SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

One of the most annoying things mobile operators do is calling their data plans “flat rates”.  Flat?? When I subscribe a data rate the last thing I want is having to control how much information I have downloaded. I think calling “flat rate” to a data plan that limits the amount of information you can download is just misleading customers.

Movistar has presented the first REAL Flat Data Plan in Spain. It’s not perfect, but the offer is clear for customers, without hidden information I’d like to say.  Here are the conditions:

• Option “Internet en el Movil”. 10 € and 100 Mb included at 1Mbps / 384Kbps. When you excess this amount, the rest of the information is “NOT CHARGED” BUT THE DOWNLOAD SPEED IS REDUCED TO 68 Kbps.
• Option “Internet en el Movil Plus” (What a name!!! ;P). 15 euros and 200 Mb included at 3Mbps / 1,4Mbps. The excess is not charged and the download speed is reduced to 128 kbps.

As I said before, this is far from being perfect, but comparing it with the rates offered by other mobile operators, THIS IS THE BEST OPTION.

I hope that mobile customers finally lose the fear of mobile internet access. Let’s see how the rest of mobile operators respond to these offers.

Link Movistar Tariffs

Nokia Siemens Networks and Mobilkom Austria has succesfully tested the new I-HSPA (Internet High Speed Packet Access) which offers 10.1Mbps speeds on data calls, which is great enough till we wait to 2010 for the so-called LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology with 173Mbps (Wow!) as peak rate one kilometer away.

If you want to know more regarding I-HSPA, visit this brochure.

Via EngadgetMobile
Link EngadgetMobile lte tag, The broadband world is flat

Thanks to Mobile Phone Development blog, a really interesting blog for mobile developers, we’ve get noticed of this new useful feature published by Opera friends.

They have called it ‘Opera Mini Connection Help’, and it’s a kind of wizard for configuring the Internet connection of your cellphone. The site includes APN information of many carriers around the world and links to some manufacturers wizards. Only Nokia and SonyEricsson, by now.

If they manage to keep the information updated it will be a really useful helper for a task that is sometimes cumbersome, specially for final users.

Via MobilePhoneDevelopment
Link OperaMiniConnectionHelp

A couple of months ago, Acer announced the unanimously approved acquisition of Taiwan-based E-Ten, the manufacturer of Glofiish line of smartphone and Pocket PC.

Now, Acer’s president, Gianfranco Lanci, states that they’re aiming to launch their first smartphone “near the end of this year of early next year”. In addition, we know it’ll “be Microsoft-based”.

By now, they are in conversations with some carriers in order to sell the handsets. Acer expects smartphone’s sales could reach 10% of the firm’s income.

Welcome to a new actor on mobile scene!

Via EngadgetMobile

Past April 17, Orange started tests of their new Read&Go device, involving 150 users that will have free access to the service for 2 months.

Read&Go service follows the same scheme of Amazon’s Kindle. It makes use of e-paper for a more comfortable reading of books and newspapers and wireless technologies for providing contents. In this case, Orange seems to bet on adding WiFi support to 3G technologies - opposing Amazon support of only Sprint’s EVDO network.

Five mainstream French daily newspapers have team up with Orange for provinding contents: Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L’Equipe, Télérama… Of course, information will be houly updated.

Users will also initially get 30 preloaded books, stored on the reader’s 1GB of internal memory.

We have no data about commercial plans for Read&Go, but I think it’s time for such a device/service to hit European market.

Via blogWimax
Link Boursier.com

While not many of us owns a HSDPA cellphone yet… Japanese carrier NTTDoCoMo is testing next generation networks: Super 3G.

Super 3G, also called 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) , is an evolution of UMTS (3G) technology, standardized by 3GPP. Its most impressive feature is the 256Mbps data transfer rate. Yes, 256Mbps. Of course, we talked about downlink. Uplink does not reach these numbers, but we can afford it.

Test are under way since past summer, tough LTE has been not normalized yet by 3GPP (tough standard is about to come).

With both feet on the ground, it will take a long road until we can see this in Europe. First, we should pay off 3G and HSDPA.

Anyway, new wireless technologies allowing higher data rates on way to reality, are always good news. Don’t forget troubles suffered to make UMTS come true, some years ago.

Via Gizmologia

T-Mobile was the first mobile operator to sign an agreement with a search engine (Google)  in order to make it their default search engine.

Now, T-Mobile has changed its mind and has dropped Google in favor of Yahoo, an action enclosed in in the Google - Yahoo - Microsoft war for the mobile website search and navigation.

The terms of the agreement specify that the One Search service will be available in 11 European countries in March. By then the users will have the Yahoo OneSearch website set as default along with the Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance services.

Yet the this is not a grown market, Yahoo is positioning itself as the leader company, with 29 mobile operators already as OneSearch costumers.

Now, the point is what kind or reaction is Google going to trigger in order to regain the leadership of the market?  (If any)

Pieter Knook and Robbie Bach did last week a conference call in MWC Microsoft’s Stand. They announced the acquisition of Brand by Microsoft and Windows Mobile grow predictions for next year. Two days after, Vodafone announced the signing of Pieter Knook for the new Internet Services division of the British company.

I’m not surprised that an executive leaves a company to join another. It happens all the time. It’s even a healthy practice in modern companies. What’s significant for me is the change in Vodafone strategy in terms of executive signing. Most Vodafone managers come from the old only-voice based company. Currently, the market has change drastically, and carriers demand people coming from internet companies and software companies. Summarizing, people with a strong service orientation.

Mobile Internet is the next battlefield, and carriers should be ready for it. Otherwise, they will be left behind. And that means death.

Via Canal PDA

This is the kind of news all people hates. While even European Comission complains about high costs of MMS and SMS in Europe, Movistar will increase MMS prices in Spain. Moreover, Movistar announces changes in their ‘e-mocion’ service pricing, too.

MMS cost was between 28 cents and 55 cents up to now. From now on, MMS will worth 1 €. An incredible raise!!!

I think this is not the best way for encouraging the use of MMS and internet services.
These new tariffs will take place in March 1st.

Anyway, this might be just an strategic movement related to iPhone’s future offers…

Via ElMundo

Yoigo, backed by TeliaSonera, is the fourth carrier in Spanish market. They launched one year ago. Their motto is something like “truly truth” when it comes to communication, specially with their clients.

They claim to have the clearest and cheapest price plans in the market. In order to prove it and as part of an agressive offer, they included free calls between Yoigo subscriber without any kind of limitation.

Three months after this unprecedented offer, Yoigo changes the rules in a completely unilateral decision. From now on, the free calls are limited to those with a duration less than 1 hour.

Yoigo’s sources have informed that this decision was not been pre-planned and is a consecuence of abusive use by a little percentage of users.

For sure, 99% of calls do not take more than one hour, so price plans are not substantially changed. But, this is not the best way to prove their own motto. In fact, this issue has made a noticeable impact in the Spanish blogosphere.

Via error500