Information Research Weblog

The wires are buzzing with stuff about mobity and wireless. From IntelliSync comes the story of CeBIT in Hannover, with news of developments in wireless and VoIP - one intersting fact caught my attention:

U.S. long-distance calls cost 20 to 30 cents a minute. VoIP, at 3 to 5 cents, offers Americans a big saving. But that price is barely less than some German phone companies charge for regular calls nowadays, thanks to healthy competition.

However - what of international calls? It can hardly be said that competition in the mobile phone market has done much to bring down the cost of 'roaming'.

From the same source, there's a report on a survey carried out by the industry magazine, Computing, with the support of the mobile phone company, O2. The brief report concludes that,

IT managers do not believe a mobile data strategy is important for their organisations.

However, of those who had implemented any kind of mobile strategy at all (192 respondents), 76 per cent said that having a strategy was 'fairly' or 'very' valuable.

And in terms of investment, on the estimates of the survey's respondents, about 12 per cent of IT budget is ploughed into mobile technology of one sort or another.

A VNUnet.com report looks at the extent to which IT directors are taking mobility and wireless on board as part of their strategy - most regard laptops as legitimately 'company business', but are reluctant to view PDAs and smartphones in the same category.