T-Mobile is first UK network to confirm it will range new iPhone rival for businesses

T-Mobile is the first UK network to confirm it will range the new BlackBerry Bold when it is released in September.

The handset will be available to business users and will be the first BlackBerry available through T-Mobile to support HSDPA.

“Demand for mobile broadband connectivity speeds is escalating rapidly,” said T-Mobile UK head of business marketing Oliver Chivers.

“T-Mobile customers using the BlackBerry Bold smartphone will have access to one of the most innovative mobile business devices on the market.”

The Bold features an array of multimedia functions as well as GPS and document editing software.

While T-Mobile are the first to announce they will be offering the handset BlackBerry said they were very confident the other networks would follow.

SOURCE: Mobile News International

RELATED SITES: T-Mobile UK

Vodafone leads the charge for new service revenues from wholesale, as O2, Orange, T-Mobile and 3 respond to its aggressive strategy in the space

All UK network operators are aggressively pursuing new MVNO business in order to grow their service revenues.

Vodafone wholesale boss Tim Stone (pictured) said: “We are seeking to grow aggressively. We are talking to a lot of people – there are four or five big brands we’re talking to at this time.”

O2 head of wholesale Phil Crookes said O2 had revised its wholesale strategy, considered conservative, in recent months to keep pace with Vodafone.

He said: “We recognise now our competitors have become much more aggressive, that the market has moved on. So, we are taking a more open approach.”

Orange refused to comment, but a source claimed: “Orange is very interested in wholesale. It is striving to secure the right deals and to grow share quickly, in the way Vodafone has done.”

Orange is expected to confirm an MVNO deal with ethnic market MVNO Lycamobile shortly.

Meanwhile, head of wholesale for T-Mobile International Ralf Weber said: “We realise our partners have opened up, but we are the market leader and we are very much in hunting mode.”

T-Mobile’s new MVNO partnership with Swedish flat-pack furniture chain Ikea goes live today.

3, meanwhile, is expected to announce a business MVNO with distributor EBS shortly.

A 3 spokesman said: “We are open for business. We have capacity for a lot of voice traffic on our network, so the MVNO model appeals to us.”

The UK wholesale market is estimated to be worth £1 billion at present, and to grow to twice that by 2012. T-Mobile takes around 60 per cent of the market, principally via its MVNO deal with Virgin Mobile. Vodafone and O2 take around 17 per cent each. Orange and 3 share the remainder.

SOURCE: Mobile News International

T-Mobile will launch RIM’s first tri-band HSDPA 3G handset into the UK next month. Also dubbed the Bold, the network provider will release this on its Business 1-Plan.

T-Mobile will launch the BlackBerry Bold in the UK next month

T-Mobile claims this plan offers a “flexible allowance of voice, data, texts and international calls”.

RIM unveiled the Bold earlier this year, but very little has been said about the phone since. However, Register Hardware did previously report that the phone was expected to land in Blighty this summer.

SOURCE: The Register

RELATED SITES: T-Mobile UK

Virgin Mobile’s quarterly revenues down, contract customers up, prepay customers down

Virgin Mobile’s revenues have fallen in Q2 despite increasing its number of customers compared with the same period last year.

Virgin Mobile posted revenues of £143.9 million for Q2, a fall of £2.4 million compared to Q2 2007.

Virgin Mobile claimed 55,900 net contract additions in the quarter, up from 52,800 last year. It had 491,600 contract customers at the end of Q2, showing growth of 64 per cent in the last year.

The company suffered 190,100 prepay disconnections, almost double the number in the same period last year. It put the fall down to not “engaging heavily in the low price handset end of the prepay market” during a time of market turmoil.

ARPU was stable at £10.65 and operational cash flow was up slightly at £35.5 million in the quarter.

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett said: “We have successfully undertaken actions to improve Mobile prepay performance including selective price increases, better focused customer retention activity and efforts to reduce customer acquisition costs.”

Virgin Mobile has agreed new terms with its mobile network operator T-Mobile which will reduce the wholesale rates it pays for voice and data.

The MVNO is planning to launch a mobile broadband service in Q4 and claims it will be competitive as a result of the new agreement to give higher value to its customers.

