Broadband in Africa always faced hurdles, ranging from very low PC penetration to lack of sufficient international bandwidth. Many of these problems remain, but some of the thorniest ones are being remedied. Read more »
The strategic alliance announced yesterday by Nokia and Yahoo sees two companies that are playing catch-up with the mighty Google on the search and mapping fronts join forces to offer a more compelling package to consumers. Read more »
Google’s plans for its Smart TV product are finally out of the box. Some of the things it announced for truly lived up to the considerable pre-launch hype, and it was certainly the shot in the arm for TV that it promised to be. Read more »
Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and CEO, last week revealed that the company’s “partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day”. Assuming Google’s hard working partners keep going at weekends, and if that rate were to be extended over the next year, there would be nearly 24 million new Android-based handsets shipped. That’s an impressive number for an OS platform that only launched its first handset 19 months ago, in late October 2008. Read more »
Netbiscuits, the mobile Internet publishing platform which powers mobile websites for brands such as Ebay, MTV, ABC and Universal Music, has unveiled data that suggests that there is a valid business case for publishers to optimise their online content for access by a range of mobile devices and not just for the smartphone A-list. Not doing so may mean missing out on sizeable chunk of traffic. Read more »
Media policy was never likely to feature particularly highly on the new government’s “to do” list and the emergence this week of the UK’s first coalition government since the Second World War is unlikely to lead to its being given any greater priority. Indeed, it does not feature at all (bar pledges to review libel laws and the ending of storage of Internet and e-mail records without good reason) in the seven-page coalition agreement published yesterday. Read more »
Carriers’ online service purchasing mechanisms are apparently not as advanced as consumers might think. OSS and BSS industry sources are suggesting that as few as 10 to 15 percent of wireless carriers worldwide have an end-to-end e-commerce solution as part of their web presence. That is to say, an online storefront where the end user can purchase their mobile phone plus their voice, messaging and Internet tariff plans; and complete the transaction electronically without the need for any manual processes or further human interaction. Read more »
The world is just emerging from one of the worst recessions in history and many countries around the world are only just starting to record economic growth. Despite this, 2009 may be the year recorded music sales started to turn a corner. The question many are asking is, what part has tougher legal played in the turnaround? Read more »
Australian communications minister Stephen Conroy triumphantly announced the findings of the A$25 million implementation study today into the National Broadband Network carried out by KPMG and McKinsey and Company.
The study gave the NBN project a big green tick on all fronts but there were a couple of crucial points raised at Conroy’s announcement that deserve further scrutiny. Read more »
As more 3G and WiMAX wireless broadband services are deployed across Asia Pacific a clear trend is emerging of operators ditching all-you-can-eat plans in order to protect the performance levels of their networks, but how will this trend affect the shape of the broadband market? Read more »