| Zenith Consulting Australian firm focused on providing advice to telecommunications companies. http://www.zenithconsulting.com.au |
| Zyzox In the business of brokering, selling, and marketing of communication products and service. Voice, Data, Video. http://www.zyzox.com |
Apple announces social networking service which will display the music interests of friends via iTunes, iPhones and iPod Touch
Having cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping.
Ping will be integrated into Apple's latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or "Pingers", to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they're buying and what concerts they're attending.
Steve Jobs, Apple's chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work.
"Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up," he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter.
The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.
The feature is believed to have been based on the technology Apple acquired with the purchase of the former online music store Lala.com last year.
The iTunes logo will no longer feature a CD – mirroring the change in the program's focus.
Jobs unveiled a range of other upgrades to its products and services, including a new version of Apple TV – which will allow users to stream television programmes and films.
The company is also releasing a revamped range of iPods, including an iPod touch with front- and rear-facing camera, Jobs told an assembled crowd of journalists, bloggers and analysts in California.
Until now the Apple TV device was "never a huge hit", admitted Jobs.
The box originally allowed users to buy films and television programmes, but the latest version, which is smaller and, at $99, much cheaper than its $229 predecessor, will only allow the renting, rather than purchasing, of content.
Users will pay $4.99 for high-definition films on the day they come out on DVD, while the rent of high-definition TV shows will be $0.99, Apple announced.
"We've sold a lot of them, but it's never been a huge hit," Jobs said of Apple TV. The new version will be available within a month.
Jobs also introduced a new design across the range of iPods, including the latest Nano, featuring a rotatable screen and a new Shuffle which sees the return of buttons – its predecessor was voice activated.
The new iPod Touch will have front- and rear-facing cameras, the latter of which will be able to record HD video content, Jobs added.
Government says it hopes junk will be sunk by rules on new numbers, but critics fear more monitoring of citizens
China began requiring identification from anyone buying a new mobile phone number today in what it says is a bid to stamp out junk messages.
But critics say the move gives the government a new tool for monitoring its citizens.
The rules apply to everyone, including foreigners visiting the country for a short stay, the China Daily newspaper reported.
The paper said the regulation was "the latest campaign by the government to curb the global scourge of spam, pornographic messages and fraud on cellular phones".
Low-cost mobile phone sim cards are readily available in China, at convenience stores, newspaper stands and airport kiosks.
Until now, they could be bought anonymously with cash and used straight away, as in the UK. But such a system makes it difficult to track down spammers.
The China Daily said Chinese mobile users receive an average of 43 text messages a week, 12 of which are spam.
The ID requirement is raising new privacy concerns and is likely to upset some customers unwilling to give out personal information for fear it will be resold, said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China, a technology market research firm.
Wang Songlian, research co-ordinator with the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said the requirement fits a pattern of tightening government control over new communication technologies.
China censors internet content it deems politically sensitive and blocks many websites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Following ethnic riots in western China's Xinjiang, international phone and internet links to the region were suspended for months.
The new regulation will probably not affect Chinese dissidents, many of whom already have their phones closely monitored.
But it could help police track down ordinary people who take part in spontaneous protests, Wang said.
China has seen a growing number of protests sparked by labour disagreements, anger over pollution and other issues.
"I think the government has an eye on Iran where protests were fuelled by text messages and Twitter and they are doing this for social stability reasons," Wang said.
China has more than 800m mobile phone numbers already in use. The Global Times newspaper reported today that 320m of those were bought without real-name registration. The numbers will have to be reregistered by 2013 or could be suspended, the newspaper said.
China Unicom, one of the country's three major state-owned phone carriers, says on its website that the ministry of industry and information technology requires real-name registration for all new phone numbers starting today.
A company official said China Unicom would strictly implement the new rule.
"It will help reduce spam and fraudulent text messages, and also help us improve service to customers," Wen Baoqiu said.
China Mobile – the world's biggest phone carrier in terms of numbers of subscribers – would also comply with the directive, said a spokesman.
The ministry of industry and information technology did not respond to questions about the new rules.
At a Beijing newspaper stand where sim cards are sold, a 24-year-old officer worker said she supported the move.
"I hope it will help crack down on spam," Wu Xi said. "It won't be a problem if I have to show my ID."
Chen Haimin, the owner of a Beijing convenience store, said he was still selling cards without personal information and he was doubtful that the new scheme would tackle junk mail. "How do you know if people are even showing their real ID?" he said. "People who want to send spam can always come up with ideas to get around the regulations. Besides, it's not hard to get a fake ID."
With three-quarters of UK homes and business using broadband, the market is seen to be maturing
The drive to create Broadband Britain has hit another milestone, as BT signed up the 15 millionth user to its high-speed network last week.
Ten years after broadband was first launched in the UK, it has now been taken up by around three-quarters of the UK's homes and small businesses. With Virgin Media serving another 4.2 million customers over its cable network, Britain boasts a higher take-up rate than other developed nations such as Germany and the US.
"Broadband Britain has been a success story with widespread availability, low prices and high take-up," Olivia Garfield, BT strategy director, said.
