Services – Page 39 – Digital-Lifestyles

Yahoo WAP Mobile Price Check Service Launched

Yahoo! UK and Ireland have launched a handy new mobile search service which allows consumers to check the prices of goods via Yahoo! WAP services when they’re out and about.

The service, accessible on all WAP enabled phones at standard browsing rates, serves up instant price and product information from the Yahoo-owned comparison service Kelkoo.

Yahoo! said it will not charge for the service which promises to cover 3 million product offers and more than 5000 UK retailers.

Mobile users accessing the WAP site at http://wap.yahoo.co.uk, can type in their desired product into the search box and click on the “Products” button.

A result screen then displays images, pricing and product information, providing users with the low down about the cheapest prices around.

Dorothea Arndt, director of search and distribution at Kelkoo enthused: “Mobile price comparison is a major step towards aligning the on and offline shopping experience and brings us significantly closer to achieving our mission of making shopping simple for everyone.”

It all sounds great, but we found the service a little flaky.

At the first two attempts, we got a screen of results serving up nothing more than the price and the name of the shop with no location, address, phone number or Weblink. A fat lot of good, then.

However, if you persevere and click through to the next results page, a ‘compare’ link should magically appear under some products and this will let you access its full details.

Once the service is fully ironed out, shopkeepers around the UK can prepare to brace themselves for a stream of tech-savvy bargain hunters waving their WAP phones around the counter and demanding price matching.

Yahoo!

Cardiff First For BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN)

Cardiff First For BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) Their glorious football team many not be first at anything much these days, but BT have announced that Cardiff and the surrounding area will lead the UK with the implementation of their 21st Century Network (21CN).

The £10bn investment will roll out the next generation of converged communications, including telephone calls, broadband and Ethernet services delivered through an Internet-based platform.

The investment will end BT’s dependence on telephony through on Ye Olde public switched telephone network (PSTN) and should – in theory – result in cheaper telephone bills for its customers.

What is this 21CN thing, do I hear you ask?

Here’s how BT describe the technology:

“BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) is a global IP infrastructure, based upon multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), that carries voice, data and Internet services on a single network. The 21CN offers multiple services across a single network, rather than today’s multitude of networks offering specific services.”

“For BT, this will mean fewer network elements overall and require simpler network management. For BT’s customers, the 21CN will deliver more choice, control and accessibility, as well as increased flexibility, reliability and security.”

Cardiff First For BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) BT is expected to begin migrating around 350,000 customer lines in the area during the second half of 2006, with the 21CN programme requiring the replacement of equipment in more than 50 local exchanges along with the implementation of new IT systems to make the technology do its stuff.

Ask BT competitors what 21CN is and you’ll get quite a different answer. Their view is that it is effectively the death of meaningful competition in the UK and that once BT has it in place there will be no incentive to try and unbundle exchanges.

Three cool-sounding “metro nodes” (super telephone exchanges) are to be developed in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, with 10 new transmission sites also being developed across the region. These will be assessed for power supply, space and logistics planning before the ‘on’ switch is pressed.

First Minister Rhodri Morgan purred, “It’s incredibly exciting for us that Wales has been selected to provide the test bed for BT’s new 21st Century Network This investment by BT clearly signifies that Cardiff and central South Wales is one of Europe’s most dynamic and progressive regions. The end result will transform our personal and business lives, and help attract high-tech industry and services to Wales.”

Matt Bross, BT group’s chief technology officer, said, “This roll-out will be the first time anywhere in the world that customers will have communications services provided over such a radical next generation network.”

“The operational experience that we gain in Cardiff and the surrounding area will enable us to move full steam ahead and deliver 21CN to everyone in the UK – migrating a total of 30 million lines – in just four years.”

“It’s an enormous technical and operational challenge, but will enable customers to benefit from compelling new services.”

How the installation and implementation of the service – and the customer feedback – works out will help BT finalise plans to roll out 21CN to customers across the UK by the end of the decade.

BT 21st Century Network

Gizmo Project takes on Skype

Project Gizmo takes on Skype It’s not surprising that when an entrepreneur sees something as successful as Skype has been, (you can’t see over 127m downloads in any other way), that the word opportunity is writ large in their eyes. This is especially when that person likes disrupting legacy business models, such as the phone system.

Enter Michael Robertson, he of mp3.com fame.

After selling mp3.com for a considerable amount of money, Mr Robertson went on to create Lindows. A Linux-based desktop operating system that aimed to take on Microsoft and their Windows product head on. After some huffing and puffing from Microsoft Lindows changed its name to the less controversial Linspire.

