Greek operator Cosmote is gearing up for a major promotional campaign when the Olympic Games come to the country next year.

As it prepares for a mass influx of visitors during the 15 days of the games, the operator has signed 280 roaming agreements in 130 countries and hopes to have GPRS roaming available later this year. 3G services are planned for 2004 in time for the event.
As an official sponsor of the games, the operator is hoping to cash in both on roamers and on increasing the number of subscribers in Greece.
“The Olympic brand is the best known brand in the world,” said Katerina Koutsaftike, Cosmote’s products expert. “We want to participate actively in all the Olympic activities, including things that have already started.”
These include a roadshow touring Greece at the moment with a booth that lets people send SMS messages to the athletes and a contest with top prizes of trips to the games including tickets, travel and accommodation. The operator is also doing co-promotions with handset maker Samsung.
“Though we are doing specific services for the event,” said Koutsaftike, “we are concentrating on reusable services. We are putting a lot of effort and we don’t want this just operating for 15 days.”

Verilocation, an automatic mobile phone location service, which uses information from the UK’s mobile networks to locate users, has gone live and already has over a thousand users.

Accurate to within 100 metres Verilocation allows businesses to have a ‘GPS type’ location capability without the need for specialist equipment, contracts or software. Provided as a simple pay-as-you-go Web service, companies pay an initial registration fee and thereafter UKP0.20 per search, purchased by buying credits online.
Verilocation is primarily aimed at companies with staff or assets travelling out and about but for whom GPS is not viable.
According to Verilocation, the service offers a ‘much more cost-effective solution than GPS.’ It links the mobile phone user to the underlying road network and displays the information in an easy-to-understand visual format using the on-screen map. The service is accessed via the web.
The basic service plots the position of the mobile phone, whilst more advanced applications involving resource allocation, automatic despatch, routing and activity analysis, are also under development.

One of Scandinavia’s largest retail groups, Reitan Group is to acquire the region’s largest mobile service provider Sense Communications following agreement by the respective boards on the terms of a final cash offer.

Reitan Group believes it can strengthen Sense Communications’ existing share of the Scandinavian mobile phone market, principally by using Reitan’s 2,109 stores as increased distribution opportunities and greater branding focus. In addition, Reitan’s channels of distribution are expected to reduce customer acquisition costs, while its existing pre-paid services will  now be complemented by a post-paid offering.
Commenting on the offer, Magnus Reitan, Chief Financial Officer of Reitan Group, said, “Sense Communications is an established business with a large and loyal customer base.  Reitan Group is confident that its existing infrastructure will provide an ideal opportunity to further expand the customer base and grow into new markets.  Reitan believes that the deal offers a good commercial opportunity both for Sense Communications shareholders and the Reitan Group. After completion of the acquisition Reitan’s mobile customer base will be in excess of 235,000, representing nearly 10% of the Norwegian market.”

To meet the demands of a growing mobile content publishing market Nokia has launched an updated Mobile Internet Toolkit (version 4.0).

This incorporates Open Mobile Alliance DRM version 1.0. Including the content publishing feature to protect the intellectual property value of applications and content is in line with a recent report from Zelos Group, which highlights integrated support for digital rights management as a crucial concern for developers and publishers.
Other improvements to the toolkit include an update manager for new tools available through the Forum Nokia website and extra support for non-Latin character encoding for Oriental and Arabic language content creation. MMS wizards also further creation in different modes, including automatic generation from SMIL content and step-by-step part selection. Lee Epting, vp and gm of Forum Nokia, stressed the increased DRM would improve “ability to generate revenues” and “make it very easy to begin developing” content on wireless networks.

The mobile phone and air travel have long been seen as mutually exclusive but this situation is set to change according to Mike Fitzgerald, ceo of Altobridge.

