Wireless Carrier News
Current business and technology news about wireless carriers (service providers)
and cell phone calling plans. Constantly updated from news sources around
the world. For consumer news about cell phones, see Mobilook's Cell
Phone Consumer News.
New Laws Drive Wireless Headset Sales - Jul 4
In a move that could give a welcome, if short-lived, boost to consumer electronics makers and retailers, consumers up and down the West Coast are snapping up headsets that let them talk on cell phones while driving -- and stay in compliance with a law that took effect in California and Washington state on July 1. Demand for hands-free headsets has been so robust that the Verizon Wireless store in San Mateo, Calif., added a whole new section for the devices, says store manager Aari Jethmal. "The shelves have been cleared and restocked and cleared and restocked." Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone, is the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone provider, after AT&T. Sales Boost Expected The law, which stipulates penalties for driving while talking on a handheld cell phone, is a boon for Plantronics and other makers of headsets that use so-called Bluetooth wireless connectivity. "Historically Bluetooth headsets have been a low-margin product, so they would need to drive significant product to move the bottom-line needle," says Avondale Partners analyst John Bright, who has an "outperform" rating on Plantronics shares. "Luckily California is the largest state and a heavy cell-phone usage state, so it certainly bodes well for heavy volume." On June 26, Bright raised his estimate for Plantronics' June quarter earnings by a penny, to 35 percent a share, in anticipation of the law taking effect. That's a cent higher than the average of Wall Street estimates. The shares have gotten little apparent lift since the law kicked in, slipping to 21.05 on July 2, from 22.32 on June 30. Plantronics expects a sales boost in California for the second and third quarters, says spokesman Dan Race, though he didn't provide specifics. "We're seeing good interest in our premium products," Race says. Other Bluetooth manufacturers poised to benefit include Motorola; GN Netcom, maker of...
Palm Centro (Verizon) - Jul 4
Palm broadens its smartphone assault with an affordable 3G-capable Verizon model.
LG Dare VX9700 - Jul 4
The LG Dare is the best multimedia phone that Verizon Wireless has ever released, and it's certainly the most fun to use.
Suit Seeks Information on U.S. Cell-Phone Tracking - Jul 3
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Department of Justice to obtain official records concerning the U.S. government's possible use of cell-phone-tracking technology to spy on individuals without first obtaining a court order based on probable cause. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the civil-liberties groups said the DOJ failed to provide an adequate and timely response to a records request filed last year under the Freedom of Information Act. "This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques," said Catherine Crump, the ACLU lead attorney. "Signing up for cell-phone services should not be synonymous with signing up to be spied on and tracked by the government." Complying With Current Law At least some U.S. attorneys may have violated a DOJ "internal recommendation" that "federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas," according to a Washington Post article published last November. Moreover, the ACLU said other media reports have raised the possibility that law-enforcement officers may have obtained tracking data directly from the nation's mobile carriers without any court involvement. Due to the limited amount of information currently available about the government's tracking practices, the ACLU said it believes the lack of information on the issue raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with current law and the U.S. Constitution. "The government's policies and practices for monitoring the locations of mobile phones are unclear," the ACLU noted in its original records request. "It is not even apparent whether the government routinely obtains mobile-phone location information without any court supervision whatsoever." Information pertaining to the DOJ's procedures for obtaining real-time tracking information is vital to the public's understanding of the privacy risks of carrying a mobile...
Spain says mobile operators colluded on price
(Reuters)
- Jul 3
Reuters - Three mobile phone operators in Spain fixed tariffs in March 2007 to compensate for a new law banning rounding up call periods, Spain's Competition Commission said on Thursday, citing initial findings of an investigation.
