At an event held today in Singapore, the group noted the potential for this spectrum to offer both high speed data and improved wide-area and indoor coverage.

The intention is to use spectrum freed-up by the switch off of analogue television services to provide mobile broadband services, “using technologies such as 4G”.

Leong Keng Thai, director-general (Telecoms & Post), at Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority, said: “This marks an important milestone achieved by the four regulatory authorities. I hope that this collaboration could be further extended to other countries in this region, as this will help improve regional mobile roaming and allow the countries to meet growing demand for mobile broadband.”

According to a recent study by Wireless Intelligence, so far there have been no launches of LTE networks in Asia using the 700MHz frequencies.

Other markets having stated support for the APT 700MHz plan include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Earlier this week, the GSMA renewed its call for the government of Thailand to allocate 700MHz spectrum for mobile broadband use, following this country’s digital television switch-over.

“Change the culture and the measure and the metrics,” he advised.

Speaking in the opening Empowering the Customer session at CommunicAsia 2013 this morning, the executive noted that, for example,  the focus on “closing” support calls within a specific time may miss the fact that the consumer was not properly satisfied with the result.

Citing the example of a customer who said that Vodafone support calls always end with the advice to change the SIM, he noted that this was often the fall back for agents unable to resolve issues within the allocated two minute time frame.

“At the end of the day, the customer experience is not just about how we interact with the customer, it’s  about how we empower our colleagues, how  we change our metrics so that people don’t close that as a successful call without providing the right outcome for the customer,” Thomas said.

The executive noted that while operators have large amounts of data which can be used to proactively serve customers, he noted that in many cases this is not acted on.

“A data centre manager said to me, ‘we have the largest amount of data in the world’. I looked at him and said ‘so what’?”

“The first challenge is getting the right data, in the right form”, he said.

Likening the move to exploit data to the gold rush, the executive noted that so far much of the focus has been on tools and processes, rather than generating value. “It hasn’t really gone after the gold. The hard thing is there is a lot of dirt,” he said.

The biggest issue for many companies is ownership of data, and where the value is being created – which are not necessarily the same divisions. “Data has been sitting in product teams, and those product team leads seem to think they own the data,” Watts noted.

The way in which telcos have traditionally done business has also not helped, he said. “Product have been built in silos, so there has been lots of views on the customer. I’ve seen an example of one of the operators having 12 different views of the same customer, and those systems aren’t talking to each other,” he said.

And the volume (and quality) of the data being stored is also an issue. “We don’t actually know 100 per cent what we are going to need in the future, so you are tending to store a lot of data,” he noted.

According to Watts, who heads up the APAC operator group’s Global Advertising unit, “we know that if you get it right, it has a massive impact on the business as a whole. We also know that if you do it wrong, it has the same sort of impact.”

The company’s Optus unit in Australia has been looking at how it works with “a lot of the core telco data, things like how many months are left on your contract, size of contract, type of plan, the phone you are using”, and linking this with its advertising systems to create sales opportunities.

But there are also other important uses to take into consideration, such as privacy laws. “In Australia, because of the privacy laws, it’s very, very hard for Optus to talk to its own customers in the digital ecosystem. It’s really, really hard. You have to be opt in, you can’t send emails, there are a certain number of calls you can make,” Watts said.

“It’s all fairly green pastures at the moment. Lots of opportunity, but still some way to go,” he concluded.

“Core telco basics will always remain. The best way to achieve success is by focusing on customer experience to achieve financial outperformance and working in concert with partners,” he argued.

“Getting the basic elements right, like having solid network coverage, is a pre-requisite to success, along with ensuring secure and high-quality services,” he continued.

Echoing comments made by David Thodey, Telstra’s CEO, earlier this year, Blanken continued the theme that so-called over-the-top players should not purely be seen as a threat by telcos.

“Of course, OTT will eat into the revenue of retail telcos and these organsiations must fight hard in these markets to maintain their position. But in other markets OTT providers should be helped. They are driving utilisaion on networks and platforms and are actually boosting revenue,” he said.

“There are many examples where incumbents are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I believe that for those markets where you can’t win, wholesale is better than no sale,” Blanken said.

