Fring has partnered up with Mobikom Austria to bring a mobile VoIP and mobile internet community application to the network operator’s consumers. Fring is a well-known Instant Messaging communication provider, and Mobikom is Austria’s leading mobile network operator.

The network operator will offer Fring’s dedicated open application to its consumers on the A1 plan, and will allow them to talk, chat and interact with each other and all of their online communities,as well as access mobile web applications.

The deal will be divided in two phases: in Phase 1, A1 over IP will be implemented in Fring’s SIP service, while in Phase 2, the Fring application will be built-in a large number of devices and provide voice over IP, instant messaging, real-time presence/availability indication, file transfer and access to fring’s new always-on mobile internet applications to users.

Press release after the break.

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Four different companies are focusing on providing telephone communication to rural cities in Africa.

Portable BGAN (broadband global area network) is a terminal which connects to satellites in 98% of the world to transfer data and voice. The service has been chosen as the answer to defeat difficulties in connectivity in rural areas, and is being used by humanitarian and aid organizations. Portable BGAN is available from US$1000.

A group of telecommunication experts is developing a mesh potato network in South Africa to connect 300 000 people to telephone communication. Dabba, a local company, is working on the service which will provide free voice calls to whoever is inside the internet network amplified by the company, and if users want to call other users in other networks, they will pay fees lower than the ones currently charged by major South Africa operators.

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Nokia users, myself included, have been up in arms with complaints of build quality issues and lacklustre high end device hardware.  All the while, Nokia’s competitors appear to be catching up, releasing devices with more multimedia features, more powerful hardware, and better, more intuitive, flashy user interfaces. The Finnish tech titan’s reputation has fallen in the minds of hardcore gadget enthusiasts, a demographic Nokia has long dominated. This is an unfavourable position to be in, especially with Nokia being a benefactor of the gadget enthusiast community’s word of mouth advertising.

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Reportedly hundreds of Skype accounts have been hacked over the last month, while the company stays irresponsive regarding the issue, while not fixing the problem or refunding the money lost to its users.

Skype is a company owned by eBay that offers VoIP services across the globe, as well as video call services and instant messaging.

Skype enables users to file a PayPal account inside their accounts, so that they can comfortably buy more credits to conduct the telephonic calls that are charged for.

One user complained that “I usually talk to my brother in Germany several times a week over Skype, and since I got hacked he has seen my account online with changed profile and country setting.”

Another user has sent an email everyday to the company requesting a refund, but the respond he and others users get is similar to the following: “Skype can not refund the money you might have lost due to this incident. Every user has to take care of his/her security systems on private computers.”

It is difficult to trace the reason hackers are managing to infiltrate users’ account as encryption is used between the connections, it might just be another case of a user forgetting to clean his/her credentials on a public computer.

[via Softpedia]