Beginning October 15th, Virgin Mobile will lower rates to many South and Central Amercia locations. This move is meant to help secure a bigger portion of the Latin America calling market and will no doubt take away some business from the phone card providers who have traditionaly dominated this market segment. Some of Virgin Mobile's new rates are unheard of in the mobile phone business:

• Mexico - As Low as $0.02 per minute
• Brazil - As Low as $0.02 per minute
• Guatemala - As Low as $0.10 per minute
• El Salvador - As Low as $0.10 per minute
• Argentina - As Low as $0.05 per minute
• Dominican Republic - As Low as $0.05 per minute

To see a full list of rates go to their web page: virginmobileusa.com/rates/internationalCalling.do

While these rates may not be as low as some of the calling cards on the market, the convenience of direct dial from your mobile phone and the lack of the dozens of fees, might make this very attractive to many Central and South Americans living in the US. This offers might not last forever, but take this opportunity to call your relatives in Central and South America, especially with holidays coming.

AT&T has signed deals with retail giants, Circuit City and Wal-Mart, to make its U-verse home television service available to consumers buying new TV sets.

U-verse kiosks will be set up at some 600 Wal-Mart and Circuit City stores in 13 states, posing new competition for established cable providers, which currently dominate America’s pay-TV market. Despite the recent bankcruptcy declaration of Circuit City, it will continue to provide its service and host AT&T's U-Verse.

Approximately 550,000 households had subscribed to U-verse TV as of July 1, and AT&T hopes to increase this customer base to 1-million by the end of 2008.

For more information, visit: www.teleclick.ca/2008/10/wal-mart-and-circuit-city-to-offer-atts-u-verse-tv-service

During current hardtime, everyone, including coorporations,  is looking for ways to stretch the corporate budget and reduce costs. VoiceCon will analyze the new framework for enterprise communications, and show you how to have a bottom-line impact on how your company does business. As VoiceCon put it, we are at a critical inflection point, as the migration from standalone TDM voice networks to IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications continues, and enterprise IT/telecom executives face pressure to leverage all of this in order to strengthen the business. To register, visit www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/

Lost car keys may become a problem of the past with the launch of a new mobile phone in Japan which can unlock car doors and ignite the engine without the need for a key.

The new mobile phone, developed by Sharp Corp, is fitted with technology that allows users to enter and start the engine of a car without using conventional keys.

advertisementCars are fitted with a system known as Intelligent Key technology that is able to recognise when the owner is in the vicinity before automatically opening the doors.

The recognition technology in the car system was initially developed by Nissan Motor Co, which launched smart keys for opening car doors six years ago and has since shipped around one million cars in Japan.

However, this is the first time that the keyless technology has been built into mobile phone devices, according to the two companies, who will be unveiling it at a conference in Tokyo next week.

The recognition service in mobile phones will be widely available in Japan following a collaboration with NTT DoCoMo Inc, the countrys largest mobile operator, from as early as March next year.

Japan, home to the largest mobile phone market in the world, has long been a pioneer in creating cutting edge mobile phone technology.

Paying by credit card, reading a novel, using the subway, watching digital television and using GPS are among a raft of features that are commonly found on Japanese mobile phones.

Testimony to Japans status as a leader in cutting edge phone technology were recent reports that, unlike most other countries around the world, the new Apple iPhone was not selling as well as anticipated.

The apparent lack of enthusiasm for the device in Japan was attributed to the fact that it does not contain many of the most popular features found on Japanese phones, such as digital television and clip art for emails.

 

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09/26/dlmobile126.xml

For those of you who have been drooling over iPhone's sleek touchscreen, but prefer BlackBerry's technology,you may rejoice for BlackBerry is unveiling the Storm, the first-ever touchscreen BlackBerry.

It's scheduled to be distributed excusively through Verizon Wireless (for US) and Vodafone (for Europe) this fall. Measuring 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.55 inches and weighing in at about 5.5 ounces, BlackBerry Storm's 480 by 360-pixel, 3.25-inch glass display, will support multitouch (2 finger) just like iPhone. When it comes to entering text, holding the Storm in a landscape view will give you a full QWERTY touch keypad, while in portrait mode you'll get a SureType keypad (or the same layout as on a BlackBerry Pearl).

What's more, the phone will Office editing support for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, 3.2 MP camera, 1 GB internal storage, and of course full-on BlackBerry e-mail support. 

It's an iPhone, but it's a BlackBerry!

