The TecBlast Blog

Do you want to call your loved ones back home for free? Every day over one million international calls are made. People are largely unaware that there is an easy way to save money on these calls you can save a lot of money with internet telephony. Mobile VoIP calls provide callers with great service, superb sound quality, and very cheap prices. VoIP technology means that callers can get extremely low cost calls worldwide. You no longer need to put up with the exorbitant rates cell phone operators charge.

A market leader in the market in mobile VoIP Truphone offer a free to download and easy to use application. This enables you to re-direct phone calls over the internet from your cell phone, allowing you to make substantial savings on calls from your mobile. The reason being, is that by avoiding the regular cell phone network you you no longer have to suffer the charges levied on you for doing so.

Voice over Internet Protocol has achieved acceptance across the globe, and competition is boosting benchmark standards for VoIP provider services. The improved performance and high level of competition in the market place contributes to the development of the unified communication network system that businesses need to cut costs and become more efficient.

Callers no longer needto pay huge amounts of money to ring their colleagues and acquaintances overseas. Large incumbent telecoms companies attract callers in by telling them that they have no choice but that is incorrect. Consumers have a wealth of alternatives! In actuality most mobile VoIP providers are likely to be even better value than your provider right now.

The Labour party’s 50p surcharge is looming large over the general public as Digital Britain honchos are pushing for implementing the scheme as soon as possible. The government is determined to bring it into force before elections due next year. The Conservatives have made it clear that they do not intend to go ahead with the surcharge if they are voted to power.

The Labour party is going full steam ahead to see its rural broadband plans bearing fruit before the elections. Government officials have confirmed that the charge will be levied from October 2010 onwards on all lines in houses. If a single owner has more than one landline, he will end up paying the tax as many times as he has phone lines, even if he does not use all of them. This 50p tax will also attract an additional VAT.

The broadband charges thus collected will go towards establishing high-speed broadband throughout the UK, connecting even the most remote corners to the information superhighway.

Users cannot escape the tax by shifting to VOIP services like those offered by Skype, as all of these will also be taxed in the same way. Broadband users - whether the network uses copper, co-axial or fibre optic cables - will be paying the same tax as landline users, the Treasury has confirmed. While some retailers may raise package price or rentals, others may simply add the tax as a separate bill item.

If all goes well for the Labour party, the surcharge will bring in an additional £175m per annum, which will go towards the rural broadband initiatives and will help establish speedy broadband over 90% of the UK by the year 2017.

If you need more information on your ISP, or you want more information on your current broadband speed, the Broadband Genie comparative table of UK broadband providers includes an analysis of the products and services from the internet service providers. So take a look at their website; click on your provider, mine is BT Broadband and check out the latest on broadband UK.

According to a report published this week, Africa’s broadband service continues to be sluggish and very expensive. A recent race between a carrier pigeon and Africa’s best- known internet provider Telekom’s ADSL service ended in an embarrassing defeat for the provider.

The report published by the UN shows that Africa’s broadband services have a long way to go before they can be called adequate. The country has the fastest growing mobile market in the world with startling growth figures over the last five years. A 550% growth was seen in the number of mobile subscribers with 350 million users in 2008 as opposed to 54 million in 2003.

However, broadband has not matched this growth and remains slow and expensive across most locations in the country. As of now, it costs around $1,300 per month to maintain broadband connection in areas like Swaziland.

The UN report studied trends in Information Technology and Communications across the world. It concluded that poorer countries like Africa and India are showing remarkable growth in terms of mobile usage. However, the broadband sector continues to lag behind owing to poor infrastructural facilities. The lack of fibre optic cabling is being quoted as the chief cause behind the sluggish and unreliable broadband service in Africa.

The Head of the ICT Analysis at the United Nations presented the report yesterday with his comments on the findings. He pointed out that the substantial growth in mobile industry in spite of recession bodes well for the future prospects of both mobile and broadband sectors. Liberalisation, better infrastructure and economical handsets will make it even more affordable for people to opt for mobile phones.

Fibre optic cabling is also being viewed seriously in the country and it will soon become reality. Because the internet has become a basic need for most of us, and with the advent of mobile broadband and free laptops, it can be accessed whenever and wherever a person wants; we basically look upon broadband access as a ‘utility’, this makes the thought of people not having access a difficult concept.

While the mobile broadband market has not yet recovered from the surprise news of the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Orange, market analyst Analysys Mason has pointed out certain major hurdles in the path of the proposed merger, coming especially from the regulatory authorities.

Mason predicts that the proposed merger will overtake the other big players in the market including Vodafone and O2 broadband. Further, the merger is very likely to attract the attention of competition authorities, who in turn may not approve the proposal, as it will reduce the market competition substantially.