The company has created a mobile management unit — a software platform which manages a mini, on-board mobile network made up specially designed base stations smaller than pico cells. Fitzgerald explained that the safety worries about EMC and interference come primarily from the power levels associated with public mobile networks. However, he said, “In GSM, the network dictates the power levels and therefore you need a solution that monitors and manages the RF and that is what our solution does.”
Just exactly what power levels don’t interfere with the aircraft systems is still unclear.  The standard GSM level of around 2W is banned but Fitzgerald explained, the Altobridge management platform has operated at 100–200mW in tests, a level resulting from the comparatively small area and simple RF propagation involved. Unlike standard GSM, the signal does not need to, and in fact is designed not to penetrate the aircraft’s chasis and works on line of sight.
In addition, Altobridge is working with the European and North American aviation authorities to create a system that is safe, something which, Fitzgerald suggested, is not the case today. Many phones are left on in error at the moment causing a safety risk, as could interference from terrestrial networks on the ground which the system also monitors, he claimed. Furthermore, the market is now right for the technology to take off.
The mobile and airline industries have been through the most testing years in their histories and both are looking for ways to increase revenues in mature and competitive markets. According to Fitzgerald, this provides a compelling business case. “The business model is based on the fact that GSM volumes will drive the price down. Initially, the service will be offered in first and business classes, but everyone involved is working on the presumption of diminishing returns as volume increases…the goal is for prices around USD2 per minute.”
These rates are significantly lower than those offered by the satellite phones currently installed in aircraft. Although the Altobridge system uses satellite for backhaul, Fitzgerald stated that the volumes GSM offers provides a bargaining position for lower backhaul rates, while the management platform minimises the satellite bandwidth used.
Fitzgerald stated that Altobridge has a clear advantage over competitors looking to provide similar systems as it has a real product ready for trial, while he suggested the business case was fundamentally stronger than those of competitive technologies. “The WLAN connection being trialled by Boeing and Lufthansa is priced at around USD30 per subscriber, while for the cost of installing that system on a single aircraft, 7–10 aircraft could be equipped with our platform.”
The system is being trialled in the US and Fitzgerald sees the business jet market in the US as the first target. However, he suggested that there was “no reason to delay entry into the European market,” and that the speed of rollout would be dictated by the availability of funding and the regulatory environment.

As Europe’s incumbent 2G operators look to make the most of their investment in GPRS, Motorola’s decision to deliver infrastructure capable of supporting Coding Schemes 3 and 4 defined within the GPRS specifications, now looks like a prudent one and could provide the company with a significant market advantage.

The point of CS3 and 4 is that they deliver faster throughput, the value of which becomes greater as many commercial rollouts of UMTS are pushed further into the future or into smaller geographical areas. Combined with Motorola’s compression techniques, CS4 delivers throughput at up to 21kbit/s per timeslot including overheads and around 16kbit/s when the overheads have been taken into consideration. This compares to 8–9kbit/s for CS2 (minus overheads).
For many of the current GPRS terminals which offer four slot downstream transmission, CS4 equates to a realistic throughput of 64kbit/s (depending of course on cell capacity) which Laith Sadiq, director of marketing strategy for Motorola’s GTSS group suggested, “is a key speed. With this, GPRS can handle 90% of data requirements for the next few years.”
Sadiq refuted the suggestion that Motorola’s interest in CS3/4 was due to its relative failure to make an impact on the European UMTS market, “It is in Motorola’s interests that 3G is launched in Western Europe,” he said. Sadiq further explained, “Operators expect more from GSM/GPRS than they thought two or three years ago. This is providing a rational business case for CS3–4 and we can deliver it now.”
The software required to upgrade Motorola infrastructure for CS3/4 has been on the market for a year and so far has be delivered to six commercial networks in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, with a further eight or nine trialling the system. However, those operators with infrastructure from other providers face a more difficult task. “We expect most vendors to support this functionality but a separate hardware upgrade may be required,” said Sadiq.

The second round of 3G contract awards and build outs will provide Chinese vendor Huawei with a real opportunity to break into the European market, according to the company’s assistant managing director, Soeren Puerschel.

“Huawei has advanced 3G technology and is not behind as it was with GSM,” he said.
Huawei, which has established a dominant position in its home market, has a broad communications portfolio within which it offers the full spectrum of 3G wireless technologies — W-CDMA, cdma2000 and TD-SCDMA.
However, Puerschel identified the company’s expertise in other areas such as optical networking, data comms and value-added services, as central to Huawei’s market positioning. He explained, “Huawei has always been at the cutting edge of technology. The problem for us has been that we are not so established in Europe.
“We have had to build this up first.  The slow down in the market has allowed us to develop and we are now very well positioned to deliver 3G infrastructure and service support in Europe.”
He continued, “Europe is much more open to new vendors than it was a few years ago. We have proven interoperability with all other major vendors and are committed to providing operators with the right solution.”
In concrete terms this means a W-CDMA product roadmap that saw a second version of the company’s Release 99 products launched in Q4 last year, while its first Release 4 products are soon to be released. Furthermore, Puerschel explained that Huawei has a strong hand when it comes to the new services that are now rolling out. The company has installed a national MMS platform for China Mobile designed for 100 million users, something which Puerschel explained gives Huawei “huge experience in high level, high volume MMS solutions.”
Puerschel concluded that he expects Huawei to make concrete moves in Europe, in terms of contracts for its wireless network or services infrastructure before Telecom 2003 in October.

