News: MWC is a crowded and noisy event with all brands vying for attention. What is your big news for the show and do you have any customers willing to support your claims? Customer references speak volumes when it comes to coverage.

Perfect your pitch: With media and analysts receiving hundreds of calls in the run up to MWC, why should Rory Cellan-Jones @bbcnews speak to you? Decide on three key messages for the show that will make your company stand out from the crowd.

MWC Show Daily: The freelancers and editors writing for the Show Daily will soon be announced. The sooner the team receive embargoed press releases, the better chance you have of inclusion so start sending now.

Social Media: With social media platforms often the first port of call for news and key trends at technology events, how will you be making use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or Foursquare this year?

Have you got all your ducks in a row, yet? Don’t worry if you haven’t but you should definitely be turning your attention toward MWC now.

Hotwire is hosting a pre-MWC reception shortly to discuss all these issues above — and I’m going to be there to offer some perspectives from the blogger/media standpoint.The evening is targeted specifically for those working in marketing at brands and vendors. So if that’s you, please come along and say hello. It’s taking place at Zebrano Bar on Greek Street, Soho, on the evening of the 25th of January.

I’m really looking forward to the evening. Do please RSVP as soon as you can to Fiona (here’s her email).

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Just to let you know, you’ve used over 3MB of data which has cost you 3 per MB so far. Once you use more than 5MB in a day, the charge becomes 15 inc VAT for each 5MB.

I’ve written about this before. I don’t know why Vodafone make these messages so cryptic.

Shouldn’t the message read, “You’ve used 9?”

No. Of course not. That’s quite expensive. Much better to ease the customer into a false sense of security — to try and avoid too much bill shock. Indeed, the more confusion and the lower the perception of costs, the better.

It’s ridiculous. It’s not just an issue confined to Vodafone — Three, for example, is a lot more direct about the costs in their text updates. The fundamental issue is that the rates are still far too high — Vodafone’s team are obviously aware of this or they wouldn’t have felt the need to disguise and divert attention from them.

It’s a sad state of affairs, it really is. I decided to record a video — for posterity’s sake — of how I was feeling about it. I’m intending to be able to look back at this in years (5? 10?) to come when this is no longer an issue. I wonder what the marketplace will look like at that point. What will the phrase ‘carrier’ or ‘operator’ or ‘roaming’ mean in 5 years time? Or 10 years? It is realistically going to need a decade before I can stride between geographies without having to care too much about the resulting data costs?

If you’ve got 10 minutes and you’re in the mood for an outpouring of emotional geekish disbelief, click on and tell me what you think.

What’s your view: Will the roaming issues we know today have gone away by 2020?

[Note: Nigel on Google+ points out that Vodafone do offer a 'rest of the world' roaming deal -- 5 for 25mb a day and that is valid in the United States. Although this is certainly a lot better than this 3 per megabyte nonsense, my key point is the fact it's still crazy pricing. For instance 5 per day for my 2-week trip equates to 70.]

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Last week I looked at the issue of SMS and how operators still have time to leverage one of their strongest assets — messaging and the phone number identity that underpins it.

This week I’m looking at added value — or semi-intangibles. I’ve often remarked before that operators need to get into the lifestyle business more. For large sections of the population, call minutes and text messaging bundles are a known quantity. Yup. Next. Move on. Is that really all you can offer me? More minutes? Double minutes? 3.5 extra minutes if I call between the hours of blah and blah? Double texts on a Tuesday if I top up with a fiver?

What if I’m a contract customer?

This is where it gets increasingly frustrating for certain segments of the operator market.

There’s a lot of people out there who define themselves as sovereign individuals. They might be contractors or perhaps self-employed. They are, fundamentally, business people. They’re either total entrepreneurs or they have a wild entrepreneurial streak that surfaces regularly. And they ‘speak’ brand. They have the best watch, the nicest suit — they research the best case for their iPad 2, they buy the highest quality accessories for their top-of-the-range Sony ultralight laptop or their Mac Air. They eat out regularly in nice restaurants. In the absence of religion or traditional class structure, they define themselves by brand consumption and allegiance.

