Reliance all set to enter GSM business after CDMA

We had covered long back in June 2006 about possibility of Reliance entering GSM business in India

Now Forbes is telling us that Huawei Technologies of China has won a 500 million USD contract from Reliance India for GSM Network hardware and installation and the contract spans 3 years. Airtel and Vodafone are battling it out already in the GSM space and State owned operators are facing losses. Will entry of Reliance make things worse for them ?

Regarding the CDMA scene in India , Reliance and Tata Indicom are the sole players and its a different ball game altogether.
Continue reading “Reliance all set to enter GSM business after CDMA”

Youtube expands mobile version and launches Java App

Google’s Youtube has expanded its mobile version by offering its large video collection at m.youtube.com

youtube mobile

Until recently only a limited subset of the entire database was available on the mobile version.

FREE Youtube JAVA Application 

They have also announced a J2ME Java Application which lets users play videos without downloading them directly. But the sad news is that application is available only for Nokia’s N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120 and SonyEricsson k800 and w880. But it should work pretty fine on any J2ME MIDP2.0 Phone . Continue reading “Youtube expands mobile version and launches Java App”

Reliance Mobile Blog

Reliance seems to be singing the Blogging song with their latest Reliance Mobile Blog Ad on TV screens across India.

Reliance Mobile Blog is the latest addition to the features of their mobile offerings. The classical song which plays is ” You got the whole world in your hands “. With mobile penetration sky rocketing in India this new feature seems to be mainly targetted at Youth.The AD shows a pretty young girl who encourages users to share your dairy on reliance mobile world. The advert seems impressive and well taken. It seems like the AD is taken in Singapore. I checked out the Official Site  and found that users are uploading mainly images and videos. So this might well be termed as Multimedia Mobile Blogging . But my worry is that since such a service is data intensive, how much time will it take for me to upload an image/video etc. I badly want to get my hands on a reliance phone and try out this service.

[youtube]http://xml.truveo.com/eb/i/2349200870/a/dfe1f41648ea417e31053cc5e700bda1/p/1[/youtube]

Hyderabad based IMImobile seems to be the powering this service for largest CDMA operator in the country.

FoneArena and blogging have some good connection . We got covered by NDTV for mobile blogging 

Check out our mobile blogging guide 

Sony Ericsson Maria Sharapova pics

Sharapova_1

We had covered the story about Sony Ericsson roping in Tennis star Mari Sharapova some time back. Now the proof is out . Some latest pics show Maria posing with the Sony Ericsson slider phone.

Im damn sure that the phone she is using is a Sony Ericsson W580i

More pics below

Continue reading “Sony Ericsson Maria Sharapova pics”

See you at Proto.in 2008

I m really excited as Im going to be attending Proto.in 2008 – An event to showcase startups in India.

Im interested in the Telecom and Mobile sectors and the first session tomorrow deals with these two sectors.

We might see some product launches and some cool new ideas being presented by Startups.

We will be covering most of the action here on FoneArena as we are an Online Media partner for Proto.in 2008.

Would be great to meet some folks over at Proto.

Latest Mobile Prices updated for January 2008

Hi Folks,

We have updated latest mobile prices of all phones on the site for January 2008 . The reason for the delay was due to a few price drops which happened in the new year. Continue reading “Latest Mobile Prices updated for January 2008”

Nokia E51 Review

Nokia E51 is a great upgrade to the old Nokia E50.Since a lot of readers are asking us about this phone we thought of writing a review about this latest entrant to the Nokia E Series . You might have seen my post on Nokia E Series in India

Simply put , Nokia wants to make its E Series devices as popular as the N Series ones

Nokia E51

Connectivity

Has got it all – Quadband , 3G, HSDPA – its a 3.5G phone infact. Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) , Bluetooth , USB are all present. Continue reading “Nokia E51 Review”

Mobile Innovations of 2008 winners announced

I never knew that Users would expect so much out of their mobile phone before kicking of Free Recharge contest where we asked the users 1 simple question. What feature would you like to see in your mobile phone in 2008 ?

We got about 65 Responses from users who had patiently written about the features which they would like to have in their mobile phone in 2008.

We really had a tough time picking the winners. Most ideas were good and we could not eliminate users easily. So we have picked 10 Users at Random as winners.