Vodafone results for the year ending 31 March 2003 showed increased turnover, albeit including figures from Japanese operations.

Losses slowed and 11% customer growth was reported, including the addition of over a million subscribers to the Vodafone Live! service. The revenues from data services also rose to UKP3,622million, as did mobile business propor-tionate EBITDA margins.
Eight new partner network agreements, the launch of Mobile Office (secure, remote laptop connection using GPRS data cards and software) and new services like GPRS roaming elicited a confident assessment of operating performance from coo, Julian Horn-Smith.
“We have laid the foundation for profitable growth and success in the years ahead,” he predicted, as outgoing chief executive Sir Christopher Gent handed over control.

The cost of 802.11 wireless LAN equipment is set for a dramatic fall following the announcement that the makers of the key chipsets will cut their prices by about 75% in the next year.

The chipsets cost about USD16 today, but this could fall to only UD4 by this time next year, making the cost of manufacturing WLAN cards cheaper.
John Kirby, vice-president for global wireless at IBM, said the fall in price was being caused by higher volumes rather than any technical innovation.
“If you look at the volumes today they are very small, but look at the volumes you are going to see,” he said at the Mobile Enterprises exhibition in London in June. “Prices will halve within 18 months.”
However, he said for WLAN to take off, issues such as the different ways to connect in different places had to be sorted out.
“Technically this is not difficult,” he said, “We need to get the companies to agree. And to agree whether you pay by time or volume.”

Orange retail in the UK has taken the decision to promote the more effective use of existing terminals by the company’s subscribers rather than the continual sale of new handsets.

According to Nick Moore, director of Orange Retail, “80% of phone users use 10% of the handset’s functions.” The three main reasons identified by Orange for this shortfall were that: services aren’t seen as being relevant, they aren’t usable or the user doesn’t know how to use them.  As Moore explained, “Mobile phones are not complicated, they are just misunderstood.”
The initiative has taken the form of a UKP10million advertising campaign, promoting the idea of the Orange Academy which trains staff to ensure that customers get the most from their terminals. To back this up 1800 staff across 250 retail outlets nationwide have been reclassified as ‘trainers.’ Their priority is now to ‘train not sell,’ in order to encourage people to use their phones more.
Herein lies the motivation for the initiative. Moore explained, “There are some hidden gems within Orange such as our answer service. Once customers personalise their answer service, usage increases by 3%.”
In a mature market such as the UK, any increase in revenue is welcomed and the handset is an obvious starting point. Furthermore, it sits well with the operator’s handset policy. “Handset subsidies are reducing and prices are increasing which leads to a desire for increased handset life spans. Therefore customers need to be encouraged to use their handsets more.”
The initiative has been backed up by a number of concrete steps that demonstrate that this is more than a marketing push. An extensive training programme has been ramped up over the past three months, comprising both in-store and full-day training sessions on particular terminals, supported by manufacturers. In addition, each new terminal is given to a different member of staff to build up the outlet’s hands-on experience. Perhaps the most telling move, however, is that commission structures have been changed, meaning that retail staff will be paid commission based on the number of training sessions they undertake, not just the number of handsets.
In addition, and in line with the ease of use theme, Orange has re-launched its WAP portal. The aim, explained Matthew Edgar, from Orange multimedia operations, is to offer services to all Orange’s customers in the easiest way possible. He explained, “This is not an exclusive handset offer. It gives people the chance to use all the relevant functionality, irrespective of their terminal. Orange always believes in the mass market.” He further suggested that, “Content is not a huge differentiator; the real difference comes with the packaging, the access and the value for money.”
To introduce the new look, Orange is offering three month free trials to all pre- and post-paid account holders with the aim of “getting customers in the habit of using these services,” according to Edgar. However, the cost barrier has also been attacked by Orange which then offers the services at a fixed fee of UKP4 per month.