There’s a little-known stipulation in Amazon’s 3G browsing, available primarily on their e-ink devices. Ostensibly, downloading items over 3G is completely free but browsing the web using the device’s weird and slow experimental interface is capped at 50MB. Most users have never hit that cap and there haven’t been many reports of actual notifications.
That’s recently changed. One user of the Kindle Keyboard 3G noticed the message when he was browsing the web in Canada. He received a message that said he could only browse Amazon.com, Wikipedia, and the Kindle Store. Wi-Fi access was unaffected.
In the terms of use, Amazon notes:
This could be a reaction to folks tethering their Kindles, resulting in a tragedy of the commons effect where some users are using a piddling amount of data while others are blowing out Amazon’s allocations in a few hours.
Nearly 3,000 alleged O2 'porn pirates' to be contacted - Digital Spy
O2 drops Arsenal sponsorship - Marketing Week
O2 is ending its 10 year sponsorship of Arsenal Football Club as it looks to concentrate its efforts on rugby, its Academy venues and the newly-launched Priority Sports initiative.
The mobile operator has been a sponsor of Arsenal since the launch of the O2 brand in 2002. O2 was first a shirt sponsor and then became the club’s exclusive mobile communications partner.
In that time, O2 has focused on raising brand awareness and rewarding its customers with match day experiences and exclusive competitions.
An O2 spokesman says: “As with all our sponsorship agreements we continually review them to ensure they offer the best opportunity for both our business and our customers. We made the decision not to renew our Arsenal partnership to enable greater focus on our existing sponsorships such as The O2, O2 Academy venues and England Rugby.”
An Arsenal Football Club spokesman said: “After ten successful years with O2, we have reached a mutual decision not to renew our partnership. We have worked together well over this time and we wish O2 every future success.”
The club recently signed a three-year sponsorship deal with African mobile operator Airtel. A spokesman for the club said there is no “urgency” to directly replace O2 like for like with another UK mobile operator and that its sponsorship division is focused on building out more partnerships internationally.
O2 told Marketing Week last August that it was looking “whether to continue” its sponsorship of Arsenal as it entered the final year of its contract agreement, partly due to some of the “unsavoury” articles about footballers and football in general, compared with rugby.
The company is currently preparing a “massive” campaign to back the launch of its Priority Sports app, which it has co-developed with Nike - a current Arsenal shirt sponsor.
More than 2,000 O2 'porn pirates' to be sent letters - BBC News
More than 2,000 O2 customers will receive letters accusing them of illegally downloading porn films.
The firm behind the films - Ben Dover Productions - had originally applied to the High Court to pursue 9,000 cases on behalf of a range of copyright owners.
The judge threw out all claims apart from those relating to Ben Dover and watered down the wording of letters.
Parent company Golden Eye did not rule out the possibility that it would be pursuing other ISPs in the future.
To date, it has only requested a court order to pursue alleged copyright infringers on O2's network but this may be extended to other ISPs.
"Golden Eye (Int) Ltd continues to monitor all ISPs for our titles and pursue online and physical forms of piracy of our content," managing director Julian Becker told the BBC.
Letters seeking recompense for alleged copyright offences will start going out to 2,845 O2 customers in August.
The Citizens Advice Bureau has agreed to help those who feel they have been wrongly accused.
Final letterThe judge who granted permission for the case to go ahead has put strict limitations on how letters are worded to avoid the "pay up or else" style letters sent by law firm ACS Law.
Golden Eye will not be able to demand a one-off £700 fine as it had originally wished, instead money owed will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
The letters also make people aware of the help available to them from Citizens Advice, with links to the website and telephone numbers.
And perhaps most crucially the letters cannot hold the bill payer liable if someone else used their internet connection to download illegal material.
The final letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the BBC, reads: "In the event that you were not responsible for the infringing acts outlined above, for example, another member of your household was the user of the computer, you should make full disclosure to us of the other parties at your residence using your internet connection."
The letter that accused O2 customers will receive[252KB]
It is not clear how the bill holder should respond if they think that material was downloaded by someone illegally accessing an unsecured home wi-fi connection.
Citizens' rights group Consumer Focus, which has followed the case closely, is pleased by the concessions.
'No option'"We do not condone copyright infringement, but innocent people should not feel bullied into settling claims and they must be made aware of where to go for help," said Mike O'Connor, chief executive of Consumer Focus.
"That is why we are working with the Citizens Advice service to provide clear advice to consumers about what to do if they are accused of copyright infringement," he added.
The group has also written to the UK's major ISPs asking that they make sure that any application to hand over consumers' personal data is supported by appropriate an consistent evidence of possible wrongdoing.
O2 is believed to be in the process of handing over names and addresses to Golden Eye.
