entertainment offerings and we are proud to have been acknowledged for our efforts over the past year.’

Congratulations 3UK!

How much does 3 pay you for bigging them up? (apart from your free contract three handset, inc bills)

It was after reading my post Questions to Mark Allera, Director of Sales for 3UK.

It was, I think, a justified question/assumption — I’ve been writing a lot about 3UK recently. I think I need to be a lot more clearer with my position at times. I don’t like to pepper posts with continual disclosure statements. I’ve listed a load of disclosures on my about section instead.

I’ve recognised that the coverage we’ve been giving to 3UK has been pretty continual recently. There’s a simple answer why, though: Nobody else talks to me — and I think 3UK are, generally speaking, doing a good job. I haven’t been afraid to hop up and down in annoyance at, for example, their N95 delays and the market opportunities I believe they lost as a result.

However, when I’ve talked to other operators — in the UK and beyond — they don’t reply. I have written emails and, on occasion, made phone calls to PR departments. Generally speaking, they don’t want to know, or don’t know how to handle interaction with a blogger.

That’s perfectly fine. I do try to deliver balanced perspective. For example, I’ve often had a dig at Vodafone’s data prices and 35p/per min cross-network call plans. I do recognise their positive elements when I can. In particular, I do recognise that the new data plans are a step in the right direction and for that I’m quite excited. But, no one talks to me from Vodafone. No one picks up the phone from o2 to challenge my ‘el Chumpo’ labelling of them. Again, that’s perfectly fine. I just make my own assumptions and viewpoints. With 3UK, I’m able to ask them questions and solicit their viewpoints to inform my writing.

3UK do pick up the phone to me. Their PR (external and internal) are very responsive. They called last week and asked if I’d like to talk to Marc. They called three weeks ago and asked if I’d like to talk to Fergal, their Director of Handsets. They phoned up a while ago and asked if I’d like an N73 device to review — I explained I already had one, but then recognised it wasn’t factory-fitted with X-Series, so borrowed the device and handed it to Ben Smith who wrote a brilliant summary.

So, 3UK coverage here on SMS Text News will definitely continue — more so if they continue to react and communicate with me as they have been doing. I’m always excited to meet industry executives, irrespective of the brand they work with.

Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and o2 coverage will arrive on the blog whenever I am minded to do so or whenever I spot a piece of news or something relevant to talk about — or, as is often the case, whenever a reader emails in with a viewpoint.

I’m not paid by any operator, unfortunately. If I was, they’d be a sponsor on the blog and it’d be fully disclosed, and we’d be giving away new handsets every week (and one for each attendee to the Unlimited Drinks), as I’d definitely make that a sponsorship requirement.

I started off with a question submitted by Paul:

How are the retail stores working out for you?
Marc: Very well indeed. We recently hit our key milestone of over 200 stand alone stores with another 50-60 to open this year. We’re actually opening at a quite a pace — 17 stores opened this week with another 25 due to open next month. It’s an aggressive policy — combined with our 130 concession stores in Superdrug.

We’re also testing concession stores with HMV. For instance, you can now find a 3UK shop in the Reading HMV — each concession staffed by 3UK teams.

Interesting! I like the concept of concession stores. I thought it was a little too soon to ask Marc how the HMV shop was performing. I wonder if they’ll notice higher than average ARPU from HMV-originated customers? Or maybe the opposite?

The next question I put to Marc was one close to my heart. It really is annoying not being able to discuss my account or make changes with the team in a 3UK store. They currently have to ask you to phone customer services. Pop into a Vodafone shop, by contrast, and the person behind the counter can do anything with your account that you need.

Why the disconnect between 3UK stores and Customer Services?
Marc: Well the main barrier for us to deliver better service in-store is our system. While our call centre agents can handle every enquiry you might have, our system doesn’t allow our in-store team to do similar. We’re mid-way through a major project to address this change — and we expect to complete by around March next year.

Well that’s good news. Very good news indeed. Whenever I’ve popped into a 3UK store, the team there have found it rather challenging to do anything with me — to upgrade me, to get me to buy more, or whatever — because it involves me phoning customer services and then having to wait 24 hours for any gizmos to arrive. A frustrating situation for an obsessed mobile geek like me. But a light at the end of a tunnel come March 2008.

Next, Rob emailed me following up on my post a few weeks back about the fact 3UK will match the Flext price plans offered by T-Mobile.