Making Yourself @Home with T-Mobile's New Plan - Jul 3
T-Mobile USA is breaking new ground. On July 2, the U.S. wireless calling division of Germany's Deutsche Telekom is introducing home-phone calling for as low as $10 a month, a fraction of the price charged by traditional phone companies including AT&T and Internet-calling providers such as Vonage. Analysts have said T-Mobile's @Home is really targeted at users of rival wireless calling services. Watch out, Verizon Wireless. I've tested @Home, and I'm impressed with the results. Akin to an Internet calling service, T-Mobile @Home routes calls via a home broadband connection. The service is available for $10 a month to T-Mobile subscribers who are already paying at least $40 a month for their wireless calls. The necessary Wi-Fi router costs $50 for customers who sign a two-year contract; otherwise it's $150. [And remember that you'll still need a high-speed Internet connection.] What You Get That monthly 10 bucks goes a long way. Besides unlimited local and long-distance calling, you also get voice mail, call forwarding, three-way conference calling, call waiting, and-:for phones with displays-:caller ID. The service also keeps a log of calls made and received on your My T-Mobile Web page, where wireless customers also can check balances and pay bills. There's other convenient overlap with T-Mobile wireless calling. The same number works for checking voice mail [123], and T-Mobile puts home and wireless calling on the same bill. [For an extra $10 a month, the service also lets you make unlimited cell-phone calls from home.] Router set-up is a snap, too. Slide a CD into your computer for step-by-step instructions on connecting the device both to your home broadband and to a landline. I was done in 10 minutes flat, a personal best. Installing Web-calling services is often nettlesome and can take hours, involving calls to customer service. Best of all, I found call quality...
Spanish authority rules mobile fee increase unlawful: report
(AFP)
- Jul 2
AFP - A probe by Spain's competition authority has ruled that mobile telephone operators Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone unlawfully agreed to raise their fees at the same time last year, Spanish media reported Wednesday.
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic - Jul 2
The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is an adorable and affordable choice for T-Mobile users looking to chat, groove, and message.
Wireless Operators Bond Together For Mobile Apps
(TechWeb)
- Jul 1
TechWeb - InformationWeek - Known as BONDI, the initiative is backed by members of the Open Mobile Terminal Platform, which includes AT&T, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.
In California, Cell-Phone Users Go Hands-Free - Jul 1
Tuesday, California joined the legion of states that ban talking on a cell phone while driving without a hands-free device. The new law will no doubt be a boon for Bluetooth device resellers because, from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, California does business on the phone, in the car. The law imposes a $20 fine for the first offense, going up to $50 thereafter. Calls to 911 and calls made by long-distance truckers, tow-truck drivers and drivers of farm equipment are exempt. California joins states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as Washington, D.C., which have had hands-free laws for several years. California's new law doesn't ban talking on the phone, just holding a phone while you talk. And it doesn't ban dialing a number -- potentially more distracting than talking -- just talking. Boon for Headset Sales The law went into effect Tuesday, and mobile stores were reporting huge spikes in headset sales. At AT&T's northern California stores, Bluetooth sales were up 30 percent between May and June after rising 20 percent between April and May. Aliph, maker of the popular Jawbone headset, said sales have been rising rapidly. "We were expecting an onslaught right around this time," said company CEO Hosain Rahman. "Awareness of the legislation is making people look more at solutions." And those solutions are wireless: NPD Group calculates that non-carrier vendors sold 2.5 million headsets since the beginning of the year, 1.7 million of which were wireless. It's the Call, Stupid But does using a hands-free device make drivers any more attentive to the road than using a handset? Sprint had lobbied for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto the bill, saying the law ignores "more significant causes of inattentive driving, including drowsiness, smoking, and adjusting the radio/CD player." Sprint also faulted the law for failing to distinguish between "inexperienced...
Hot-Selling Instinct Phone May Lead a Sprint Comeback - Jul 1
Wall Street has been snapping up Sprint Nextel shares recently amid signs the struggling communications giant may be resolving problems that have plagued it since the second half of last year. Perhaps the most encouraging sign comes in the form of record sales for the new "iPhone killer" Sprint co-developed with Samsung. Despite mixed reviews, the Instinct smartphone broke the company's record for the first week of sales for any high-speed EVDO mobile device. "The strong early response tells us that wireless customers recognize Instinct as a highly innovative and convenient touchscreen device combined with the fast speeds available on the largest national mobile broadband network," said John Garcia, president of Sprint's wireless division. The Comeback Road Since joining the company early this year, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has been leading efforts to stem subscriber defections through the launch of beefed-up customer service and a $99 voice/data plan. That renewed focus on subscribers appears to be paying off. During a recent meeting with investors, Verizon Communications President Denny Strigl noted that Sprint's performance had picked up in the past 30 days, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sprint has also agreed to spin off its fledgling WiMAX network, which had been threatening to drain as much as $5 billion from the company. A joint Sprint/Clearwire WiMAX deal announced last year will launch with a combined $3.2 billion investment from industry giants Comcast, Intel, Time Warner, Google and Bright House Networks. And last month Sprint and infrastructure partner Samsung Telecommunications said WiMAX was ready for prime time. Recent tests in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., areas show that the network has passed rigorous performance criteria pertaining to signal-handoff problems Sprint encountered earlier this year, the companies said. In the short term, however, Sprint is relying on the Samsung Instinct to keep Apple's new iPhone...
