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• By Stephen Fenech
• From: The Daily Telegraph
• March 03, 2010 9:48AM

Mobile Smart Phones (l to r) Nokia N900, iPhone 3G S , BlackBerry Bold, Samsung Icon HD , HTC HD2, Picture: John Fotiadis Source: The Daily Telegraph

NEW smartphones let you see the world from the palm of your hand, writes Stephen Fenech.

NOKIA N900
Price: $899
Website: nokia.com.au
Rating: ***

NOKIA’S latest entry into the smartphone market offers the best of both worlds with a touch-sensitive screen and a slide-out qwerty keyboard.

The N900′s 3.5-inch screen is very responsive and the keyboard lets you type messages, tweets or status updates quickly.

The downside of having both is the added weight (181g) and thickness (1.6cm) of the device. The N900, which is due for release next month, also runs a new Maemo operating system that makes it easier to multi-task and browse the web.

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For nearly all of its functions the N900 needs to be held in landscape mode like a laptop, but it can be flipped sideways to make calls.

HTC HD2
Price: $829
Website: htc.com/au
Rating: ****

THIS phone’s headline feature is its enormous screen. It’s simply huge at 4.3 inches and makes web browsing, media viewing and reading messages comfortable.

The device is also quite thin and, with an exclusive Telstra partnership until March 31, it sings along nicely on the Next G network. It has space for memory cards to expand its storage and a 5-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom.

Under the hood, the device runs Windows Mobile 6.5 and it’s here that it puts the smart into smartphone with mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint plus full email synching with Outlook using ActiveSync.

IPHONE 3GS
Rating: $879 16GB/$1040 32GB
Website: apple.com.au
Rating: ****

THE iPhone reinvented the smartphone with a touchscreen interface and slick operating system. It also created a new mobile computing platform that has inspired more than 140,000 apps for the device.

Apart from being a phone, the iPhone is also a great way to browse the web and access email, both private and corporate. It incorporates a fully fledged iPod that can store thousands of songs and can play movies and TV shows in the palm of your hand.

Couple that with GPS navigation, wi-fi connectivity, a 3-megapixel camera that can capture video and stills, a voice recorder and voice controls and you have got a very personal computer.

SAMSUNG ICON HD
Price: $999
Website: samsung.com.au
Rating: ****

THE specs on this are impressive, starting with its bright 3.7-inch screen that can display up to 16 million colours. The Icon HD packs in an 8-megapixel camera that takes high-quality images, but the trump card is its ability to capture and play video in high definition (720p).

Running the Symbian operating system, the Icon HD provides a clean and reliable interface to navigate its many features, including Outlook email, Microsoft Office compatibility, a business card scanner, voice recorder and FM radio.

It can also share files, including high-definition video, wirelessly using DLNA to compatible devices on a home network such as a TV or computer.

BLACKBERRY BOLD 9700
Price: $999
Website: blackberry.com
Rating: ***

BLACKBERRY cut its teeth as a tool for business users, but today the smartphones are selling faster among regular consumers.

The Bold 9700 reflects this trend with a designer look, high-res screen and multimedia features that make it as much an entertainer as a communication device.

Its strength is as an email device that can deliver your Gmail or connect to your company’s secure server for business mail. And having a full qwerty keyboard means heavy email users who don’t like typing on glass can power through messages with ease.

A new feature is the trackpad that allows users to navigate the device with the brush of a finger.

Govt open to Telstra Bill changes

The government has indicated for the first time that it is “open to amendments” on the Telstra separation Bill due for debate this Thursday.

“The government will always have an open mind to amendments that it believes will improve the Bill,” Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s Office wrote in a statement on Friday evening.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 has offered Telstra a choice to voluntarily opt for structural separation or face an imposed functional separation coupled with tough sanctions, including a ban on acquiring spectrum for 4G wireless services.

The government is “determined to debate and pass the Bill early this year,” Conroy’s office wrote.

The government hoped to reintroduce the Bill to the Senate this Wednesday; however, it has been pushed back to Thursday due to various health Bills, leaving little chance for it to be passed until Senate resumes on 9 March.

Independents as late as last week were yet to hear from Conroy regarding their concerns over the Bill, with Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam questioning what exactly would be in it. Ludlam, Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and Family First Senator Steve Fielding have all indicated they want to see amendments made to the Bill.

The week’s break to 9 March could be seen as giving NBN Co and Telstra a short window to complete negotiations regarding the company’s structural separation, though the company’s CEO David Thodey said two weeks ago that decision would be “months away”. Thodey has also said that any deal with NBN Co must be approved by shareholders.

David Forman, executive director of the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition (CCC), said Thodey’s requirement to get shareholder approval will not stop the Bill proceeding.

“Public policy is not hostage to David Thodey’s opinions on what is agreeable to shareholders. That’s David Thodey’s problem,” Forman told ZDNet.com.au.

The CCC, which represents several carriers’ interests, had argued its case to crossbenchers, Forman said.

“We have had very constructive conversations with crossbench senators on all aspects of the Bill. I’m not sure whether that will translate into amendments, but I have very good reason to believe that these are taken seriously and confident that they will be discussing those changes with the government,” said Forman.

Broadly speaking, CCC has argued for an open process to determine whether Telstra’s proposed form of structural separation to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is adequate — if it proposes one prior to the government passing the Bill. It also wants to ensure that Telstra cannot use contract law to overcome pricing determinations made by the ACCC.