SOURCE: Mobile News International

But sheds 554,000 prepay customers in the first half of the year and records dip in profits and ARPU

T-Mobile UK added 37,000 contract customers and shed 554,000 prepay customers in the first half of the year.

Its total UK customer base now stands at 16,794, including Virgin Mobile customers. Its prepay losses are across both the T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile customer bases.

T-Mobile’s total net revenues in the first six months of the year increased 1.7 per cent on the same period last year to £1.607 billion. Its service revenues were up 0.9 per cent to £1.449 billion. Q2 revenue growth slowed marginally on growth the previous quarter.

But profits fell 2.7 per cent on the first half of last year to £.29billion, with profit margins down marginally, from 21.4 per cent to 20.5 per cent.

ARPU dropped too, from £21 to £20 in the first half of the year, also in the quarter. T-Mobile’s contract ARPU is £44 and prepay ARPU, excluding Virgin Mobile, is £9.

T-Mobile claimed a 360 per cent increase in mobile broadband device sales in the first half of the year, although its USB dongles were not available until last Autumn.

T-Mobile said it acquired 41 per cent of new customers on £30-£35 tariffs in the last week of June. Its total contract additions during Q2 were 56,000.

T-Mobile chief executive Jim Hyde said: “In spite of a slight dip in Q2 EBITDA, customer numbers are stable and we achieved resilient growth in contract net additions in Q2, a slight increase in revenues and a two percentage point uplift in our non-voice revenues.

“We reinforced our position in the mobile broadband market by being the first to launch HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) nationwide to give customers up to a fivefold increase in speeds.

“Our dominant position in the wholesale prepay market has been further strengthened following the announcement of a partnership with Ikea’s new Family Mobile, a SIM card targeted at 1.4 million members of the Ikea Family loyalty programme and positioned as the UK’s lowest priced prepay service.”

SOURCE: Mobile News International

RELATED SITES: T-Mobile UK

Store staff informed by email to expect complaints from customers about failed MMS

Staff in T-Mobile stores have been informed that 60 per cent of all picture messages sent by customers using the network are failing.
Store staff were told last week in an internal email, the issue, which is effecting all T-Mobile customers, is intermittent and was being looked in to. The problem has so far lasted one week. T-Mobile has given staff no timescale yet for a resolution to the problem.

A T-Mobile staffer said: “Fortunately not many people have complained because it doesn’t fail every time. It’s a case of, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”

T-Mobile was unavailable for comment.

SOURCE: Mobile News International

RELATED SITES: T-Mobile UK

The furniture retailer claims that its new pay-as-you-go mobile service for loyal customers is Britain’s cheapest by 25%

Home furnishing retailer Ikea is hoping to make the humble pay-as-you-go (PAYG) mobile SIM as handy as a standard issue Allen key by undercutting the competition by a quarter.

The purveyor of oddly named ranges of flat-pack furniture has pulled a new product out of its bargain bin: a pay-as-you-go mobile SIM it claims offers the lowest price PAYG calls and texts in the UK—at a flat rate of 9p per minute, and 6p per text.

PAYG SIMs are available to the 1.4 million members of the Swedish furniture behemoth’s ‘Ikea Family’ customer loyalty programme. The mobile service has been branded ‘Family Mobile’.

The 9p call rates and 6p text rates apply at any day, time and to any network (except premium rate numbers), according to Ikea, which claims the offering is “at least 25 per cent cheaper than any other comparable pay-as-you-go offer”.

While there is no contract, minimum spend or monthly charges, £10 of credit must be purchased initially to activate each SIM. Ikea said mobile users will be able to keep their existing number.

Family Mobile users can also set up a household account with a number of SIMs registered to one joint account—in order to more easily stay on top of the household’s mobile costs, according to Ikea.

The retail giant is partnering with mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Mobile Partners UK for the service, which piggybacks on T-Mobile’s UK network.

Bargain basement mobile phones will not, however, be available to buy in Ikea stores, alongside Lack coffee tables and Billy bookcases. But phones will be available via Mobile Partners at www.familymobile.co.uk .

