If you�d like to republish any comments or quotes from News & Views, you�re welcome to. We would however ask that you show the source reference of Phonechoice and include our URL (www.phonechoice.com.au).

2272  Articles   152 Pages         5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14  15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

• 15 Aug 07 - Tragic: Murdered for mobile
• 14 Aug 07 - Wonders of Mobile VoIP
• 14 Aug 07 - Wonders of Mobile VoIP - Part 2
• 14 Aug 07 - Government to launch Scam alert service
• 13 Aug 07 - Deceased man's $218 Trillion phone bill
• 10 Aug 07 - Relief near for bandwith demand
• 10 Aug 07 - Fake kidnappers mobile racket
• 09 Aug 07 - The mobile as a musical instrument
• 08 Aug 07 - Mobile broadband set to explode
• 07 Aug 07 - Minister assures CDMA coverage
• 06 Aug 07 - Google phone coming soon
• 02 Aug 07 - The humble mobile stars on Broadway
• 02 Aug 07 - Qantas to offer on board broadband
• 01 Aug 07 - Tour de France rider sacked by phone company
• 01 Aug 07 - Virgin launches aggressive mobile broadband product

Police in the Moscow region have detained three young men suspected of beating two 15-year-old boys to death in order to steal their mobile phones, prosecutors said Tuesday. The suspects, aged 15 to 22, were detained over the weekend in connection with the beating deaths of Kirill Khromushkin and Dmitry Timofeyev, whose bodies were discovered Thursday night in a forest outside the village of Vorovskogo, 30 kilometers northeast of Moscow.

The deadly attack appears to fall into the trend of mobile phone-related crimes. Police and prosecutors have registered numerous violent crimes - including arson and homicide - in recent years that they say were committed in order to obtain mobile phones.

VOICE over internet protocol telephony has helped thousands of people shave money from their fixed-line phone bills since appearing on the scene some four years ago. Now it's poised to do the same to mobiles. By enabling people to avoid the steep call rates levied by mobile carriers, the technology is changing the way mobile phones are used. Some are seeing it as the second phase of the VoIP revolution.

Mobile VoIP takes two forms. The first involves bypassing the mobile cellular network and sending calls over a wireless network instead. The second makes use of the data capabilities of the cellular network itself.

While it's early days for both methods, initial reaction from users is positive. It's only a matter of time before mobile VoIP enters the mainstream. An example of the first type of mobile VoIP service, launched by Engin, is designed to work on mobile phones capable of Wi-Fi networking. Examples of these include Nokia's N and E series handsets. Once installed, the phone needs to be set to search for available Wi-Fi networks. This could be a network in the home or office, or one of the growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots sprouting up in cafes, airports and hotels.

Once connected, voice calls can be made and received over the Wi-Fi connection rather than the mobile network. Any calls to the user's inbound VoIP number will be relayed to the handset, and all outgoing calls will be charged at VoIP rates. Making calls via a hotspot, or even over one of the growing number of free municipal Wi-Fi networks, can slash hundreds of dollars off the bill.

Engin is working on handover technology for its mobile softphone service and expects it to be available later this year. Once installed, it will allow a user to begin a call on a Wi-Fi network and then seamlessly transfer it to a cellular network when they are on the move.

The second area in which VoIP is saving money for mobile users is calls over the mobile network itself. In Australia, network operator Hutchison 3 has led the charge with its X-Series bundles. As well as mobile broadband and access to 3's content, the bundles also provide a set number of Skype call minutes. Users can call other Skype users from their mobile handset for free.

Meanwhile Gotalk is planning a phone client that will allow users to make use of its VoIP service from their mobile handsets. Gotalk CEO Steve Picton says it's designed to make it easy for people to access a VoIP service, regardless of the device they use to connect.

"VoIP is just an access method and it's pretty much irrelevant to users. At the end of the day, customers want to have a variety of access methods and we shouldn't be tying them down to their PC or anything else. We have enabled our pre-paid products to be accessed via a PC-based softphone, and the next phase is to make that softphone available on mobiles." Said Picton.

A national alert service designed to protect home users and small businesses from cyber threats will be launched by the Federal Government aimed at protecting home internet users from online threats such as phishing, ID theft, banking frauds and other scams. The project is part of a $13.6 million package over the next four years to strengthen home user and small business security. Reaction to the proposed service has been mixed.

Nishad Herath, senior researcher with security software maker McAfee, says the service could work if it were well promoted. He says a wealth of information about security is already available to home users and small business. The trick is to convince end users they need to educate themselves.

Karl Hanmore, operations manager of not-for-profit IT security information centre AusCERT, is more upbeat: "Providing a good central place for information is a positive step. It's definitely a step in the right direction. High level, it looks good."

A Malaysian man who paid off a $23 wireless bill and disconnected his late father's cell phone back in January has been stiffed for subsequent charges on the closed account, MSNBC has reported. Telekom Malaysia sent Yahaya Wahab a bill for 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit, or about $218 trillion, for charges to the account, along with a demand from the company's debt collection agency that he settle the alleged debt within 10 days, or get a lawyer.

"If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it," Yahaya claimed. "In fact, I can't wait to face it. "No one apparently at Telekom Malaysia is quite sure whether the bill was a mistake, or, cryptically, if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after his death.

AUSTRALIAN consumers can expect by late next year relief from the international bandwidth drought that has been driving up internet access costs. Network infrastructure specialist, Pipe Networks, has selected Tyco Telecommunications to supply a new undersea cable linking Australia to Guam that is expected to break an international bandwidth duopoly suppressing local internet download quotas.

Pipe Networks would not reveal details of its commercial agreement with Tyco but it has previously estimated that the cost of building the cable – named Project Runway – would reach $200 million. Pipe Networks said it expected to start connecting local internet providers to the new cable by the first quarter of the 2009 financial year.

The announcement comes amid a round of pricing and policy changes by ISPs who say they can no longer cover the cost of providing high download quotas services. The ABS reported that Australian internet users downloaded 40 trillion megabytes in the three months to March 31 compared with 33 trillion megabytes in the previous quarter. International telecommunications analyst group TeleGeography recently reported that Australia's international bandwidth costs were among the highest in the world.

Colombian mobile telephone users are being duped by criminals who pose as phone operators and instruct them to turn off their handsets just long enough to demand ransom from their families. Colombia, long one of the world's kidnapping capitals, has seen a rash of cases in which mobile phone customers receive messages telling them to turn off their handsets for two hours because their telephones have been cloned, police say.

The criminals then contact family members of the phone user to say that he or she has been taken hostage. Families who have no way of contacting their relative are directed where to drop off ransom money before the two hours are up. "If you get a call telling you to turn off your handset, contact the authorities," local television channel Caracol told viewers during a Tuesday news program.

A mobile phone rings during a musical performance. At this show, it's one of the featured instruments. As part of an event designed to raise awareness for Samsung's Upstage, a digital music phone that plays music in the traditional sense was introduced. The electronics giant hired experimental musician Bora Yoon performed music with her mobile phone.

Yoon said she's always tried to not discriminate against nice sounds just because they might come from non-traditional sources. She said that she believes a tin can fit perfectly well alongside a piano or guitar. "I guess it's kinda like architecture with intangible things like sounds. You could call it music or you could call it organising pitches and thoughts in a certain pattern," Yoon said.

No two songs she does with the mobile phone are exactly the same. That's because she sees it as her instrument to solo, to just kind of jam on stage. "It's organising a keyboard, essentially. So, you're soloing, but the interface this time is a mobile phone," Yoon said. Next up for Yoon, she said she's working with researchers at MIT to help her use her self-professed geeked-out style of music to create an entire opera.