Do you plan on marketing your Flext tariffs more? I don’t like only having 200 text messages on my plan, for example.
Marc: When T-Mobile first introduced Flext, we made a very similar offering available too. I can’t comment specifically about this because we’ve a major tariff refresh coming this October.

Ah excellent. If recent performance from 3UK is anything to go by, the new tariffs are going to be shockingly good.

Quite a few people asked if I could talk to Marc about the customer segments they’re aiming for (e.g. Professionals vs Budgets):

What key customer segments are you aiming for?
Marc: We’re aiming for as many high quality customers as possible.
Ewan: What does high quality mean?
Marc: Well, happy, loyal customers who pay on time and who stay with us a long time. We’re a challenger brand — you saw this with the £15/month price plan.

(Note: o2 reacted by launching a £15/month ‘simplicity’ tariff… only, without a handset — 3UK’s offering came with a decent Nokia, if memory serves)

Marc: We’re aiming to be a beacon of light in the market place. Our £15/month tariff got a lot of people into our stores — who then chose to upgrade to more expensive price plans, whilst we’ve got the likes of X-Series which really adds credibility to our offering.

Another chance to address a 3UK bugbear —

Ewan; Why is the Nokia N95 not shown anywhere near the X-Series site (www.three.co.uk/xseries)?
Marc: We’ll need to take a look at that.

Cool, cool, it just winds up the N95 X-Series fanatics not seeing it there.

A question from Kat:

What’s your favourite X-Series application?
Marc: Most definitely MSN Messenger. It’s great for staying in touch with my mates when I’m on the go.

Then it was time to ask Marc one of my favourite interview questions.

Ewan: What was your first handset?

[ Marc pauses in deep thought ]

Marc: Geez, it was a Nokia. I can’t remember the version. But I remember paying something like £2/minute on Vodafone when I was a student.

And your favourite handset ever? From a nostalgic perspective?
Marc: It has to be the Motorola StarTac, I loved it.

What about your first 3UK handset?
Marc: Ah, simple — I had an NEC 606, then an NEC 808 then an NEC 835.

And what do you use today?
Marc: The Nokia N73 [ He's got the nice, snazzy black N73 ] and I’ve got an Nokia N95 back at the office — I’m thinking of converting to that as my primary handset.

I thought it would be useful to get some background on Marc himself — so I asked him straight.

What’s your background?
Marc: My last role was as General Manager for Sega Europe — I was also Sales Director there for four years (during the time when Sega had recently launched the Dreamcast). Prior to this I worked in the home entertainment division as Head of Trading for John Menzies.

So, safe to say that Marc knows consumer retail back to front then.

What are you most excited by when it comes to the mobile industry?
Marc: The pace of change. For example, when you look at what we’re offering today — and what we offered a year ago, the speed of change is staggering. In 3-5 years, I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to offer customers. It’s very exciting.

What do you use your mobile for most?
Marc: Calling first and foremost, then texting, taking pictures and football results. I just love the Premiership Scores application we offer — this year’s version is even better.

(Marc, by the way, is a Liverpool FC supporter)

What’s the best mobile application you’ve seen recently?
Marc: It has to be the Premiership Scores application – just brilliant for information on the move for a supporter like me.

I then thought I’d ask Marc to give me one line on each of the major operators. I thought it’d be rather interesting to see how he described his competition.

So, Marc, one line on Vodafone:
Marc: Big, red, strong
T-Mobile?
Marc: Inconsistent in channel, good work and progress on mobile data
Orange?
Marc: Culling loads of dealers — going through pain in the independent channel
And o2?
Marc: The best mobile retailer that we’re up against

Time was pressing so I asked Marc a few quick questions not specifically related to mobile:

What’s the last thing you saw?
Marc: The Departed – a brilliant film

The last album you bought?
A Headcandy compilation.

Marc likes is banging music! Nice. I’ve got quite a lot of Headcandy albums.

The last thing you downladed on your phone?
Marc: A Rafa Benitez ringtone

[ Rafa's the manager of Liverpool FC ]

Good man! Nice to meet a mobile industry executive who actually downloads stuff to his mobile.

I walked into the Congress Hall near Tottenham Court Road not two hours ago. I’d been told to ask for ‘Sarah’ or ‘Sarah’. I spied a group of people clustered around a Mobile Choice magazine and thought I was probably in the right area.

