telefonica

BARCELONA, Spain--Telefonica today showed off B2G, the Mozilla browser-based operating system for mobile phones, saying it's good enough to sell to today's feature-phone customers later this year.

You may or may not agree. To help you judge, here's a video of Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital's director of product development and innovation, demonstrating a prototype phone at a press conference today at the Mobile World Congress show here. At the event, Telefonica announced its mobile OS pact with Mozilla.

Having watched the demo myself, the phone looked workable but awfully pokey. And touch input-- specially the keyboard--was … Read more

BARCELONA--Half of Telefonica's customers are in Latin America, where smartphones are scarcer than in wealthier parts of the world. But the mobile network operator hopes Mozilla's new browser-based operating system, B2G, will change that.

"What we're selling the most in these countries is feature phones, which is ridiculous, said Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital's director of product development and innovation, in an interview at the Mobile World Congress show here in Barcelona, Spain. "We think we can bring smartphones to the masses in developing countries with this approach."

How affordable, exactly? The B2G phone … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla took a big first step in making something real out of B2G, its browser-based mobile operating system, by signing on mobile network operator Telefonica as a partner.

In addition, the Firefox maker discussed another step, a close relationship with mobile processor maker Qualcomm to create the hardware for the first phones, expected to launch later in 2012.

Those are two very important steps. But they're only one of dozens that it must take to create an operating system competitive with Apple's iOS and Google's Android, much less one that fulfills Mozilla's grander ambition. The … Read more

It would be counter-productive to make voice, text, and data roaming too cheap, Telefonica has argued in response to strict new proposals by a member of the European Parliament.

Excessively low retail caps would make it too unprofitable for new investors to enter the European mobile market, and stymie the Commission's goal of increasing competition, Telefonica regulatory chief Robert Mourik told a European Parliament debate on Tuesday.

"Don't prescribe a structural solution if you don't think it will work in the first place," Mourik said, referring to less stringent proposals put forward by the European Commission. &… Read more

I can't ever remember Catherine Zeta-Jones making political statements when she was T-Mobile's femme fatale. She might have said one or two things in favor of Welsh nationalism.

However, the rather fetching spokesperson for Telefonica Germany has managed to get herself fired by the company after uttering words that were rather supportive of the Gadhafi family.

ABC News offered that Vanessa Hessler, an Italian-American supermodel, was dismissed from her contract by Telefonica Germany, a subsidiary of the Spanish company, after she spoke of her "very beautiful love story" with Mutassim Gadhafi, 36-year-old son of the now … Read more

Three of the top wireless providers in the U.K. are joining forces to speed up the deployment of mobile payments that will allow shoppers to pay for things with their cell phones, according to Reuters.

Thursday the news service reported that Everything Everywhere, the joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone and Telefonica's O2 have agreed to create a mobile commerce system that would bring together retailers, banks and advertisers.

For years, there's been talk that consumers would be able to use their phones to buy things using a technology called Near Field Communications, which allows very … Read more

AT&T isn't the only wireless operator that is doing away with unlimited data plans for smartphones. Telefonica's O2 in the United Kingdom is also dumping its unlimited data offering, the company announced Thursday.

O2, the second-biggest mobile operator in the U.K., said in a press release that the change in pricing will give customers "a more transparent pricing model tied to usage."

Here's what has changed: Customers on plans costing 25 pounds, 30 pounds or 35 pounds a month will get 500 megabytes of data downloads. Plans costing 40 pounds or 45 … Read more

Telefonica Europe on Wednesday announced that it has acquired voice over Internet Protocol and telephony service Jajah for $207 million in cash.

Reports of the sale and its price had begun to circulate several days ahead of the official announcement. There were also rumors of an ongoing bidding war between Cisco Systems and Microsoft, which were competing with Telefonica for the sale.

Telefonica is a business division of a company most consumers know as O2. It counts some 48.6 million customers as part of its communications business. Jajah, which has several services for consumers, also has business offerings for … Read more

Telefonica, one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, has announced a $1 billion share swap with Chinese operator China Unicom.

Under the agreement, announced Monday, each company will buy $1 billion in shares in the other company. In addition, the partners will cooperate in business areas. For example, they will jointly acquire infrastructure and equipment and jointly develop wireless service platforms.

"We are looking forward to enhancing the partnership and achieving a win-win situation for both parties," Chang Xiaobing, China Unicom's chief executive, said in a joint statement from the companies. "We believe that the … Read more