During the time of building up Linspire, I was surprised to see Robertson launched SIPPhone.com – his first pop at a VoIP business. When I first saw this it looked like a distraction from his OS business, almost like he saw the great opportunity of VoIP coming and couldn’t resist jumping on top of it.

Well things have move on now, and after 6 months software development, Robinson is publicly showing his Skype-killer, Gizmo Project.

Project Gizmo takes on Skype The big differentiator between Gizmo Project (a temporary name – they’re asking for suggestions) and Skype is Gizmo uses the open standard of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, for those who really want to know), as opposed to the proprietary method Skype uses. This goes after Skype in the only way it can.

Many of the early users of Skype were hardcore Linux/Open source fans. Although using Skype was free, it still stuck in their throats a little that they were talking over proprietary protocols.

Skype doesn’t allow connections to other VoIP service, and as they control all of the inside processing, if they don’t want it to happen, it won’t.

Robertson claims that as Gizmo is SIP-based, it will interconnect to any other phone system.

Using Gizmo Once the software is installed, anyone familiar with Skype will not have a problem quickly adapting to use Gizmo. It runs on Linux, Macintosh and Windows. It appears to have all of Skype’s functions plus quite a few extras.

Useful additional features include a call quality meter, located at the bottom left of the app.

Gee whiz factor is provided by features like the World map that can be summoned up, showing you how far you are calling – good for gloating that you’re not paying a penny extra for calling that distance.

Despite the product being in beta, it’s currently on version 0.8, Gizmo haven’t been slow in holding back on the in and outbound call features – the ones that generate the income. It was surprising to see that the pricing of Gizmo In is more expensive than SkypeIn, with the $30 buying just 6 months of service compared with Skypes – I thought new entrants to a market were supposed to be more competitive not half the value.

Project Gizmo takes on Skype Skype has done well in encouraging other companies to build extra software and importantly, hardware including phone handsets (Siemens M34; Cyberphone K). This has been enabled by them publishing the API (Application Program Interface). As to whether/if Gizmo will have an API as Skype does, is as yet unclear.

Trying to unseat Skype is one hell of a tough battle; it’s seriously entrenched in the tech world, and is making pretty strong moves in to the general market.

The fact that it uses open protocols is a big advantage, if that kind of thing is important to you. For the rest of the market what’s important is that they’re able to speak to their friends on the service. As things stand today, that is probably Skype.

Expect a rash of these applications.

Gizmo Project

BT Gets Botty Smacked By ASA Over ‘Free Calls’ Claims

BT Gets Botty Smacked Over Free Calls Claims Delivering a king size slipper to the ample bottom of BT, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that BT’s PC-based internet telephony service, BT Communicator, does not make “free” calls.

In one of its mailings, the UK telco behemoth had bragged: “BT Communicator – FREE UK Calls for a year” emphasising the freebieness of the deal with the strap line: “The power of BT Broadband to enjoy free calls for a year”.

But a concerned consumer in Kent was having none of it, arguing that by gleefully proclaiming “FREE UK Calls for a year”, BT was pulling a fast one.

BT Gets Botty Smacked Over Free Calls Claims The Kentish complainant pointed out that by using the VoIP service he’d rapidly burn up the 1 gig a month usage limit that BT slaps on its Broadband Basic packages – and once he exceeded that limit, he’d have to start forking out for additional time online.

Hauled in front of the ASA, BT mumbled something about the fact that they “had not intended to charge customers for the service, but they had not fully considered the impact of usage allowances on the ability to make free calls”.

The ASA was not impressed, making a savage sauté of BT’s nether regions: “The Authority was concerned that, although the promotion offered ‘free calls’, those calls depleted the monthly usage allowance that a broadband customer paid for on a monthly basis as part of their broadband package”.

BT Gets Botty Smacked Over Free Calls Claims Smarting from a derriere rouge par excellence, BT was told “not to describe calls that depleted a consumer’s usage allowance as ‘free’ and to state prominently in advertisements for BT Communicator that making telephone calls depleted a consumer’s broadband usage allowance”.

This ruling raises the suggestion that BT hasn’t fully considered the impact of VoiP usage allowances on its services.

With BT ramping up bandwidth-gorging offerings with innovations like video on demand and smarty pants hybrid mobile/landline BT Fusion handsets, the broadband experience of the future may prove to be a mighty expensive one for consumers.

BT Communicator
ASA
BT thrashed for ‘free’ VoIP call claim

Wanadoo Turns Orange

Long time customers of Wanadoo (formerly Freeserve) might be forgiven for forgetting who they’re connecting with after the company announced yet another rebranding.

