There doesn't seem to be a lot of interesting mobile news currently, certainly not since we last posted on 10th February. The most interesting news from the world of mobile phones, both business mobile phones and consumer mobiles, is posted below.

Firstly it looks like the Orange/T-Mobile merger is going to go ahead without regulatory inspection in the UK. The decision is with the EU and it would appear that the companies involved have made enough concessions for the OFT to withdraw its objections and the EU to approve it. The decision is expected early next week.

Hopefully once regulatory approval is granted we will then get a timescale for the merger and perhaps more details of the direction that will be taken by the newly-merged network. Fingers crossed it will bring lower prices and more innovative products but don't hold your breath.

Vodafone would appear to be the fastest network for web browsing on mobile phones according to a recent independent survey commissioned by O2. The figures are general across the UK rather than region specific and the actual differences in speed between the major networks is unlikely to be noticeable by the average user.

Vodafone have also launched what is thought to be the world's cheapest phone. The 150 should sell for around £10 and is aimed at the developing world. The developing world is seen as the main growth area in the coming years as phone sales in the developed world fall.

TalkTalk are looking to enter the mobile phone arena by becoming a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) later in the year. This service is in addition to the home phone, broadband and digital TV products it already offers.

Sony Ericsson have been censured by the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) over claims it made in a TV advert with regard to it's Satio handset and its ability to connect to Facebook. The handset does not come with a Facebook app and initially could not even run the app due to software problems. However the Facebook app is now available for download onto the Satio.  

Vehicle tracking has been around for a few years now. Usually a GPS device is fitted to the vehicle and this transmits the position of the vehicle at pre-set intervals so that the movement of the vehicle can be tracked. Using the latest software, vehicle tracking is done online in real-time.

By utilising online tracking this means that you can log in from any device anywhere and see where your vehicles are. However fixed in-vehicle tracking does mean an initial cost for installing the hardware in each vehicle.

Now vehicle tracking can be done by mobile phone. Using a GPS enabled phone to transmit the position, direction and speed of travel, the phone can also show the whereabouts of the employee when out of the vehicle.

Both of these vehicle tracking systems enable savings to be made in your business if you operate a fleet of vehicles, whether small or large. Areas where vehicle tracking can help include:

• Reduced mileage
• Savings on diesel/petrol
• Reduced overtime claims
• Lone worker protection
• Helath and safety compliance
• Improved customer service
• Reduced admin via pre-prepared reports

Device tracking is easy to set up and, if you already have GPS smartphones in your business, is extremely cost efficient. If you don't already have GPS business phones suitable handsets can be supplied free of charge when you next renew your mobile contract. GPS enabled mobile phones can be obtained cheaply and still work well with the tracking software.

Device tracking also offers you extras such as tracking employees using their own vehicles on company business. You have a duty of care to them whilst they are working for you.

The savings made from a vehicle tracking system can quickly pay for the system itself and deliver cost savings on a monthly basis thereafter. There's only one way to find out how much your business could save and that is to get a vehicle tracking quote.

We have a number of websites providing business phone services. These are mainly for business mobiles but also for business landlines, broadband, mobile broadband and IT services too.

One such site, UK business phone deals, has recently undergone a revamp, although this is actually a rollback to a previous site rather than a new website. Unfortunately our experiment with the content management system, Mojo Portal, has proved to be delivering pages much too slowly, making the website close to unusable.

So we've removed the database driven site and replaced it with the old straight html pages to speed it up. Hopefully this will improve the visitor experience and enable businesses to start saving money on their mobiles and communications.

A new website for UK mobile phone deals will be coming soon, when time allows. This will offer a full range of business phones including mobiles and landlines plus details of all of the many services we offer to improve your business communications.

We continue to work on all of our websites, adding new content and updating new products and services as they become available. Some of our other sites include:

• Best business mobile deals
• Best business phone deals

For news of changes and developments simply keep tuned to the Business Mobile World Blog where we will publish amendments as they happen.

