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The UK’s telecom regulator has said Three is the only major UK mobile network to have “refused” to automatically cut its customers’ monthly charge at the end of their contract’s lock-in period.

As a result, Ofcom said, the firm’s subscribers would “overpay” unless they took action to change to another deal.

The watchdog said it had challenged the industry to treat users more fairly.

But Three has said that customers were often happy to stay on the same deal.

“Many consumers are happy with the service that they are paying for and may choose to take no action, particularly if the consumer feels that there is not an equivalent, better value, service that meets their needs,” it said in a consultation filing.

“Moving consumers to a default tariff, on an opt-out basis, may drive consumer dissatisfaction and complaints.”

By contrast, Ofcom said that the other major mobile companies had given it the following commitments regarding out-of-contract customers:

• O2 and Virgin Mobile – will cut the monthly charge to the equivalent of a 30-day Sim-only deal
• Vodafone and EE – will automatically reduce prices three months after the subscribers’ lock-in period expires, but have yet to say by what amount
• Tesco Mobile – will reduce the monthly charge to the best available airtime tariff

The discounts are set be introduced by February 2020.

The regulator said that this would help address a situation in which it currently estimated that 1.4 million out-of-contract mobile phone users were spending an average of just under £11 more per month than if they switched to a comparable Sim-only deal.

This situation had arisen, it explained, because the initial deal had covered both the cost of a handset and its usage.

“We’re introducing a range of measures to increase fairness for mobile customers, while ensuring we don’t leave existing customers worse off,” said Ofcom’s consumer group director, Lindsey Fussell, in a statement.

“All the major mobile companies – except Three – will also be reducing bills for millions of customers who are past their initial contract period.”

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Oracle wants to get all of its 4,000 on-premise customers in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region on to the cloud in the next two years.

It is a challenging task but Arun Khekar, senior vice-president for business applications at Oracle for Middle East, Africa and India,said in an exclusive interview with TechRadar Middle East that it is possible and that is his target.

“I am pretty charged up and in the next 16 months we have a lot to gain if we do things right than any other cloud providers,” he said.   

Khekar wants more than 1,000 of its on-premise customers to move to the cloud this year. Out of the 4,000 customers, around 70% are based in the UAE.

700 live cloud customers in region

Khekar is confident that the opening of a data centre in Abu Dhabi in February this year has helped the company in many ways.

“In the past, selling would have taken weeks but the UAE data centre has made it easy and big names are joining on board,” he said.

Oracle has more than 700 live cloud customers in Middle East and Africa region, including Emaar Group, Fine Hygiene Holding, Landmark Group and DP World, to name a few.

“Lot of our customers doesn’t even ask where the data centre is going to be, apart from the regulated industries such as public sectors, financial and banking sectors and telecom. For us, we want to take the whole piece and don’t want to leave any grey areas for any individuals,” he said.

The industries for which the local data residency matters, he said: “We have the answer and we give customers the choice”.

Where the data lies is not a criterion anymore

“For me, where the data centre is not a criterion anymore. Data centre discussions take 10% of my time these days while the rest of the time goes to how to move a company, what are the complexities, what are the challenges, mapping part and the study, and customers need to understand why he is moving,” he said.

It is a huge task to take somebody from a four- or five-year technology to futuristic technology, he said and added that data centre is a huge catalyst for on-premise customers to move to the cloud as they can expand beyond their geographies and it can be done only through internet and cloud.

“Business issues have become critical and digital transformation has become a much bigger issue than where the data is going to reside. What Oracle is doing differently from its competitors and which only Oracle can do is the offering of end-to-end solutions,” he said.

In the good old days, he said that Oracle used to sell the CD and leave but now, “we sell it, service it, implement it, run it, upgrade it and secure it. So, you have one neck to catch if anything goes wrong. We are into a service business now”.

40% of its revenues come from installed base

Oracle earns 40% of its revenues from the installed base and the rest from new clients.

“If I need to convert all my 4,000 customers to the cloud, I don’t need to look outside. There is so much to do from the inside,” he said.

“Our strategy is to make sure we get more of our installed base on to the cloud. We are reshaping to do more and why more? We have the base today and big names have kick-started today. The cloud renewal rate is at an all-time high and that is the key measure for us today,” he said.

Moreover, he said that Oracle can do more as it has more skills on the ground, more people on the ground and more references to show than it did three years ago.

“During the economic downturn in 2007, we did more business than years before. Companies were getting to the next level of automation because they had time internally due to slow business. This year also, it is expected to happen the same as companies are looking at their operational cost more than they did before,” he said.