GhostBird is behind KitCam and the PhotoForge series, advanced photography apps for iOS.

According to TechCrunch, KitCam allow mobile photographers to shoot with different “lenses” and “films”, and to manually adjust settings like white balance and exposure.

The PhotoForge series (1 and 2) focuses on modifying photos, with image resizing, cropping, metadata editing, and the adjustment of advanced settings (like curves and levels).

How much Yahoo paid for GhostBird is not disclosed, although it’s the latest in a series of app acquisitions undertaken by Yahoo under CEO Marissa Mayer, the most audacious being the $1.1 billion it stumped up last month for the Tumblr blogging service.

Recent mobile app purchases include Stamped, a mobile recommendations app, and the Summly news reading app that it acquired in March for a reported $30 million. In April, Yahoo launched a new version of its iPhone news app using Summly.

The company has also opened a developer portal that includes a number of tools and resources to help integrate Keek into their apps. Tools include access to public video updates (known as Keeks), search functionality, user profiles and videos related to a certain topic, which are called Klusters. Customisable widgets and write capabilities are in the pipeline.

The Canadian company announced that it had more than 45 million users, with 24 million users joining in the past four months. It generates 3.5 billion page views per month.

“The release of our API will enable developers to build on Keek’s momentum and provide users with new and exciting ways to enjoy the platform,” said Keek founder and CEO Isaac Raichyk.

This compares to 14 per cent of respondents who said they were working, or planning to start work, on their own app stores a year ago.

The Mobile Business Forecast also found that 60 per cent of respondents are currently working on a mobile app for employees, compared with 42 per cent in 2012.

A greater proportion of companies also said they are working on mobile apps for customers, at 67 per cent, compared with 43 per cent a year ago.

When identifying frustrations with mobile development for enterprise, cost was cited by the highest proportion of respondents at 48 per cent, followed by speed to market (43 per cent), security (39 per cent) and integration (36 per cent).

The operator will offer the firm’s platform to healthcare partners at up to 22 sites, serving up to 5,000 patients, in the US.

Patients who will benefit from the service include those with diabetes and asthma. MedAdherence uses text and voice to encourage patients to take on greater management of their own conditions.

The two companies aim to roll out the platform to health providers later this year.

According to research2guidance, the global app user base has seen a compound annual growth rate of 251 per cent over the past five years. And although the stationary internet user base is still twice the size, its 16 per cent CAGR will soon be eclipsed by apps.

The growth has been driven by the wide range of apps and their ability to provide intelligence and context to smart devices, making them into everyday tools.

In time, all mobile subscribers will possess devices that support apps as the mobile industry launches cheaper devices with monthly subscription plans that give ARPU of around $5.

Another consequence of the huge growth in the app user base will be the need for businesses to mobilise their IT and train their developers in mobile programming and design.

Mobile will become a key strategic channel for every business, meaning the challenges of creating, developing and maintaining numerous mobile services for different platforms and user groups must be better addressed.

An increase in mergers and acquisitions is also likely, according to research2guidance, as companies buy apps and mobile services to keep pace with market development. This will see an increasing role for Apple’s App Transfer initiative and companies like Apptopia.

“We have been communicating with WhatsApp and other similar communication platforms to get them to cooperate and comply with the Saudi telecom providers. However, nothing has come of this communication yet,” Abdullah Al-Darrab, governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), told Arab News.

CITC reportedly wants to monitor usage of so-called over-the-top (OTT) applications, which steer call and texting revenue away from operators. Details of what OTT compliance actually entails, however, are sketchy.

Viber, a communications app, has already been banned in Saudi Arabia.

Skype, along with WhatsApp, may now be next on the banned OTT list according to the CITC chief.

When asked when WhatsApp services would be blocked, Al-Darrab said it was highly likely to be before the holy month of Ramadan, which starts on 9 July.

The regulator issued a directive in March saying that Viber, WhatsApp and Skype broke local laws, but without saying how.

Saudi Arabia’s three main operators – Saudi Telecom, Etisalat (Mobily) and Zain Saudi – were reportedly asked at the time to tell CITC if they were able to monitor or block such applications.