Promising customers a “smooth changeover”, owners France Telecom will be bringing their Wanadoo service under the umbrella of their high-profile brand, Orange.

The move is part of a strategy to make Orange become “the Group’s international commercial brand for mobile, broadband and multiplay offerings”.

The well-recognised Freeserve name was taken over by Wanadoo just 14 months ago, but France Telecom insist that the latest rebrand will better reflect the portfolio of services to be offered.

These include combined mobile and internet access, a broadband telephone that tells with email notification and remote surveillance of your home through a mobile or a computer.

A spokesman for ~~Freeserve~~, ~~Wanadoo~~, Orange said: “The Wanadoo brand has been an enormous success enabling us to become a broadband leader in the UK. But we are now entering the era of convergence where our customers will experience a new generation of high value and exciting converged services.”

“These services will allow our customers to be able to communicate at home, at work or on the go. A single brand representing these integrated services – the Orange brand – is the way forward.”

Wanadoo Turns Orange The spokesman added that customer’s email services will be uninterrupted, with users still contactable whatever their domain name.

As convergence continues to impact in the teleco sector, France Telecom’s move should ensure that customers will get their mobile, broadband, video-on-demand and fixed line services all from the same company, slapped on the same bill.

If they’re not too confused, of course!

Wanadoo
France Telecom

France Telecom / Cable and Wireless Potential Deal Examined

France Telecom / Cable and Wireless Potential Deal Examined Last weekend there was a report that France Telecom (FT) were rumored to be buying Cable and Wireless (C&W) for GBP 4bn. FT has of course denied it.

Though the telco market is consolidating, it does seem an odd match.

FT is the French equivalent of British Telecom (BT) the incumbent operator. The French government still owns a considerable portion of FT (though it has recently released a number of shares on to the open market).

C&W a UK monolith

C&W comes from the old school of telecoms, it’s a giant. It was half of the duoploy with BT when the telecoms market deregulated in 1994 (under the Mercury brand). It became very cash rich (to the annoyance of C&W’s shareholders), but like every other telco was hit hard by the telecoms crash after the dot com boom. They sold of their US operations (apart from the Caribean where they are still a virtual monopoly and very profitable) and have concentrated on their core UK operations.

As a telco, C&W has become very aggressive with their pricing especially in the wholesale minutes market and carry a lot of traffic for UK “switchless” providers and Carrier PreSelect (CPS) companies. They’ve become so aggressive they’ve been accused of predatory pricing (i.e. selling under cost to win business in the hope that it wins further business) but that’s not been proven.

They are trying to move into new areas and have announced new products such as VoIP, but as yet these are really marketing noises.

France Telecom / Cable and Wireless Potential Deal Examined One area where they have invested in and have made real progress is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) with their purchase of Bulldog (for GBP 18m). Bulldog have now unbundled about 400 exchanges and have plans to unbundle another 400 by the end of the year.

The C&W and Bulldog acquisition has had teething problems, cutting over to the vastly increased C&W infrastructure didn’t go particularly smoothly with customers losing connectivity for hours at a time. There are still on-going problems.

FT and C&W, not an ideal match

Would FT purchase C&W, well they might, but it would be an expensive buy.

France Telecom / Cable and Wireless Potential Deal Examined Wanadoo (the ISP arm of FT) has stated they are going to invest EU 300m in unbundling exchanges (in the first year) and rumour has it there’s a total of EU 1bn over 3 years for LLU. So FT could buy C&W just for the LLU aspects, but really does seem excessive. C&W bought Bulldog for GBP 18m and they’ve invested at least 10’s of million into them. So 4bn is a HUGE premium to pay for a ready made network and 10’s of thousands of customers. Wanadoo already have considerably more broadband customers than Bulldog.

C&W have a big network, with good links into most of the telecoms companies in the UK, that might be of some value but the global number of call minutes is decreasing (as people move to VoIP) and the value per minute is decreasing even more rapidly (as flat rate calls – especially in the VoIP arena – become the norm). A call to anywhere in the world is now approaching around 2c (on average) per minute.

Another minus point is that FT already have a UK network (they purchased Equant), so having an old legacy telecoms network can’t seem that attractive.

There’s also Orange to worry about (the mobile side of FT), they also have considerable UK telecoms infrastructure.

All in all it doesn’t seem a good fit, though of course there may be another completely hidden agenda.

France Telecom
Cable and Wireless
Bulldog DSL

Skype for Pocket PC Review

Skype for Pocket PC Review As you probably know, we’re big fans of the Internet-based telephony application Skype, and when we got our grubby hands on an imate JAM PocketPC phone (with SanDisk Wi-Fi card), we couldn’t wait to start reaping those free VoIP calls with Skype for Pocket PC, v1.1.0.6.