Samsung's Instinct a Worthy iPhone Rival - Jul 1
You've got to feel a little sorry for the folks at Samsung and Sprint Nextel. Last Friday, they launched a feature-rich, attractive and generously priced $130 smartphone called Instinct, yet all anyone wants to gab about is the new iPhone coming July 11 from Apple and AT&T. Instinct invites the inevitable comparisons to its iconic rival. Instinct and iPhone kind of resemble each other. And both run off their respective carriers' fastest cellular networks. Moreover, it may be an iPhone wannabe, but Instinct boasts features the iPhone doesn't offer. These include mobile radio and TV services, voice dialing, stereo Bluetooth, expandable memory, a camera that shoots video and a removable battery. Heck, Sprint even tosses in a spare, which you can charge outside the phone. One more thing Sprint supplies that Apple doesn't: a carrying case that in hindsight I should have used. Its touch-screen got a nasty scratch after I carried it unprotected in my pocket during tests in Manhattan, northern New Jersey and South Florida. All this indeed makes Instinct a worthy rival to the iPhone, even if it falls short. Apple's software is more intuitive and pleasurable. The iPhone makes beautiful use of an "accelerometer" for orienting the screen horizontally or vertically depending on what you are doing. With Instinct, there doesn't always seem to be a rhyme or reason for when you must rotate the device. Moreover, even with a Web browser capable of showing the real deal Internet rather than pages optimized for mobile viewing, the experience pales next to iPhone. Ditto for e-mail. Here's closer look: *The basic Instinct. At 4.4 ounces and just over 4 1/2 inches tall, 2 inches wide and a half-inch thick, Instinct is close physically to the iPhone. Its 3.1-inch display is a little smaller than Apple's, however, and of a lesser resolution. Three main touch controls...
How Nokia's Symbian Move Helps Google - Jul 1
Nokia rocked the wireless industry June 24 with news it would purchase the portion of Symbian, a maker of mobile-phone software, that it didn't already own -- and then give away the software for nothing. The prospect of free software would surely lure users away from competing cell-phone software makers including Google, which in the past year threw its hat into the cell-phone software ring by spearheading the creation of Android, an operating system for wireless devices. Or so the argument runs. But Nokia's move may play right into Google's hands, by helping to nurture a blossoming of the mobile Web and spur demand for all manner of cell-phone applications -- and most important, the ads sold by Google. "There's nothing to say that this isn't what Google's plan was all along," says Kevin Burden, research director, mobile devices at consultancy ABI Research. "They might have wanted a more open device environment anyway. This might have been Google's end game." Opening the Airwaves Google, which makes money from ads placed on Web pages and alongside search results, stands to benefit from anything that helps spread the use of the Web -- be it on computers or the advanced cell phones known as smartphones that run Symbian software. With the desktop search market showing signs of slowing, the company needs to ramp up usage of its applications from mobile devices. U.S. mobile search ad sales are expected to rise to $1.4 billion in 2012 from $33.2 million in 2007, according to consulting firm Kelsey Group. But in the U.S. market, Google has long been hampered in getting its applications onto cell phones for a variety of reasons. To now, Web search on phones has been too slow or awkward, mobile data plans and smartphones are often expensive, and carriers and cell-phone makers place restrictions on which...
Verizon, Rhapsody Team up on Mobile Music
(PC World)
- Jun 30
PC World - Rhapsody America on Monday began selling songs from all major labels in the MP3 format and launched its mobile music service...