Congrats to the winners and A Big Thanks to all the participants.

Please find the list of winning entries below Continue reading “Mobile Innovations of 2008 winners announced”

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Now you can get free updates via SMS each time a new story is posted on FoneArena.

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SMS the following to 567673434 to join through your mobile phone JOIN FoneArena

note :You will be charged Rs.3 for this SMS. But incoming SMSes will be delivered for free to your number

Alternatively you can join our SMS GupShup group. You can see the group online at http://smsgupshup.com/groups/FoneArena

SMS GupShup is a free group SMS service.

SMS GupShup through mobile phones is currently available only in India.

Nokia N95 8GB gets v15 firmware

All About Symbian is reporting that theres a major upgrade to the Nokia N95 8GB firmware available for download. You can see the screenshot below which shows the possibility to upgrade from version 11 to version 15.

Nokia n95 8gb v15 firmware

Highlights of the new firmware v15.

Faster Search

Increase in access speed of the internal 8GB memory.

Support for 3rd party themes

Flash Lite 3 and Flash Video suppor t. This is the most interesting feature addition to the phone.

Adobe launched FlashLite 3 with Video  some time back in October last year.

Continue reading “Nokia N95 8GB gets v15 firmware”

Nokia Siemens Networks bags multi-million Euro IVR deal from Bharti Airtel

If your on Airtel Network , You can expect a lot of Voice Based services from Bharti Airtel in the coming years

Nokia Siemens has just bagged a multi-million euro deal from Bharti Airtel for deployment of a single Interactive Voice Response (IVR) . Bharti Airtel awarded this pan India contract to Nokia Siemens Networks for deployment of a single Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform across all 23 circles. The three year turnkey and multi-million Euro contract includes designing, planning, systems integration and optimization services to enhance overall customer experience. The new IVR solution will enable Airtel to deliver Services such as Voice SMS, Televoting, Call Management Services (Reach-me service / Missed Call Advisor), Caller Ring back Tone (CRBT) and Voice Portal among others on a faster time-to-market basis, reduce OPEX costs due to optimized network utilization, and increase security by creation of a layered architecture towards Interactive Voice applications.

Nokia Siemens Networks will deploy and integrate the latest state-of-the-art platforms to provide a multi-technology, multi-vendor integrated solution that includes systems integration services. The platforms are HP OCMP (Open Call Management Platform), Video Gateway, Televoting Application and ASR/TTS (Automatic Speech Recognition / Text-to-Speech Engine. The solution will be ready for commercial operation by April 2008 and is expected to scale up to one billion minutes of usage per month in three years for Bharti Airtel. Continue reading “Nokia Siemens Networks bags multi-million Euro IVR deal from Bharti Airtel”

Happy new Year 2008 – Win free recharge voucher

Fone Arena is growing bigger every day. We would like to wish all our users a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year. May all your dreams come true in 2008. To Celebrate the New Year we are giving 10 Mobile Prepaid Recharge vouchers worth Rs.100 each. So you all have a chance to win Rs.1000 worth of prizes. To enter the contest. Please answer this question

Continue reading “Happy new Year 2008 – Win free recharge voucher”

Nokia betting big on E Series devices

I have never seen Nokia marketing the E-Series range of devices in India. But now, Nokia is Marketing E Series in Indian newspapers , TV Channels , Websites like never before. Though N Series is the major winner for Nokia in India , we can see that they also want to capture the professional / enterprise phone user.

May be India is just a part of the Nokia’s Asia Pacific market as the website which is promoting these devices is nokiaforbusiness.com/apac/eseries/

The E series starts from the E50 priced at Rs.8000 to the E90 Communicator priced at Rs.35000

Continue reading “Nokia betting big on E Series devices”

Man gets mobile phone bill for 34 lacs

Imagine you get a mobile bill for Rupees 34 lacs !! You can even buy a Merc or an apartment for that kind of money.

An 22yr old Oil Field worker from Calgary,Canada -Piotr Staniaszek got an whooping 85000 dollar mobile phone bill . It was due to his mobile browsing charges. He had signed up for a $150 unlimited data service from Bell Canada

He happily connected his phone to his computer and downloaded tons of data including movies and games. Continue reading “Man gets mobile phone bill for 34 lacs”