It told the BBC: "We have no option but to comply with this court order and will be co-operating fully."
O2 attempts to muscle in on voucher biz with SME freebie scheme - The Register
O2 attempts to muscle in on voucher biz with SME freebie scheme
You get ads, we get the simple joy of being your friends
Posted in Small Biz, 24th July 2012 07:27 GMT
Free whitepaper – BPM from back office to front office and beyond
O2 is opening its Priority Moments service to any business with an O2 phone, letting one-man-bands offer vouchers to O2 customers just like the big boys can.
Small businesses, who've not yet ventured into Groupon or Vouchercloud or who just fancy broadening their options, can now use O2's Priority Moments for some free advertising as long as they've got an O2 connection and are prepared to do business in the physical world.
Franchises and chains are excluded; they'll have to cough up for their ads like a proper business, but the smallest of companies can create voucher-based offers assuming they've got (or are prepared to buy) an O2 connection of any kind. Cheapo consumer tariffs are fine, even prepaid SIMs, though O2 reserves the right to reject anyone it considers to be spamming.
Assuming that's not the intention the business can submit vouchers through a process O2 reckons will take less than five minutes, and have them available to Priority Moments' users within 24 hours. Redemptions are capped at 500 - the business can specify fewer, but the cap is intended to bring business back to the portal regularly to tweak their promotion. O2 wants a relationship in exchange for the ads.
O2 is making much of its portal, claiming it outperforms those available from Vouchercloud and Groupon, though vouchers submitted to Priority Moments can only be used by O2 customers.
Vouchers are the flavour of the month right now, with schemes proliferating all over and everyone trying to grab some space at the table before the inevitable consolidation. Priority Moments is only half of O2's voucher business - it also has O2 More, an opt-in scheme which pushes vouchers out to customers based on their demographic and/or location.
Priority Moments is mainly a group-buying scheme, similar to Groupon's model, but the Local side is more like Vouchercloud's approach. Vouchercloud is now predominantly owned by Vodafone, and offers free vouchers for users and businesses, while trying to make money by offering access to particularly-choice offers to those buying "premium" subscriptions.
O2 reckons that by limiting the offer to small businesses, and requiring them to have some sort of O2 connection, they can fund the service as a promotional vehicle for O2, particularly as it tries to take the brand beyond telephony into more-profitable industries. Being free will help build up a customer base, but at some point someone will have to pay for something. In the meantime those prepared to trawl for vouchers should enjoy even more deals than ever. ®
Free whitepaper – BPM from back office to front office and beyond
China Adds 47.3 Mln 3G Subscribers in H1 - CRIENGLISH.com
The number of people subscribing to third-generation (3G) mobile phone services in China increased by 47.33 million in the first six months this year, showed statistics released on Tuesday.
The total number of 3G subscribers reached 176 million by the end of June, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in a statement on its website.
The number of Internet broadband users leapt 14.03 million to 164 million in the first half.
Main business revenues for China's telecommunication industry jumped 9.2 percent year on year to reach 517.53 billion yuan (82.15 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-June period, the MIIT said.
Porno compo bid targets thousands of web users - The Sun
Ben Dover Productions will contact almost 3,000 households for allegedly infringing their online smut flicks' copyright.
They originally offered up 9,000 cases to the High Court on behalf of numerous copyright owners.
But the judge threw out all the claims - apart from those relating to Ben Dover Productions before watering down the wording.
He imposed strict limitations on the letters and demanded they avoid a 'pay up or else' style.
Ben Dover parent company Golden Eye is pursuing alleged copyright infringers on O2's network but has not ruled out further action against other internet service providers (ISPs) in the future.
Golden Eye previously wanted to demand a one-off £700 fine but now must determine how much money is owed on a case-by-case basis.
Letters demanding compensation will be dispatched to 2,845 O2 customers in August.
O2 is believed to be in the process of handing over names and addresses to Golden Eye, who used a forensic computer anaylst to track down illegal download sites.
A spokesperson said: "We have no option but to comply with this court order and will be co-operating fully."
The Citizens Advice Bureau has agreed to help those who feel they have been wrongly accused.
Crucially, the letters cannot hold the bill-payer liable if someone else used their internet connection to download illegal material.
Mike O'Connor, chief executive of citizens' rights group Consumer Focus, said: "We do not condone copyright infringement, but innocent people should not feel bullied into settling claims and they must be made aware of where to go for help.”
O2 ends Arsenal sponsorship after 10 years - Brand Republic
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O2 is dropping its sponsorship of Arsenal, 10 years after it launched the brand through a shirt sponsorship of the London football club. O2: ending Arsenal sponsorship after 10 years The telecoms brand began its relationship with Arsenal in 2002, first as ...
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