TextMagic, a provider of easy-to-use online text messaging solutions, has today launched its new and improved web-based SMS service, TextMagic Online. This new generation of online SMS delivery allows businesses and individuals to send text messages directly from any computer, mobile or handheld device without the need to install dedicated software. The online interface lets users send multiple or individual texts, create and manage campaigns and keep in touch with valued customers with just a few clicks, all for just a few pence.

TextMagic Online is said to be a quick and easy way to create ad-hoc awareness campaigns and communicate with customers via their mobiles. Its web-based interface means it's more scalable than a desktop solution and is secure – all personal information is protected with secure data transfer protocol, so consumers can trust SMS messages sent with TextMagic. Mobile contacts can be easily imported from different customer relationship management (CRM) systems and programmes like Outlook, Excel, Salesforce.com and many more.

Companies can use SMS as an effective way of communicating with customers in a way that is more immediate and effective than email or phonecalls. For example, TextMagic Online allows estate agents to update multiple buyers and sellers on viewings and new properties the moment they come onto the market, all with a single SMS.  Logistics and delivery companies can use text messages to arrange deliveries and confirm good have arrived – potentially ending the problem of never being at home when the delivery van calls!

"More than 1 billion text messages are sent every week in the UK, making text messages the perfect way to deliver personalised services quickly and cost-effectively," commented Priit Vaikmaa, Marketing Manager of TextMagic. With over 70 million mobile users in the UK alone, mobile is the most ubiquitous device we own, and with the increase use of mobile for business, our service provides an essential business tool for companies that are looking for tailored ways to market their services and manage their customer relations."

The rise in musicphones has spurred adoption of mobile music consumption across the United States and Western Europe, according to M:Metrics, the mobile media firm. It reports that sideloading accounts for 83 percent of mobile music usage across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Among other methods, sharing music outpaces full-track mobile downloading in the majority of these markets.

With the exceptions of Spain and the United States, more mobile music consumers listened to music that was shared (for example, between phones via Bluetooth), than was downloaded directly to the phone using a music service. France and the UK posted the highest frequency of this activity, accounting for 12.5 percent of those who listened to mobile music in the month.  At the other end of the spectrum was Spain, with only 7.1 percent of mobile music users transferring music between devices.
 
"Mobile music is quickly catching on, and the fact that consumers are sharing music demonstrates its potential as a social, viral phenomenon centered on mobile handsets," said Jen Wu, analyst, M:Metrics. "The proliferation of musicphones is causing a shift in digital music toward the mobile platform, which opens numerous opportunities for music-related content, services, hardware and accessories built to accommodate or enhance these mobile music activities."
 
The measurement firm found that 10.7 percent of mobile subscribers across the six geographies reported listening to music on their mobile device, ranging from 5.7 percent in the United States to 20 percent in Spain.
 
Musicphone penetration has grown considerably in the United States and Western Europe, at an aggregated rate of 50.7 percent growth from November 2006 to November 2007 across the six geographies. The United States is the fastest-growing market, with 63.6 percent growth, from 23.2 million subscribers owning musicphones in November 2006 to 63.8 million one year later. Musicphones include all mobile handsets that are, at a minimum, capable of digital music playback (AAC, MP3, MPEG-2 AAC, MPEG-4 AAC+ or WMA codecs) and storage (greater than 47MB or support for memory expansion) or are a smartphone.

Subex, the provider of Operations Support Systems solutions for communications service providers, has announced the release of Prevea 2.2, the latest version of its credit risk management offering that enables communications service providers to continuously assess and mitigate subscriber credit risk throughout the customer lifecycle.

Designed to help service providers achieve greater operational efficiency and a key component of the Revenue Operations Center (ROC), Prevea tracks credit risk in near real-time, prior to subscriber acquisition, ongoing usage, and recovery. Prevea builds an extensive customer profile consisting of demographics, usage patterns, payment information and other relevant customer information.

Prevea 2.2 brings out the 'true exposure' of the subscriber and enables operators to automatically track credit risk by removing the guesswork associated with the value of service utilization. It creates structures and processes for defining credit risk assessment schemes and customer-specific credit limits, allowing for alert conditions to be configured that track risk variations, such as deviations in customer behavior and payment delays/reversals.

It also raises alerts at the earliest signs of an account problem and provides workflow mechanism to aid investigation. The benefits of deploying Prevea are increased customer profitability, improved collection rates, reduced bad debts and operating costs and improved bottom-line financial performance.

