Countdown WCA 2010

The entries have started to come in for the 2010 World Communication Awards - but there's still time for you to be involved...
Deadline for entries is this Friday, 2nd July 2010.


Submit your entries online in one of 15 categories that you can enter, including:

• Best Brand
• Best Content Service
• Best Customer Care
• Best Managed Service
• Best Mobile Operator
• Best New Service
• Best Operator in a Devloping Market
• Best Project Management
• The Alireza Mahmoodshahi Technology Foresight Award
• Best Mobile Device Strategy
• Best Wholesale Carrier
• Best Global Operator
• Best Regional Operator
• The Green Award
• Team of the Year
  

You can view the winners from previous years and get a feeling for what makes them winners by visiting the Roll of Honour of winners since 1999 or check out the Judges advice on writing a winning entry.

Remember if you don't enter, you can't win! Don't miss out Friday is the deadline...

Watch the introduction to the 2009 awards:

Hold the phone

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has responded to complaints that the new iPhone 4 loses signal when it is held a certain way.

"Just avoid holding it in this way," he said in an email to Ars Technica.

Unfortunately 'the way' that Jobs is referring to is a pretty standard holding technique in which the phone is gripped in the left hand the same way you would grip any other handset with your left hand, whether you're left-handed, or doing something crazy at the same time like writing, using a mouse, holding a TV remote or swigging Jack Daniel's in a vain bid to add focus to the blind fury induced by watching the reception plummet on your shiny new smartphone.

As reported by Engadget on Thursday, the problem occurs when the iPhone 4 is held by the bottom left corner of the stainless steel band that incorporates the antenna system. Gripping the phone there bridges the gap between the two aerials, causing signal loss.

Funnily enough, using Apple's official iPhone 4 rubber 'bumper' case - announced ahead of the handset's official launch - solves this issue.

Unsurprisingly Apple hasn't come close to admitting it's a design flaw.

"Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas," said Apple, in a statement emailed to Engadget.

"If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."

Of course it won't be long until some wily entrepreneur releases a special iPhone 4 glove enabling the user to hold their coveted device however they please, replacing signal loss with enhanced feelings of self-worth.

World Cup fever

After months, nay, years of build-up, the World Cup finally kicks off today, and while the planet's football lovers focus on South Africa, some telecom companies have sought to make the most out of the excitement any which way they can.

Translated that means so far I've received more than 50 World Cup-related announcements.

Some are from companies announcing special World Cup-themed offers and services, while others are providing comment on the various effects the World Cup will have on things like mobile Internet browsing, the number of texts being sent etc.

There have also been a few doomsayers predicting that both fixed and mobile networks will struggle to cope with the demand - and of course we're looking forward to receiving several press releases immediately after the World Cup about how [insert telco]'s network/service/platform coped brilliantly with unprecedented demand during this summer's football extravaganza.

One plucky press release even predicted that the World Cup will drive mobile TV usage - something's got to, I suppose.

Apple's new iPhone launch almost didn't happen

Despite our outrageous prediction that Apple would hold off on announcing a new iPhone on Monday, we'd be lying if we said we were surprised when Steve Jobs produced a sleek-looking new smartphone familiar to anyone whose read Gizmodo in the last couple of months.

However, the iPhone 4 launch didn't go exactly to plan - not for any of the reasons we'd suggested, but because the sheer number of fanbois live-blogging the presentation from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) swallowed up all the WiFi capacity.

"You know you could help me out if you're on WiFi," said Jobs, as reported by TheAppleBlog, live from WWDC.

He struggled to demonstrate a New York Times app, and later bemoaned his laggy video call.

"Jobs is complaining about people not turning off WiFi, as though he were our mother," said TheAppleBlog.

"I think bloggers have a right to blog, but if you want to see the demos, we're not going to be able to do it," Jobs said.

Of course, bloggers who blog about prototype iPhones tend to have their homes raided by police, as Gizmodo editor Jason Chen discovered.