A quick visit to Skype’s website bagged the free 2.5 meg download, and told us that our machine was up to the job.

Skype recommends a rather beefy 400 MHz processor or above, so our JAM phone (also known as the T-Mobile MDA Compact) should be fine for the job with its sprightly 416 Mhz CPU.

Seeing as most PDA/smartphone users typically operate their devices in power saving modes running the processor significantly slower than top speed, there is a danger that Skype’s demanding CPU footprint may turn into something of a battery hog, so be warned

Making Calls

The interface will be very familiar to Skype PC users, offering a near-identical feature list, including chat messaging. Once logged in, your phone contacts appear as usual although we found the online notification a bit flaky, often failing to correctly indicate that friends were online.

Skype for Pocket PC Review Using Skype to place voice calls to Skype users or via SkypeOut was simplicity itself, with almost all attempts to connect calls successful first time. Sadly, once connected, things weren’t quite so rosy.

My first call was encouraging; with the other person’s voice coming over reasonably clear with no problems their end either.

The second call, however, was a catastrophe, with a distorted, intermittent signal making me sound like Norman Collier doing an impression of the Daleks. It was unusable.

Other calls have resulted in recipients being subjected to buzzes, clicks, pops, complete silences or weird dub remixes of my voice, while I’ve been treated to random snippets of audio, whirring clicks and, in once case, words spoken some time previously coming back in a spooky loop.

At times, it was a bit like trying to communicate over a children’s walkie-talkie at the limits of its range or hearing disconnected voices through the fug of mind bending drugs.

Skype for Pocket PC Review But I battled on, and found subsequent Skype calls to be a veritable potpourri of good, bad and indifferent, with more terrible calls than good ones.

In didn’t help that Skype defaulted to using the JAM’s speakerphone, making a headset essential for any kind of clarity (and privacy).

Although you can buy natty headsets with boom microphones that make you look like an Air Traffic Controller, I’ve yet to see a Pocket PC with a dedicated mic input, so you’ll still have to bark your words into the device’s integrated microphone.

For the greater part, the IM element of Skype worked fine, and if you’ve got a wide circle of chums using Skype, is worth the download alone.

Conclusion

With the fast growth of VoiP and Wi-Fi access, there’s no denying that the software has huge potential.

Skype for Pocket PC Review As we reported in March 2005, there’s free Skype access provided at hundreds of airports, railways stations etc through The Cloud’s network, which – in theory – means you could be ringing up associates worldwide for nowt.

But no business client is going to be impressed with a phone call full of buzzing noises, weird clicks with the caller sounding like Sparky the Magic Piano on a bad day.

Seeing as almost all of the problems encountered were specific to the PocketPC version, it’s hard to work out whether it’s the limitations of the platform holding back Skype, or that the software hasn’t matured yet.

The good news is that Skype for Pocket PC is a free download, so it’s definitely checking it out to see how it works on your device.

The company are aggressively developing the product, and with luck many of the issues we encountered may be resolved in the near future.

For now, we can only give it a mixed review. We love the technology and we – naturally – love the idea of free VoiP calls on a smartphone, but until calls become more reliable – and usable – we’ll be sticking to conventional networks for important calls.

Rating: 3/5

Skype

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service Yahoo has whipped out its wallet and snapped up DialPad Communications, a company making VoIP software allowing users to make cut-price calls over the Internet.

Yahoo will use DialPad to expand its product array in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) sector.

Based in California, DialPad is a six year-old company with around 40 employees competing in the hot potato sector of rerouting calls from computers to servers to telephones.

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service The company offers a selection of VoIP subscription plans to users – including prepaid VoIP calling cards – with charges ranging from as little as 1.7 cents per minute for calls to more than 200 countries.

DialPad has been offering calling plans for about two years and boasts more than 14 million users.

Although the specifics of the deal are yet to be released, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said that the new products integrating the DialPad technology could be debuting within a month. Pricing has yet to be announced.

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service In its announcement, Dialpad served up a bit more information about the deal: “Yahoo plans on leveraging Dialpad’s PSTN calling capabilities to add to Yahoo Messenger’s recently enhanced PC-to-PC voice calling offering. These products are very complementary and by combining our strengths, we are better positioned to take advantage of the fast growing IP telephony market and build a range of exciting new services.”

The acquisition comes hot on the heels of Yahoo introducing a test version of its instant messaging software which bundled an Internet telephony component that allowing users to make free computer-to-computer calls.

With rumours recently circulating the Web about Yahoo scooping up Skype, it now seems that Yahoo is looking to take on the VoIP upstart head on. Fight! Fight!

