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
USA Today reports a new survey on kids in cyberspace. According to the survey one in five teens have “sexted” — sent or received sexually suggestive, nude or nearly nude photos through cellphone sms text messages or e-mail.
Most teens who sexted sent the photos to girlfriends or boyfriends, but 11% sent them to strangers, according to the study made public today by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Cox Communications. Of teens who sext, 80% are under 18, the survey found.
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.
Gaea News reports 
that Australia is trying to make racist SMS an offence. Alarmed by the damage done to the country’s reputation after a series of attacks on Indian students, the Australian government is mulling a change in law that would make sending an SMS inciting racial attacks an offense. The government was examining the possibility of amending an existing law of inciting violence against people for their race, religion or ethnicity to include “inciting violence against an individual on the basis of that individual’s race, religion, ethnicity or nationality”.
Phonepayplus just released new information on web promoted sms subscription services. According to PPP, it is now required to have terms and conditions visible without scrolling, to have 2 mobile number input fields (one verifying the other) and to have a un-ticked checkbox asking to accept the terms of the text service.
