Younger Oz generation abandoning home phone in favour of the mobile

September 30th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India's telecom major Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN Wednesday terminated their talks for a proposed $24-billion equity swap-cum-strategic alliance that could have potentially created the world's third largest mobile phone enterprise. According to Bharti, the proposed deal was called off after the South African authorities declined to accept certain regulatory constraints on the part of both sides.

September 14th, 2009 LONDON - Britons keep almost 90 million unused phone handsets at home after they upgrade to new models, according to a countrywide survey. The research revealed that 52 per cent keep unused phones at home in case a current handset is stolen, lost or broken.

September 2nd, 2009 HAMILTON - Use of handheld mobile phone while driving will be banned here in the next two months due to a rise in the number of accidents, with a New Zealand official stressing that "using a mobile phone while driving is dangerous". The ban comes into effect from Nov 1.

August 22nd, 2009 TAIPEI - China Mobile Ltd, the world's largest mobile phone carrier, has decided to pick Taiwan's electronics giant Hon Hai Group as its supplier of electronic readers, a top company official said Saturday. "We have picked Hong Hai Group to make electronic readers for us and we believe the electronic reader market will be huge," said Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile, on the second day of his nine-day visit to Taiwan.

August 17th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A subway passenger in China blamed another man for theft on the basis of his looks. When Zhou couldn't find his mobile phone, he caught Chen, and took him to police station in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, claiming he was the thief.

August 12th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A teenager who wanted to find an Indian student and steal his mobile phone but later killed a university researcher in this Australian city has been sentenced to 10 years in jail. The teenager lifted the university researcher and dropped him on his head during a fatal gang bashing, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

August 5th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Heavy mobile phone users have poorer memory, slower reaction times and make more mistakes, a new study has found. The study by researchers from Monash University reviewed 300 students aged 12 to 14 from 20 Melbourne private and state schools.

July 5th, 2009 PENANG - Phones are catching up with TVs, and the number of phones being used by 'bottom of the pyramid' households have already outpaced the number of radios and computers in South Asia, researchers have said. LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka-based Asia-Pacific information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation capacity-building organisation, said in India a hundred bottom of the pyramid (BOP) households now had 50 TVs, 38 phones, 28 radios and one computer.

July 4th, 2009 LONDON - The NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin has said that humans should create a settlement on Mars to provide much-needed objectives to the younger generation. Aldrin, the second man to set his foot on the Moon, has claimed that setting up habitation on the surface of the red planet is a "wonderful objective" for humanity.

June 13th, 2009 BEIJING - In the wake of Chinese mobile users complaining that they are getting up to 641 million junk texts a day, Chinese telecom regulators have intensified their crackdown on spam short messages. Country's three main mobile network operators, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have joined the regulators in their anti-spam fight by signing an agreement to deal with inter-network spam messages, the China Daily reports.

May 18th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Mobile phones, though marketed as a business tool, have now become an instrument for life, according to a new survey. The survey involving 1000 workers has shown that cell phones not only keep users "perpetually available", they also help in stress because "dead time"-for example, waiting for the late morning train-can be revived by making a call to mum or looking for a work contact.Most people still think mobile phones split up and rush our lives, but the reality is that it doesn't seem to be a perniciously accelerating technology," the Age quoted time-use expert Michael Bittman as saying.

May 4th, 2009 TOKYO - A mobile phone has been launched in Japan that will help the country's citizens locate the nearest public toilet in double quick time. According to The Telegraph, users of the mobile lavatory locator are able to upload the free software from the Check A Toilet website.

April 12th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Telstra said that it cannot guarantee its loan mobile phones are free of porn, after a 10-year-old Gold Coast girl was exposed to a sex video. The mother of the Runaway Bay girl said a phone she borrowed from Telstra had not been reset and it contained the previous client's personal text messages and recordings.

April 6th, 2009 MELBOURNE - While parents worry over the link between cell-phone and cancer, mobiles are making their way into the hands of kids as young as nine, according to a study. The prevalence of mobiles among kids came to the fore at the time when the independence of Australia's peak mobile phone research group was being questioned.

March 23rd, 2009 MELBOURNE - Queen of Pop Madonna has reportedly banned her alleged toyboy lover Jesus Luz from attending his phone in front of her. According to a source, the 50-year-old singer had a heated argument with the 22-year-old Brazilian model after he answered a call while she was in the same room, and has now restricted him to accepting emergency calls only.