A former head of OzEmail and the Microsoft Network in Ausralia, Milne is now the telecommunications giant’s group managing director of voice, broadband and media.

It is a new title intended to deal with an old problem: how to stop the telco’s millions of fixed-line and broadband customers wandering off to other carriers.

Milne describes his unit as a “grown-up version” of what BigPond (Telstra’s internet service provider) was a year ago.

“We very much believe that as media changes and grows, the telco business becomes more about what you do on the pipes than the pipes themselves.”

Combining content (media) with infrastructure (fixed and mobile phones, as well as fixed and mobile broadband) as a way to retain customers and charge them more is not new. Big telecommunications companies the world over have been grappling with the challenges and opportunities of convergence for years.

“Gradually, what telcos have done is reinvent themselves — even though they’ve been incredibly slow do so at times — through the power of their balance sheet and the power of their people and the necessity of trying to hang on to the huge business they’ve had,” says the Telstra executive.

“Large telcos need to embrace this stuff, and media is one of the next things they’re looking to reinvent themselves around.”

So does Milne subscribe to theory that incumbent telcos — whose old job was to build faster and more useful communication infrastructure — can’t succeed in the new media business?

“That’s what farriers and blacksmiths used to say before the Model T Ford,” he says. “But when the Model T Ford came along, it was the end of the line for farriers and blacksmiths.”

Never mind that to some analysts Telstra is the farrier in that metaphor, not the Model T, given that its shortcomings were laid bare at its interim results briefing this month when chief executive David Thodey downgraded profit guidance for the third time in six months, and admitted the decay in the fixed-line telephony business had spread to other parts of the empire, including broadband.

“It is critically important for us to really address this,” Thodey said at the results briefing, before singling out Milne, who joined Telstra in 2002, as someone who “can really make a difference”.

It won’t be easy. Telstra’s revenue from its fixed-line services fell 6.9 per cent to $3 billion in the six months to December — a slump that was not offset by growth in the mobile and broadband divisions.

Meanwhile, increased competition in the fixed broadband market meant 30,000 customers went somewhere else for the half.

Telstra’s directories business, Sensis, which is overseen by Bruce Akhurst, was also affected by the advertising downturn, with revenue down 7.3 per cent to $959 million, while pay-television operator Foxtel is facing slower subscriber growth. (Foxtel is 50 per cent owned by Telstra and 25 per cent owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian. James Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings has the other 25 per cent).

These are operational challenges that will be around long after Telstra’s tortuous negotiations with the government over the proposed national broadband network are completed. And while every media business faces competitive threats — as markets fragment, consumers flex their muscles and new entrants such as internet television evolve — Thodey has now linked content with the success of the pipes, whether fixed-line or broadband.

Milne says Telstra has been at the vanguard of new media in Australia since Ted Pretty arrived from Optus in 1997. Pretty, who oversaw Telstra’s ill-fated dot.com forays, including Sausage Software, ran a number of more successful businesses, including Sensis, before resigning in 2005 after Sol Trujillo replaced Ziggy Switkowski at the top.

“I’m reasonably happy but I hope not complacent,” says Milne. “I’m happy because one way or another through a succession of regimes at Telstra, and CEOs including Ziggy and Sol and David — all of those CEOs and the boards behind them have supported an appropriate level of investment in what’s broadly called new media.”

Telstra is betting it will be able to recover some of that fixed-line and broadband revenue through two bits of new technology that combine the various parts of the business.

The first is T-Hub, a device that attempts to reinvent the home phone (and get some of those fixed-line customers back) by grouping a wireless telephone, a 17.5cm touchscreen and access to the internet.

It would most likely sit in the kitchen and offers services such as BigPond’s address book and calendar, BigPond and Sensis content and internet services such as YouTube and Facebook. It can also act as a news centre through internet radio or even be a digital photo frame.

Telstra has been consumer testing the product, and Milne says the feedback has been “extremely encouraging”.

The second device is a digital set-top box called the T-Box. This will allow people to pause, rewind and record TV, and gain access to BigPond internet TV channels’ downloads and content.

The T-Box is one of several set-top boxes expected to compete with established players such as TiVo and Foxtel IQ this year as internet protocol television continues to establish itself.

Milne says there are big opportunities in IPTV, but he — like almost every other media executive in the world — warns that quality content will be crucial to attracting and retaining consumers.

For example, Bigpond now has the online rights to sports such as AFL, NRL and V8 Supercars. Milne says services based around this kind of content will become more important and he expects Telstra to co-operate with free-to-air networks as the rights for the football codes are negotiated over the next 12 months.

Milne argues that internet TV will not have a detrimental effect on a Foxtel subscriber base already battling the new digital channels offered by free-to-air television networks.

“IPTV is in my view not going to be pay-TV delivered via the internet,” says Milne.

“It’s going to be a different media experience to what we currently understand as Pay-TV, in other words Foxtel.”

Milne says it is more helpful to think of internet models such as YouTube that don’t “feel anything like Foxtel”.

“Foxtel is a pay version of free-to-air TV — it’s an extremely good one,” he says. “Foxtel is a wonderful service loved by lots of Australians, including me, that gives you access to a huge range of services you don’t get from free-to-air, but I think internet TV won’t be that. It will be something different.”

So what will it be?

Milne says the answer probably hasn’t been invented yet, and that new ideas are borne of new technology. “Nobody thought of Twitter when the mobile phone was invented, but here it is.”

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