We are always looking at new products and services that can benefit our customers by reducing costs and improving communications. One such product allows you to control your inbound calls on any number, anywhere, from any device.

It works for both geographic and non-geographic telephone numbers and provides online access to a full range of call routing, monitoring and management tools, helping your business improve its customer service.

The benefits of this service include:

• Use with any number, anywhere, from any device
• Easy to use, designed to be intuitive
• Immediate to set up
• No capital outlay

There are three plans available on this service, designed for all sizes of business from sole traders and single site businesses, through multi site/multi department organisations, up to large call centres.

The features provided include:

• Tailored call plans - build plans according to your business operating hours, schedule call routing, handling and divert options to maximise your call handling potential.
• Call statistics - easily interpreted graphs of your inbound call statistics, results of call handling.
• Call queuing - Queue incoming calls during busy periods. Live queue statistics and queue management.
• Auto attendant - interactive voice response can be uploaded for announcements to callers
• Optional call recording - record inbound calls for compliance, customer service and audit purposes.

The easy to use online interface gives you full control of the handling of all of your inbound call traffic. If this feature is something you think could aid your business please contact us to discuss your requirements.

We have been looking at how we can make it easier for you to get in touch with us to get a quotation for your business mobiles.

The first solution has been to reduce the size of our online enquiry form. A number of fields have been removed and now it is just basic contact information we require and we will contact you from there to obtain anything else we need.

We have tested the new form out and it takes less than a minute to complete, typing in every field. If you have any sort of auto fill for forms enabled on your browser it will be even quicker!

We have also changed the telephone number displayed on the website from an 0844 number to a local 0115 number. This means that callers from mobile phones can get in touch cheaper (and usually free from inclusive minutes). Call us on 0115 944 8977 for a business mobile quote.

Remember our quotes are free of charge and without obligation. We can quote from one handset to two hundred plus and our aim is to save your business money whilst improving your communications.

In addition to business mobiles we also offer a number of related telecoms products including landlines, broadband, tracking and more. All of our services are designed to work in harmony together, streamlining both your internal and external communications, not to mention your administration and billing.

So visit our new look business mobile enquiry form and take a single minute out of your busy day to save your business some money.

A collection of stories, snippets and interesting information from the world of mobile phones.

• Some of the latest mobile phone apps include one from the AA listing 14,000 places to eat, stay and drink in throughout the UK. This guide will also tell you about local points of interest based upon your location. For those that regularly misplace their phone or have terrible memories where they last put it down a new app called Where's My Phone could be the answer. It allows you to whistle and the phone rings in response, allowing you to locate it.
  
• SmartPhones represent 25% of the mobile phone market yet nearly half of all phone based web traffic comes from them. The average SmartPhone user utilises around 300 minutes per month. Facebook is the most popular website accessed by mobile phone users.
  
• New mobile phones - the Sony Ericsson X10 is due to arrive in April, although it could be earlier. This phone makes use of the Android operating system and features a full touchscreen, 8.1mp camera with auto focus and 16x digital zoom, Timespace (a social networking aggregator), 1GB built-in memory expandable up to 16GB and GPS.
  
• Business Mobiles - companies, particularly corporate users, are spending up to one third of their mobile phone communication bill on personal calls made by their employees. This represents a total spend of £1bn which could possibly be saved by better management and procedures for company mobiles.
  
• The OFT are lobbying for an investigation by UK authorities into the Orange/T-mobile merger. The deal will already be scrutinised by the EU but fears of reduced competition and increased prices for consumers have led to the call from the OFT. A UK investigation could further drag out the merger timescale for several extra months.
  
• Apple - O2 have sold their 2 millionth Apple iPhone in the UK despite losing their exclusivity late last year. The next big thing, the Apple iPad, due for launch later this year, is also on the radar for all of the networks looking to tie up deals with Apple. No news yet of an exact release date or pricing.
  