And their operator is ignoring them. Chances are, the operator is busy trying to flog SIMs to the fabled 16p-annual-ARPU mass market, whilst totally ignoring the segment of discerning customers with large amounts of disposable income to spend.

I suspect that if you’re reading Mobile Industry Review, you probably fit into this sovereign individual category. You may well be an employee but I’m sure, at minimum, you have some level of entrepreneurial streak. Otherwise you’d be sitting watching Jeremy Kyle instead of reading this.

So please do run with me for the moment.

Ben Smith was describing to me his abject joy at discovering T-Mobile have apparently introduced a price plan ‘booster’ that, for 15 a month, offers unlimited BlackBerry data worldwide. He explains the full offering here.

“Really?” I asked, my excitement rising.

“Yes, really,” he confirms. He actually had to do a heck of a lot of confirming. He didn’t believe it. Neither did I.

But yes, it’s valid. Obviously there are some efficiencies to be gained from BlackBerries due to the way they manage and route their data traffic. RIM are ultra efficient with data consumption on their devices.

This price plan ‘bolt on’ had me reaching for the phone. I am nigh-on almost ready to swap to T-Mobile as my primary operator for this, given how much I use my (BlackBerry) abroad.

But I haven’t swapped.

Not yet.

It’s not quite enough. It’s certainly almost there, but not enough to get me to switch. I’m ‘ok’ paying 2/day for 25mb in Europe to Vodafone at the moment.

This got me thinking. What would make me switch? What would it take?

I think I need more.

Sell me the lifestyle. Sell me the benefits. Let me feel good. Give me something that makes MY spend with T-Mobile look better than my friend’s spend. The fact I can’t easily differentiate operator choice between my peers is bad news.

I’d like the best. This segment really does 59 on a super-quality leather case for their iPad/iPhone/MacBook Air.

So what would get me excited?

Well, I traveled to Ireland last night. I popped into Heathrow Terminal 1 to take the Aer Lingus flight to Cork as I’m attending a wedding this weekend. I had some food at the ultra shit but very nicely appointed “The Goose” pub and waited for my colleague Rafe Blandford to arrive.

It’s at this point that I thought I should have ‘lounge access’.

Why doesn’t my operator offer me this? If I’m thinking about buying a global data roaming package, chances are I might also want to get airport lounge access too, so I can do some work. Or get a free mini can of coke along with a biscuit.

I’d like to explain to Rafe that my T-Mobile GlobalPlus+ price plan gets me and one friend into any airport lounge on the planet.

I’d feel good. Rafe would feel good too. And probably make a mental note to investigate that price plan for himself later on.

It does actually make sense — if you’re buying an international data roaming package, chances are you’d like that too.

But there’s more.

Why not sell me a Boingo Wireless account too? So that, thanks to being a customer with T-Mobile, I can get access to every possible hotspot on the planet as well.

Airport lounge access? That’s valuable.

WiFi anywhere? That’s valuable.

So when I’m looking down the price plan option list, why not add these on? These kind of semi-intangible options really do start making folk feel good. They represent (at minimum) a perception of value, even if you actually only go abroad twice a year.

I could definitely imagine paying a fiver or a tenner extra to T-Mobile each month so that I got access to their suite of GlobalPlus+ fancy sounding offerings.

All of a sudden, T-Mobile can start extracting additional cash for more than just minutes, texts and data.

I’d really like to see a lot more experiments in this regard. What about, for example, adding in Regus office support? Pay 100 per month and you get ‘planet-wide WiFi access’, priority airport lounge access and the ability to ‘touchdown’ at 1,100 offices worldwide?

Now it’s a real business tool for me, not just a commodity..

What do you think?

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The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 certification means that the PlayBook is secure enough for government use. Of course, not having any standalone communications apps certainly might help the PlayBook get that certification.

via Mobileburn:BlackBerry PlayBook is first tablet certified by the feds.

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But it’s something we all need to do now-and-again. Paper, unfortunately, sometimes is necessary.

So when you’re swanning around with your gorgeous iPad 2 or your all new PlayBook — or, if you’re using a smartphone — how do you print?

