A bit late in the news but if you’ve been wondering why BlackBerry email has been removed from the E71, this could be one of the many reasons. Nokia Messaging is out of beta and apart from local WiFi services, Nokia has announced their stand alone service for up to 10 email addresses into your phone. Local rates apply of course.

There is no charge as of the trial period but Nokia hints that your local telco will be able to integrate Nokia Messaging into their list of data services. Currently, these are the features for Nokia Messaging:

What’s new in this release of Nokia Messaging?

* Improved application performance, including rapid access to the Inbox
* Support for up to 10 email addresses
* Better support for subfolders in IMAP email accounts
* Flagged messages automatically become starred messages in Gmail
* Improved battery life
* More intuitive inbox navigation
* Support for more Nokia S60 phones
* Support for Google Apps hosted email addresses
* Mail sent from any email address on your phone now syncs to the server

Steve Jobs is mad. He’s mad at Canada. Not at the Canadians in particular. but to Canadian telcos who are described to have the most horrid data plans, it makes the whole thing disgusting. Tris from Maple Leaf 2.0 has A LOT to say about this.

The 6 Apple Stores in Canada will demo the iPhone 3G but will not sell them. But this isn’t what’s appalling - Steve Jobs is diverting shipments of iPhone 3G to Europe. Rogers tries to defend their stand:

Rogers has historically been criticized for being the most reluctant of Canadian providers to decrease its data fees. A year ago, the company’s pricing for 500MB of data would have cost $295 per month, while Bell and Telus shortly afterwards began dropping the cost of data to where unlimited browsing would cost as little as $7 per month on Bell’s HTC Touch. Rogers has since responded by offering its own $7 plan for any device but limits it only to the default web browser.

Announced yesterday, Alltell Wireless is pushing their new Rev-A technology that does 3.1MBPS for downloads and 1.8 MBPS for uploads. This service is spread across 18 areas including Little Rock, Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa in urban and rural areas.

Here’s a quote from the press release:

Alltel’s existing broadband Wireless Internet service enables remote access to corporate intranets, productivity enhancing applications and a variety of consumer products, such as Alltel TV and XM Radio Mobile. Rev. A will enhance the performance of all of those services. Alltel plans an initial rollout of Rev. A to 18 market areas and dozens of cities, including Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa. Customers using Rev. A will experience average upload speeds of 500-800 Kbps with bursts up to 1.8 Mbps. Upload speeds on the company’s existing broadband network average 50-70 Kbps, with bursts up to 144 Kbps, so the enhanced network will be five to 10 times faster.

Download speeds also will increase. Rev. A download speeds average 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps, with bursts up to 3.1 Mbps. By comparison, downloads on the existing broadband network average 400-700 Kbps with bursts up to 2.4 Mbps. Using Rev. A, customers can expect to download a 1 Megabyte e-mail file attachment – the equivalent of a small Power Point® presentation or a large PDF file – in less than 15 seconds and upload the same file in less than 25 seconds.

How much, pray tell? Alltell Wireless’ EVDO service only costs $59.99 per month for unlimited use. So if you have a laptop or a mobile phone that is EVDO compatible, this new service may be the end-all for your portable needs.

[image from newscom]

Huge news for the Asian telco industry. But just to put a little perspective … there’s been a lot of speculation on the Google Phone business model since 2005. With Google’s core competence being contextual advertising (wasn’t it search a long time ago?) they’ve never really kept secret about their plans to use the 700MHz spectrum for a completely free, advertising driven telco and broadband (?) service.

Free, advertising driven telco.

Well, Asia has just opened up it’s first and it’s in the Philippines. Pardon me, I had to break the news in my personal blog simply because of regional implications. I wanted the thought of a free telco to settle in.

So here are a few thoughts about the service and what exactly “free” means.

First off, it isn’t completely free. U Mobile works pretty much like any other telco because it is owned by SMART telecommunications, which is perhaps the largest telco in the PH. The “free” part comes in when you opt in to the contextual advertising program that is sent to your phone and when we say “contextual” we mean something predetermined by a series of lifestyle questionnaires. I filled mine up and it took me a good 20 minutes to get through everything. The form is updated every year. If you don’t fill up the form, you cannot participate in the ad program. There is also a current limit to the maximum amount of free credits you get. I expect this to get higher and higher as they win subscribers.

Not everyone can sign up just yet. Sign ups work like Orkut’s social network where you need to be referred by a friend who is currently a subscriber. The first 350 handsets were generously awarded as raffles to “influential people” who attended the launch (wow, I’m influential!).

Leo Laporte and the rest of TWiT talked about the implications of ad driven telco services. It’s a question of whether you want to allow advertisers to spam your sacred inbox with advertising. Some people may be sensitive to this. Some don’t really care.

The service launched yesterday and there are just so many questions for U Mobile. Hoping to grab an interview with them soon. But yeah this shows how the telco is evolving, and being the first in Asia, well, wow. I’m not sure if similar telco operators in the USA and Europe have an equivalent service. Would appreciate a chime in from the readers!

The image above was taken by yours truly at the ümobile event launch.

Mark from Work Boxers wrote about a very sensitive topic which us mobile phone consumers have, at one time or another experienced. This has to do with value added services or VAS that come with the telco service of choice you apply for. Whether you’re on prepaid or a postpaid subscription you will have access to a milieu of services including wallpaper and ringtone downloads, news, daily jokes or Bible quotes, Mobile TV, …. the list goes on and on and on.

In short — the FCC is warning consumers of the hidden or undisclosed costs of Value Added Services that content providers are playing with:
Read more

Here are three good deals that any telco should offer your post paid plan subscriber. As in.

No hidden fees!
Doesn’t it suck to find out that your $30 dollar phone plan has $20 dollars more worth of “hidden charges?” The reason why I have stuck to my telco for more than three years is that the billing statement is so easy to read. A is A, B is B. I don’t have fancy sounding lingo like “currency conversion charges” or “additional miscellaneous fees” suspiciously printed before the sum total of my bill.

Incentive to renew!
You have a great phone plan, but is your telco giving you an incentive to lock in once again right before your contract expires? Usually, the best incentive for retaining accounts is to have free phones given off for a lock in period of two years. The telco doesn’t really make money with the base charges and aims to earn more with upgrading plans for better phones or through data or excess SMS charges. Fine by me.

Option to downgrade!
Definitely the ultimate perk — if your telco allows you to downgrade your plan without hesitation. This offer is too good to be true but it does exist. All you need to do as a consumer is to be very persistent and tell them that you’re a member of the press and you’ll write about them in your next column if the– …

When applying for a post paid plan, what items do you consider as real perks?