DialPad
Yahoo

BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls

BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls BT has unveiled a smarty-pants phone designed to integrate landline and mobile phone technologies.

Called BT Fusion, the handset promises callers the “best of both worlds” and works like a regular mobile phone away from home, but when the rambling caller comes home, the clever stuff whirrs into action.

As soon as the user’s home broadband hub is detected, the call is transferred to a VoIP connection through the phone’s own Bluetooth software.

BT is hoping that the service (dubbed “Project Bluephone” during development) will tickle the fancy of consumers looking for the functionality of a cell phone with cheaper fixed-line prices.

“We know that many of our customers enjoy the convenience of their mobile phones when they’re out and about, but switch to using a landline phone when they arrive back home to save money or because they have little or no mobile coverage”, observed Ian Livingstone, chief executive of BT Retail.

BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls BT Fusion is part of the company’s strategy to lure back customers wooed by mobile telephonic temptresses touting cheap calls.

The BT Fusion service – using adapted Motorola V560 GSM phones – will initially be trialled by 400 customers, with a more widespread consumer launch in September, followed up by a corporate package rollout in 2006.

BT was tight-lipped about how many customers it expected to sign up to the service, but was clearly eyeing up the 30 percent of their customers who make mobile phone calls from their homes.

BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls “The future will be convergence”, insisted Livingstone. “This is going to be a market that grows fantastically over time even though it might take a while to get going. We still expect many millions of converged handsets by the end of the decade.”

BT’s monthly packages will come in two flavours, offering 100 cross-network minutes for £9.99 (US$18.07~ €15) or 200 minutes for £14.99 (US$27.12~ €22.5) for 200 minutes.

BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls Calls to landlines originating in the home will be ratcheted up at BT’s regular rate of 5.5 p (10 cents, €0.08) for up to an hour.

Subscribers wanting to join the BT Fusion gang will need both a BT landline and access to BT broadband, with a special access point, called the BT Hub, being installed in the home.

Although currently using Bluetooth, BT is planning an upgrade to Wi-Fi technology and has already installed the necessary wireless equipment in the hubs.

Although Ian Livingstone, chief executive at BT Retail, has commented that the service could be used on any broadband service provider “if we decide to make it available”, subscribers will have to use BT’s own broadband service and Vodafone for now.

BT Fusion
Motorola’s RAZR Coming Soon to BT Fusion Service

Skype Voicemail Out Of Beta, Now Live

Skype Launches Voicemail Service After several weeks in beta, Skype has officially launched the Skype Voicemail service, the company’s second pre-paid premium offering.

The new Skype Voicemail service allows callers to leave unlimited voicemail messages for Skype users when they are unavailable or offline.

Unlike bog-standard voicemail systems, Skype Voicemail also lets users send pre-recorded voice messages to other Skype users – even if they’re not a subscriber to the service.

The SkypeIn beta ran in eight countries, and testers in those countries can also receive Voicemail messages from ordinary fixed or mobile phones.

Users of the service can personalise their Skype Voicemail by setting their answer preferences, adding their own witty and kray-zee greeting and electing to receive messages up to 10 minutes long.

Skype Voicemail subscriptions are available for €5 (~US$7~£4.00~) for 3 months or €15 (~US$19~£11.00~) for one year. Orders may be pre-paid with a credit card or via PayPal or Moneybookers at the Skype Store.

Also rolling off the Skype production line is the latest Skype for Windows v1.3, incorporating several feature improvements, including enhancements for importing new contacts to contact lists and a more customisable user profile area.

Skype Launches Voicemail Service Skype v1.3 allows bolts on the ability to populate Skype contact lists from desktop applications including MSN, and auto-populate exact matches from Microsoft Outlook.

Skype for Windows also offers an “enhanced visual experience” (whatever that is) with streamlined user interfaces and improved upgrade and premium notices.

There are also some new animated emoticons which, apparently, give instant messages “more expression”. Or maybe just irritate people more.

The company’s first premium offering, SkypeOut, allowed Skype users pre-paid calling to traditional and mobile phone numbers for local rates, attracted more than 1.5 million paid users since its launch in July 2004.

All of the company’s premium services – Skype Voicemail, SkypeOut, and the beta version of SkypeIn – are compatible with the latest versions of Skype for Linux, Mac OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms.

The company boasts more than 42 million registered users increasing by approximately 150,000 new users a day.

In the last few days, Internet rumours have been rife about Skype being the subject of a possible merger, commercial partnership or buy-out by Yahoo. Nothing’s been confirmed – or denied – yet, but we’ll keep you posted!

Skype