Nevertheless the world has a new iPhone, and we're now girding our loins in preparation for the volume of ensuing coverage that one handset is capable of generating.

Vodafone launches femtocells in Spain

In an announcement that slipped through the net last week, Vodafone has become - it claims - the first operator to launch a commercial femtocell proposition in Spain.

The telco is targeting the business market, adding femtocells into its Vodafone Office package to create a 'premium voice and data access' product. Voda said it has more than 25,000 businesses, with more than half a million lines, using Vodafone Office's cloud services. These customers will now be offered the 'premium' product for €15 per month. The service supports 32 connections, with a maximum of four connecting simultaneously.

Reasons why Apple (probably) won't unveil a new iPhone

At 6pm U.K. time today, demigod and Apple CEO Steve Jobs is widely-expected to unveil a new version of the iPhone at his company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

In keeping with tradition, speculative 'new iPhone' stories have been swirling for months, gradually building the hype to fever pitch. This year has been a little different though, thanks to a hapless Apple engineer who left a protoype device in a bar, only for it to eventually fall into the hands of gadget blog Gizmodo.

Among other things the new iPhone will reportedly have improved battery life, a higher resolution screen, a better camera with a flash, a front-facing camera for video chat purposes, and will be powered by Apple's latest smartphone software iPhone OS 4.0.

What's more Bloomberg reported late last week that Apple's online store is no longer stocking the iPhone 3G ahead of what is expected to be today's unveiling of a new one.

However, at the beginning of 2010 we predicted that Apple wouldn't unveil a new iPhone on grounds that a new version wouldn't be a big enough leap in hardware or software for it to be worthwhile.

Now, we could be wrong (judging by the volume of 'new iPhone' coverage how could we be right?), but just to make sure that we potentially end up with the maximum amount of egg on our face, here are some reasons why Mr Jobs probably won't be announcing a new iPhone today:

We've only just had the last one
A year might be a long time by Apple's standards, but not so for mobile phones. The iPhone 3GS launched in late June 2009, so while some early adopters will be coming to the end of their contracts, the majority will not, with many millions still six months away at least. Outside the U.S., iPhones have been on sale from some operators - and in some markets - for less than six months.

iPhone sales are still rising
Apple reported in April that iPhone shipments doubled on year thanks to strong sales in Europe and Asia. The momentum of its current product set isn't about to plateau, and there is still plenty of demand to drive iPhone 3GS sales even further.

Apple chooses user experience over technology
Apple is renowned for delivering the latest and greatest user experience in a compelling form factor; not necessarily for delivering the latest and greatest technology. The first iPhone was 2G, and slightly on the chunky side. Meanwhile its computers aren't known first and formost for their processor speed, nor its iPods for record breaking amounts of storage. Even the first batch of iPads to go on sale lacked 3G, if only for a short time.

The vast majority of what we've heard so far about the supposedly new iPhone has been focused on hardware, and with iPhone OS 4.0 already announced, is Jobs going to spend the whole time on stage talking about a high resolution screen, the benefits of a front-facing camera and the fact it looks a bit different? I don't know, maybe he will.

Competition is out there, but yet to mount a serious threat
Rival devices and platforms are gaining momentum - with Android immediately springing to mind - but try as they might, they have yet to steal the limelight away from the iPhone experience. Apple can't afford to be complacent - no company can (see Motorola post RAZR) - and to remain relevant and innovative the iPhone will need to receive an update at some point. Is it in need of that update right now? Perhaps as a design study that showcases Apple's vision of the not too distant future, but not necessarily as something it needs to put on the shelves right now.

What about the 'magical' iPad?
Will Jobs really be that keen to divert attention away from a product as ambitious as the iPad so soon after it launched? Apple no doubt has marketing cash to burn, and the world's press just love an Apple story, but shouldn't it concentrate on trying to convince consumers outside its core fan base that buying a tablet computer is a good idea?

So, even if we are subject to endless stories this week about Apple's new iPhone, what it does, when it's launching and on which operator, remember there was one publication that took on the risk of ending up with egg on its face to bravely question the hype!