However, even if France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom get an approval for the merger of their UK business, the approval might come with conditions like providing wider rural broadband coverage, which the companies might not agree to as it would reduce the benefits that they would be able to derive from the deal.

Mason is of the opinion that this merger can pave the way for other mergers. Though it is unlikely that Vodafone and O2 will merge anytime soon, there are possibilities that the UK mobile broadband consumers will be left with a maximum of three to four options. The fact is further supported by the international trend of mergers in mobile broadband markets, particularly in Austria and the Netherlands.

Seeking better service and greater transparency, Virgin Media has increased broadband speeds of its non-cable ADSL internet service and has remodelled its selling approach towards potential customers.

The company’s ADSL service can now be availed with a broadband speed of up to 20 Mb. Moreover, the company promises not to exaggerate on the broadband speeds to increase sales. It also promises to provide correct information regarding technicalities of the broadband service at the time of sale.

This commitment comes after Ofcom reported last week that many service providers are giving a false picture to potential customers regarding broadband speeds. Broadband lines of most ISPs are not equipped to deliver speeds that are promised to customers. Ofcom’s report was thereafter followed by this new move from Virgin Broadband. The company’s ADSL broadband service will now include a verified broadband speed declaration; else the company will promote its products by declaring the speed to be the fastest broadband speed that they can offer.

The CEO of Virgin Media expressed his hopes that this new move would create a standard in the telecom industry in terms of keeping transparency and loyalty with customers. He reasoned that false speed claims by internet service providers misinform customers. He added that his company’s National Broadband Speed Promise would help customers to get the right picture and decide on the right product.

Further, Virgin Media

Ovum, a well-known telecom and software consulting group, has announced that the latest bundled broadband deal being offered by BT is one with very little potential profits. The deal is being advertised as the “cheapest in the UK” and it offers impressive usage terms.

The new package is priced quite attractively at £15.65 per month, and it allows a monthly usage of 1GB from BT mobile broadband along with Wi-Fi hotspot access. It also gives home broadband service of up to 8Mbps. BT claims that the deal is the cheapest in the country and offers savings of more than £120 as compared to offers by other providers such as Virgin and Orange.

However, while customers are enjoying these great benefits, analysts from Ovum feel that BT might have to face losses from this deal. The mobile broadband network used to provide this service is not owned by BT, and the company has to pay Vodafone for the use of its network resources, which makes the cost of providing this service higher than what other operators in the UK have to bear.

Steven Hartley, an analyst from Ovum, said that while BT was fast gaining popularity in the mobile broadband market with such special deals, the cost would turn out to be very high, thus making the strategy unsustainable.

Ovum has talked about these issues to BT, and there is a possibility of this new deal vanishing from the market in the near future. Therefore, if you do not want to lose out on this great opportunity, make sure you get your hands on this package as soon as possible. If you’re unfortunate to miss out, the click here for some great mobile broadband deals.

The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) is a prominent UN agency that addresses global concerns related to ICT (Information and communication technology). A recent research conducted by the ITU has put the UK at a lowly number 10 when compared with other nations in terms of ICT. The higher spots have gone to the Scandinavian nations such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

The ITU used two principal tools for conducting the study the ICT Development Index and the ICT Price Basket. The ICT development index measures factors like the number of homes having a computer, skill level and the level of literacy, whereas, the ICT Price Basket is used for comparing the cost of similar ICT services across various nations.

The reason for UK lagging behind other European nations seems to be the fact that ICT services in the country come at a much higher price when compared to a country like Sweden, which has topped the list. Click here for more info on mobile broadband UK.

ITU is also quite optimistic about mobile broadband and believes that it has the potential to provide a major boost to ICT across the globe. The agency pointed out that as technologies like 3G and IMT-2000 are already present in a large number of countries, the basic infrastructure needed for an exponential growth in mobile broadband usage is already in place.

Digital Subscriber Lines, also known as DSL, offers users a high-speed internet connection that shares the same lines as the telephone. For many, the advantage to this is one of convenience: a person can bundle their internet service with their phone service to simplify billing. Some carriers even offer discounts for bundled services.

