NEWS
25th March 2011
Irish firm's roaming service cuts call prices
US MOBILE phone users will be able to receive calls and SMS messages from the US at no cost when they travel to Europe, thanks to a new service from Irish firm Cubic Telecom.
The new feature of Cubic's low-cost mobile roaming service, Maxroam, was introduced at the CTIA telecoms show in Florida this week. Pat Phelan, Cubic director of products and innovation, said it would allow anyone roaming in Europe to eliminate the cost of receiving calls and texts.
Last month, as part of its relationship with Ryanair, Cubic launched a similar promotion to receive calls for free when roaming. Cubic Telecom was just one of 32 Irish firms which this week made the trip to CTIA, the biggest telecoms industry event in North America, with support from Enterprise Ireland.
Dial2Do, which has voice-recognition software to allow people carry out common tasks like checking e-mail and sending texts while using a hands-free car kit or headset, announced its latest deal with a manufacturer in Orlando.
French Bluetooth speakerphone manufacturer SuperTooth will use Dial2Do to power a new service called SuperTooth HandsFree Assistant that enables two-way, voice-activated, handsfree messaging.
David Smith, Enterprise Ireland's senior vice-president for telecoms in the US, said the Irish firms had solutions such as spectrum management, apps, cloud services and mobile advertising, which were attracting a lot of attention at the show.
"This is the busiest event we have supported in a long time," said Mr Smith. "Although, in the telecoms space, it can take 1½ to two years to make a sale so it will be a while before we see the impact."
Mr Phelan said that, although the numbers may have been down on previous years, the quality of attendees - mostly senior industry executives - was higher than at similar events in Europe.
ATT's proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's US unit, was the talk of the show according to Mr Phelan. Rival operator Sprint Nextel said the deal would stifle competition and potentially hurt its profitability.
"When one competitor has that much buying power, they can determine the fate of different products," Fared Adib, a Sprint executive in charge of handsets, said at CTIA.
Earlier in the day, Sprint chief executive Dan Hesse had spoken out against the deal during a keynote panel of chief executives, and said it would be bad for competition in the industry. "I am concerned about it," he said, sitting beside another panelist, ATT's mobile chief Ralph de la Vega.
Sprint, the third-largest US mobile service, already faces tough competition from its two bigger rivals, ATT and Verizon Wireless, in which Vodafone has a stake. The combination of ATT and T-Mobile, the fourth-largest network in the US, would leapfrog Verizon to become market leader.
If the ATT deal is approved, the top two operators would serve about three-quarters of US mobile contract customers between them, according to analysts' estimates.
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