Vodafone 360: The messy divorce

Since deciding to ditch Vodafone 360 in favour of temporarily using a borrowed Nexus One as my primary handset, I've already hit a rather large hurdle.

Vodafone 360 doesn't let you export your contacts to the SIM card, so the Nexus One's address book is looking rather sorry. The reason I ended up with Vodafone 360 was because I'd lost my old phone - and with it the SIM storing my contacts.

I can't have been the only person to have decided to call it a day with Voda's bug-ridden service, and sure enough a quick check on Vodafone's 360 forums revealed someone else was having trouble transferring their contacts from their Samsung H1 to their shiny new Nokia N900.

"I'm afraid it's not possible to save contacts to the SIM on the H1, because everything is remotely synchronised with the 360 service rather than stored locally," said Vodafone tech support in a reply to the other 360 deserter. They even included a smiley at the end. A SMILEY!

Instead, if you really, really want to leave and 'take the kids with you', Vodafone recommends you retrieve your contacts by synchronising Vodafone 360 with Microsoft Outlook - which is likely to be easier said than done given that synchronisation is one of the buggiest parts of the service - and then cross your fingers that your new phone is also able to synchronise with Outlook.

If that doesn't work, I suppose I could either start a Facebook group requesting numbers from my friends, otherwise it looks like I'll be clearing my schedule, drinking lots of coffee, and sitting down with a pen and paper and copying my address book out by hand - a bit like a monk copying the bible. Only with more swearing.

Vodafone 360: I've had enough

Regular readers may remember this post in December 2009, when I took the unusual decision to opt for Vodafone's first dedicated Vodafone 360 smartphone, the Samsung H1, as my next handset - the reason being I had lost my old phone, was due an upgrade, and the iPhone was yet to launch on Voda.

It was a gamble, but when the operator unveiled Vodafone 360 earlier in September I had been impressed by the 3D address book that aggregated contacts across various social networks and stored their details online. I was also impressed by the H1's specs, which as well as the standard smartphone fodder, also included 16 Gigabytes of built-in memory, a 5 megapixel camera, and a crisp, bright OLED touchscreen as standard.

However, I'm less than six months into my contract, and I've had enough. Despite Vodafone's ambition, its LiMo-based 360 platform is buggy to the point of rendering the phone unusuable.

The clever 3D address book - the star of the show - crashes. A lot. This means I have to look through the call history or the messaging app to find a contact.

It's worth leaving the latter up and running if you're in the middle of a text conversation by the way, because compared to the iPhone and most Android handsets, the messaging app takes an age to load. Sometimes it even renders the touchscreen completely unresponsive and the only solution involves a hard restart and a lot of self restraint to avoid throwing it out of a window.

Sometimes when trying to send a text only half the screen autorotates. So you're left with a horizontal keyboard and a vertical chat box, or vice versa.

Email synchronisation is a nightmare - I'm unable to send any emails, and it's only capable of downloading junk mail from my Webmail account. So I have a smartphone that spams me.

The Internet browser, despite incorporating Opera technology, crashes often and the software keyboard doesn't always appear when you touch on a dialogue box - so looking up train times, or filling out any kind of online form for that matter, is laborious.

Vodafone in March pushed out over-the-air updates to 360, only my phone didn't download them.

So I'm left with a device that has a sluggish interface that includes an unstable address book, messaging application and Internet browser, with an email app that does nothing but spam me. Not exactly the smartphone experience I've been hankering for, and more than once my phone has come very close to being 'flushed'.

Why am I writing about this now? I was sent a Nexus One for the purposes of another story I'm working on, and although it's had mixed publicity thanks to connection issues on T-Mobile USA and Google's lack of dedicated tech support, it has reminded me of what I've been missing out on: Any semblance of a smartphone experience.

So I will keep using the Nexus One until someone asks for it back, and I will keep the blog updated with how I'm getting on - stay tuned!