Mark Nicholson , Chief Technology Officer, Subex, said, "This latest version of Prevea is designed to enable service providers to easily monitor subscriber risk and improve the bottom-line. These latest product updates make it easier for our customers to optimize their margins and become leaner and more efficient in their operations."

MACH, the global clearing and settlement partner for mobile based transactions, has today announced that Telefónica Spain is using its Data Express and Fraud Protection solutions to achieve Near Real Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTRDE) compliancy. MACH will monitor and protect Telefónica Spain against roaming fraud.

Manuel Franco, Director of Revenue Assurance & Fraud at Telefónica Spain commented; "MACH has one of the most advanced NRTRDE & Fraud Protection solutions available. As MACH provides Clearinghouse services & NRTDE to other Telefónica Group members as well as other leading global operator Groups it has for both solutions, the right level of expertise to combat roaming fraud."

Lodewijk Cornelis, Head of New Sales & Marketing at MACH commented, "With MACH Data Express and MACH Fraud Protection, Telefónica benefits from a fully comprehensive solution against roaming fraud. The operator will have early visibility of roaming subscriber activity and data intelligence and a global view with fraud 'fingerprint' matches across all networks. MACH also has a specialist 'rapid responsive' fraud protection unit with 24/7/365 surveillance, detection and monitoring of suspicious behaviour. MACH acts as the watch tower and has the capabilities to instantly shut-down roaming fraud."

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has announced the results of its inaugural Mobile Attitude and Usage Study for five markets in Western Europe. The study surveyed 1,535 participants in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain and provides actionable insights into the region's consumer mobile usage by demographic group and awareness. The report also identifies usage of mobile phone features and services, and interest in and concerns about specific applications.

The study's key findings are said to include the following:

One in ten mobile users in the Western European markets is highly interested in mobile marketing and another three in ten indicate moderate interest. This level of interest translates into an overall growth opportunity for mobile marketing.

Italian and Spanish consumers are most interested in mobile marketing. Over half of all users in Italy and Spain are at least moderately interested in mobile marketing and similar proportions express potential to opt-in.

2-way text messaging is the most important mobile feature across all age groups. The ability to send and receive SMS was at the top of the list for all age groups except teens, for whom it ranks second to camera functionality. Across the Western European markets surveyed, seven in ten have experience with text messaging, with the most text-savvy consumers in Italy and Spain. Over half of all users surveyed use SMS at least weekly and 37% are daily users. Daily use is most common among 13 – 24 year olds.

Western European consumers poised for an increase in mobile marketing. 15% of all consumers surveyed have had some experience with mobile marketing. Mobile phones are almost universal and most phones are equipped to receive mobile messages. More than half use text messaging at least weekly and 7 in 10 are familiar with the technology.

Interactive voting, receiving ads and product/service information are the most common applications of mobile marketing.  18 – 34 year olds have the highest rate of participation in mobile marketing efforts. However, age is not strongly predictive; interest levels are similar across ages 13 – 54.

Across all regions surveyed, mobile coupons, status alerts about accounts/purchases and special sales have greatest appeal.  Over half the users have increased data usage to some extent in the past year vs. slightly under half reporting an increase in voice usage.

"This study confirms that mobile users in Western Europe already appreciate mobile marketing and have a desire to opt in to receive relevant product and services," said Richard Saggers, MMA EMEA Chairman and Head of Mobile Advertising, Vodafone Global Services. "These results indicate Italy and Spain are significantly advanced users of mobile, and already have the most experience with mobile marketing and are therefore more likely to participate. At least 60% in all age categories surveyed have experience with text messaging, indicating a big opportunity for marketers."

"Western Europe represents a significant opportunity for mobile marketers.  One in three consumers surveyed indicated that their mobile phone is highly important to them and they are very dependent on it.  With consumers acknowledging their mobile is always on them, brands need to begin integrating mobile into their marketing campaigns ASAP. Clearly, mobile is proving its potential value as a marketing tool," said Laura Marriott, President of the MMA.

Nokia has announced plans to discontinue the production of mobile devices in Germany and close its Bochum site by mid-2008. The company plans to move manufacturing to its other, more cost-competitive sites in Europe.

