ABI Research has named Vodafone and NTT Docomo as the top mobile operators in the industry in a recent study, according to businessMOBILEAsia.
ABI’s study revealed that both NTT Docomo and Vodafone were ahead of their peers in areas of consumer and enterprise application delivery, as well as mobile payment.
ABI also singled out Hutchison 3 and China Mobile as operators with great long term potential.
I spoke to one of Celcom’s Product Development managers last week and he revealed that Celcom was working on a project that will be unveiled at the end of the month. HSDPA perhaps? I’m guessing it will more likely be a major content deal since they’ve demonstrated great savvy in their recent marketing tie-ups.
You heard it here first 😉
First the iPhone, now the Google Phone. The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. Google HQ in the US responded with a statement that neither confirmed or denied the rumoured Blackberry-like Google Phone. The telecommunications landscape is starting to look very interesting…
Yesterday the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced the 4 winners of licenses to operate the 2.3GHz WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) spectrum in Malaysia (PDF link to news release).
The 4 winners were:
The bigger news is that none of the 3 telecom companies in Malaysia won a license. The failure to obtain a WiMAX license isn’t that big a deal to TM and Maxis, who both have 3G licenses, but DiGi has really been left out in the cold again, having failed to win a 3G license also previously. It really looks like our Government doesn’t want any foreigners to have a too big foothold in Malaysian telecommunications. My heart goes out to DiGi – I’m an unabashed DiGi fanboy – but they say they’ll be ok.
The four winners are expected to spend between RM250-RM300 million each to roll out wireless broadband services based on WiMAX in the next 3 years and the MCMC says that their decision is in line with their goal that broadband penetration increases to 75% by 2010 (keep hoping).
My take: I’m actually disappointed that none of the telcos won a license. I think that a telco that also operates a wireless broadband service will usher in fixed-mobile convergence in Malaysia quicker. With WiMAX being operated by the telcos competitors, I’m afraid that switching between cellular and wireless broadband will be less than seamless.
If anything, I hope the news will spur TM Net (the damn slackers!) to buck up its services.
A group of F-22 Raptors were almost knocked out of the sky due to a computer glitch caused by the new daylight-savings time schedule which takes effect this year.
When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to “reboot” the systems to no avail.
Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd said that the Raptors were lucky that visibility was good and that they were travelling with refueling tankers. “They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation,” he said.
Scaaary. This change in the daylight-savings time schedule is expected to affect everything from high-tech military jets, stock trading and even airline schedules. Thank goodness we don’t have to deal with this daylight-savings nonsense here in Malaysia.
Both stories heard on the excellent Buzz Out Loud podcast. The blogjunkie hearts you, Tom, Molly and especially Veronica 😉
I’m David a.k.a. the blogjunkie. This is my personal blog where I let my hair down. I’m an entrepreneur making a living from the internet, without the scammy get rich quick, make money online methods. I’m an Apple fanboy, and WordPress geek.
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