Mobile Network Comparison

Serial entrepreneur Dan Lane has sadly announced that his project Impossible Telecom has effectively been put been on indefinite hold. There’s been a bit of a hiatus in updates leading many to assume that he’d run into some stumbling blocks and unfortunately that seems to be the case. He has announced that he’s no longer working full time on the company.

Dan just blogged earlier this week explaining that he has been working hard on the start-up over the last year putting his telecoms expertise to use. However, although the network was due to launch about six months ago, the reason it was never able to get off the ground is because the parents networks that would be providing the infrastructure and selling on their airtime and network capabilities didn’t want to play ball.

Dan Lane doesn’t go into great detail but the implication is that either his idea for Impossible Telecom was too novel or that the existing networks deemed it too great a threat. We think it’s a real shame. Some of the ideas that were going to form the backbone of Impossible Telecom were really exciting and came from proper blue skies thinking.

We first took a detailed look at Impossible Telecom back in April 2012. One of the exciting ideas put forward was the ability to have two accounts or phone numbers on one SIM card. So that you don’t need to carry around multiple devices to have a separate number for work and for personal use. Even better, Impossible Telecom was going to let you use your same mobile number on different phones and in different places. And to let you share your call, text and data bundles across all your devices.

We need people like Dan Lane to push forward the evolution of technologies that so often stay stagnant. Can we really trust by-the-book companies like Vodafone and O₂ to invest in real innovation? When the UK’s networks drag their feet on basic stuff like the introduction of 4G, progressive and affordable data plans or even simple apps like real-time itemised billing how can we expect them to produce mobile services for the future. Things fit for the 21st century? There’s far too much corporate close-mindedness, playing catch-up and chasing after profits.

Sadly, it’s looking like Impossible Telecom won’t be happening any time soon but the good news is that we might see some of the technology that went into it appearing as standalone products in the coming years.

What do you think? Are you surprised that Impossible Telecom didn’t work in the end? What was your most anticipated feature? If you were designing a mobile network, what innovations would you introduce? And do you agree with our analysis of the existing mainstream networks?

There are rumblings and murmurs that a pan-European network may be coming soon. It is an issued that has been talked about recently but recent developments are the most concrete steps seen yet toward a European fully-integrated mobile telephony network. The rumours come following a private meeting between some of the continent’s biggest telephone companies with EU bigwigs also attending.

Recently, mobile phone companies have been performing poorly and have seen profits tumble in the wake of the global financial crisis. Investors are putting the pressure on especially after all the investment in 4G across Europe. In order to try to recoup their revenues, many European networks are restructuring their businesses over the coming years.

One thing driving development is an urging from the EU headquarters to make more concerted effort to combine the multitude of network across the continent. Brussels recently mandated EU-wide payment caps on mobile phone usage across Europe much to the relief of consumers everywhere. It’s now thought they will press for a stronger union amongst the fragmentation of telephonic utilities.

The latest meeting brought together some of the biggest players in the industry. As well as T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, Orange owner France Télécom, and O₂ owner Telefónica, there were also representatives from Telecom Italia. Together, the four companies bring in revenues of about €200 billion making them truly massive multinationals. Furthermore, EU competition chief Joaquín Almunia also attended making the private meeting full of some of the biggest movers and shakers involved in mobile phones.

Industry experts have concluded that the results of the meeting was that all the leaders agreed that joining together Europe’s networks would be beneficial. It is thought that the fragmented European telecoms markets make the industry less competitive. As most of the mobile networks originated from state-owned monopolies originally, the market has grown in a more disjointed way than many other in Europe.

However, the aim to create a pan-European network will encounter several roadblocks on the way, not least from the EU regulators. There will also be difficulties reconciling the various national laws and regulations of communications. Added on to that the financial and technical obstacles in uniting the various infrastructures and it becomes clear how gargantuan a task this will be.

However, it is thought that united the various national operators will modernise the telecoms industry and bring benefits for consumers. It will also more closely resemble other major mobile network markets such as that in China and the US which are totally dominated by just a handful of providers. The possibility of reducing roaming fees and simplifying pricing across the whole EU would also be a massive benefit for end users.

Despite the obvious challenges, it is thought that this latest meeting represents one of the biggest first steps toward setting this plan in motion. This is very much a preliminary stage but there is good reason for speculation. And, after all, the networks are nowadays under increasing pressure to share the burden of investment and work together for a share of ever-diminishing margins.

What do you think? Is there any basis in these rumours? And would it be better to have a EU-wide mobile network? What do you see as the main benefits to consumers?

HTC, the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacture, has just posted troubling financial results. The latest figures show that net income has fallen almost 100% compared to last year. The net income for HTC was only £21.2 million – shockingly this is the lowest since 2004 when far fewer smartphones were being sold.

The company was an early leader in the smartphone market and, after initially concentrating on the Windows Mobile OS, became a popular choice for Android OS Smartphones. Its experience making touch devices since the late 1990s put it in prime position to capitalise on the emerging smartphone market. The first A series (Android OS) phone produced by HTC was the HTC Dream (also known as the T-Mobile G1). This was released in 2008 and was the first ever Android phone originally running Android 1.0 before being upgraded to 1.0.

Since then, HTC has released more phones running on Android than any other platform. These range from affordable low-end phones just as the HTC Wildfire to popular handsets such as the Desire series and even top-end limit-pushing phones such as the Incredible series and the HTC One X.

HTC is also well known for its distinctive HTC Sense graphical interface. This is widely acclaimed as being one of the most smooth and powerful interfaces available for Android and the included exclusive widgets are massively popular amongst power users especially the familiar clock/weather combo on untold numbers of homescreens.

In any case, the latest financial figures are a deep disappointment for HTC. While analysts expected lower profits due to a lack of major product launches, it turns out that the actual figures were even less than predicted. Much of this must be due to incredibly steep competition from Samsung and Apple.

We only just learned that Samsung is now the most popular mobile phone brand in the world. But the most pertinent information to glean from this is how well Samsung has been doing with smartphones at the expense of everyone else. Samsung is now responsible for a massive 28% of smartphone sales while HTC is struggling – in 2012 its share of the smartphone market plummeted from 9% to 5% leaving it severely lagging behind Samsung and Apple.

HTC must really step up its game if it is going to compete with Samsung in 2013 especially with the new Galaxy S4 smartphone just around the corner. They are due to announce a new product at an expo in Las Vegas this week so hopefully HTC will pull something surprising out of the bag.

What do you make of the massive drop in HTC’s profits? Have you owned an HTC phone and what did you think of it? And can they still compete with Apple and Samsung in 2013?