mobile-services

Google pushed to change mobile services in EU antitrust probe

Just as Google was working to settle the antitrust investigation launched by the European Union, the governing body has tacked on one more demand: change your mobile services too.

According to the Financial Times, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia saved this final stipulation until settlement talks were already well into process. It's unclear what exactly Google needs to change but if the search giant doesn't concede it could lead to the settlement talks falling apart.

The EU's antitrust probe was opened in 2010 when European regulators asked the company to explain how it ranked search results and … Read more

AT&T rated worst cell phone carrier for second year in a row

AT&T may be huge and generating boatloads of cash every quarter, but when it comes to service, the carrier has a lot of work to do.

For the second year in a row, AT&T was ranked last in Consumer Reports' annual customer satisfaction survey. The company was hit especially hard by complaints over poor voice service and phone-based customer care. Even worse for AT&T, the company's 2011 rating is slightly lower than last year's.

Consumer Reports' survey examines voice, data, and text-messaging service, as well as customer care. The specific ratings are … Read more

AT&T may honor T-Mobile contracts for good

Our friends at TmoNews got their hands on a very interesting document that foretells how current T-Mobile service plans will be affected if the proposed AT&T merger goes through. Though we've always known that AT&T's will honor T-Mobile's contracts through the end of their life, this employee FAQ says that customers can keep their plans "as long as they want to, even when their term ends and the service continues on a month-to-month basis."

Exactly what that means remains to be seen. In previous carrier mergers, customers were allowed to keep … Read more

Forrester study: Got game? Not in a recession

Internet and mobile services are expected to score against handheld video game players and satellite radio amid an economic recession, according to results from a Forrester Research survey released Monday.

According to the results, 51 percent of North America consumers surveyed said they planned to curtail technology spending in the coming year, due to the economy. And areas expected to take the greatest hit include handheld video game players, followed by satellite radio, smart phones, video game consoles, and portable GPS devices.

The report noted:

While no device is immune from consumer spending cuts, new devices such as satellite radios … Read more

Apple offers details on recent MobileMe update

Clarification at 10:00 a.m. PDT: Details about the update have been added.

Apple has disclosed information on a recent MobileMe update, offering a glimpse at the changes and fixes it made in late September to its beleaguered service.

According to information posted Wednesday, the latest known update largely affected MobileMe e-mail and calendar features--two areas that have encountered a rash of problems since the service debuted in July in less-than-perfect shape.

Apple apparently wanted to specifically point out its efforts to improve the service. "Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update … Read more

Mobile IM to surpass SMS?

A recent Gartner study estimates that 189 billion mobile messages have been sent by U.S. mobile-phone subscribers in 2007. It forecasts 301 billion mobile messages sent in 2008.

If correct, those figures would still account for only a small fraction of the 2.3 trillion messages to be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages). Asia is the biggest mobile-messaging market worldwide. China is in the lead, with approximately 560 billion SMS messages sent in 2007, followed by the Philippines' 430 billion and Japan's … Read more

AOL launching a slew of new mobile services at CTIA

AOL may have been one of the first mainstream services to really make its way onto most consumer telephones (with AIM), but the rest of its mobile services haven't exactly been keeping pace with Google and Yahoo's efforts. Today they're trying to change that with several mobile incarnations of AOL services that have been custom tailored for entry level handsets and smart phones running Windows Mobile.

For users with phones that aren't running a "smart" operating system there are two services that have been specially tailored for you. The first is a new WAP … Read more