• O2 continue testing on the 4G mobile network. Speeds of up to 150mbps are potentially available using this technology, however this has not been achieved yet and a full rollout of this is a little way off still.
  
• Nearly 97 billion text messages were sent in the UK in 2009. This represents an hourly rate of 11 million! These figures show a steady increase from 2007 and 2008 despite competition from social networking sites such as twitter and facebook.
  

We have a number of websites promoting our products and services. Some are specifically tailored to a particular category, such as business mobiles, whilst others are more generalised giving an overview of many of the different communication areas we can help your business with.

We have today updated Best Business Phone Deals with another three pages. These are as follows:

• Small business phones
• Business phones in Derbyshire
• Business phones in Nottinghamshire

These all emphasise that whilst we are able to provide a national service, our core business is working with local businesses throughout the East Midlands to provide them with a full portfolio of communication and IT products.

The advantages of dealing with a local company are many. Firstly, if there is any element of call-out, a local company will almost certainly be cheaper than a centralised national company. For instance if you need a small telephone system installing.

Secondly, if anything goes wrong, particularly with hardware, we can come out quickly to put it right. Finally we provide a much more personal service. No call centres and a dedicated account manager to contact.

We are right in the heart of the midlands, ideally placed to service Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. There are no businesses too large or small to take advantage of our services.

Quotes are free and without obligation and as well as looking at ways to save your business money we also look at how your communications can be improved and new technology incorporated into your existing systems.

Fill out our simple enquiry form and we'll contact you and show you how much your business could save.

There can't be many people out there who missed the launch of Apple's latest gadget, the iPad. We now have a tentative date for launch in the UK of March for the wi-fi version and April for the 3G iPad. UK prices are not known but in the US it will sell for $499 (a little over £300).

So what's all the fuss about? Is it really worth getting so excited about?

There's no doubt that the iPad will sell well amongst the Apple devotees and will certainly shift some units to the growing base of iPhone users, but it will be mainly a consumer device and we don't expect much take up amongst business users, although we could be surprised.

There's no news yet on a UK network carrier, although it looks likely that a similar exclusive deal to O2's original iPhone deal might be in the offing with all of the major networks in talks with Apple. A free iPad, heavily subsidised by one of the phone networks on a monthly contract is likely to be appealing in the same way as it is for the iPhone.

The iPad will certainly improve the mobile internet experience over SmartPhones with its large screen, although a lack of flash support will hold it back on many sites. As it doesn't have built in phone capacity it is not going to replace people's SmartPhones, and because of its size it is unlikely to replace netbooks/laptops. However it could find a niche market with users who don't currently own either device and are casual, light users looking for a "fun" device which is easy to use.

Those looking for serious business tools are still more likely to stick with their trusty laptops, at least for the time being, although as we have seen with the iPhone the iPad will likely spawn several similar products from other manufacturers and will drive laptop/netbook development in new directions. Expect to see plenty more tablet PCs coming out soon.

Have you reviewed your business phones recently? A phone review should cover not only cost reductions, where possible, but also communication improvements. Ensuring that your mobile phones and landlines work together to provide optimum performance and smooth lines of communication.

Too many companies fail to review their arrangements and renew their contracts without giving consideration to how much they might save by looking at alternative ways of organising their business phones.

In fact savings of several thousands of pounds are possible for medium to large users. This is money that should not be wasted, particularly in the current economic climate. No business should be paying over the odds for their telecoms.

Some of the areas to look at with a review include:

• Business mobile tariff
• Mobile network
• Changes of usage (more/less mins, sms, data)
• New mobile handsets
• No of lines/extensions
• Line rental costs
• Landline hardware (system/handsets)
• Cost per minute of most used destinations
• IT integration

By ensuring that your business communications are on the optimum plan you should not only save money on your basic monthly costs but should also benefit from increased new business and business retention by improving your communications both internally and externally.

You have nothing to lose with a business phone review from Business Mobile World. They are free of charge and take little time out of your business. After a quick fact find we can put together a proposal showing you where improvements and savings can be made.