Another prepaid lawsuit settled. This time, it was lawsuit of Locus Telecommunications, Inc. The company announced that they had agreed to a settlement in a national class action settlement suit brought against them in New Jersey Court. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that Locus distributed or sold prepaid and rechargeable calling cards without fully disclosing the applicable rates and charges associated with those cards. While Locus did not admit to any wrong doings, they did agree to settle this claim.

Locus agreed to provide $3,663,520 of replacement pins to eligible consumers in the form of a replacement pin with a value of $0.50 each ($0.10 a minute to US and $0.25 a minute to certain international destinations). For each $5 card purchased, consumers are entitled to 1 $0.50 pin. The kicker here is that the customer must have their original pin in order to claim more than 1 replacement pin. Customers wishing to receive the replacement pin(s), must make a request within 6 months from the date of the settlement and can do so by visiting their web site.

In addition to the replacement pins, Locus agreed to donate $300,000 to charity and agreed to use another $200,000 in product discounts in the upcoming months. IDT had a similar suit which they settled in much the same way a few years back.

A week before this settlement, Locus Telecommunications announced that it has signed a deal with Best Buy to sell it's prepaid wireless Universal SIMcards and recharge cards, branded O2 Wireless, at all Best Buy locations throughout the USA.

"With this new O2 Wireless service, cost-conscience consumers can ditch their expensive cell phone contracts and purchase as much or as little airtime they want."

The SIM cards work with any unlocked GSM phone and is ideal for business traveler and students who do not need the heavy cost of monthly plans and want something for which they only have to pay for what they use! O2Wireless also has a very significant coverage area supporting all major metro areas and much of the East Coast and West Coast (they do not have much coverage in the Midwest.

This deal is sure to be huge for Locus as it will give their MVNO business a huge amount of eyeballs which is relatively hard in todays comepetitve landscape.

Good news for iPhone and Phone Cards users, you can use your calling cards much easier with your iPhone. This new application by iPhone can be downloaded at iTunes for a small fee, and you can enter your calling cards info (access number, pin, etc) on the application and it's ready to use.

You can store more than 1 phone cards (to call to different countries) and it also supports pin-less calling cards. Using your phone cards on iPhone is as easy as 1-2-3. To read more information about this new application, read the article here: http://www.phonecardstop.com/easy_calling_card_use_with_iphone.html

Phone Card business has been around for a while, and its reputation has not been clean at all. Ontario Phone Cards has disclosed information on deceptive marketing practices in the phone card industry in response to the Competition Bureau’s request. The Canadian Federal Competition Bureau had announced the receipt of numerous complaints regarding hidden fees, higher rates, and fewer minutes than advertised. The Bureau has implemented a new initiative to ensure proper disclosure for consumers with regard to any terms and conditions affecting the value and use of prepaid long distance calling cards.

Ontario Phone Cards disclosed a number of the deceptive methods commonly used within the industry to attract and often mislead consumers. There are few phone cards in the market that provide honest minute-by-minute billing. Most phone cards operating in Canada and the United States deduct undisclosed hidden fees from the balance on the card and do not provide all posted minutes.

One of the most commonly used deceptive marketing practice is the release of new phone cards with attractive and sometimes unbeatable rates. There are cases where posted rates are lower than that offered by wholesale carriers. Once the new calling card achieves popularity, unspecified hidden charges are gradually increased, which significantly decreases actual time available for consumers.

Source: http://www.phonecardstop.com/Ontario+Phone+Cards+Reveals+Phone+Card+Industry+Practices.html

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