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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

According to elPeriodico.com, a spanish newspaper, Cesar Alierta, Telefonica’s President, will announce during Mobile World Congress an exclusive agreement with Apple in order to distribute the new release of the iPhone with 3G in Spain (Movistar) and Italy (Telecom Italy).

Besides, elPeriodico.com informs that this new 3G release will be distributed at the same time in USA where AT&T is offering UMTS from now on.

Everybody expects this new announcement as great news that will include the first Steve Jobs visit to Spain the same day that Apple and Telefonica will star the distribution (maybe in July).

Via ElPeriodico.com

Since past November, rumours of Apple’s talks with China Mobile are on the table. The possibility of such an agreement helped Apple to rise its share price.

Don’t forget that China Mobile is the operator with a bigger amount of subscribers around the world. Just ove 350 millions. More than USA population!!!

In the last days, some rumours point that Apple and China Mobile have called off this negotiations about iPhone.

More recently, this week at CES, in the post-keynote interview, Steve Jobs stated that it had never been any kind of talks with any major player on China, though Apple would like to bring the iPhone to the Far East.

For sure, we will have more news (or rumours, at least) on this topic sooner than later.

Via YahooNews

If you are Vodafone client and Windows Mobile is your favorite mobile platform, the picture above is going to be your new main guide for this new year.

Boy Genius has just released the supposed Vodafone Windows Mobile roadmap for 2008. 7 new awesome devices that will be released from 2008 Q2. Discover all of them after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to Telmex press release, this company will be divided in two companies; one of them for the Mexico business and the other one for Latin America.

While “Telmex” will continue with Mexico business, “International Telmex” will go on with the rest of the business. It’s planned that the reorganization “take effects and the International Telmex shares will be gave to shareholder’s Telmex”, during 2008.

The Slim sign hopes International Telmex to be quoted of Mexico and United States. Nowadays, Telmex is present in Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Perú.

Via Noticiasdot

It’s no secret that Bankinter is one of the most innovative banks. Its next step leads the bank to the mobile market as long as Bankinter will create its own virtual mobile network operator. Through the agreement signed between KPN and Bankinter, the bank will start offering mobile services starting next February. KPN will provide the network (through another agreement signed with Orange), OTA Services and Software.

Bankinter has announced that the SIM cards provided with the service will contain banking software preloaded. This is a great advance to their customers, as long as the SIM capacity will be big enough (256 kb) to store digital certificates. The SIM cards will also provide cryptographic capabilities.

Great news to mobile banking users. SIM cards have been a walled garden for mobile operators, not allowing application deploying or innovation in this field. Bankinter is proving that SIM card is a perfect vehicle for digital signature, banking and other operations where security is a big constraint.

Don’t miss this new carrier because, knowing beforehand other innovations created by Bankinter, it will be a fresh breeze to virtual mobile network operators market.

Link Bankinter Press Note

Motorola boss Ed Zander has been ousted as CEO by the firm’s board of directors. Greg Brown, the firm’s current president and chief operating officer, will held the position after 1 January. Anyway, Zander will continue in Motorola board until May and as strategic advisor to the CEO until January 2009.

A spokesman of the board said that the decision to drop Zander and elect Brown as CEO was the “culmination of a thoughtful and disciplined process of succession planning”.

Ed Zander becomes Motorola’s CEO in 2004, months before Motorola RAZR success, tough this success gives him little credit because the product was developed long before.

Since then, Motorola market share has not stopped falling and has cut around 7,500 jobs worldwide since January 2007, trying to push the company back into profitability.

Link mocoNews

European Telecomunnications ministers have given today their support to the innitiative of opening the GSM spectrum to technologies like third generation data access mobiles (3G). Nowadays, this spectrum is only available to regular GSM mobile phones.

Last July, the European Commission proposed the free access to the 900 MHz frequency. They claimed that it would make things easier to the phone operators, from the 27 european countries, when offering thier wireless services.

Moreover, the GSM Association said that a 3G - 900 MHZ network would mean an increase of about 40% of the 2100 MHz bandwidth. This improvement would be achieved without performing any new investiment.

After its complete approval, the proposal has to be approved by the European Parliament as well.

Via  Reuters.

Verizon announced yesterdey their plans to start 4G trials next year. To do so, they will team up with Vodafone (Vodafone and Verizon co-owns Verizon Wireless). The chosen technology will be LTE (Long Term Evolution) eventually, standard developed by 3GPP.

Trial suppliers include Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia-Siemens, and Nortel.

Verizon Wireless is the first company to launch high-speed wireless broadband service in the United States using CDMA Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) technology. Its data innovation and leadership have been marked by the introduction of new multimedia handsets and innovative applications such as V CAST Music, V CAST Video, VZ Navigator^SM, V CAST games, e-mail, Internet access, and picture and video messaging on a variety of devices, including handsets, PDAs and laptops.

Link Verizon Press Note