Over 1,100 applications on the cloud

Oracle has a Future Lab at Dubai Internet City where customers can get a flavour of how it will work in the cloud if they come with their data.

“They can see a proof of concept locally within hours, instead of what would have taken normally six to seven weeks. We are bringing the cost of ownership down by between 30% and 37%, without adding the indirect cost,” he said.

Khekar boasts that Oracle has more than 1,100 applications on the cloud and no vendor has the length and breadth of Oracle.

The US giant is expected to open its next data centre in Saudi Arabia this year.

“Data centre is needed for Saudi Arabia because of the regulated industries and we want to make sure our checklist is complete,” he said.

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If you’re going to boast about working on a smartphone feature that every other phone company is also working on, you need a particular angle to make your own device stand out, and that’s exactly what Redmi has done by sharing a 64MP photo of an adorable furry cat.

Shared by Redmi – an offshoot of Xiaomi – on Chinese social media service Weibo, the kitty picture shows all the detail of the creature’s fur, and even has a zoomed-in section to show you just how well the image captures the textures and colors.

By posting a picture of such a noble beast, Redmi has announced in style that it is working on a phone with a 64MP sensor.

(Image credit: Redmi)

This high-resolution snapper is becoming a hot topic at the moment, after Samsung announced it developed a 64MP sensor in May. Since then many companies have announced (or it has been leaked that) some others are working on 64MP camera phones, including Samsung, Realme, and Xiaomi.

This last leak is the most pertinent to the cat picture – Redmi is a subsidiary of Xiaomi, so the phone referred to in the Xiaomi leak could be in fact a Redmi device.

Xiaomi itself has said no words on its 64MP plans, so we don’t know if we can expect the Xiaomi Mi10 or Redmi Note 8 to have the sensor.

For now, all we can do is wait for Xiaomi, Redmi, and other phone companies to provide some concrete evidence of a 64MP phone, other than camera samples and rumors. Oh, and we can also stare at the lovely cute picture of a cat.

Via GSMArena

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It may not have had much luck with the temperamental, faulty Samsung Galaxy Fold, but that isn’t stopping Samsung’s ambitions in the bendy-phone race. A new report suggests it has not one, but three foldable phones in the works.

It’s worth taking with a pinch of salt as the source (DigiTimes), doesn’t always hit the target with its leaked information. But it cites supply chain sources which claim that Samsung’s alleged clamshell touchscreen smartphone is real.

That’s not necessarily news to us – but things get more interesting based on its supposed release schedule.

We already knew that Samsung is intending to get a second foldable smartphone into consumers hands before its rival Huawei is capable of delivering its first, the Huawei Mate X. 

However, the Mate X release is imminent, and the source here suggests Samsung’s clamshell phone is due out next year. With initial reports pointing to the clamshell phone being that second device, and that now being suggested by the DigiTimes report to be further away than anticipated, that adds further weight to the possibility of their being another, as-yet-unknown foldable handset coming in the near future from Samsung.

With smartphone design having plateaued in recent years, the foldable market is seen as the next genuinely groundbreaking step for the industry to take. At the very least, this new report points to Samsung ramping up its interest ahead of next year’s MWC 2020 showcase. 

Or, if we’re lucky, we could see the device launch alongside the Galaxy Note 10 on August 7 – that is, if Samsung doesn’t re-release the Galaxy Fold then.

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Over the last few years Huawei has turned its back on Wear OS, as it pursued its own smartwatch tech with the LightOS-toting Huawei Watch GT, but it looks like the company may be making a comeback in the smartwatch space.

According to Bluetooth regulation filings spotted by GadgetsAndWearables, it looks like Huawei is preparing four new smartwatches for release in the near future. Those are likely to be a few different versions of the same product.

The most interesting element of this is how one is codenamed CSN-BX9. The Huawei Watch 2 – the company’s last attempt at a Wear OS smartwatch from early 2017 – was also codenamed BX9 before getting its official name.

There’s no gurantee this is the Huawei Watch 3, but it would make sense if the company were to update its Wear OS device (that sits in a separate line to its Watch GT devices).

Two of the other devices listed sport similar codenames, and it’s likely these will be variations on the same product. Expect one to be an LTE version of the watch, while another may come in a slightly different size or design.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Division, has previously confirmed the company is looking at making a new Wear OS watch, but in late 2018 he explained the company wanted to make big improvements before updating its device.

A big step up?

We’ll probably see some serious improvements over the Huawei Watch 2, which could mean the final product will include a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset to offer improved battery life and a more optimized power experience.