A girl called Tricia from Lewis PR asked if I was Ewan and introduced herself. She said I’d have 15 minutes with Fergal once he was finished with the chap who was currently interviewing him. She asked how I got started with SMS text News. I explained that I was a bit of a mobile geek and that I’d worked in the mobile industry. I wasn’t sure if she’d got the enormity of the ‘geek’ reference, so I demonstrated by bringing out my E61i and putting it on the table, joining it with the E65 in my pocket and the N95 in my other pocket. If she was shocked and horrified, she did a good job of appearing calm and relaxed in my company.

Quickly, Fergal finished with the other chap, not before I’d had a dig at the old media with Tricia and Sarah Pope (3UK’s Consumer PR manager) tactically keeping silent. I do like Mobile Choice, for example it’s got a comprehensive mobile review section at the back, but reading through the main pages of the magazine is like peering through a range of announcements already old covered in-depth years ago by the likes of Intomobile, AllAboutSymbian or Engadget.

Anyway, Fergal had stood up and bid the old media guy farewell and I was on.

I shook his hand and took out my questions from everybody at SMS Text News. I’d quadruple spaced them so I had space to write the answers and I think Fergal was slightly alarmed that I’d just taken five pages worth of questions out to put to him. In 15 minutes.

I explained I was a huge fan and that we’d asked for questions from SMS Text News readers the night before — he interrupted to say that he was a reader. Nice one Fergal.

I felt a little bit like Bob Whatshisname from the quiz show Blockbusters. I only had 15 minutes so I started firing questions like a machine gun geek. Normally I like to sit and have a chat with folk.

I went straight to the jugular, no messin’, with Ben Smith’s first contributed question:

Can he spill any beans about the Nokia N81 Music Phone and whatever Nokia are launching on 29th of August?

Fergal: No. It’s exciting, very exciting. It’s fantastic — we really are pushing mobile music forward. We’re the number one in mobile music downloads in the world and we’re second only to iTunes for music downloads here in the UK — and we’re bigger than iTunes in Sweden and Denmark.

I followed up with another one of Ben’s questions — one that I know a lot of people have been wondering.

Any plans to offer any Windows Mobile or Blackberry devices?

Fergal: Intentions? You betcha. Plans? Yes. Confirmed news? Not yet — but we’re working on it. We’d love to do this and we certainly will. We’re just looking at the commercials at the moment. Maybe toward the end of this year.

Oooh now that is quite interesting. They could certainly go to town with a funky Windows Mobile HTC Touch style device and X-Series applications. And as for Blackberry, well I think it would get a lot of interest from those data-hungry Blackberry fans out there.

Next, a favourite bugbear of any 3UK watcher:

Why the discrepancy in launch dates between the various 3 networks internationally for handsets (including the N95)?

Fergal; Each of us [each 3 country] qualifies the handsets we offer independently, we do our own testing and we decide what’s appropriate for our marketplace. From our own history here in the UK and looking to the future, we are continually focused on our desire to maintain and increase quality. So in the case of the Nokia N95, we decided we could wait. There were some intense discussions here, I can tell you. But I believe we are vindicated by the problems that other mobile operators have had with the device. By waiting, we were able to offer a much, much better quality Nokia N95 to our customers — better GPS, improved battery life, plus support for HSDPA and X-Series too.

That does make a lot of sense to me. I was still doing my nut when I found out 3 Italy had launched the N95 way before 3UK

Ok next question.

What’s the score with the Sony Ericsson W950i — it was promised on X-Series from the outset?

Fergal: Very good question. We launched it. It sold out! We’re one of the only operators to push the boundaries — I mean really, really push the boundaries of our handset platforms to their limits. While we were able to do everything we wanted to with X-Series on Series 60, Symbian’s UIQ has proved a lot more difficult to get working.

Why do they forbid the use of non-3 handsets in their terms & conditions? With he more technical and demanding crowd they’re attracting with X-Series, how about allowing them, but unsupported (or similar)?

Fergal: We, unlike some operators, don’t make money from selling our handsets. We pass on the handset cost to the customer through their contract. If we open up our handsets, we’d be basically giving away pieces of kit — so for this reason our handsets are locked to the sim card.

I did clarify with Fergal though — you’re perfectly fine using another handset that you’ve bought elsewhere with your 3 sim.