With calling card market being down for the past few months, here's a more positive article that can help phone cards distributor and users rest easy. Luis Aria, CEO of Blackstone Calling Card Inc., is featured by SmartBusiness journals this month. In the article, you can read how Luis Arias keeps Blackstone Calling Card consistently growing by getting everyone to work together. The article basically profiles how Arias runs his business and seems to point to how he tries to keep involved and paints a picture of Blackstone being a great place to work and a business with it's eye on the bottom line. Even though Luis Arias doesn’t spend a lot of time using his own products at work, he has a lot of faith in prepaid telecommunications products put out by his company and its employees.

I think it's a really great story, and it shows how Blackstone Calling Card Inc. is consistent with their product quality.

For full article, visit SmartBusiness.com

There were a total of 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide by the end of last year, more than three times as many landline connections, according to data collected by Infonetics Research.

The number of wireless users jumped 31% in 2007, mostly due to strong subscriber growth in the heavily populated “BRIC countries” (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). The global landline telephone market declined 5% in the same period.

“Subscribers in Brazil, Russia, and later this year China, are migrating to 3G, which in turn will lead to a 2G and 2.5G to 3G subscriber migration process in 2008. However, current GSM deployment patterns remain unabated, with double-digit GSM subscriber growth rates being common in BRIC countries,” commented Infonetics principal analyst, Stéphane Téral.

If current trends continue, there will be 5.2 billion cell phone subscriptions worldwide by 2011. 3G mobile broadband services will account for a growing proportion of wireless revenue, meanwhile, growing at a compound annual rate of 104% through 2011, by which time there will be one mobile broadband subscriber for every four wireline broadband users.

Source:www.teleclick.ca/2008/08/brazil-russia-india-and-china-fuel-growth-of-global-wireless-industry

Two of Canada’s leading cell phone carriers, Bell and Telus, will soon charge their customers for incoming text messages, beginning on August 8 and August 24, respectively.

The companies, which already charge $0.15 for each SMS message sent, plan to bill customers an additional $0.15 for each message received, theoretically doubling revenue from SMS services.

SMS is already a cash cow for Canada’s mobile operators, which process more than 45.4 million messages per day, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. But carriers claim that it’s the phenomenal growth of text messaging which is forcing them to charge for incoming messages.

“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” explained Telus Mobility spokesman, AJ Gratton. “This volume places tremendous demands on our network and we can’t afford to provide this service for free anymore.”

But despite carriers’ attempts to bamboozle customers using big numbers, their assertions don’t make economic sense. The “economies of scale” theory suggests that the cost of transmitting an SMS message should decline as the overall number of messages increases.

The excuse of “tremendous demands” on Bell and Telus networks is utterly frivolous. In reality, this price increase is a cash grab, plain and simple.

Customers who send a message are making a choice to pay $0.15 a pop. If carriers genuinely couldn’t afford to provide the service at that price, they could always increase the cost to senders, which would in turn reduce demand for an unreasonably expensive service.

By charging customers for incoming messages, however, the cell phone providers are attempting to take choice out of the equation, charging twice as much for each text message, while preventing a reduction in overall demand.

But Bell and Telus are taking a reckless competitive risk on this one. Without the option to reject or summarily delete messages, many customers will be forced to pay for “spam,” harassment, and other unwanted SMS communications. This will undoubtedly cause many frustrated users to flee to Rogers Wireless, which has clearly indicated that it has no plans to charge for incoming messages.

Who knows; I wouldn’t be surprised to see some Bell and Telus customers take legal action to get out of their current contracts.

One thing is certain: with new competition looming on the horizon, Telus and Bell are making a stupid decision that could easily haunt them for years to come.

Source:
www.teleclick.ca/2008/07/bell-telus-text-messaging-cash-grab-makes-no-economic-sense

Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), a Russian mobile operator, has teamed up with Microsoft and Fujitsu Siemens Computers to launch the first integrated 3G notebook service in the country. The 3G-enabled Fujitsu Siemens notebook will run on the Microsoft Vista OS, with an embedded SIM card and a data tariff plan from MTS. The notebook features a 3G modem, compatible both with the HSDPA mobile communications technology with data speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps and the GPRS/EDGE data networks. The product is scheduled for commercial availability starting early August. Customers who purchase the notebook in August will receive 100Mb data packages free of charge on a monthly basis for the following four months. The notebook will initially be sold in Moscow, after which its availability will be extended to St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg and Sochi. The jointly developed product is part of MTS' mobile broadband strategy, which includes the development of portable devices with preinstalled software, as well as imbedded services for mobile broadband access via the MTS network.

Source:
www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=627195

According to The Beijing Times, China Telecom Corp Ltd is expected to set up a company to procure CDMA handsets. The report said the new company will be responsible for customizing and purchasing CDMA handsets. China Telecom, formerly an all-fixed line company, has taken over China Unicom's CDMA business.

For further inquiry, contact: susan.wang@Xfn.com

Source: www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/07/02/afx5179747.html