Caroline Kahl

European Operators lower roaming fees

While European mobile operators just announced to cut tariffs on roaming, Brazil is still behind. Mobile operators charge you a roaming fortune for inter-state calls, not even talking about international long distance calls from your fixed line. No wonder people migrate to skype. My newest revelation: free VoIP calls from your PC to land lines in selected countries like Germany, UK, USA, China and many more with VoIPStunt.

More Competition

Today is the deadline that Anatel, the Brazilian Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications, received proposals for the auction of mobile concessions covering the states of SP, Alagoa, Pernambuco, Ceará, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte. Auction will take place on March 7th and finally all states in Brazil will have 4 competitors. Besides the concession for mobile services included is the right to explore radio frequency for 15/30 years and fixed line services for long distance and international calls.
The latter definitely needs more competition so prices will fall for int´l calls. Tried to Skype out to Venezuela today - forget it, within South America the quality is poor, Europe and US ok.

Girls & Gadgets

I actually could parade in a samba school and film it for you, without too obviously holding a cellphone/camera in my hand, but making the camera part of my Fantasia: if this Girl´s Snake developed by Product Visionaires for BenQ Mobile would have an integrated camera. Gimme ten of those for me and my Samba Queen girlfriends and we wrap it around our pulse and ankle during Carnaval parade, having the gadget shining in different colours reflecting our emotions. I swear we will then easily compete with SMS Sugar Man, first full length film shot entirely on cellphones by Southafrican film director Aryan Kaganof and it would be more than a pocket film.

Carnival of the Mobilists

Rio de Janeiro hosts the biggest Carnaval parade and parties on earth and growth rates of the mobile market impress : 1,26 million new cellphone clients in Jan 2006 totalling a number of 87.470.911 by the end of January. A growth rate of 25% in comparison to 2005.
The countdown week for Carnaval starts and I enoy accompanying the Carnaval of the Mobilists, a great initiative I discovered the other day one Rudy´s Blog. Check out the carnavalists:
16th December C Enrique Ortiz
23rd December Christmas Edition at MobHappy
Christmas Break until 20th January.
20th January The Golden Swamp
27th January Blethers
3rd February Mobile Enterprise Weblog
10th February Xellular Identity
17th February - No Carnival - Mobilists are all at 3GSM
24th February TBC
3rd March - Textually
I would really love to contribute by participating int the parade in Sambódromo like last year, filming it life with my Motorola ROKR and posting it here for you... But if a judge spots me my beloved samba school may loose points, that is really risky.

Spectacular Growth Rates..

...in many segments of the Brazilian market, especially in Mobile.
Mobile Operator OI just announced that its customer base increased by 50% in 2005 to a total of 10,3 million clients. Oi is part of fixed line operator Telemar and according to spokesmen the growth rate is due to cross marketing effects. Oi was one of the first mobile operators to run on GSM technology and has a market share of 11,99% , 4th place in the ranking after Vivo (34,54%), TIM (23,42% ), Claro (21,64% ) in Brazil according to Dec 05 figures. GSM technology in Brazil currently accounts for about 52%, leaving behing CDMA (28%) and TDMA (20%). Something to bare in mind though about this country: from more then 87 million cellphones and a growth rate of 31% in comparison to Dec 04, 80% of Brazilian cellphones are pre-paid. (Source: Anatel, Dec 05 figures)

VoIP on mobile network

Telefónica Móviles España and Outsmart will introduce at 3GSM in Barcelona a new service of voice over IP communications through a PC and a mobile network. The "Plug 'n Talk" service is a preloaded softphone on a USB memory stick. Clients will receive a movistar number, preloaded with EUR 15 prepaid credit, and will be able to make and receive calls though their PCs, using the Telefónica Móviles mobile network. More...

Mobilefest Brazil

Mobilefest - The Internation Festival of Mobile Creativity in Brazil will happen in September, 2006 in São Paulo, Brazil.
It is the 1st Brazilian Festival of Mobile Art, based on the sociological implications that mobile phones and mobile technologies have been promoting in our culture.The  agenda is composed by two days of cultural and technical activities. MOBILEFEST will include an international symposium, workshops and recognition awarding of the best works and mobile applications developed by Brazilians.

Brief scenery of the telecommunications in Brazil:
Country size: 8.511.996 Km2
Population: 185,1 million inhabitants
Mobile covering: 163,7 million
Number of mobile lines: 82.351.644
Pre-paid: 80,85%
Pos-paid: 19,15%
Lines activated in November of 2005: 1.111.914
Mobile density: 44,55%
Growth in 2005: 34,58%
Number of Operators: 8
Technologies: GSM (49,83) CDMA (28,22%) TDMA (21,78)
SMS 2005: 7,5 billion messages *
MMS 2005: 10 million messages *
Homes with Microcomputer: 16,3%
Computers with Internet access: 12,2%
Television Covering: 90,3%
Electric illumination: 96,8%

MMM

Marriages between Mobile and Music:
the cards in the mobile game seem to be mixed every day in a new way, strategic alliances, JVs, take overs, just as rich as the Brazilian vocabulary for relationships (going deeper into this requires an extra post...rsrs)
1. Belgian Mobistar and Universal announced the launch of Tempo Music in Belgium for Feb 1st, a prepaid service called "Tempo" offering Universal content: real tones, voice cards and an own "Tempo Music" radiostation.
2. Sounds like Movistar in Argentina, the content cooperation between Universal and Telefonica.
3. MTV Germany will start a new 24h music channel for cellphones in cooperation with Vodafone. Read: MTV-Mobile
4. Universal Germany acquires a minority stake in German mobile service provider net mobile, with the objective to increase their participation in value added mobile services.
5. Verizon follows Sprint in the mobile download business. The second largest mobile operator in the US pretends to start its own mobile donwload shop in cooperation with Microsoft under the name of V Cast Music. with repertoire from the four majors. Target in spring: an offering of more than 1 million titles for download. What sucks: no mp3 format can be played, again the Microsoft predominance taking over. Users need to pass by a Verizon PoS to pick up a software.
6. MTV US acquires a 50 mio USD stake in Amp'd Mobile, a new US mobile operator which started ist services Dec 15th. With the strategic alliance the companies plan to produce exclusive content which will be marketed on the various MTV platforms like MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV2, mtvU and Spike.  Download service Urge, announced and developped by MTV and Microsoft will offer mobile fulltrack-downloads, ringtones and other products for Amp'd-clients.
7. European Cooperation between t-mobile and EMI: 60 million t-mobile clients will have acess to video clips, ringtones, images and full download tracks of sexy Robbie Williams (for the girls), Kylie Minogue (for the boys) and other artists like Norah Jones, Coldplay and the Gorillaz...
8. China: ringtone provider takes over music label. Western labels and publishers try to make their entry into the Chinese market while a first consilidation in the Chinese market is taking place. Ringtone provider Hurray! acquires a majority stake in Freeland Music.

Just a remaining question to all mobile operators: why can I download with my Motorola ROKR  a full track from iTunes for 99 cents with iTunes paying 15% to my credit card company and you guys charge me a price per download of up to 3 USD saving the credit card fee by charging me on your operator bill? What kind of value added service do you offer to make me pay a higher price???

MoBlog

Brazilian Operator Vivo launched a mobile blog. Brazil is not as behind as you imagine!! All which is missing here is "mobile deluxe" as far as mobile content is concerned.