Virgin's predecessors, NTL and Telewest, offered the first broadband services in Britain in early 2000. BT itself only got serious about the technology in 2002, when former chief executive Ben Verwaayen slashed prices and speeded up the process of installing broadband equipment in its local telephone exchanges.
BT said it has been signing up around 5,000 new customers a day since 2002. That rate has slowed in the last couple of years, despite competition between rival operators, in a sign that the market is maturing. "There has been a price war in the fixed broadband market in the last two years, with the average price of a connection falling," Charlie Davies, analyst at Ovum, said.
"The speed of broadband penetration is starting to slow, and some markets are nearing saturation," he added. There are around 22m homes in the UK, and some 4m small businesses, so there should be plenty of potential customers for broadband providers to target. Data released last week showed 9 million people have never used the internet.
"Usage is closely linked with a number of socio-economic and demographic indicators, with those less educated and on lower incomes less likely to access the web," said Mark Williams from the Office for National Statistics. Worryingly for the industry, the reason given for not going online is typically a lack of interest.
BT's retail arm has slightly more than 5 million broadband customers. Nearly two-thirds of the 15 million customers on its network are choosing a rival internet service provider, such as TalkTalk or Sky, which use BT's infrastructure.
The UK lags behind other nations when it comes to broadband speeds. BT's largely copper-based network means that customers suffer lower speeds, depending on the distance they live from their exchange.
BT said its planned rollout of a fibre-optic broadband network over the next 18 months would deliver much faster speeds, although one-in-three homes will miss out.
"BT is now investing a further £2.5bn to roll out fibre broadband to two-thirds of the UK. This will help the UK climb the league tables for speeds, one of the few areas in which we don't lead the world," Garfield said.
Communications regulator Ofcom reported this month that retail revenues from internet and broadband services has been effectively flat since 2006, despite the rise in broadband users. Services such as TV-on-demand or faster services could drive revenues higher in the future, although Davies predicted that competitive pressures may keep bills down.
Many children get their first mobile phone on starting secondary school in September. We hunt down the best first deals for an 11-year-old
When to let your child have their first mobile phone is a contentious issue. But the chances are you'll join the majority of parents and get them one when they start secondary school at 11.
At this age many children start travelling to and from school alone and parents like the reassurance of knowing they can call home.
So with a bewildering plethora of handset and tariff options, where do you start to find the best deal?
Anthony Ball, director of mobile comparison website Onecompare.com says: "You can get a mobile contract for your child, but pay-as-you-go is probably the best move because of the level of control it gives parents. If your child uses the phone too much, the credit simply runs out until you decide to top it up, but they can still receive your texts and calls free."
There's also little point buying an expensive, flashy phone that could serve as a "mugging magnet".
Many parents will have an old phone they can pass on to their child or, if not, they can pick up a basic model for under £20 and put in a free sim card now available from most major networks, which often offer bundles of texts, call time and, if want, internet access typically starting with a £10 top-up per month. But which one?
"The difficulty of getting the first deal for an 11-year-old is that you have little idea of how, and how much, they are going to use their phone," Ball says. "But as these sims are free and don't tie you in to a long contract, you can try one and, if that doesn't suit, simply switch to another."
Earlier this month Tesco Mobile targeted young users with its launch of, arguably, the UK's cheapest sim-only monthly tariff which provides unlimited texts and 100 minutes of call time for £6 a month.
But it's not available instore – it's only sold online and over the phone, and is based on a one-month sim-only rolling contract paid by direct debit which means that customers can cancel and switch to other providers should they choose after 30 days.
It should particularly suit text-addicted youngsters. Tesco's research shows that 16- to 24-year-olds are the most prolific texters and, on a personal note, I've found that a sim, offering unlimited texts, is definitely the best money-saving mobile option for my two aged 12 and 16.
If, however, your child is likely to go over the 100-minute call-time allowance excess calls are charged at 20p per minute and the bill is added on to your £6 monthly direct debit, so the cost could quickly add up. As a safety measure, Tesco puts a £30 cap on the monthly amount you can run up on top of the £6 subscription.
If that limit is reached, the phone is barred for outgoing calls (not, importantly, from incoming calls) until the paying customer – the parent in our scenario – calls Tesco Mobile to verify the amount of credit they are willing to pay.
But this does highlight the difference between a standard pay-as-you-go deal, where your child cannot run up a bill, and a monthly contract, where they can.
Below are a selection of the pay-as-you-go free sim deals on offer for a £10 monthly top-up from major networks which may suit an 11-year-old's usage.
The search company is aiming to undercut international call rates and set up phone boxes in universities and airports for its call product
Google has added free voice calls over the internet to its free email service Gmail in the US - although some UK users have found they can also use the service to make calls to the US for free.
The service, unveiled on Wednesday night, will let users make free calls at least to the end of this year within the US and Canada. That presently undercuts Skype, which charges per minute for calls to landline numbers. It also threatens existing VOIP providers, and the recently introduced MagicTalk service from VocalTec.
