It seems that Facebook is teaming up with carriers to provide a “social calling” service. The deal started with French carrier orange, and it will allow friends to make voice calls to each other, without the need for phone numbers.

The service will allow any Facebook-to-Facebook calling situation to work, so Facebook phone-to-phone, Facebook phone-to-desktop, and so on. There will even be support for group calling from the sounds of it.

The service will utilize Orange’s new “Libon” call app, which basically is like other messaging/voice services including Skype. At the moment the service seems only bound directly for France in the summer of 2013, but could potentially make its way across Europe as well.

Adding Facebook friend voice chatting is actually a pretty cool idea. You have to wonder though, will this remain in Europe or will Facebook attempt to bring the technology over to the North American market and the rest of the world as well? If Facebook adding social calling, would you use it or do you already enjoy services like Skype for these kinds of situations?

For more details on what this service would entail, hit the source link below.

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T-Mobile and Orange recently announced they were coming together with EE to bring 4G LTE to the United Kingdom. At the time of the announcement they planed to roll out several great devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, Nokia Lumia 920, Nokia Lumia 820, and others. That wasn’t it though, one device was purposely left off: the iPhone 5.

EE announced the 4G LTE service ahead of the iPhone 5, and even though everyone knew the device was coming, EE couldn’t mention it for obvious reasons. When is the iPhone 5 4G LTE version coming? The exact date isn’t mentioned, but it is likely that you won’t have to wait too much longer to get your hands on a 4G LTE version of the upcoming iPhone 5.

This is great news since many UK carriers won’t have the 4G LTE version of the iPhone 5 anytime soon- if at all. It is worth noting that UK Carrier, Three, is expected to get the 4G LTE version some time in the future as well.

Those in the UK who want the iPhone 5 with 4G LTE and aren’t willing to wait will likely want to consider switching to EE. What do you think?

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Want 4G LTE in London? Your wish is about to be granted, thanks to a brand new company called EE. For those that don’t know, EE isn’t really a new company though- it is ran by Orange and T-Mobile.

The 4G LTE service is coming to London, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham first. In fact, these cities already have the network up for testing purposes in these cities. There will be twelve more cities added by Christmas as well.

The added cities are Edinburgh, Belfast, Derby, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Southampton by the end of this year.

What devices will roll out to take advantage of the new 4G LTE service? The Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, Nokia Lumia 920, Nokia Lumia 820, HTC One XL, Huawei Ascend P1 LTE and the Huawei E392 Mobile Broadband stick are all expected to arrive through the service.

EE hopes to have all T-Mobile and Orange customers migrated to the EE data network by the end of the year. Are you interested in getting 4G LTE through EE, or waiting for higher-speed service to make it to your currently preferred carrier instead?

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Whenever you decide it’s time for a new phone, whether because it’s not working or you want the latest and fastest, there are likely some basic things you do. For example, you might do a ton of research on various phones before settling for a specific one. Then you might talk to the customer service reps at the mall to see what else they can tell you. While that’s all fine and dandy and will help you in your quest, Microsoft, HTC and Orange are trying something a little different in Poland.

The three companies are currently doing product promotion in Poland by lending out HTC Mozart phone units for a limited time to mobile users in order to let them experience firsthand what it is like to use a Windows Phone 7 smartphone. A similar promotion by Play and an Android handset netted 150,000 testers for their phones. We’ll see how successful it is in Poland.

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Music lovers at UK’s Glastonbury Festival will have the chance to test out a t-shirt that can charge a cellphone. Orange announced a prototype called the “Sound Charge” that was produced in conjunction with renewable energy designers GotWind. Orange has tested other green charging technologies at past Glastonbury Festivals, including 2010’s Power Wellies, boots that converted heat into current to keep people connected to their devices.

The t-shirt’s technology uses Piezoelectric film, found in modern HI-FI speakers. The Piezoelectric film acts like an oversized microphone, absorbing sound waves and turning them into electric charge. The electricity gets stored in a battery that then charges the cellphone. According to Orange, the interchangeable lead should fit most cellphone models. Unlike the solar bikini’s skimpy design that fails to capture a significant amount of energy from the sun, the t-shirt has a large surface area, which means it can capture a good amount of sound pressure waves.

The Piezoelectric film panel and electronics can be removed, allowing dirty festival-goers to wash the t-shirt likely to be coated in sweat, tears, booze and other side-effects of an outdoor music festival. Orange estimates that when used at the festival with sound levels of around 80dB, which is about the same as a busy street, the t-shirt will generate up to 6 W/h of power over the course of the weekend. I don’t think they’ll have a noise issue. Though wearers of the t-shirt will most likely use it for a quick top up rather than a full charge, it should be able to power two standard mobile phones or one smartphone. Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing these things at the mall anytime soon, as Orange hopes to inspire future development and won’t be developing them for mass production.

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By combining their powers, T-Mobile and Orange will become the largest mobile phone company in the United Kingdom. The only major speedbump left in their path is a request from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), checking for any issues related to a monopoly or something similar.

For instance, 3 is the smallest mobile phone network in the UK and it has largely been credited with driving the price down in recent years. A bigger juggernaut may be able to muscle out a smaller firm like 3 (which is owned by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa).

To overcome this concern, the new deal gives 3 access to 3,000 more mast sites across the UK, and  gives them the largest 3G network in the United Kingdom. Further still, T-Mobile and Orange will need to forfeit 25% of their current spectrum so that competitors can jump in for some wireless broadband.

Let’s not forget about Vodafone and O2 too. They might not be happy with this merger either.

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