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UK and French carriers working on cellular coverage for Channel Tunnel, aim to finish by 2012 Olympics
If you live in a technophile city like Taipei, you'll have been enjoying underground 4G for a long time now, but in London the rule is that you have to bid adieu to your mobile connectivity when diving into a tunnel. The city's Mayor has been active in encouraging (forcing?) the major British carriers to install the necessary equipment to provide coverage on the Tube, and now we're hearing that ambition has stretched beyond the nation's borders as well. The Daily Telegraph reports that Vodafone, O2, Everything Everywhere, and Three from the UK along with Orange, SFR and Bouygues from France have agreed to share the cost of putting together a £20 million ($30.8m) project for making cellular coverage possible while traveling through the 31.4-mile Channel Tunnel between the two countries. The goal is to get things up and running by the Olympics in 2012, though we've no indication as to what speeds those wireless data transfers will reach. Still, having some bars is better than none, right?
UK iPad subsidy plan to be announced later today
Everything Everywhere is the UK's largest mobile network operator, and it owns the UK telecom brands Orange UK and T-Mobile UK. According to Marketing Week, the two telecom brands are expected to issue a formal announcement on November 22 that they will sell the iPad at their dual-branded stores. Not only will the Everything Everywhere stores be carrying the iPad, but they will also offer a discount plan to consumers who enter a service contract with their telecom brands. The discount plan to Orange and T-Mobile subscribers could mean up to 70 percent off of the iPad price tag if the subscriber signs an 18 month or 2 year contract. This is pretty big news, since this is the first widescale iPad subsidy being offered to consumers. Hopefully, Everything Everywhere is merely leading the charge, and we'll soon see iPad subsidies from other mobile carriers. No further details have been offered yet, although we should expect more contract details with the formal announcement soon.
Orange and T-Mobile set to offer 3G iPad on contract in UK, £200 price rumored
Orange has just dropped a rather enigmatic note in our inbox letting us know that it plans to offer Apple's 3G iPad on "one of [its] great new plans" in the UK, resulting in what the company promises will be "more affordable prices." Current rumors making the rounds place that expenditure at the £200 ($320) mark, should you be willing to commit to a two-year data plan to go with your 10-inch tablet. It's also expected that Orange's new dance partner, T-Mobile, will be making a similar announcement soon, complete with a matching price. We'll keep digging until we know for sure. Full PR after the break. Update: Sure enough, T-Mobile is now also listing the iPad as "coming soon." Thanks, Dilwar!
Samsung Galaxy Tab on sale now in UK
While Steve Jobs doesn't like the form factor and Google thinks that Froyo is less than ideal for tablets, we were pretty impressed by the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab's ability to run Android 2.2. Today it's officially on sale in UK shops as previously announced. It's supposed to be coming to all the major UK carriers in addition to Carphone Warehouse, Dixons, and T-Mobile shops. At the moment, we're seeing it in stock at the Carphone Warehouse under a variety of plans ranging from a £499.99 with a £10 pay monthly plan on Talk Mobile that includes 1GB of data. On the other extreme is a £99.99 deal that requires a £40 per month two year contract that includes 5GB of data on Three. It's also offered for a standalone price of £529.99. And please, whatever you do don't call it a UMPC, that was so 5 years ago. Update: We've just heard that Orange is also launching the Tab at similar price points, starting from £499. Similarly, Vodafone's offering the same tablet for £499 across all of its monthly contracts. On the other hand, O2's slapped a staggering £599 tag onto the device for all of its plans -- a very odd move, we'd say (link only works within the UK).
Orange, T-Mobile UK start sharing networks on October 5
The first customer-facing fruit of the blockbuster Orange / T-Mobile merger over in Old Blighty becomes available next month, allowing customers of both carriers to roam on whichever network offers the best signal in their location. That's just the first change, though -- the combined venture, Everything Everywhere, is already touting mid-call automatic network switching and "enhanced data and internet coverage" that'll be coming next year. Together, Everything Everywhere accounts for around 30 million subscribers, which means there should be plenty of people enjoying the improved coverage -- at the cost of some amount of competition, of course.
Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video)
(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); Digg Good news for UK mobile addicts: Orange's long-anticipated HD Voice service has officially made it to the Land of Hope and Glory. Starting today, British customers can pick up a HD Voice-enabled handset -- including the Nokia 5230, X6, E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro at launch -- from Orange, and start buttering their ears with "crystal clear" phone calls while within the carrier's 3G coverage. Prior to the launch, we were fortunate enough to try out the new service on a couple of Nokia E5 prototypes in Piccadilly Circus, and boy, that was some pretty impressive stuff there -- the wider speech bandwidth really added a lot of clarity to the caller's voice, and additionally, the noisy traffic from the caller's end was well suppressed at where it'd otherwise crackle over a normal call. Perhaps the easiest way to put it is that this is much like jumping from a bad FM radio broadcast to some sweet CD audio, thus making conversations a lot easier to interpret, even if the recipient is in a noisy environment or has hearing problem (as proven by Orange's public trial). As always, hearing is believing, so do check out our sample audio clips after the break. While Orange remains a dominant driving force behind this mobile revolution, the carrier assured us that it expects other companies to pick up this open standard. That said, it's rather disappointing that current owners of the aforementioned handsets won't be getting a software patch for the HD upgrade (we were told that no extra hardware is involved), but we can understand -- the manufacturers do need to sell new phones to stay alive in this rapidly changing market. Anyhow, here's hoping that the forthcoming flagship Android and Windows Phone 7 devices will also get a taste of this crystal clear call quality.
Orange and T-Mobile become Everything Everywhere (in the UK)
We did ponder how you can rename the Orange and T-Mobile coalition (topical word, eh Britain?) without offending either party, and the strategy seems to have been to just go for a name so bombastic that it overshadows all other concerns. Say hello to Everything Everywhere. Such is the strident new moniker attached to the joint venture between the French and German telecoms, with the justification being that the resultant "super-network" will be the biggest in the UK and therefore capable of providing both universal coverage and limitless services. We'll see how that works out, but for now it's important to note that the high street brands won't be changing. T-Mobile and Orange will retain their separate identities (and eye-searing color schemes), while offering you all the synergistic benefits resulting from the scale of the new company. Full PR after the break.
Orange and T-Mobile UK merger approved by EU, forms 29.5 million customer juggernaut
The European Commission has decided it doesn't mind the crass splicing of pink (okay, magenta) and orange, and has therefore provided its tastefully hued green light to the UK merger of the two mobile operators. Once the transaction is completed this Spring, we'll still be looking at two delineated entities on the consumer market, but there'll be one back office and one consolidated network servicing the two brands. That'll remain the case for at least the next 18 months, when the joint venture between Deutsche Telecom and France Telecom, the respective parent companies of T-Mobile and Orange, will likely complete the process by rebranding itself into one entity. The press announcement is littered with vague references to synergy leveraging and value generation, but those all-important questions as to what the new operator will eventually be called and what colors it will sport are left unanswered. All that really matters for now is that the UK has a new market share leader and the mobile space became that little bit less competitive. [Thanks, Mitchel]
