In what seems as a desperate move to stay in power, Iran’s authorities are sending text messages to citizens warning them not to take part in anti-government protests. According to Tabnak, the SMS warns recipients that they have been identified as participants in past protests, and that they should stop attending demonstrations.

The reports come ahead of Student Day that is scheduled for December 7th, and which the opposition has vowed to “turn green” in support of the Green movement backing opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi.

I’m all for expanding the use of mobile technology, but sometimes there’s the other side of the story, as you can see…

[Via: textually, SperoNews - image from AroundTheSphere]

GSMA and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have announced the Green Power for Mobile (GPM) project, targeting operators in developing markets which may operate in some areas in the off-grid environment. So far, these operators relied on diesel aggregators for powering their cellular stations in remote areas that don’t have access to the power grid. In that sense, GSMA and IFC propose development and utilizing of clean energy resources and technologies, which would provide power to those stations.

The GSMA aims its efforts at 118,000 off-grid renewable energy base stations that will be installed by 2012. Under this program, not only CO2 emissions will be reduced, but the manufacturing capacity of renewable energy industry will also be increased.

However, according to ABI Research, there is more opportunity in the on-grid cellular station market, which could get energy from wind or solar technologies. More than 200,000 of these stations is expected to be installed by 2013. This is not to say there’s no business in the off-grid market — quite the contrary, carriers could cut their costs by replacing diesel aggregators with renewable energy technologies.

Hopefully, GSMA’s and IFC’s idea will spread around the globe and soon enough we’ll have more leaner and cleaner mobile operators offering their services even in remotest parts of the planet.

[Via: renewbl]

Zain has expanded its international roaming service, which is known as “One Network,” to include Egypt after signing a partnership with Mobinil. The mentioned service offers roaming across the Zain network (and its partners) with call costs and services charged at the same rate as the home network. Best of all, Zain customers travelling to other countries can recharge their pre-paid accounts with locally purchased top up cards.

Commenting on the service expansion, Zain Group’s Dr Saad Al Barrak said: “‘One Network’ is unstoppable! We have reached an enormous milestone by reaching Egypt, a country that embraces both the Middle East and Africa. In every new country in which we plant the “One Network’ flag, we are redefining the concept of mobile coverage and roaming by delivering on our brand promise of ‘A wonderful world’”.

Finally in case you’re wondering, “One Network” was introduced back in September 2006, and ever since has attained many awards, most recently it was named “Telecommunication Innovation of the Year.”

[Via: CellularNews]

The BBC World Service Trust has developed English language courses for mobile phones and is currently offering them to over 50 million mobile phone users in Bangladesh. The idea behind the project is to extend BBC’s existing learning tool to mobile, in addition to TV and Internet, and reach more people.

For the endeavor, BBC has teamed up with all six of Bangladesh’s networks, which have agreed to cut the cost of calls to the service by up to 75%. Speaking of the course, it consists of over 250 audio and SMS lessons, and each lesson is a three-minute phone call, costing about 3 taka.

According to The Financial Times, more than 300,000 people have already signed up for the service, which is great!

[Via: textually]

It was back in April when we reported that North Korea has reached 20,000 mobile phone users. Now, 6 months later, we’re glad to see that them number is approaching the 70,000 mark. As of the end of September, the sole mobile operator in the country koryolink, which BTS is majority owned by Eygpt’s Orascom Telecom, reported that its subscriber base has reached 69,261 users. Meaning that in the time you’re reading this, the 70,000 mark has been reached and even surpassed.

In the 9 months ending September 30, 2009 – koryolink reported revenues of $18.5 million with EBITDA of $10 million, representing a margin of 54%.

Currently, the carrier is working to extend the network coverage to the whole country…

[Via: CellularNews]

During the Mobile Asia Congress, the GSMA unveiled Mobile’s Green Manifesto, developed in collaboration with The Climate Group, to set out how the mobile industry plans to lower its greenhouse gas emissions per connection. The manifesto makes specific policy recommendations for governments and delegates attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to realise the full potential of the role that mobile communications can take in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Through the Green Manifesto, the mobile industry outlines its goals:

• To reduce its total global greenhouse gas emissions per Connection by 40% by 2020 compared to 2009.
• To aim for carbon neutral growth, despite the fact that the number of mobile connections is set to rise by 70% to 8 billion by 2020.
• To work with handset vendors to ensure that the energy consumed by a typical handset is reduced by 40% by 2020.
• To work with equipment vendors to ensure that the life cycle emissions of network equipment components are reduced by 40% by 2020.

And if you care to read the whole thing, you can do that from this page.

Just when we talked about Oberthur’s EcoSIM card, the company announced that it has demoed a visual voicemail service running on their Multimedia SIM Card GIGANTIC WUAOW during the CARTES & Identification 2009 exhibition in Paris. Oberthur’s “partner in crime” is Spanish Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), which will undoubtedly sell the service as soon as all trials are completed. Moreover, we’ve no doubts other carriers will jump on board, selling visual voicemail to all the feature phone-ownin’ (no smartphone is needed, as far as I’ve understood) folks out there. A new revenue stream for the carriers has emerged, and I bet they won’t miss it.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced a significant revision to the definition of Mobile Marketing. The new definition is:

Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.

Where:

• The “set of practices” includes “activities, institutions, processes, industry players, standards, advertising and media, direct response, promotions, relationship management, CRM, customer services, loyalty, social marketing, and all the many faces and facets of marketing.”
• To “engage” means to “start relationships, acquire, generate activity, stimulate social interaction with organization and community members, (and) be present at time of consumers expressed need.” Furthermore, engagement can be initiated by the consumer (”Pull” in form of a click or response) or by the marketer (”Push”).

According to MMA’s President and CEO, Mike Wehrs, the new definition more accurately reflects the evolved nature and current capabilities of Mobile Marketing…

It is being reported that Telenor is mulling acquisition of Pakistan’s Warid Telecom for around $1.3 billion. If this proves true and Norway-based company succeeds, it will leave the Dhabi Group with 7% of Warid, while other 30% will stay with Singtel.

According to Pro Pakistani, the talks went through in a smooth way, with Telenor agreeing to paying the value that was pretty acceptable for Dhabi Group.

Pakistan telecom market includes 5 big players: Moblink with just over 28 million customers, Telenor and Ufone with just under 20 million customers, Warid Telecom with around 17 million, and China Mobile (NYSE: CHL)-owned Zong with with just under 6 million customers.

And for the record, China Mobile had previously tried to buy out Warid Telecom but reportedly failed to reach an agreement on the price…

[Via: CellularNews]

Helix Wind, the company which we’ve already mentioned in the past, will trial its cell tower-powering wind turbines in Southern California. Installation will occur in early 2010, and the test will run for three months.

In addition to providing power to the cell phone towers, Helix will also test whether it’s feasible to sell excess power to the power grid under a power purchase agreement.

The company is working on the project in association with Core Communications Group-owned Vertical Green.

Finally, Helix points out that due the fact that the number of cell phone towers is expected to grow in the next five years, they will be carefully watching the market and look for the opportunity to sell as many wind turbines as demanded…

[Via: renewbl]