Oman’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has issued five mobile reseller licences as it seeks to further liberalise telecoms services in the country. The recipients – Injaz International, Kalem Telecom, Majan Telecom, Mazoon Mobile and Arab Link – each receive initial five-year licences. The new licensees are expected to launch their products and services later this year once agreements have been made with existing cellcos Oman Mobile and Nawras Telecom.

German regulator Bundesnetzagentur has imposed new limits on the one-off fees paid by Deutsche Telekom’s competitors to access the ‘last mile’ part of the telco’s network. The price for the service will fall 0.2% to 4.1% from 1 July over the next two years. Deutsche Telekom had asked to increase such fees by more than 50%.

France Telecom (FT) has launched fixed, mobile and internet services under its Orange brand in five towns in Niger, according to the company. FT’s head of African operations Marc Rennard said the network would soon be available in an additional 30 towns. The company, which received its licence last November after paying EUR48 million (USD76 million), hopes to achieve a 30% share of Niger’s mobile market in the first year, and 50% by 2015. Currently the country is home to 709,000 wireless subscribers, of which 83% is controlled by Celtel, 10% by Moov and the remaining 7% by Sahelcom.

Here is something I am thinking of – triggered by the latest issue of Fortune magazine

The question I am asking here is:
If the online advertising business model is expected to double in two years from $40 billion to $80 billion .. How can some of the revenue from the Web advertising extend to the Mobile domain?

On one hand,
as per fortune magazine

Ballmer et al. believe that online advertising is the business where its greatest potential revenue and profit growth lie. So far only about $40 billion of the world’s $500 billion in ad spending has moved online. But Ballmer expects the Internet portion to be $80 billion in just two years. While total worldwide spending on business technology is much bigger, around $1.6 trillion, it isn’t growing nearly so fast.

And more from the Guardian ..
Besieged US newspaper journalists face final deadline
In the first three months of this year, print advertising sales by American newspapers charted their biggest drop since records began in 1971. And it was the eighth quarterly drop in a row. Advertisers spent $8.43bn on newspaper ads in the first three months of 2008, a 14 per cent decline on the same period last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America. The appalling state of the US economy is largely to blame this time around, as property and recruitment ads - the newspaper industry’s bread and butter - are surplus to requirements in a downturn.

On the other hand,
the mobile data industry laments that the ad agencies don’t seem to be getting it when it comes to mobile advertising (What matters for mobile advertising)

However, there is a third perspective…

I am speaking at the next mashup event on Enterprise 2.0. You can learn about Mashup events through the mashup events website. If you are interested in Enterprise 2.0, I look forward to meeting you at this event

I just wanted to pass the news I’ve just read from the Google Official Blog:

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.

In case anyone of you still owns a Palm- or Handspring-made OS3 or OS4 device, this is great news: 2bitsoftware’s QuickBits is now freeware.

QuickBits replaces a bunch of Palm OS functions with ones that work faster. This leads to huge performance gains (especially on color devices like the IIIc and Visor Prism) and significantly faster […]

Yours truly recently had a VERY weird issue concerning system prefs. The structure given below worked well while in main memory, but saving/restoring it via the Preference API led to total fuxation of all values below the logging struct:

typedef struct{
UInt16 autoOff:1;
UInt16 timestamp: 2;
UInt16 flashscreen: 1;
[…]

Starting tomorrow, July 1st, it will be illegal to drive in the state of California while talking on a mobile phone without a handsfree device. The first offense will result in a $20 fine, and the second will cost you $50.

“Under the new law, drivers cannot hold cell phones to their head while on the road,” writes InformationWeek's Michael Singer. “Handsfree devices such as headsets and speakerphones are mandatory when using a cell phone while driving. Drivers under the age of 18 cannot use cell phones while driving at all, even if used in conjunction with a handsfree device.”

“While they won't quote their sales figures directly, retailers such as RadioShack, Plantronics, and Headsets.com say they've seen a jump in sales of Bluetooth and other handsfree devices in the past month,” notes CNET News' Holly Jackson.

Just a few months after its initial launch, the Dash Express has received its first over-the-air update from manufacturer Dash Navigation.

“Dash Navigation said owners of the Dash Express received an update via Wi-Fi to help drivers determine the best route option and to shorten the time it takes for the GPS unit to find satellite signals,” writes TWICE's Amy Gilroy. “Dash said it was the first GPS provider to wirelessly update GPS devices in the field without requiring users purchase a DVD or install updates from a PC.”

“The two-way global positioning system (GPS) device will now have a feature called MyRoute,” writes VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi. “If you drive a regular route, such as to work, you can ask the device to memorize the route, which is then highlighted in pink on the device's map. The device can look at traffic data and decide whether your route is the best way to go on a particular day. Another cool feature of this update is the ability to make Yahoo Local search results more relevant to your particular commute. If you use the 'Search Along Route' query, the results will come back based on how close they are to your MyRoute.”

Alvarion today announced the commercial launch of mobile WiMax service by DigitalBridge Communications (DBC) in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, using Alvarion's BreezeMAX equipment.

“DBC actually offers fixed WiMax in some other markets, but this marks a first for mobile WiMax, which will allow customers to use the service while on the move,” WirelessWeek's Monica Alleven. “Covering the Jackson Hole market required deploying only about three base stations, which were provided by Alvarion.”

“DBC's goal is to bring WiMax to underserved rural communities,” writes FierceBroadbandWireless' Lynnette Luna. “It has fixed broadband wireless up and running in a number of markets in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and will work to upgrade those markets to standardized mobile WiMax in the 2.5 GHz band within the next year.”

“DigitalBridge said its current Jackson Hole audience area reaches some 3,000 homes and businesses,” writes InformationWeek's W. David Gardner. “The company indicated it eventually wants to expand WiMax mobile capabilities throughout its 200,000-household deployment area.”

RBC Capital Markets reports that 56 percent of consumers who plan on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days are going to buy the new iPhone 3G, which will be released on July 11.

Count me in as one of that 56 percent…

“That's a jump from just 35 percent of consumers who said they anticipated buying one of the new touch-screen handsets back in March when the firm conducted a similar survey before Apple had announced pricing and features,” writes AppleInsider's Slash Lane. “Another 25 percent indicated that they may buy an iPhone 3G 'sometime in the future' - a more than twofold increase in interest from the March study.”

Verizon Wireless today introduced Rhapsody's subscription music service, allowing its customers to download as much music as they want to their phones for $15 per month.

Rhapsody is following in the tracks of Napster, Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com, all of which have introduced MP3 downloads and moved away from digital rights management, or DRM, which prevents copying and piracy, but also makes it difficult to legally move music between devices.

Songs downloaded through the new $15 unlimited service on Verizon phones will still come with DRM. The process requires users to connect their phones to a Windows PC running Rhapsody's software. At present there is no Macintosh version.

AdWeek just posted this interesting article on companies creating interactive experiences for moviegoers. I think this is a set of great examples of breaking down the barrier between physical and virtual worlds. As always, the mobile is involved because it is the device actually in everybody’s pockets.

Briefly, the article talks about a couple of companies […]

Carnival of the mobilists No 130 is at Andrew Grill’s blog . Well worth reading as usual