Mobile operator roundup: cheap calls, NFC, managed mobiles and the Dallas Cowboys

Indian price wars have gotten ridiculous with new call charges from Bharti Airtel. Verizon has launched an enterprise mobile management product with Sybase. Turkcell is running a high-profile 3-month campaign for contactless mobile payments. AT&T is showing love for the home team by installing 500 antennas in the Dallas Cowboys stadium and T-Mobile is expanding it’s presence in the Czech Republic.

Mobile operator round-up: video, backhaul, regulation and sanctions

There’s a lot going on this week in the world of mobile operations. Today we have mobile video services in Turkey, along with Indian and Thai deals and (of particular interest to myself) a hefty Government action brewing against mobile operators in Ghana.

Turkey gets new location based friend finding application sobbe

Sobbe is the Turkish name for location social networking business sniff (already launched in the US, UK and Sweden).

Turkcell positive on mobile advertising and the future of mobile data

Turkcell, the largest mobile operator in Turkey, believes that in the future you will be charged for only one service by your operator - data. With VoIP becoming more and more popular as the channel for voice calls, and IM and mobile email catching up on SMS, Turkcell is exploring the possibilities of ad-funded services. [...]

Turkcell buys BeST

The Turkish mobile operator Turkcell will acquire 80% of BeST
 
BeST?

BeST is a mobile operator based in Belarus. It is stated owned and the government will retain a 20% hold in the company. The cost of the acquisition is USD 500 million.

Turkcell and NeuStar team up to bring Windows Live Messenger to Turkish Mobile Users

NeuStar announced today that it’s partnered with Turkcell to launch the Windows Live Messenger service - available to Turkcell’s 35.1 million mobile subscribers.
From the Press Release:
Turkcell is now using NeuStar’s powerful Mobile Messaging Gateway (MMG) solution to bring Windows Live Messenger to its subscribers. Turkcell has been and will continue to offer its own-community mobile [...]

Bubble Motion Announces Partnership with Turkcell

Mountain View CA, 13 May 2008: Bubble Motion, the pioneer and global leader of ‘voice SMS’, today announced an agreement with Turkcell, the leading mobile communications provider in Turkey, to launch its voice SMS service, KonusGonder. BubbleTALK usage has been an overwhelming success story, with mobile operators globally offering the service to more than 140 [...]

Blyk Mobile Advertising discussion at Mobile Marketing Forum

Blyk might not have been at the forum today - but that does not mean that the MVNO was forgotten. Two questions were posed - first in the media round table -(I will write that up a bit later on). The question was “what do you think of Blyk” the response “ask Blyk”.

Then again in [...]

Mobile Content Adaptation: Novarra vs Novarra

Novarra content adaptation is now deployed by Vodafone, Turkcell, Yahoo!, 3 Hong Kong, 3 Italy and Telia Sonera. Mid last year with the Vodafone deployment, Novarra went under the spotlight and there were some issues with the services which were highly documented.
 
This was a surprise to me as every session I had with Novarra before [...]

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