|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Your advert here!!! Our Guides Technical Editors:
Last modified: | Mobile Insight Vol: 8 Issue 303 February 6th 2006Vodafone may consider major outsourcingStill stung by shareholder criticism of its performance, Vodafone is considering a major outsourcing strategy according to the Sunday Times. The deal could potentially save the mobile-phone company £300m a year and IBM's name is very much in the frame. The British operator is potentially looking to outsource billing, CRM and software development. Just like the deal struck between UK operator, 3, and Ericsson to outsource the latter's entire network, there's the possibility that large numbers of Vodafone staff might have to switch jobs to the new provider. See Ericsson to take over 3's network. A source at Vodafone told the Sunday Times, "We already outsource some IT functions. We are looking at outsourcing other functions. No decision has been taken. There are a number of suppliers that we are looking at." It's thought that Vodafone's main hardware suppliers are HP and Dell. It's highly unlikely that the company would do anything as radical as 3 and hand control of its mobile network to somebody else.www.vodafone.com Sona's Star Trek phone still delayedA mobile phone which looks just like the communicator employed by Star Trek's heroes such as Captain Kirk, is still very much lost in cyberspace. The creation of the Star Trek Communicator Phone was announced by Sona Mobile back in August 2005. It was due to go on sale by October 1st but the company's web site still has it labelled as coming soon. Rather than being an actual manufacturer of handsets, Sona is in fact a mobile software specialist which offers software to run on top of Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform. It's believed that this is the first time Viacom/Paramount have agreed to licence a version of the Communicator. Features of the handset will include the ability to play a multi-player game for Trekkies called Fleet Wars. There's also an e-book called StarTrek Vanguard: Harbinger. A key benefit of this particular handset will be its ability to support downloading of video – including Trekkie clips, naturally. The company doesn't actually say whether it intends to produce a cdmaOne version of the Communicator for the Americas as well as a GSM handset. Significantly it has offices in Canada and the UK as well as the USA. Officially the handset is held up by overwhelming demand for the product. Mobile Insight suspects, however, that Sona is having difficulty finding a manufacturer for the product. Furthermore, Nokia might want to have words for calling a handset the 'Communicator'.Visto adds Good to its litigation listTalk about being litigation crazy, the guys at Visto are trying it on again. This time Visto is having a stab at Good Technology. It's over alleged patent infringements in the area of mobile email. The list of companies which Visto has taken to court reads like a who's who of email technology. Just for good measure it even includes the Beast of Redmond. In its lawsuit against Good, Visto specifically cites U.S. Patent No. 6,085,192 entitled, “System And Method For Securely Synchronizing Multiple Copies Of A Workspace Element In A Network.” Mobile Insight thought this all sounded incredibly familiar. Guess what? Visto used it against email rival - Seven Networks. Back in 2004 the Mobile Insight wrote this 'Seven Networks battles Visto over IPR'. What happened? Well, in March 2005 Seven announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) had rejected the base claims of Visto Corporation's US Patent 6,085,192. Its press release says, "After conducting its review, the PTO found that all of the independent claims of the '192 Patent were unpatentable in view of prior art references asserted by Seven. Rather tellingly, Seven also asserts "Visto Corporation is embroiled in numerous lawsuits with suppliers of mobile information technologies, in an apparent effort to confuse the market, defer attention from its own market performance, and impede true innovation." And what does Visto say? "There are justifiable marketplace jitters about whether Blackberry service will be shut down by a federal court next month," noted [Visto CEO, Brian] Bogosian. "With Visto, all users, including Blackberry users, have a safe harbour alternative to RIM that offers protection from intellectual property risks." Sounds like Seven might just have a point.www.visto.com
Ineffective. That's the best
way of describing the body
responsible for policing mobile
content in the UK – ICSTIS. First
Mobile Insight and now Which?
Magazine - published by the
Consumers' Association - have shown
that there are huge holes in the
measures intended to block access to
adult content.
The good news is that from June
1st 2006, ICSTIS will have a new
chairman in the shape of Sir
Alistair Graham. He succeeds Sir
Peter North who's been in the job
for seven years. Sir Alistair has
previously been Chairman of the
Police Complaints Authority. Which's gripe with ICSTIS was
that it had been "assured by ICSTIS
that any attempts by people aged
under 18 to access [porn] sites via
text message should be blocked by
the phone company." So it got a 15
year old girl to buy an O2 mobile
and lo and behold she could gain
passwords for Web based porn sites. The sites simply charged her
mobile phone £1.50 by sending her
handset a premium rate text.
According to Which? "When we
contacted O2, it admitted there was
a loophole for adult sites using
texts for payment." O2's response was "Whilst it is
the responsibility of those websites
to provide protection to prevent
under-18s from viewing the content
on a computer, we are looking at the
process whereby payment is collected
by mobile to see if there are
additional safeguards we can
introduce." In other words, there are
loopholes which enable companies to
charge for premium rate text
messages without the need to check
whether the content that's going to
be delivered is of an adult nature.
It also lulls parents into a
false sense of security. The 8 year
old who received girlie pictures
from T-Mobile (see
|
|