It may also be the company decides to include some new health features such as an ECG monitor or an improved heart rate tracker.

There’s no guarantee Huawei will stick with Wear OS software for its next full-blown smartwatch, but we’re unlikely to know for certain for some time. It may be the company is ready to announce the new device at IFA 2019, which is set to take place at the start of September.

The fourth product on the listing is codenamed ALX-AL10 and that’s likely to be a new smartwatch for kids. We don’t know any details about this yet, but we’ll be sure to bring you all the latest on all Huawei’s new smartwatches when we know what they are. 

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It’s no secret that Marvel will have a big presence on the upcoming Disney Plus streaming service, which launches in the US later this year. 

But with an official unveiling of Marvel’s schedule of TV series and movies slated for the next two years, we now have a better idea of when the spinoffs of Loki, Hawkeye and WandaVision will actually be joining the list of Disney Plus shows (via GamesRadar).

The first Marvel spinoff we’ll get, it seems, will be Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan reprising their roles for a Q3 2020 release (roughly July to September).

Both Loki – featuring Tom Hiddleston’s Norse god trickster – and WandaVision, the spinoff of Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany’s Vision, will then be hitting Disney Plus sometime in Q2 2021 (between April and June). The spinoff of Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, however, will come a bit later in Q3 2021.

There’s only so much confirmed about the content of these spinoff series right now. Given the apparent 1950s setting of WandaVision, and (spoilers!) Loki’s demise in Avengers: Endgame, it looks like Marvel will be using these shows on Disney Plus to explore prequels of these beloved characters – though ongoing chatter about multiverses in recent films could take them in completely different directions entirely.

But if we know anything, it’s that plans this far away will be open to change, and we could well see some of these release dates brought forward or pushed back, in order not to clash with some of Marvel’s big theatrical releases – or those of its competitors.

Disney Plus itself will be launching in December in the US, with plans to roll out to other territories probably (hopefully?) in early 2020. We expect to have a host of legacy content like classic Disney movies, and a number of MCU and Star Wars movies from launch day, but it looks like we’ll be waiting a bit longer to get any exclusive Disney Plus shows.

Countdown to Phase 4

Of course, these shows are only a fraction of what Marvel has planned for its Phase 4 roadmap. We know there are at least 10 new films set in the MCU coming in the next few years.

There are some unsurprising sequels, such as a new Doctor Strange, Thor 4 (with Natalie Portman playing a female Thor alongside Chris Hemsworth), as well as a martial arts-themed superhero movie with a lead actor who’s actually of Asian descent (about time, Marvel!). Add to that a movie of The Eternals featuring Angelina Jolie, and a reboot of Blade featuring Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book), and there seems to be no shortage of Marvel content in the near future.

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Body-worn cameras are to be compulsory for bailiffs under government plans to improve the treatment of people in debt.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said the move should help protect those in debt from “intimidation and aggression” used by some bailiffs.

However, Citizen Advice said the cameras would do “nothing” to protect people.

It wants an independent regulator to crack down on the industry.

“Bailiff body cameras will do nothing to protect people while there is no industry regulator to oversee how they are used,” said Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy.

“While it’s encouraging the government has committed to further action, its next step must be the creation of an independent regulator to crack down on rule-breaking bailiffs.”

• MPs demand regulator to curb bailiffs

The body cameras will have to be worn by around 2,500 certified enforcement agents, or bailiffs, who collect all sorts of debts including those related to council tax, traffic penalties and rent arrears.

High Court enforcement officers will also wear the cameras, but the measure will not apply to county court bailiffs.

The MoJ says it will work with the industry to make the cameras compulsory as soon as possible.

Debt collection saw major reform in 2014 but campaigners say more action is needed.

Citizens Advice has highlighted numerous issues, including bailiffs refusing to set up offers of affordable payments, charging excessive fees and misrepresenting their rights of entry.

‘Unacceptable’ tactics

The government is holding a consultation on how to tackle aggressive tactics in the industry, as well finding ways to protect vulnerable people.

“The use of intimidation and aggression by some bailiffs is utterly unacceptable, and it is right we do all we can to tackle such behaviour,” said Justice Minister Paul Maynard.

“Whilst most bailiffs act above board, body-worn cameras will provide greater security for all involved – not least consumers who are often vulnerable.”

The Civil Enforcement Association, which represents bailiff firms, said: “This decision offers reassurance to the public that standards are consistently high and gives protection to our agents who do a difficult job on behalf of local authorities.”

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