Cellphone network Cell C´s new ad in which funny-man Trevor Noah features has had mixed reactions within consumers. Some people even considering it a “sick joke”.
The new ad campaign which is aimed to re-launch Cell C´s, has not gone well with customers.
Cell C´s president said that they are taking the re-launch very serious and is not their aim to deceive customers about the cellphone network industry.
In the advert Trevor Noah calls Cell C being the “worst” network provider. Few days later in a newspaper ad appeared and apology to Noah assuring him that Cell C was serious about turning things around!
Source: Times Live.
A Flinders University Doctor has invented a mobile phone that does not need a Network reception in order to function!!
The Doctor at the Flinders University says that science “It´s about making the world a better place”. He is now giving the opportunity to the public to test and try these mobiles themselves and to realize how science can help the poorest people in the world. His mobile phones new system should be able to operate in remote areas which in some cases can be disaster struck areas.
Natural disasters like the Tsunami in Indonesia and the Haiti earthquake have destroyed phone networks, making it difficult and almost impossible for families to get in touch with their relatives and loved ones, as well as making more difficult any rescue intent.
In many parts of the world where people find it difficult to escape poverty or poor health is aggravated by the absence of basic phone networks. “Their new system will allow people to substitute any phone network very quickly possibly within hours”.
Source: Science Alert.
Vodacom SA Group, announced that its revenues in the fiscal first-quarter has not been good despite of the one million new customers.
New mobile operators are aiming to enter the African continent, as is one of the few world regions in which mobile telephones are not very much in used. One of Africa´s largest mobile operator MTN Group Ltd, will be adding 20 million more users this year. Bhartu Airtell Ltd (Indian operator) has announced that is planning to spend over $1 billion improving its newly acquired networks in Africa.
Vodacom, has also announced that it´s customers base has decrease 37.7 million in the last three months due to a new “disconnection policy” by the South African government. This new law has introduced new and strict registration laws for mobile users. Vodacom which is majority owned by UK´s Vodafone Group, gets 87% of its sales from their South Africa market, as it´s the largest operator use in Soiuth Africa.
Vodacom has gained more customers in countries like Tanzania, Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, but unfortunately the revenue coming from this countries has fell about 15% due to the strength of the rand.
A business consultant from Frost & Sullivan, said that Vodacom has to try expand its overall operations in order to improve performance as its current operations are not running smoothly therefore they need to minimize the risk otherwise they will face future bigger losses.
Source: WSJ.com
GLOBE Telecom Inc it´s bracing itself for another though financial semester as no significant change of earnings is expected until the end of December.
It has reported a big fall in net income at the end of June. GLOBE´s president Ernest Cu said that the company´s immediate challenge is to increase or at least stabilize it´s revenues.
This Cellular firm has been hit by the low price offered in order to lure customers into usage of the prepaid segment of the wireless market that unfortunately has gone sour.
-GLOBE tried really hard to reinvent the prepaid market, they tried in the second quarter but will no good results. Now they are planning to be a bit more aggressive with their marketing in the third quarter by trying to “tweak” some of their promos.
GLOBE as many of its other rivals like Smart Communications had been offering unlimited voice and test messaging services. Their next challenge is to shift to internet work from one network to another, but unfortunately not even the booming Broadband business would be able to help increase the revenues from text messaging and mobile voice services.
Mr Cu said “It won´t be enough as things will never be as profitable as it was with the SMS (Short Message Service). GLOBE´s future approach is to improve and offer superior end to end Customer Service and to implement a Promo for a longer period of time and try to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Source: Business Mirror
UK phone-paid services regulator PhonepayPlus today revealed it has started to work on the 12th edition of it’s code of practice taking into consideration recommendations made by Ofcom in its recent PRS Scope Review. PhonepayPlus is aiming to reduce step-by-step guidance and instead defines desirable outcomes to allow businesses more freedom. On the other hand it aims to increase customer confidence.
We can’t help to wonder why they don’t target obvious problematic areas – such as network operators never issuing refunds while putting the burden on service providers who only get half the money but have to pay full. That’s something most service providers would consider unfair treatment.
Or think of mobile network operators effectively forestalling micro payment. As a service provider, you’ll roughly get 50% of what the end user has been charged – the rest stays with the network operator. Imagine what price we could offer you for your sms flat rate if network operators would change to a pay out scheme like credit card companies offer.
Don’t get us wrong – consumer protection is a good thing – we’re consumers ourselves at the end. We still think that most of the problems in the industry are largely due to ignorance on the network side of things (we’re getting unrequested sms from mobile networks on all new phones, and we never agreed to get them in the first place) – and it would certainly benefit consumers to take a closer look at that.
As moconews and zdnet pointed out today, the UK government wants to improve on Underground mobile coverage for the 2012 Olympics. ZDNet reports that this is the second attempt in a short period of time to increase mobile coverage within tubes – the first was dropped quietly after lack of interest from suppliers.
