New premium rate mobile rules for UK

Premium phone service regulator PhonepayPlus has set out new measures for the mobile premium content market. With immediate effect companies offering mobile subscription services charging over £4.50 a week or applying pay-per-page mobile internet charges must apply for permission from PhonepayPlus. In addition, customers must receive a free confirmation text message and must reply to that text before the service starts. [Press release]

BT considering mobile internet service?

The Guardian says BT is considering setting up a mobile phone or mobile data service in partnership with T-Mobile and 3. It currently offers some mobile services as an optional extension of its broadband package.

Opera ends 2008 with 17.8 million mobile users

Mobile browser company Opera has published a review of the mobile web for 2008. Its State of the Mobile Web report shows continuing growth, with 17.8 million people using Opera Mini at the end of the year. In the UK, the top 5 sites visited by Opera mobile users were google.com, facebook.com, yahoo.com, bbc.co.uk and orkut.com. The top UK social network was facebook.com with 536% growth in 2008. MySpace, incidentally, showed a 15% drop. [Press release]

Vodafone achieves 16Mbps mobile broadband speed

Vodafone has achieved download speeds of 16Mbps during mobile broadband trials in Spain. It's now aiming to achieve 21Mbps in the next few weeks, which would mean consumer speeds of around 13Mbps. The tests combined new HSPA+ and 64QAM technology along with MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) - multiple antennae on base stations and data devices. 64QAM and MIMO both require new HSPA+ mobile broadband devices, so these speeds won't be available on any current mobile equipment. [Press release]

Vodafone & 3 are favourite mobile portals

Research from Strategy Analytics says that consumers in the UK prefer the usability and design of Vodafone and 3's mobile internet portals in preference to those from O2, Orange, T-Mobile and even MSN. They've also recently published a report that says an increasing number of consumers are happy with navigation on their phones, with the usability of Vodafone's Telmap Navigator software winning over two dedicated navigation devices. [Portal press release; Navigation press release]

Half of US mobile users ignore multimedia features

A new report by The NPD Group says 45% of American mobile phone users don't use the multimedia features on their handsets. In fact, only 20% use their mobiles as an all-in-one device for music, videos, web surfing and other activities. 21% were not sure if their handsets would play music and 23% weren't sure if their phone included GPS - although NPD calculated that 55% of phones sold from January to November 2008 had GPS technology. [Press release]

Orange says mobile multimedia is more popular than ever

The latest Digital Media Index report from Orange (covering summer/autumn 2008) says that mobile data usage has almost doubled since the company's previous report, which covered November 2007 to January 2008. Sales of 3G mobile internet 'dongles' were up 2,139% since January, with 3G customer numbers rising 86%: 1.3 million people. Mobile search was up 30% and music downloads were up 10%. [Press release]

We'll all be smartphone surfing in 2020

The Pew Internet & American Life Project­ (in partnership with Elon University), which surveys technology stakeholders and critics, says the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people by 2020. Voice recognition and touch interfaces will be used much more for browsing than they are today. [Imagining the Internet, PDF report]

Nokia to launch 3G dongle in 2009

Nokia says it'll start selling its first 3G internet modem in early 2009, according to press reports. [Source: WashingtonPost.com]

Mobile social networkers love their mobiles(!)

Social networking site itsmy.com has conducted a survey that shows how much its 2.5 million members rely on their mobiles (although it's only published results from its 15,000 most-active users worldwide). 95% from the USA and 96% from the UK use the mobile as main means of communication with loved ones... and the average user browses through 160 mobile internet pages per day. [Press release]

Top-up your phone from your online bank

OneVu, which provides online bill payments for the UK, says it's preparing to launch mobile phone top-up facility available for internet bank users. The service is expected to be available from Spring 2009. [Press release]

