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If an operator is charging users for Facebook roaming, should they pay a license fee?

By Ewan on June 7, 2011 in Operators, Opinion

This post ties rather neatly in with my previous one (Would you pay €2 to use Facebook on the beach?) regarding roaming. Now then, what happens if operators were to deploy these rather innovative plans such as the one mentioned above? It’s a topic I’ve been exploring whilst I’ve been on-site at MACH Insights 2011. [...]

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This new mobile world is great, as long as stuff actually works

By Ewan on May 11, 2011 in Operators, Opinion

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch highlights a key fundamental that we often forget at the bleeding edge of the mobile world: The basic stuff has to actually work. For all the talk about 4G and LTE and genius amazing whiz-bang gizmos, the basic reality is that when I hit ‘dial’, I expect my call to [...]

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I’d love to see a ‘trusted context network’ for my phone

By Ewan on May 1, 2011 in Opinion

Well then it’s just gone 4am and I’m in the taxi on the way to RIM’s highly anticipated BlackBerry World event in Orlando. It’s sure to be an exciting one. There’s bound to be some interesting and exciting news. However this morning I’d like to raise a very basic problem I still have with my [...]

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Mobile operators? Will they not learn? Charging Google & Facebook? Come on!

By Ewan on April 27, 2011 in Operators, Opinion

Ah dear. Time for a diatribe. I had to knock out a brief comment on this Financial Times post. Here’s the first few paras: Leading European telecoms companies want to levy significant charges on Google and other online content providers through an overhaul of the regime governing how data travel over the internet. Operators in [...]

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Acision: Mobile tariffs out of step with consumer usage habits

By Ewan on April 13, 2011 in Operators, Services

I’m sure you’ll have read the headlines this week about consumers being royally nailed by their operators by agreeing to pay for a price plan that they don’t actually end up using. If not, here’s a bit of a refresher by way of Acision, the global messaging giant: New research from Ofcom-accredited mobile bill analysis [...]

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Impressed by SoftBank’s reaction to the Japanese Quake

By Ewan on March 30, 2011 in Operators

Serkan at MobileCrunch has the full story: Son said that as SoftBank’s leader, it makes him feel uncomfortable to hear that disaster victims and their friends and relatives have trouble in connecting and obtaining information. And while he was at it, he also promised that the orphans won’t be charged any communication fees until they [...]

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If an operator suffers a critical outage, should they refund customers?

By Ewan on March 30, 2011 in Operators

On the 28th of March, T-Mobile Netherlands suffered a catastrophic network outage that resulted in millions of users having their phones transformed from communications devices into paperweights. From what I’ve been told, connectivity was offline for most of the business day. T-Mobile is refusing to offer any compensation citing ‘Force Majeure’. Now then — should [...]

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Ovum: Operators should fear the threat from Facebook

By Ewan on February 22, 2011 in Opinion

Here’s Ovum‘s take on the elephant in the ultra small mobile operator room — Facebook. – – – – – Facebook is shaping up to be a strong competitor to mobile operators that are in danger of underestimating the threat it poses, according to Ovum. In a new report* the independent telecoms analyst states that [...]

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How Facebook could really nail the mobile operators

By Ewan on February 22, 2011 in Operators

I participated in an array of superb briefings last week at Mobile World Congress. The issue of the ‘data crunch’ was never far from the conversation. One company I met on Sunday morning prior to MWC was apoplectic with rage about Facebook, Google and Apple. I won’t go into detail about the company’s identity except [...]

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RIM’s carrier-billing hat-trick with Vodafone, Telefonica & T-Mobile

By Ewan on February 14, 2011 in Operators

Congratulations to the team at RIM who’ve notched up a perfect hat-trick this morning announcing not one, not two but three carrier-billing partnerships with the global behemoths of Vodafone, Telefonica and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telecom). This is excellent news. It means that shortly, if you’re an App World user, you’ll be able to pay for your [...]

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Visual voicemail: A super example of Britain’s lazy, inept, innovation-less mobile operators

By Ewan on January 13, 2011 in Operators, Opinion, Services

I have an iPhone on each of the following UK networks: – o2- Orange- Three- Vodafone Only one of those networks, o2, has actually installed the gubbings on their network to enable Apple’s visual voicemail service. The rest of the operators couldn’t be bothered. I mean that, quite literally. Voicemail — as I highlighted in [...]

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Text-to-donate still a huge rip off [updated]

By Ewan on December 13, 2010 in News, Operators

You’d have thought that as we are almost entering the year 2011, the UK mobile industry would have collectively got it’s act together regarding text donations. Alas no. This ad is currently running on Southwest Trains and is aiming to raise money for ‘Our Heroes’ — that is, the British Forces Foundation serving wounded troops. [...]

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