For the record 21 September

21-09-2006

by Charlie Taylor

Meteor slashes cross-border roaming rates | Nokia and Alcatel announce collaboration

The Labour Party's communications spokesperson, Tommy Broughan has slammed Minister Noel Dempsey's comments trumpeting the advances in broadband roll-out during his time as communications minister. Minister Dempsey was speaking at the Facilitating Broadband Leadership conference in Dublin on Thursday. "Minister Dempsey's announcement this morning that the current 410,000 level of broadband subscribers has 'smashed the target I set with several months to spare' is disingenuous in the extreme," said Broughan. "The Minister's original target in his Department's 2004 broadband policy directive was for 500,000 subscribers by mid-2005 and 600,000 plus subscribers by the end of 2006. When it was increasingly clear that this target would not be reached, instead of establishing a more effective policy, the Minister simply decided to change the target and downgraded his broadband goal to reaching 400,000 by the end of 2006."

Meteor has announced that it has abolished charges for prepay customers who receive calls while roaming in Northern Ireland and the UK. The mobile operator also announced free voicemail for contract customers, flat-rate SMS charges and cheaper roaming rates for both prepay and contract subscribers making calls on trips to and from Britain. Minister Dempsey welcomed the announcement, saying that the news would especially benefit those living in border counties.

The card payment solution firm euroConex, has announced a partnership agreement with Card Commerce, a provider of prepaid debit solutions. Under the new deal, Card Commerce's PayPlus OnDemand giftcard service will be made available to euroConex's network of merchants across Europe. The deployment of PayPlus OnDemand will allow merchants using euroConex point of sale card terminals through their banking partner to sell and redeem giftcards and other types of prepaid debit cards such as returns cards or savings cards. The system will initially be available through Bank of Ireland and Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, euroConex's partner banks in Ireland and the UK, before being rolled out into the broader European network in 2007.

Three Ireland is to offer a free dedicated Ryder Cup service to its customers starting on Friday. The mobile operator said that subscribers would be able to view news highlights from BSkyB, receive alerts and latest news from Teamtalk and access a number of golfing websites.

INFONXX, a provider of directory assistance and enhanced information services has completed the acquisitions of Excell Services and Conduit Limited. Excell is a US-based provider of directory assistance, operator services, and inbound customer service, while Conduit is a Dublin-based European information services company. Through these acquisitions, INFONXX estimates it will process more than 1 billion directory assistance inquiries this year.

Nokia has teamed up with the French telecoms equipment manufacturer Alcatel in order to develop a new offering that integrates Nokia Eseries devices into the Alcatel IP Communications server.

Palm has launched a new smartphone which works on Vodafone Ireland's 3G network. The Treo 750v is a "multi-featured" mobile phone with e-mail, messaging, web browsing and organisation software. It comes with Microsoft's Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP) for Windows Mobile 5.0 and is fully compatible with Vodafone Business E-mail.