The answer?

We email it to a colleague. Or to a nearby secretary.

Yeah.

Rubbish solution.

Isn’t there something better out there? Well, I asked Carsten Mickeleit, CEO of mobile services firm Cortado, to give us an overview of their Cloud Printing solution.

First though, let’s get the background. Over to Carsten:

In terms of mobile, our view is Desktop as an App.

We deliver the full PC desktop experience to Tablets and Smartphones, but as a real application and not as a Windows screen. Our product is easy and fast to use, completely integrated with all the other device applications and your corporate environment.

One of our ‘Virtual Desktop Process’ offerings is Cloud Printing, which we built and are continuing to grow in co-operation with members of the Cloud Printing Alliance (the CPA).

Right, and you’re a big supporter of the Cloud Printing Alliance?

Yes, we launched the Cloud Printing Alliance with other founding members: Brother, Dell, Funkwerk, Konica Minolta, Kyocera Mita and OKI. They all signed an alliance agreement with us to bring true mobile cloud printing to the market.

How does your approach to Cloud Printing work?

Cloud Printing is a real technical challenge and we believe that we have the leading solution compared to most of our competitors who only have a very limited approach meaning their products are limited to a specific: printer, device, apps or documents, or to specific location.

We’ve created an application that allows you to print wherever you are to whatever printer you would like to use.

However, this is just the beginning for us with the support of the Cloud Printing Alliance members to complete the driver list, and the support of the device manufacturers to provide our app on their stores/phones/devices we are aiming to create a real impact in both the enterprise and consumer worlds.

We realise we cannot do this alone, so we do need the feedback of our users to be able to provide the best possible user experience.

We are working very hard to convince hot spot providers to host a printer in their network and offer printing to their customers and if we do our job right, mobile printing will be possible nearly everywhere and much more easily compared to a PC.

Well, bring it on. We’re looking forward to bring able to print stuff anywhere! Where can we go for more information?

You can find out more about our enterprise services (to mobile-enable your enterprise environment) at our site, Cortado.com and you can find out more about the Cloud Printing Alliance at www.cloud-printing-alliance.com.

Thanks Carsten!

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Here I am again in Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Vodafone has updated it’s advertising as you can see. The current message is ridiculously misleading. Unless, perhaps, I didn’t get the memo. It’s certainly possible.

The message Vodafone wants to get across? European roaming mobile internet can be included in your monthly price plan.

That sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Indeed it sounds like you can finally get rid of the worry of running up crazy amounts of roaming data fees by having it all integrated into a nice, fair price plan. An extra fiver a month, perhaps? If only.
Now then, I haven’t looked at the latest Vodafone offering but long, frustrating experience leads me to assume that — yet-a-flipping-gain — the marketing team at Vodafone has vomited out a beauty. I suspect that when I look closely, I will be able to swap to a price plan that includes, I don’t know, perhaps 50mb of roaming data per month, for an extra tenner? Something like that. Something half useful. Something almost worth considering. Something that enables the marketers to spunk out a different, slightly modified message — but that is wholly pedestrian.

I’d like a few hundred meg included at least. At least. But when ‘unlimited’ data on Vodafone tends to defined as a paltry 500mb, I suspect I’m indulging in wishful thinking.

I would be delighted to be corrected. I’ll have a look at the Voda site later on.

Oh, the suspense. Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device

Posted via email from MIR Live

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Look at this. Totally flipping ridiculous. The AA have decided to send me this marketing message. I don’t have a problem with it per se, I did opt-in to receive messages.

My problem is the call-to-action. They want me to phone them. Phone? You mean, like, with a voice?

Why can’t I just hit reply and type ‘yes’? Why do I need to phone up The AA call centre? I can’t be bothered. I don’t have time to give my life story to a (no doubt very nice) call centre agent.

But I would have agreed to the offer if I could have either typed ‘yes’ or visited a secure mobile web page to tape ‘yes’. But phone? And quote a reference? Get with the programme, AA!
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device

Posted via email from MIR Live

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Continuing our series on BlueVia, we’re back with Jos Valles, BlueVia’s top man. In this segment, I asked him what it’s like working at BlueVia.

