The Australian mobile phone industry says figures show that its Lost & Stolen program, which has resulted in a 25% fall in phone blocking over the past 7 years, has acted as a deterrent to thieves.

Strong uptake of smartphones and mobile telecommunications data services are dominant trends in today’s release of new figures from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which show there are more than 29 million mobile services in operation in Australia.

Australia’s world-leading mobile phone blocking program has been highlighted in San Francisco this week following a spate of violent robberies of smartphones from people walking down the street in the US.

Henry Calvert (Optus) was elected Chair of AMTA at last week’s Annual General Meeting in Melbourne. Josh Delgado (Samsung) was elected Deputy Chair. Mr Calvert's annual report presented to the meeting can be read in this article and following the link.

Not-for-profits MobileMuster and Oxfam Australia are asking Australians to recycle their old mobile phones this Christmas to help the environment and fight poverty. For every two mobile phones recycled over Christmas and New Year, MobileMuster will purchase a chicken through Oxfam Unwrapped to help families living in poverty. The ‘Old phones, more chickens’ campaign will run until 31 January 2012*.

Mobile phone base station deployment is essential to meet rapidly growing community demand for mobile data services, including access to mobile broadband (MBB), AMTA told IT News today.