For Nokia handsets, why isn’t it possible to firmware upgrade 3-branded phones?

Fergal: You shouldn’t be able to do this with the security measures we’ve put in place — this comes back to handset cost and my answer to your previous question.

To one of Grant’s questions now…

With regards to strategy — are you looking to increase the variety (and number) of devices availble or are you focusing on keeping quite specialist 3 equipment (fewer available handsets)?

At this point, Fergal broke into a big grin. I could see the excitement radiating from him.

Fergal: The former, Grant. If you look at the handsets we had available in May 2007 of this year, by October, we’ll have doubled our handset range.

Now that is very, very exciting.

Adam asked a similar question to Ben, asking:

Why is each 3 country so different in terms of handsets (variety and availability)?

Fergal: We’re like a federation of nation states. Each country in the world is different — and every market is different — for example, in Ireland you have to pay for your handsets whilst here in the UK, we’ll put the Aston Martin of handsets, (The Nokia N95) into your hand at no direct cost. Other global operators have tried to standardise on a global range across every country but we feel that severely reduces local flexibility.

Now to a question posed by Harry…

I got the Nokia 6120 classic on 3 last month [Fergal pulls out his 6120 to show me and nods] but when will HSDPA coverage be available nationwide?

Fergal: Nationwide coverage is to be confirmed — sometime toward the end of the year, but we’ll have significant coverage available by this September.

SE Fanboy asked this P1 question…

Will the X-Series work on my Sony Ericsson P1i? Cos my Vodafone contract is nearly finished and I only “do” Sony Ericsson

Fergal: If we decide to carry the handset, yes. Would it work with X-Series? Yes. [i.e. you can use 'unlimited' data, not all the X-Series applications will work though, as they may need to be tested for that handset]

Time was pressing so I finished off asking what Fergal’s first handset was. Turns out he used to work for Ericsson so it was, predictably, an Ericsson handset!

He then went on to give me this handset range sneak preview:

Sony Ericsson K530
Sony Ericsson K770
Sony Ericsson K850
Sony Ericsson W910
Nokia 6500

…. And the LG U990…. The Prada Phone!

But a double-hard-wideboy version of the Prada we all know and sort-of-love. The U990 will be sporting:

3G, HSDPA
5 megapixel camera
TV out
120 frames/sec playback
170mb internal memory +external memory support
And the Prada touchscreen UI

I’ll need to see that one. That sounds fantastic.

By the way, make sure you check out Ben Smith’s long-term road test of 3′s X-Series published yesterday.

So now we’ve got to know each other properly it’s time to step away, kick the tyres a bit and look back at how we’ve got on. Before I begin properly I should point out that I’ve been a proper paying customer… handing over a wedge of my hard-earned every month. I ported in my regular number to 3 at the outset and we’ve been together through thick and thin on the ‘silver’ X-Series tariff ever since. 3 have also lent Ewan a handset on the ‘gold’ tariff and I’ve put in a few laps round the test track on that over the last fortnight. This is my look back… (cue slow fade and uplifting soft-rock).
[OK, I'm going to stop the weak motoring-show metaphors now…]

Launched in November 2006, X-Series is an add-on to any standard consumer pay-monthly voice and text plan from 3. It comes in three flavours:

Unlimited Internet: For any handset and tariff combination available in the 3 range this option adds unlimited data usage for £5 a month. This can be used for web browsing, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo searching, downloading podcasts and accessing Ebay (as long as the handset supports them).

Silver tariff: For a smaller range of X-Series compatible handsets (all Nokia at this point) a number of additional applications are available including Skype, push e-mail and the Yahoo! Go suite, also for £5 per month.

Gold tariff: For £10 a month this adds unlimited media streaming from your home PC or home TV (with the right software and hardware) to the Silver tariff’s applications.

As with other networks ‘unlimited’ is qualified in the small print, but in this case it means a reasonable 1GB of downloaded data per month which can be used for anything plus 80 hours of streamed media for ‘gold’ users. Comparisons with other networks are a little tricky, but T-Mobile gets closest with their ‘web n walk’ package which also gives 1GB of data downloads per month but for £7.50. However, this specifically excludes instant messaging and voice over IP – two of the key technologies promoted by X-Series. Vodafone offer 120 MB per month, also for £7.50, with the same restrictions and the rest seem still to exist in the dark ages (yes, I’m looking at you Orange and O2) offering 30 MB and 4 MB for £8 and £5 per month respectively. To be fair though, O2 do generously give 100 KB free per month on some tariffs… No really… 100KB. I didn’t even know you could measure amounts that small.