But in using internet technology to carry the phone calls, Google is also positioning itself as a dangerous rival to US long-distance carriers, and telecoms companies carrying international voice traffic, which have seen their businesses being eaten into by calls carried over the internet. Many call centres, for instance, use voice-over-internet technology so that international calls can be handled more cheaply than with high-quality voice lines.
While computer-to-computer calling isn't new, computer-to-phone services have been much rarer, with Skype - which in August said it has 8.1m paying customers - being the only one that has managed to crack it convincingly. Vonage, a US company, offers a service in which customers have standard phones but make calls through VOIP - though they still need a landline for the basic telephone connection.
Google hopes to make money from the service by charging for international calls - though those will vary widely, even within the same country. It has a chart of rates. People also will be able to receive calls on their PC if they obtain a free phone number from Google, or already have one through its Google Voice service.
The new arrival poses a threat not just to telecoms companies: Skype is planning a $100m flotation, but is burdened with debt and is also making significant capital investment. However, it dwarfs Google Voice for reach, having a total of 560m users, up 36% from last year, though the number of paying customers only rose 23% in the same time. In its SEC filing it noted that there could be competition from companies like Apple and BSkyB - and Google.
But Skype does make an operating profit, with income of $13m on revenues of $406m in the first half of this year.
So far Google Voice - which was until about two months ago an invitation-only service as the company absorbed its acquisition of GrandCentral, the VOIP provider that underlies this function - has more than 1.4m assigned phone numbers. Those can then be used as the destination point for calls made to a home, office or mobile phone - like the 0700 "follow me" numbers used in the UK.
Google is also going to promote the service by setting up red phone booths in US universities and airports, letting them make free calls inside North America, and cheaper ones outside it.
The company also wants to make it possible to transfer existing home or mobile numbers to Google Voice to broaden its appeal.
At present only users of the Gmail system inside the US are being offered the service. Business, military and government users of Google's mail and calendar services are not yet being offered the service, but it may be broadened to them: "we're working on making this available more broadly - stay tuned!" said Nick Foster, a Google Voice software engineer, in a blog post on Wednesday.
The move will speed up access for people using the site via iPhones or Android
Mobile users in the UK, Europe and Middle East can now access an HTML5 version of Google's YouTube video site, speeding up access for those accessing it via iPhones, Android or other mobile devices with browsers able to render HTML5 video content.
The launch comes as mobile use of the web is growing rapidly: Google says that YouTube's mobile site, m.youtube.com, gets more than 100m video playbacks a day – roughly the number of daily views youtube.com was getting when being acquired by Google in 2006 – and every minute an hour of video is uploaded to the site from a mobile device. Mobile video playback also grew by 160% in 2009 on the previous year, along with an increase in adoption of devices able to stream video.
The US version of the HTML5 site for mobiles was launched last month.
Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK consumes the most YouTube videos on mobile devices, followed by France, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.
The original mobile version of YouTube launched in 2007, but relied on versions of Adobe's Flash for playback – which was too taxing for most devices. Since then, the development of the HTML5 web standard, and of mobile browsers – notably WebKit, used by Apple in the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and by Google in Android – able to play back embedded video content using the H.264 codec, rather than Flash's usual Sorensen or VP6 codecs, has meant that HTML5 video use has become feasible.
Google says the decision has been driven by the dramatic growth in mobile access to YouTube, which is more than doubling every year.
Several short-form video sites are building players in HTML5: Vimeo brought out a hybrid HTML5 version of its player earlier this month, designed for better mobile playback. But when US-only TV and movie streaming site Hulu unveiled a major revamp of its display earlier this year, it did so using Adobe Flash, saying HTML5 "doesn't meet our customers' needs".
The use of HTML5 does not mean that Flash is shut out of YouTube's mobile version: Adobe's product can encode video in H.264 as well. But the growing use of desktop browsers such as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, which can render H.264 video – and with the forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 also offering it – poses a long-term question about Flash's continued widespread use.
Brightcove, the video hosting service for many media organisations, began offering an HTML5 version of its site in March this year. The New York Times and Time Inc were among the first media outlets to integrate it – allowing playback on Apple's popular mobile devices, which do not use Flash.
Closer to home, Erik Huggers, director of BBC future media & technology, recently defended the corporation from accusations that its widespread use of Flash – on the iPlayer, in particular – betrayed a commitment to open standards.
"Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience," Huggers said, adding: "The fact is that there's still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5's ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback."
Though the BBC does deliver H.264-encoded video to Apple mobile devices, it does not do that for Android devices, citing concerns about copying of content via the Android platform, and instead serves Flash-based video to them.
However YouTube has said that HTML5 is still some way from becoming the new standard for streaming long-form video content, such as BBC iPlayer content. "While HTML5's video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don't support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs," said John Hardin, software engineer at YouTube, in a blogpost published in June. "Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube's video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it."
Microsoft has put its eggs in the HTML5 basket with next year's release of its internet Explorer 9 browser. Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's senior director of internet Explorer, said in May this year: "We're all in on HTML5. We've been co-chairing the HTML5 working group, and we're actually leading the HTML5 testing group."
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