I spotted an article in the Financial Times last night which said Apple has succeeded in persuading 3 mobile operators to sell the iPhone in Europe using the same revenue share as AT&T in the US.
The three mobile operators mentioned are T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and O2 in the UK. According to the article:
The operators are set officially to announce the partnerships at the IFA trade fair in Berlin at the end of August
The article goes on to say that
[Apple] will continue the roll-out elsewhere in Europe next year, when it will also launch in Asia
Damn! I realise it is unlikely but is there any chance the UK O2 launch will include Ireland?
I did!
Skype are claiming that with their outage last week was due to massive numbers of people re-starting their computers after downloading Microsoft’s monthly software update!
I am sure they are correct, despite how implausible it sounds.
I am just curious about how Skype managed to keep the service running every other month that Microsoft has released patches.
UPDATE: - Skype have published a more detailed explanation of the outage.
In case you hadn’t noticed (or read about it elsewhere) Skype has been offline since around 11am this morning. It is now 5pm.
This is the first time I can remember Skype being unavailable since I started using it 3-4 years ago.
Is anyone using it as their only means of telephony? Up to now, that would have been quite tempting.
Getting broadband from your mobile operator is a very tempting proposition as I have mentioned previously. It allows you to finally get rid of that landline you so rarely use (and pay a fortune in monthly charges for) and mobile broadband means you can take it with you when you travel - no more looking for wifi hotspots.
However, reading FrankP’s experience with 3 Ireland’s mobile broadband offering I think I’ll hold off on going the 3 Ireland route for mobile broadband for now.
I spoke to Frank this morning after reading his post and I asked him about the speed of the connection - he said:
1288 kbps right now
yesterday it was 504 kbps when I checked
10th it was 612 kbps / 1141
9th 334 kbps
8th from 30 to 70kbps
This is quite a bit different from the promise on the 3 Ireland Broadband page:
speeds of up to 3.6Mbps – smooth surfing guaranteed
Is Frank’s experience with 3 Ireland unique or have others had similar issues?
Paul Giltenan of Choice Communications has promised me a review O2 broadband modem to trial so I’m looking forward to seeing how that works. I wonder are O2 customers having similar problems - they are, after all, using the same Huawei usb modem.
And if this is a more general problem than 3 Ireland Mobile, should Comreg be getting involved? Of course we all know the telcos find Comreg about as intimidating as Bambi.
I have read a lot about how great the iPhone is but I hadn’t seen any until last Friday; and then I saw three!
I was at a lunch in Cork with Britt Blaser and Sean O’Mahoney (amongst others). Both had iPhones.
I had a chance to try the phone out for myself and see just why people rave about it. It is spectacular.
Later that day I met Patrick Collison. Patrick also had an iPhone.
He was meeting Damien and myself. During the meeting he had to leave us briefly to collect someone. He left his iPhone for us to play with. It really is an incredible phone (although Patrick, after about 25 minutes the sound deteriorates on calls to the speaking clock in Hong Kong 
).
There is no question but that Apple have re-defined the mobile phone.
Pat Phelan’s Cubic Telecom company has been selected to be one of the finalists in TechCrunch 20 for their Roam4free product. What is TechCrunch 20? From the site:
Twenty of the hottest new startups from around the world will announce and demo their products over a two day period at TechCrunch20. And they don’t pay a cent to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone. In fact, we’re even offering a $50,000 cash award and lining up other in-kind services and awards from a generous group of corporate sponsors.
There were over 700 submissions from 26 countries so making it to the last 100 finalists was a considerable achievement. In fact, as far as I know Pat’s is the only Irish company in the final 100. Well done Pat - go for it boy!
I have spoken to Pat at length about their new Roam4free product set due out in the coming weeks and if they deliver half of what Pat is promising, it will set the mobile world on its head.
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