In use the service is fast and reliable – I wasn’t much of a fan of 3′s service in the early days. Poor selection of handsets, dropped calls, poor coverage and grim customer service experiences put me off and I was a vocal critic to anyone who’d listen (not that many people to be honest but that didn’t stop me). I certainly wasn’t the only one and it seems that 3 have listened. Voice calls are crisp and reliable and since January coverage for areas where 3′s coverage is lacking is provided by Orange’s network (it was O2 before) which appears to be up to the job. Handovers between the networks appear reliable and the dual coverage meant I wasn’t able to find any areas where coverage was significantly lacking. I certainly didn’t expect it to be this good having come from Vodafone previously – a place I laboured for some time under the misapprehension that I was paying a premium for superior coverage. Data is similarly reliable – just how it should be really – it just works whenever I’ve needed it. So far, very much so good.

As ever with 3, the voice tariffs are some of the best on the market and look competitive across the range. I opted for one costing around £40 per month (including X-Series charge) which has all the voice and texts I could ever want. However, on current pricing X-Series is available from as low as £20 per month. Also worthy of note is 3′s ’3 Like Home’ roaming charging – the most sensible approach to international roaming anyone’s come up with for a long time in my opinion (and I’m going to ask you to pretend that matters for a little longer). For countries where 3 has a network (Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia and Ireland) charges for calls and data are exactly as they would be in the UK including any bundled elements. For X-Series customers that means up to a gigabyte of roaming data per month for no extra cost and it works… brilliantly. On a number of trips to Ireland data and calls worked well and the only annoyance was explaining to concerned hosts that, no, I wasn’t bankrupting myself in roaming fees looking up flight times on my phone. To be fair, roaming costs to other countries aren’t quite as outstanding, but have reduced in line with the recent EU ruling.

Handset selection across the whole range is still more limited that many other networks and people who want the full X-Series experience will need to opt for a Nokia Series 60 smartphone: the 6120, N73, E65 or (added this weekend) top-of-the-line N95 phone, camera, music player, GPS gizmo and cappuccino machine. I was initially a little disappointed at this and the continued absence of the Sony Ericsson W950i promised at launch is obviously still frustrating some. Whilst, in use, the Nokia handsets’ reliability and versatility have shown why they suit X-Series so well (and would now be my preference) the absence of other smart phones, including any from the Windows Mobile stable seems odd. This coupled with the relatively slow time to launch new handsets is definitely an area for improvement.

What marks X-Series out particularly from any other offering available is the inclusion of the applications and services element in addition to the data service and it’s worth taking a look at each one:

Skype: Based on the iSkoot solution the client surprised me in its elegance. Skype calls are made and received as normal phone calls to 3′s server which in turn connects too your contacts and updates their status to your handset. This is particularly smart as it ensures calls are not interrupted by other downloads and even uses the standard 3 voicemail if calls are missed. Call quality was indistinguishable from normal mobile calls and only the absence of the Skype chat functionality gave any cause for complaint.

MobileMail: Another 3rd party solution (this time provided by Seven), push e-mail also works smoothly – coupled with my IMAP account updates and deletions happened quickly and, most importantly, in the background making use a much more pleasant experience than the phone’s native mail client. Strangely some of the advanced features (particularly around IMAP mail) are disabled (including copying of sent items to the correct folder on the server) which is a shame, but it otherwise works well. As an aside, I supplemented MobileMail with Dataviz’s Roadsync product to synchronise my corporate e-mail from an Exchange server to another mailbox and they co-exist very happily.

Ebay: This is provided by a customised interface which is accessed by the web browser. It provides an excellent mobile buying interface and also allows tracking of watched items. Some of the detail of listing is lost in the small screen version, but once you have found and ‘watched’ an item it’s a slick process – I even bought a few things on the train on the way home one night…. Ooooo get me.