For more information on BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer programme, please visit www.bluevia.com.

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- Over 42% of Brits check or write emails and 32% doodle while taking part in a conference call

Well, I admit to having done similar. But only when the person on the teleconference is droning on about something I already know. Right?

You’re the same too, yeah?

- 24% of the UK would be happy to deal with a Doctor on a video call

I’m surprised at this one. I have no issue with this. Indeed I’d much prefer a video call with a doctor rather than having to arse around getting to the surgery.

- Over 46 per cent of all respondents from Germany, India, Spain and Singapore check or write emails, while on average 43 per cent surf the net, 17 per cent doodle and 11 per cent have even made another phone call.

Almost every teleconference I’ve been on with more than 5 people seems to feature at least one of the parties having to ‘put himself on mute’ whilst he makes another call. I always find that rather fascinating, given you’re meant to be paying attention to the current call.

Other findings? Heh. Have a read of this one:

- Over a third of respondents in the UK still put on a formal phone voice when answering a call from a number we dont recognise and on telephone conference calls

Heh. Now, I don’t think I do this. But I wonder if, subconsciously, I actually do. Shocking. I think I do.

“Ewan speaking?”

OK let’s talk focus:

- In the UK our concentration and focus on telephone conference calls begins to wane after an average of 23 minutes, but on a video conference call or in a face-to-face meeting our attention span rockets to 35 minutes, putting us on par with Singaporeans who report the longest concentration time on a video conference call at 37 minutes

On a video conference there’s next to no room for staring at the wall, is there? That 23 minute statistic will be heavily relevant to anyone who has to work through 60+ minute teleconferences every week.

- Interestingly, on regular one to one phone calls the average focus in the UK is just nine minutes, a figure our German cousins put to shame with the ability to concentrate for over 16 minutes

This is shocking. Goodness me. Don’t bother with any call longer than 10 minutes in the UK then?

- 87% of Brits claim face to face contact is more likely to lead to a business decision

Aye, I buy that.

- The use of video conferencing solutions in business can save customers at least 25% on their travel costs.

Oh come on, only 25%? And the rest! What about the 12,000 business class flights? x3?

I’ve seen quite a lot of video conferencing services across the years — and the best are the ‘life size’ ones where it really is like being on Star Trek. You feel like you’re actually sitting across the board table from the people in Sydney.

I will need to check out the Cable & Wireless ‘managed video conferencing‘ service and see how that works.

Meanwhile, if you’ve got some 60 minute teleconferences scheduled next week, send the ‘meeting owner’ this post and tell them to keep it to 30 minutes in order to hold the attention of the attendees…

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This is Momchil here wrapping up the discussion on the mighty Nokia N8.

As mentioned before, I am a Nokia supporter and I always use a Nokia as my primary handset. I have been closely following the development of Nokia touchscreen smartphones since the 7710 made it to the market. This leads me to my first point reliability. Every Nokia Ive had, smartphone or not, has always been utterly reliable. The 7710 Ive owned since 2004 still works perfectly despite having been dropped in the pool and suffering numerous substantial impacts. The Nokia N8, being its very distant successor, is also extremely reliable.

The 7710 was relatively unsuccessful in the market for a reason which is no fault of Nokia engineers as the phone was (and still is) amazing. The only problem with the 7710 was that the device was way ahead of its time. Now coming back to the future (Nokia N8), the lesson has been learned. AMOLED screen, HDMI out, USB OTG, 12 megapixel camera, aluminium shell, these are the fundamental components of todays ultimate smartphone. The customer is already used to touchscreens, he has an HDMI compatible TV or monitor at home, he would make good use of the amazing camera and he would know the difference between 12 megapixels with HD video capabilities and the 5 megapixel phone he probably owned before. The market is ready for the N8, and Nokia N8 is already setting standards in the market.

It all ties in Camera, HDMI, USB OTG, 16GB

Start by taking some really impressive high resolution crisp photos with your N8. Make a video or two, or as many as you wish, the 16GB internal memory will handle it. Impress someone at work or at home by connecting the Nokia to a big HDMI flatscreen and playing your clips. Amaze your friends even more by copying the pictures to their USB flash drive, which they happen to carry on their keychain. Enjoy!

