Mobile Insight Vol: 8 Issue 306 February 27th 2006
RIM wins minor reprieve against NTP
The long-running courtroom battle
between RIM (maker of the
Blackberry) and NTP (the patent
company) drags on. The
judge, James R. Spencer, has merely
granted a 30 day stay. The idea is
to exempt key US government and
emergency workers from loss of email
in case of any shut down. It's
obvious that RIM still
expects NTP's patents to be thrown
out by the US Patent Office, while
NTP just wants the money it has won
through court decisions. This is going to carry on for months. According to the Ottawa Sun,
Judge Spencer actually said, ""I am
surprised, absolutely surprised,
that you have left this incredibly
important decision to the courts,"
Spencer told the companies. "I've
always thought this was a business
decision."
It's the kind of thing you'd expect someone owning a games console from
failed supplier, Gizmondo, to do. Crash a rare Ferrari Enzo on the costal road
near Malibu, California that is. Except that Stefan Eriksson has allegedly done
it in real life. Eriksson had been a director with Gizmondo but resigned last
year just before a Swedish newspaper claimed that he'd been convicted of
counterfeiting. See Newspaper probes Gizmondo managers' past. The company has
gone belly up and investors are trying to get some of their money back from its
parent, Tiger Telematics. The Ferrari was just one of many luxury cars which
Gizmondo appears to have splashed out on.
The whole point about cable company, NTL, purchasing Virgin Mobile is that it
will create one giant converged communications company. Able to offer the
infamous fourplay of TV, Internet, fixed line telephony and cellular.
But what about radio? It might not be very sexy at the moment, but there are a
whole bunch of improvements right on the horizon. One of them is, of course, DAB
(the digital radio standard). And Virgin's on that. Plus, there is the new funky
collision between radio and cellular called Visual Radio. Mobile Insight
was quite amused when O2 announced that it had partnered with Virgin Radio to
offer a Visual Radio service in the UK. Now, we know why. Virgin Radio is no
longer part of the Virgin Group. It's owned by SMG. So stations like Virgin
Classic Rock and Virgin Xtreme, no longer have anything to do with Sir Richard
Branson.
It used to be called Sonera Zed. Now
it's known as LaNetro Zed and claims to be the second largest mobile
content company in the world with revenues of over €137 million in 2004.
Zed UK, however, has just been fined £25,000 for operating without a
working helpline for two years. Zed provides the usual stuff for mobile
phone owners – wallpapers and ringtones. The problem is that users could
run up a bill after their prepaid credit had run out. So Zed was
collecting on past bills. What this meant was that, for some people,
sending the word 'STOP' to Zed's shortcode had no effect. The company
continued to send premium rate messages to collect on outstanding debts.
Worse still, it was charging interest on monies due.
Stung into action by the Web posting of an adjudication against it by
telecoms industry watchdog, ICSTIS, Spanish content provider, LaNorte Zed, has
responded rigorously. "They've got it all wrong," claimed a spokesperson.
Following the Mobile Insight's eariler story, Zed is claiming that customers
have always been free to leave its service (which offers ringtones and
wallpapers) and more crucially, that the 'Stop' command does stop customers from
receiving further billing. The biggest confusion appears to be over the helpline
which ICSTIS said hadn't been working for some two years. A company statements
says, "The 0906 helpline number [in question] has not been advertised since June
2004 and Zed UK has communicated the new helpline number, 0870 600 0933, to
every network."
An irate Verizon Wireless user who complained about spam from his own
cellular provider was initially told it was almost impossible to stop such
messages. In a complete volte face, however, Verizon soon relented and sent
details on how to stop such messages. Upset that even his own network provider
was sending him spam, this Mobile Insight reader was initially told by
the Verizon helpdesk that any block on such messages would result in a block on
all incoming messages.
When our reader persisted, Verizon swiftly changed its mind and supplied him
with details as to how to stop such promotional messages. Indeed the ' Do Not
Call/Solicit List' covers voice calls; emails; postal mail; voicemails; surveys;
and marketing to third parties as well as text messages.
CSR says it is aligning with the WiMedia Alliance and will use their technology to develop Ultra Wideband (UWB)
with Bluetooth products. The company argues that the integration of UWB into the Bluetooth architecture will enable future Bluetooth devices to share information at much higher data transfer speeds with even lower power consumption.
www.csr.com....
Since launching Qualcomm's BREW solution back in July 2003, China Unicom’s 2.5 million
cumulative BREW users have downloaded more than 30 million BREW
applications. More than 1,000 different BREW applications and services have
been offered on China Unicom’s network covering a variety of categories
including streaming TV. According to Sino-MR, more than 6 million BREW
handsets, covering more than 90 different models, have been sold in China.
www.sino-mr.com
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
McFly
On behalf of the record label, Universal Music, Graphico New Media has built the official WAP site for the pop band, McFly. The site has a usual mix of ringtones, colour wallpapers, news, dates and biographies of the band members. So far, Graphico New Media has developed WAP sites for seven artists out of Universal's 300 artist Web sites. Given that the URL is quite complicated its lucky that by sending a text message to 'GO MCFLY' to 85080,it will trigger a WAP push message that automatically puts McFly's mobile site into the phone's browser. Graphico claims that not only is it providing paid content for users to personalise their phones with, but also free news, tour dates, and other relevant tips to make fans come back on a regular basis.