Mobilecast: This is the podcasting application and of those offered I think this is the least successful. The idea is sound – the ability to download podcasts on the move is an excellent one, but this is a poor implementation with a strange interface that doesn’t always behave consistently with other applications. The built in directory is very limited and feels especially so if you’re familiar with using iTunes to search and subscribe to podcasts from. Worst of all, however, is that the audio is streamed ‘on demand’ which makes for frustrating delays between clicking ‘play’ and anything happening. It also means use on the move can be interrupted by tunnels/going underground, of which there is just enough on my run into work to cause annoyance. Playback is also interrupted if the network or host server can’t keep up and the audio doesn’t always recover quite in the right place. Although relying on external directories rather than a built-in directory, I vastly prefer Nokia’s Podcasting application which is improving all the time and has a ‘background download’ feature to fill a memory card with podcasts in advance to avoid all the delays and interruptions. Of course the great thing about this tariff is that I can swap…

Windows Live Messenger: This worked well, without serious problems or hiccup. I occasionally missed incoming messages, but this was normally down to my lack of attention as far as I can tell. Personally, I am so used to using multi-network clients such as the excellent web-based Meebo I found the restriction of just being able to contact people on one network too limiting and after a while resorted to the excellent Agile Messenger instead which covers the lot.

Yahoo! Go: Probably the hardest to describe of all the applications I’m going to wimp out and suggest if you don’t know that you should read up here , but as expected the portal element worked well and the mail, contacts, calendar and photo sync also worked well too. It is a bit if a hog in some respects – demanding a lot of memory and requiring the use of its own interface to access some of the features. However, if you’re already a Yahoo user this is the closest to a free consumer ‘blackberry’ solution I’ve seen to-date. It’s a shame Yahoo’s desktop synchronisation doesn’t match up to complete the picture (it’s completely unusable).

Orb: Only available for gold subscribers this is really just an additional mobile interface for the existing Orb home media streaming product. The Orb Server installs on your home PC (only a PC with XP or Vista at the moment) and it indexes the media content stored on it. Then, as long as the PC’s on, the handset can access the Orb interface via the web browser and can view pictures or stream music and video via the phone’s RealPlayer application. Pictures and audio worked well for me, but in video playback colours were corrupted. All the characters in the Simpsons Movie trailer, for example, where purple. Whilst the functionality is appealing I’m excluded from using it long-term as I’m primarily a Mac user at home and if I did have a PC on all the time I don’t think the current quality warrants the additional monthly cost.

Slingcast: Without a Slingbox I didn’t test this, but the concept is similar to the Orb player – albeit with a hardware device streaming TV from home. I expect the remote viewing functionality may be the most compelling part of the gold tariff for people on the move or away from home a lot, but with the increasing availability of internet-based video services, including mobile versions such as m.youtube.com I’m not 100% sold on this. I guess it may be different if you were already an owner and user of this technology.

…and in reality it is these few criticisms of the X-Series applications that are the only real complaints I can level at the service. I think 3 are probably faced with a dilemma – to stick with the recognisable brand names like Microsoft and Yahoo for the X-Series applications or move to sometimes incorporate more rounded applications from smaller vendors. However, I think they’ve cracked this though with the 3neXt initiative – a directory of mobile apps that can work on X-Series so that users can discover and use those that suit them best. It also allows for users to expand the range of applications to fill any gaps – perhaps like the omission of a photo or blogging tool such as Shozu [news just in - they added it to X-Series at the same time as launching the N95 ] or a mapping tool such as Google Maps (my choice) or Map24. A review feature also allows applications to be rated and recommended.

As a tariff, I love X-Series – it’s a mobile network with performance as good as any I’ve used in recent years and with unlimited data at these prices it’s excellent value for money, even before ’3 Like Home’ which should be like a kick up the backside to other operators (and no, Vodafone, Passport does not come anywhere even close…). The whole approach is unusually fair and rooted in common sense… and it feels nice. There’s not going to be any surprises in my next bill and the small print doesn’t hide a ton of restrictions on what I use my data for – for that alone someone needs a medal. Sure, there’s room for improvement, but there’s a real sense that 3 aren’t going to rest on their laurels quite yet. They’re actively engaged with users through the official X-Series blog and there’s a beta programme for new offerings. It’s good to know from time to time I’m going to wake up in the morning and X-Series will have got just a little bit better… And whilst the gold tariff isn’t for me yet, I’ve no doubt it will be added to and extended over time, and |’m just waiting to be tempted by some new shiny extra.

In all it’s good. Bloody good. So good, in fact, they’ll be getting my money for some time to come…

Related: Put some questions to 3UK’s Head of Handsets