Virgin Mobile announces flat-rate web deal

Virgin Mobile has said it's launching a flat-rate mobile internet deal next week. From 8th December, customers in the UK will be able to browse mobile internet sites for 30p a day on 'pay monthly' and prepay tariffs. (Exceeding the 25MB 'fair usage' cap will incur additional charges). There'll also be a new Virgin Media branded portal featuring Yahoo’s oneSearch service. We interviewed Virgin Mobile MD Graeme Oxby in October for the Mobile News podcast -more details are here. [Press release; promotional site]

Wireless traffic could increase tenfold

Mobile network operators in developed regions should be ready for a tenfold increase in wireless network traffic by 2015, according to a new report from Analysys Mason. Its Wireless network traffic 2008–2015 report says data traffic is quickly overtaking voice, driven by factors that include USB modems, smartphones, affordable pricing and bigger downloads. Developed regions are expected to account for just 25% of mobile phone users by 2015 but will generate 65% of total global wireless network traffic. The average mobile user is expected to use eight times more data by 2015, rising from the current figure of 56MB per month to 455MB per month... although one forecast says this could be as much as a 23-fold increase, depending on circumstances. [Press release]

Mobile phones can damage your soul

"Vatican Warns That Mobile Phones Threaten the Soul". That's the headline, although Father Federico Lombardi, who runs the Vatican press office, wasn't quite that specific. He's warned people that modern life isn't leaving time for us to look after the spiritual dimension of our lives - and says mobile phones and the internet probably make it more difficult. [Source: Cellular-News.com]

Mobile internet increasingly popular

Researchers at Nielsen say the number of British people accessing the internet via their mobile phones has increased 25% from Q2 to Q3 2008, rising from 5.8 million to 7.3 million. In contrast, PC-based internet use increased 3% from 34.3 million to 35.3 million. Google is the most popular PC-based web site, while the most popular mobile internet site is BBC News, with 1.7 million British visitors (24% of mobile internet consumers) every month. [Sources: PDF press release; Telecoms.com; TotalTele.com]

Yahoo launches voice-enabled mobile search in UK

Following April's USA launch, Yahoo has launched its voice-enabled oneSearch mobile service in the UK. Instead of using a keyboard, users can speak their internet search queries. It's currently available on some BlackBerry devices and Nokia S60 phones. [Source: ZDNet.co.uk]

Smartphones driving increased mobile search

This is probably another of those "it's obvious when you think about it" reports. Researchers at The Kelsey Group have linked the increased purchase of 'smart' mobile devices with an increase in searches - particularly for local information - from mobiles. They say 18.9% of mobile customers in the USA now use a smartphone, with 49.2% of all respondents planning to buy a smart mobile device within the next two years. In the last six months, 17.6% of US mobile users have downloaded or looked at maps or directions (up from 10.8% in 2007), 15.6% have searched online for products or services in their local area (up from 9.8% in 2007), 14.3% have searched online products or services outside their local area (up from 6.4% in 2007), 13.7% have searched for entertainment information (up from 8.2% in 2007) and 9.6% have connected with a online social network (up from 3.4% in 2007). [Press release]

Top websites aren't coping with mobile browsing

Mobile web company Bango has just completed a survey of the top 20 websites (according to the amount of PC-based traffic, as surveyed by Nielsen Online). They found that half of the sites didn't work well on mobile phones, even though 5% of website visitors are estimated to come from mobile devices. In addition, many online businesses didn't know how much mobile traffic was hitting their PC-focussed site. [Press release; Bango blog]

Customers prefer mobiles to PCs

A survey from IBM says over 50% of consumers would substitute their internet usage on a PC for a mobile device and 71% expect to increase their usage of communication services from their mobile device. [Press release]

Nokia N95 is UK's favourite mobile browser

The latest AdMob Mobile Metrics report, which analyses the company's mobile advertising, says the Nokia N95 is the UK's leading handset for web browsing. 9.7% of all the company's UK advertisements were displayed on an N95 in September. Last year's leader, the Sony Ericsson K800i, has slipped to second place. Worldwide, the Motorola RAZR V3 is top (with 4% of traffic), followed by the Nokia N70, the Motorola KRZR K1c, the Apple iPhone and the Motorola W385. [September 2008 pdf report]