Google Moves Maps to Tele Atlas as Nokia Buys Navteq - Jun 30
Google has expanded its licensing agreement with digital map provider Tele Atlas under undisclosed financial terms. The new license covers the entire range of Google's map-related services, from Google Maps and Google Earth services to newer applications that are expected to play lead roles on Google's Android mobile platform. The five-year agreement also gives Tele Atlas access to edits for its maps from Google's community of users, whose suggested changes can help the company further increase the quality and richness of Tele Atlas maps. Tele Atlas CEO Bill Henry said the deal was important because it would give Tele Atlas "access to input from a significant online community of map users, whose feedback can help us keep our maps fresh and accurate." Pause For Thought From Google's perspective, the new licensing agreement will provide the search-engine giant with guaranteed access to Tele Atlas maps and dynamic content in more than 200 countries around the world. And it will no longer have to rely on getting data from digital mapmaker Navteq, which is in the process of being acquired by rival Nokia. Nokia's recent relaunch of the Symbian mobile operating system as a free open-source rival to Google Android must have given the search-engine giant pause for thought, noted IDC Mobility Research Director Shiv Bakhshi. "It makes perfect sense for Google to sign on with a competing source, because it doesn't want its future to be circumscribed by a competitor," Bakhshi said. By repositioning Symbian, Nokia will also be able compete for free, Bakhshi noted. "So it is a fight in a marketplace where Android no longer has any price advantage." Mapping data is without doubt a major part of Google's plans for Android, Bakhshi noted. Following the launch of Google's first Android Developer Challenge last May, Android team member Eric Chu noted...
Rhapsody Launches DRM-Free Online Music Store - Jun 30
Rhapsody on Monday partnered with MTV Networks to launch Music Without Limits. They want to accomplish three goals in the digital-music industry: Speed the migration from proprietary formats such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) music; empower music fans to stream full-length songs and buy MP3s from music sites and social networks on the Web; and integrate digital music directly with mobile phones. "Until now, legal digital music has suffered from severe limitations on where consumers could buy it and how they could use it," said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. "Music Without Limits fixes those problems and will make digital music easier and more valuable for consumers." Rhapsody's Twist on DRM-Free The Rhapsody MP3 catalog will include more than five million songs from all four major music labels -- Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI -- plus independent labels. The Rhapsody MP3 Store is offering digital albums, most for $9.99, and tracks for 99 cents. Rhapsody stocked the store with DRM-free MP3 music from its inventory, as well as its partners, including iLike, Yahoo, MTV Networks, and Verizon Wireless. Rhapsody's MP3 Store lets consumers listen to full-length songs instead of 30-second samples. Purchased tracks and albums can be downloaded into Rhapsody, RealPlayer or iTunes. Beginning in the weeks ahead, consumers will be able to enjoy full-song playback (up to 25 songs per month per person) whether they are on Yahoo Music or MTV.com, CMT.com or VH1.com, and they will have the ability to go from playing a song on those sites to purchasing a DRM-free version of the music. This is a scalable model to monetize the potential for music consumption across social networks. Artists and labels will be paid royalties each time their music is played. On the mobile front, Rhapsody will also push much of...
Verizon Wireless gets Rhapsody music subscriptions
(AP)
- Jun 30
AP - Cell phones are becoming more useful devices for listening to music. Verizon Wireless is introducing Rhapsody's subscription music service Monday, allowing its customers to download as much music as they want to their phones for $15 per month.
Virgin Mobile USA Buys Helio for $39 Million in Equity
(NewsFactor)
- Jun 27
NewsFactor - Virgin Mobile USA on Friday said it has agreed to acquire Helio, a joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink, for $39 million in equity.
MetroPCS' 'Open' Network Signals Single-Network Shift
(TechWeb)
- Jun 27
TechWeb - InformationWeek - Sprint, Verizon, and Alltel phones can now be used on the MetroFlash flat-rate wireless service for a $40 a-month fee.
Wireless company to allow other carriers' devices
(AP)
- Jun 27
AP - MetroPCS Communications Inc. has become the largest U.S. wireless carrier to say it will let customers bring cell phones from other carriers, which it will then reprogram for use on its own network.
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