House telecom subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) reportedly plans to craft a wireless consumer protection bill this year, an effort likely to reignite a debate over the role of states in a new national regulatory framework. At the same time, the Government Accounting Office is conducting interviews with eye toward issuing a report later this [...]

Regional wireless provider iPCS Inc. posted $9.8 million in losses for 2008, but the company remains optimistic it will continue to add customers and reduce churn.In regard to subscribers, the Sprint Nextel Corp. affiliate said it added 61,200 net customers for 2008, short of the 68,600 subscribers the carrier added in 2007. The company reported [...]

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said about 30,000 LG Electronics Co. Ltd. handsets are being recalled because of 911-calling-related problems.“The recalled phones can have difficulty sustaining a connection or have poor voice quality on calls to emergency 911,” the CPSC stated in a recall alert. “The firm has received one report of a motorist [...]

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.Collecting a soggy newspaper from the end of the driveway in one’s pajamas is familiar to many of us. As newspapers and magazines pile up on the counters [...]

The following list details this week’s infrastructure awards for the cellular, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX industries. The contracts are broken down by transmission technology, country and vendor. The value of the contract is included when available.Cellular–China: Nokia Siemens Networks won frame agreements with China Mobile and China Unicom under the China-Europe Purchasing Delegation that calls for [...]

Mobile banking is beginning to get legs in emerging markets, but it’s not just the noble goals of empowering individuals and helping the downtrodden that is driving the space.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shone a spotlight on the space recently, announcing a $12.5 million donation to help bring cheap mobile financial services to people [...]

Like cartoon coyotes that draw themselves to full height before an exaggerated pounce on prey, handset vendors have offered little this year – but portended much – before an expected lunge at the market.Major vendors, particularly smartphone purveyors, have largely passed up the first two industry gatherings of the year to introduce new devices, while [...]

While the big news out of this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Span, was Verizon Wireless’ choice of LTE vendors – Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson, among others – its IMS news is just as interesting. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Verizon Wireless is going to deploy IMS to [...]

Dish Network, controlled by entrepreneur Charlie Ergen, said it had a net loss of 102,000 subscribers, compared with a year earlier, when it added 85,000.