The Family Mobile service will launch on 8 August and Ikea will kick off the offer by giving its entire body of 9,500 UK ‘co-workers’—aka store staff—a free mobile phone and SIM loaded with £5 credit.

As well as cheap-as-chips PAYG mobile goodness, Ikea Family members enjoy a multitude of Ikea-based benefits, including discounts on selected Ikea products and restaurant meals, free tea and coffee in the Ikea restaurant on week days and a free home furnishing magazine.

SOURCE: BusinessWeek.com

Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson C902 and Samsung Tocco available for ‘free’ on GBP 75 per month deals, instead of standard GBP 35 priceplans.

The likes of Nokia’s N95, Sony Ericsson’s C902 and Samsung’s Tocco handsets are now only available for ‘free’ on £75 contracts.

Previously, they were available on £35 per month deals.

The move is the first by a UK network operator to slash handset subsidies. But, so far, the handsets remain on lower value monthly contracts via other networks.

The 8GB Nokia N95 is available on £35 deals from Vodafone and £50 contracts from T-Mobile. The Sony Ericsson C902 is free on £30 priceplans from Orange and Vodafone.

Carphone Warehouse offers it for free on O2 and T-Mobile contracts of £25 per month and over, and T-Mobile stores offer it free on £35 per month deals.

It is available from 3 on £22 per month tariffs.

SOURCE: Mobile News International

RELATED SITES: O2 Offers, T-Mobile, Carphone Warehouse, 3 Direct

The MDA Compact IV is the T-Mobile branded version of the HTC Touch Diamond. The T-Mobile version has nicely rounded edges and it weighs less - only 98g compared to the 110g. Apart from a few minor cosmetic changes the Compact IV is near identical to the Touch Diamond.

The T-Mobile MDA Compact IV is a slim touchscreen phone powered by the highly customisable Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. It has a clever TouchFLO 3D system, in T-Mobile’s white and magenta colour scheme, that allows your photos and music to be searched as you rotate the phone, or via finger gestures on it’s impressive screen.

The screen itself is a 2.8 inch TFT-LCD with full VGA resolution meaning you have plenty of room to view pictures from the onboard 3.2 megapixel camera, or movies stored on the 4GB internal memory. Browsing the web on this phone is great too as the large touchscreen is complimented by broadband like speed thanks to the HSDPA and Wi-fi data connectivity. GPS completes the impressive feature list.

Compare T-Mobile MDA Compact IV deals

Store evaluations go up from once a month to 21 times T-Mobile has intensified its own store mystery shopping process.

All 280 T-Mobile stores are now evaluated 21 times per month. Previously, each store was ‘mystery shopped’ just once per month.

T-Mobile is retaining its traditional mystery shop process, which sees each store visited and assessed every month. But it has now introduced a system where customers are telephoned after making a purchase from stores to gauge feedback on service.

In total, 20 customers from each store will be telephoned for feedback each month. The shop assessment will be conducted by International Contact Analysis.

T-Mobile head of retail service and development Jon Talbot said: “We think this is a great way of mystery shopping. It provides us with a totally unbiased view of customer service.

“It was trialled in the first half of the year and is now fully operational.”

Stores that receive positive feedback will be rewarded with cash prizes, while those that perform poorly will receive extra training.

“Rewards motivate staff, which improves customer satisfaction,” said Talbot.

“To my knowledge no other network currently does this. We believe it’s a great way of keeping a closer eye on staff to ensure we have the best customer service in the market.”

But staff suggested customers might dislike unsolicited calls from T-Mobile, while customers’ opinions of services such as repairs or simple top-ups rarely had much to do with staff.

“People never like handing over their details anyway. If a customer has sent a phone off for repair and gets a phone call asking about the service, it’s unlikely to be positive, which reflects poorly on us,” said one T-Mobile staffer.

“I don’t think too many people will be happy about receiving a call asking about the service anyway; they’re hardly going to be enthusiastic about something which may be as insignificant as buying credit. They will just want to get off the phone.”

Another staffer said: “Five times a week is a bit much, but will keep us on our toes.”

SOURCE: Mobile News International