As a consequence of the planned shift of production from Bochum to other European sites, Nokia also intends to discontinue other non-production activities at the Bochum site. In conjunction with the announced plans to close its Bochum site, Nokia is also announcing plans to sell its line fit automotive business and it is in negotiations with Sasken Technologies to sell the Bochum-based adaptation software R&D-entity.

The planned closure of the site in Bochum is estimated to affect approximately 2,300 Nokia employees.

Nokia's decision to discontinue manufacturing in Bochum is based on the lack of competitiveness of the location. Renewing the site would require additional investments but even this would not result in manufacturing in Bochum being globally competitive.

"The planned closure of the Bochum production site is necessary to secure Nokia's long-term competitiveness," said Veli Sundbäck, Executive Vice President of Nokia and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Nokia GmbH. "Due to market changes and increasing requirements for cost-effectiveness, production of mobile devices in Germany is no longer feasible for Nokia. It cannot be operated in a way that meets the requirements for global cost efficiency and for flexible capacity growth. Therefore we have to make this tough decision."

Nokia will start the consultations with the employee representatives as soon as possible in order to to reach a satisfactory solution for all parties concerned.

The financial costs associated with this restructuring will be determined along with the consultation process and reported in Nokia's quarterly reporting for 2008.

Aeroflex has announced the addition of Wideband AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) support to its 6113 AIME basestation protocol test system.  The new test capability relates to the 3GPP TS45.003 test specification.

The new Wideband AMR codecs (TCH/WFS12.65, TCH/WFS8.85, TCH/WFS6.60) build on existing narrow band AMR technology and their introduction will significantly improve the quality of voice services due to the wider speech bandwidth used.

"Wideband AMR features need to be correctly configured, optimised and maintained if subscribers are to get the full quality of service benefits that the new speech codecs can deliver," said Ross Broadhurst, Product Marketing Manager, Aeroflex Test Solutions Wireless Division.  "The launch of the new Wideband AMR test capability on our 6113 AIME protocol test system is of significant benefit to infrastructure developers who will be able to develop, integrate and test Wideband AMR basestation capabilities, in advance of the mobile handset capability becoming available."

The Aeroflex 6113 AIME basestation protocol tester allows infrastructure developers to create and test new GSM basestation software and hardware features by providing a mobile emulation. Combining the 6113E test set with the 6113E AIME (Air Interface Monitor Emulation) software package, it provides software engineers with a layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3 monitoring and emulation capability for the Um interface. Software engineers can monitor, debug and fault find the layer 1 and protocol interchanges on the Um interface with fully decoded display of layer 2 and layer 3 messages. In addition, the 6113 AIME protocol test system features sophisticated script editing, debugging, execution and automation facilities, logging of all air interface signalling and logging of all traffic frames.

NetHawk has announced the new portable platform TravelHawk for GSM, (E)GPRS, UMTS, HSPA WiMAX and LTE protocol analysis. Based on NetHawk's M5 Analyser, TravelHawk offers high port density and capacity but still it is small enough to go as carry-on luggage on business trips.

The new platform supports multiple interface adapter configurations fitting the needs of different end-user groups. TravelHawk is designed to monitor up to four STM-1 and sixteen E1 links to meet the heavy load testing requirements. It also supports channelised STM-1 and IMA.

"I'm thrilled about this new monitoring tool platform. Knowing how much easier we'll make the lives of travelling engineers, I'm sure that TravelHawk will be a success story. High capacity and versatility in such a small package is something that this industry has never seen before" says Mr. Pertti Paakkolanvaara, Executive Vice President, Analyser Business Unit, NetHawk.

On top of the modular TravelHawk hardware platform end-users can take advantage of the intelligent data analysis options of the NetHawk M5. The Call&Session Analysis application for multi-interface call tracing enables correlation of real-time data from several interfaces simultaneously reducing total time needed for root-cause analysis of the network. The Call&Session Statistics application is utilised to provide an overall view of quality of service of the monitored network. For increased data rates in today's networks, the NetHawk M5 Analyser provides excellent filtering options. Focusing on absolutely necessary information is crucial when handling gigabits of data from multiple sources. Counter and KPI results in a clear graphical UI makes monitoring of the network performance easier than ever. Because of the growing amount of IP data transfer in mobile networks verification of IP quality of service has to be conducted carefully. The Quality of Service application provides throughput, delay, and jitter measurements with a few mouse clicks. The versatile applications of the M5 Analyser make the TravelHawk an effective tool for several purposes both in live networks and laboratory environments.