S60 Open to new features

EU has investigated mobile roaming charges in Europe. I wrote about this long time ago. Operators has been slow in this issue  and now EU is getting into real action. The EU's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has voted overwhelmingly in support of the proposed cap on EU-wide roaming charges, fixing the price at €0.40 for outgoing, and €0.15 for incoming calls. EU is making easier for people to move around and make business in other EU countries but in ancient telco business you can see national boarders still too well. Regulation is strongly needed and this is a great step.

Now as a smartphone user I'm interested to know what's going to happen for roaming data charges. If voice roaming is extortionately priced, roaming data is not from this planet. It's no surprise for me that EU politicians know well Graham Bell and mobile versions of his innovation. But I'm afraid they haven't heard about mobile data service yet.

3GSM was last week and it was a good reminder about size of telecom business. Big companies, big business, money and influencing power. One nice aspect in telecom business is that you actually affect to lives of huge number of people. You can provide cheap phones to developing countries and give tools for economic growth and better living standards. Or you can deliver tech devices for people who have almost everything and make their life hopefully easier, more effective at work or more entertaining at freetime. I don't know how you others in the telecoms find motivation. Get food and heating for wife and children and money to travel to Seychelles- that's a good one too. One motivation booster of course is that I'd like to see everything done in more environmentally friendly way. Never really got change to influence to this in Nokia, but IMHO this is going to be important purchasing decision soon.

I'm naturally more focusing to TDD (Tech Device Delivering. 7 years ago I worked in the area of Time Division Duplex:-). I want the technology development and commercial adaptation to happen as fast as possible. Lot's of things have happened. When we entered to new millennium we didn't have color screens or packet data. The first S60 phone was also the first Nokia GPRS phone with email. Cool achievements during the years but when I compare to internet innovation, I'm not that satisfied. Youtubes, Myspaces, Secondlifes etc. I truly believe that Wimax or 3.9G is going to change lives less than Secondlife. Which one is getting more investments?

Telecom is big, HUGE and revenues are enormous. Fascinating! When talking with operators it becomes clear that the size of the business is actually one of the biggest problems. Voice and SMS is the business and everything besides them seems worthless tinkering. There has been significant growth in data services but business value is still clearly in POTS. If I look from operator perspective, openness and new services can actually mean more risk than opportunity. Look the iPhone, it's closed. The closed platform gives control to operator and removes risk that someone is going to use VoIP in a manner that is not contributing to revenues like CS voice today (Look the UMA promise). New service creation requires lots of work, service takeup can be slow and worst case is if it creates more risks for current revenue sources. When there is oligopoly in local market and not too much competition around, why to take unnecessary risks. Business might not be growing that much anymore but everyting is still ok. Enough money to buy 2 tickets to Seychelles.

In the certain market control and walls are higher than in the others. US is one extreme. There was a interesting discussion about net neutrality in RCR Wireless news. Skype is demanding net neutrality in wireless. Note the most humorous comment of the week. Award is given to Cellphone Association CTIA. "Skype's 'recommendations' will freeze the innovation and choice hundreds of millions of consumers enjoy today." I'm so happy that someone looks after telcoconsumer:-)

Finland used to be number one in the mobile phone penetration. Then we used to be on the top of SMS usage statistics. Then one essential part of the industry made some unnecessary foreign investments, technology was not developing as fast as expected, some ownership changes of key player(s) and puff, few years later, this market is so different.

End of March European Union’s Regulators Group proposed that a single Europe-wide cap on wholesale roaming charges to be applied. EU suggested that this would lead to reductions in average wholesale roaming charges of around 60 percent. A month later Vodafone came out and said: "Average European roaming costs for Vodafone customers will be cut by at least 40 per cent by April 2007, when compared to last summer." Yesterday Orange ,T-Mobile, Wind, Telecom Italia, Telenor SA and TeliaSonera announced that they have agreed to slash mobile phone roaming charges. They plan to reduce the cap to 36 euro cents a minute from October 2007 - a cut of almost half from the current wholesale prices.

One thing what I learned during 3 years working in China was that 3G licensees are always expected to be awarded within 6 months. Already year 2000, when I moved there, we expected 3G licensees to be awarded in 6 months. Then 6 months went and we expected them to be awarded during next year half and again and again… This has continued now for … let’s see… for 6 years. But now there is a change in expectations. Licensees are not given before 2007 writes Xinhuanet.