As part of Motorola’s strategy to tempt home and business with new services, the company has announced that it will add Yahoo! Web services to their Linux-based mobile devices.
The company intends to integrate Yahoo Internet services – such as e-mail, search, instant messaging and news – into its handheld and desktop devices throughout the major markets, starting in 2006.
As well as phones, the deal will also see Yahoo’s services pre-installed into home broadband-enabled products and its soon-come digital radio and MP3 device, iRadio.
Motorola plans to make these services available to operators worldwide with the aim of increasing consumer adoption of mobile data services.
Ron Garriques, president of Motorola’s mobile device business, said: “By optimising these products for our leading Linux and Java software platform, we’re making it just that much easier for operators to maximize revenue while delivering the most innovative consumer experiences.”
This announcement follows Motorola’s launch of their new daft Bluetooth sunglasses.
Elsewhere, the company have also announced that Vonage will offer the new Motorola VT2442 voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway to its Internet telephony customers.
It hasn’t exactly got the sexiest of names, but Motorola VT2442 is touted as greatly simplifying the process of adding broadband telephone service into a home network.
The technology also serves up a fully-featured home network router, offering four Ethernet ports for connecting computers or gaming consoles, and an advanced firewall for Internet security.
The North American voice over IP (VoIP) market is about to go completely bananas, with phenomenal growth predicted for the next six years, according to a report by Frost & Sulllivan. 
The VoIP’s operator’s joy could be the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) misery, as Internet telephony represents a direct threat their market share and revenue. 
The report concludes that it’s the quality of service and the VoIP feature set that’s attracting punters to the service rather than a desire to get in with the hi-tech crowd. 
Skype has teamed up with The Cloud – Europe’s leading Wi-Fi network provider – to offer low cost Wi-Fi access and Internet voice calls at 6,000 of The Cloud’s hotspots in the UK and Sweden. 
Skype users ambling into a Cloud hotspot will be connected to the service as soon as they flip out their Wi-Fi enabled device. 
“Skype is bringing affordable Wi-Fi and voice calls to millions of users, enabling them to talk, IM and surf conveniently and cost-effectively from thousands of great locations. Our users in the UK and Sweden will benefit from The Cloud’s extensive network coverage in places where people really want to use it.” 
We had a report from a reader today that he’d been … ehm, carrying out tests on his content filtering service. This entailed going to sites with photos of naked bodies – purely to test that the content filter blocked his access to them you understand. One of first sites he went to was the well known UK tabloid, The Sun. 
The piece in the Gizmo section of the site and paper features BT’s new model to promote BT Communicator, Michelle Marsh. 
Boingo Wireless and Skype have fluttered eyelids at each other, gone for a quiet snog and, ruddy faced, jointly announced Skype Zones, a partnership that offers global Wi-Fi access to Skype customers at (ahem) “revolutionary” prices. 
Fluffing up the big pink cushions of corporate love, Niklas Zennstrom, Skype CEO purred passionately about his new partner: “Boingo is a world-class company that offers Skype users unprecedented global communications mobility and accessibility, at an aggressive, market disrupting price.” 
Monthly access to Skype Zones is $7.95 per month for unlimited Skype access or $2.95 (~€2.42~£1.66) for a 2-hour connection. 
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). 
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. 
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. 
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. 
Skype has done well in encouraging other companies to build extra software and importantly, hardware including phone handsets (
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. 
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. 
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”. 
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. 
The spokesman added that customer’s email services will be uninterrupted, with users still contactable whatever their domain name. 
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. 
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. 
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.