{"id":17161,"date":"2010-12-09T11:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-12-09T11:20:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T09:20:00","slug":"mobile-operators-fail-to-respond-to-mtn-htc-android-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/17161-mobile-operators-fail-to-respond-to-mtn-htc-android-announcement.html","title":{"rendered":"Mobile operators fail to respond to MTN HTC Android announcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN South Africa announced on Tuesday, 7 December 2010, that they are collaborating with HTC to offer firmware over the air (FOTA) updates for HTC’s Android smartphones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FOTA allows updates to be downloaded directly to the device through either MTN’s mobile network or a Wi-Fi connection. This lets people upgrade their phones directly without requiring a PC or going into a retail store.<\/p>\n

Leaf International Communications, local distributors of HTC products in South Africa, have been promising FOTA since August this year<\/a>, explaining that arrangements to have the downloads zero-rated were causing the delay.<\/p>\n

A zero-rated download means that the operator won’t charge the end-user for the data consumed by the download.<\/p>\n

No zero-rated upgrades<\/strong><\/p>\n

It seems as though attempts to free the consumer of the data costs of downloading updates for their HTC Android devices were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

“FOTA downloads are not zero-rated as customers will be charged from their data bundles or at R2\/MB if no data bundles are loaded,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

“The data file footprint is small and is expected to range from 2KB to 2MB depending on the amount of updates to be downloaded. These updates happen in a controlled manner and give clients the option to download them either via 3G or Wi-Fi hotspots,” said MTN.<\/p>\n

MTN said that they have no plans to zero-rate the download.<\/p>\n

MTN’s competitors fail to respond<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would seem as though users of HTC devices have no choice but to go to MTN for their updates as Vodacom subscribers aren’t likely to receive the service anytime soon.<\/p>\n

“We are currently in discussions with HTC but we have no firm plans in place for this service,” said Vodacom spokesperson Nomsa Thusi.<\/p>\n

Neither 8ta nor Cell C commented by the time of publication as to whether they will provide FOTA services .<\/p>\n

Upgrade schedule<\/strong><\/p>\n

Managing director of Leaf, Quinton Leigh, predicted that MTN would update their HTC devices in the following order: Desire, Legend, Hero, Wildfire.<\/p>\n

He explained that it’s not just a matter of dumping the ROMs on the server and pushing updates out to devices as each ROM must be approved by the operator.<\/p>\n

MTN said that they expect the first roll-out to the HTC Desire devices to commence on 17 December 2010.<\/p>\n

Mobile operators fail to respond to MTN HTC Android announcement<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN's recent announcement that they will provide \u201cover-the-air\u201d updating services to selected HTC Android devices has gone unchallenged by the other mobile operators<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}