Things we take for granted

Amazing sound quality and playback time. The music player is very user-friendly and the 3.5mm stereo jack enables you to plug your favourite earphones. Music playback has been tested at MIR and works perfectly with our huge pair of Sennheiser earphones. The sound was also sharp on our JBL sound system and finally we tested it with a Phillips amplified setup in the 5.1 dolby digital sound mode again fantastic results. A huge advantage of the N8 over competitors products is the ease of music (and video) accessibility. You can just plug the Nokia to your PC in mass storage mode, upload some MP3s and videos, and they will be immediately ready to play. The same applies to USB OTG, just connect your flash drive or external hard drive to the device and it will play anything, yes, instantly, in High Definition, on your HD TV. No need for special PC applications or conversions.

Improvements of the OS

Symbian OS hasnt been so spectacular recently compared to what others have to offer. However, Symbian ^3 is a real improvement to the previous versions of the system. It is much more user-friendly and there has been an enormous effort put into making it more touchscreen-oriented. Take the QWERTY keyboard, for example. It occupies the entire screen, providing more area for each of the buttons, therefore making it easier for the user. There is a much more decent task manager and the menus are more intuitive compared to the N97, for example. Messages appear on the screen as IMs, no need to click Open every time you receive one. E-mail connectivity works really well. The automatic screen orientation feature on my N82 and my N97 was really annoying, I had it switched off. However, on the Nokia N8 it feels really different. It actually works when you need it to. There is a little pause just before the change of screen orientation, to make sure this isnt just a random movement of inclination. In general, Symbian is much better now!

The on-screen clock

I have elaborated on this in my first N8 post: Nokia N8 First Impressions. I absolutely adore this seemingly normal feature. There is an on-screen clock visible at all times when the phone is locked. It doesnt disappear in a minute. You dont have to press a button in order to check the time. Its simply brilliant!

Aluminium and Glass

The scratch and scuff resistant anodised aluminium body speaks of quality, and feels like it. I must add that the phone feels cool most of the times, not like other handsets with powerful processors that might fry your palm. Glass screen, not plastic, feels much better and is more responsive than the N97, for example. Rigidity is a strong quality of the N8, take the micro USB port reinforcement for instance. The very access to the port is integrated into the shell of the phone, which helps support the micro USB plug when connected, unlike many other handsets on which the port is prone to snapping off the mainboard.

The ULTIMATE TEST

The N8 as a portable home entertainment centre?

Here at MIR we decided to put the N8 to the ultimate test. We wanted to use USB OTG, audio and HDMI playback at the same time. How so? We connected a USB wireless mouse/keyboard to the Nokia. We used the HDMI port and placed the handset close to our HD monitor. We linked our JBL audio system in. But first, let’s transfer something from an external hard drive…

Active Ingredients: Nokia N8, USB Hard Disk, USB Keyboard, Bluetooth Mouse, Full HD Monitor

The Nokia N8 as a Portable Home Media Centre

How this worked:

First, connect a USB Hard Drive to the Nokia (or any USB Flash Drive). Browse for videos, copy them to the phone or open them directly.

Connect a Keyboard, it works automatically. Pair a bluetooth mouse, it takes seconds!

Now let’s put this all together. Bring in the Full HD monitor!

Try the browser, connecting to a WiFi is easy enough. Let’s see if the keyboard works… Flawless! The mouse functions are fully integrated and really useful, hold the right button and you have a Task Manager!

FINAL STAGE OF THE TEST

THE PORTABLE MEDIA CENTRE

It works!!! The Nokia N8 really did it! We have a USB keyboard, Bluetooth Mouse, Full HD Video file copied from a USB Hard Drive, Full HD Monitor and a JBL Audio system connected to the Nokia N8 Simultaneously!!!

I can’t express my feelings right now… This device is really, really powerful. In addition it didn’t heat up at all while playing in HD and the battery was charging at the same time too!

WELL DONE NOKIA, I am truly impressed!!!

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