DSL is available in a variety of speeds from under one megabit per second (Mbps) to as many as 100 Mbps. However, in the United States speeds currently top out at around 10 Mbps. Early on, aside from the higher speeds, people were drawn to DSL because it allowed them to surf the internet without tying up a phone line or paying the expense of installing an additional phone line to accommodate dial-up access. DSL allows simultaneous internet and phone connections over the same line. This is possible because DSL uses frequencies that are not necessary for telephone communication. These frequencies are filtered at the phone jack using a special, inexpensive analog low-pass filter that splits the line into separate voice and data lines. It is possible to use DSL service without a filter, but you will notice greatly diminished speed while online and poor quality audio when you’re on the phone. This is because without the filter, the voice and data signals interfere with each other. Usually DSL filters are free with the purchase of a service plan, but if additional filters are necessary they can be purchased for as little as $1.00.

Aside from the filter, DSL service requires a special modem. These modems are also usually included with the purchase of DSL service as part of a package, but they can also be purchased for as little as $10.00 used online if you’re willing to do some searching. The modem connects to the internet through the DSL filter, and a computer or router is then connected to the modem allowing it access to the web.

One of the most important developments in the VoIP industry in recent times has been the growth of mobile VoIP technology. Although still relatively early days for the mobile Voice over IP companies such as Truphone, it certainly seems they have the capacity to mix things up in the telecoms industry. Some of the recent incumbent mobile operators’ actions seem evidence of this with T-Mobile recently being forced to allow the use of Truphone over its network, having previously not allowed calls to Truphone allocated numbers.

Whilst some people argue that as VoIP prices fall towards zero, this is making it a very difficult industry to make any substantial profit in; the increasing prevalence of cut cost high speed broadband and has resulted in a huge surge in the availability of free Wi-Fi. Consequently this is making mobile VoIP operators an increasingly attractive offer for consumers. The trend in the availability of new ’smart phones’ with the ability to run mobile VoIP client software, at ever reducing prices is also, it could be argued, creating a situation where mobile VoIP could really take off.

We have recently seen T-Mobile introduce their Voice over IP service called @home giving customers the option of paying a single low monthly flat rate. However whilst the industry is finding people not entirely willing to give up their fixed phone line all together, mobile VoIP operators have no such issue to contend with. The seamless integration of mobile VoIP clients into the functionality of mobile phones, as well as the reduced cost of data-inclusive phone packages has resulted in a predictably fast growth in the mobile VoIP sector.

At present it has been reported that there are 4 million VoIP customers in the United Kingdom, and its likely this figure will go up. How established mobile phone operators will harness this remains to be seen but the decision to force T Mobile to allow calls to Truphone subscribers surely transmits a clear signal that rather than try and resist the mobile VoIP operators, the incumbent industry monoliths must find a way of working with them.

One issue which may have an influence on the amount of subscribers of mobile Voice over IP is security, with many highly publicized stories highlighting the vulnerabilities in making calls using VoIP. Another issue to contend with is ‘VoIP phishing’ where people are convinced to part with their personal data voluntarily after falling for a thief’s lure. This is also symptomatic of other VoIP security problems where unscrupulous would be thieves can tamper with the caller ID making it appear as though they are calling from reputable financial institutions. Once such problems have been dealt with and fears allayed it is likely that mobile VoIP will become will become much more integral to peoples lives as people take the opportunity to turn their mobiles into VoIP phones.

Unfortunately for Motorola it has not has not proved the most respected mobile handset they have every produced, however it is still worth evaluating if you see one with cheap line rental or a lot of inclusive minutes. With this handset Motorola have made something wich is fairly well featured for the price. With the RAZR V3xx Motorola have produced a good all rounder intended to be appealing for a very wide range of customers.

The Motorola RAZR V3xx weighs only 107 g. Compared to other models, the RAZR V3xx is very compact easily fitting into ones pocket. The Motorola RAZR V3xx can only be bought in Black. The Motorola RAZR V3xx is has bluetooth, making it effortless to integrate with devices, for example hands free sets or a music system. The RAZR V3xx is compatible with 2G GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 and 3G HSDPA 850 / 1900 . The RAZR V3xx has an integrated 1.3 MP, 1280 x 1024 pixels, video; secondary VGA video call camera. A WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML (Opera), browser allows this mobile phone to be used for mobile Internet access. In terms of battery cell usage the Motorola RAZR V3xx has 3:00 talk time and 290 hours standby charge. The Motorola RAZR V3xx is that is fitted to a Li-Ion 940 mAh, battery. The RAZR V3xx has Polyphonic, MP3 ring tones enabled on top of which is a vibrating alert. The screen is a TFT, 256K colors. Additionally the Motorola RAZR V3xx has the following additional features:

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This is now quite an old handset, but still does a great job. If you can find one, on clearance you can steal a real bargain. The most popular place to shop for a mobile phone at the present time is from specialist websites. Buying online can save you a significant amount of money, it is even possible to get 12 month free deals , which will not cost a penny.