2007

LG Electronics Co. scored a pair of carrier wins last week spanning the range of wireless offerings. One of the deals was with the industry’s largest player and long-time LG partner AT&T Mobility, while the other was with mobile virtual …

Qwest Communications International Inc.’s new CEO takes the helm of a company that has weathered financial storms, been through a turn-around that included selling off its wireless network and forging a mobile virtual network operator agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. …

ELVIS-The short codeGroove Mobile is testing an off-portal direct-to-consumer service that will give consumers access to Sony BMG’s music catalog. The trial is being conducted with Vodafone UK. The carrier’s customers can download music by sending a text message to …

Friction is growing between wireless executives and their Hollywood counterparts as both begin to experiment with mobile entertainment. One of the few points people from the telecom and television industries can agree on is that no one has yet discovered …

So who exactly are the innovators leading the pack in wireless entertainment?It depends who you ask.Few agreed to be identified as they talked about their experiences with carriers, for fear of upsetting their bedfellows, but the bulk of feedback RCR …

Sprint Nextel is on a roll. No, not the kind where you walk away from the $10 blackjack tables with piles of chips in colors you typically only see in the “high stakes” rooms, but the kind of role where …

The W-CDMA baseband chip business is morphing in real time, as various market pressures push and pull the players to partner, diversify their customer base or pursue less-demanding technologies.Data from Forward Concepts (see chart) shows that last year Texas Instruments …

For all the hype Sprint Nextel put behind last week’s “Technology Summit” in Reston, Va., we were hoping the carrier would have come up with something more exciting than a name for its WiMAX service. We sent our intrepid Online …

User-generated content is finding an audience in mobile. But it appears the early successes in the space may have more to do with connecting with others and less to do with the content itself.MySpace and Facebook are leveraging valuable deck …

Qualcomm Inc. clarified last week that its former general counsel, Lou Lupin, is taking a personal leave and is not resigning from the company.Qualcomm had issued a terse press release last Monday stating that Lupin had resigned his position as …

The mobile banking and payments space continues to gather momentum, with banks exploring and announcing new services, and solutions providers forging new partnerships to enable the applications.Just within the past two months, a number of banks in the U.S. and …

Mobile banking and payments are gathering steam in the U.S., but the space is also drawing significant interest abroad. Within recent weeks, a series of international companies have made banking-related announcements, including:— Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which offers banking …

Social network services will dominate the market for mobile user-generated content, said a new report from research firm Juniper Research.The company said end-user-generated revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will grow from $572 million this year …

Bringing broadband to the masses is kind of like the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one is doing anything about it. President Bush’s plan of bridging the digital divide is laudable in theory, but problematic in reality.The problem …

If your idea of mobile navigation applications is limited to left- and right-turn commands, maybe you should test drive one of the newer offerings.Early-adopting road warriors have long depended on stand-alone devices from Garmin Ltd. and other manufacturers to deliver …

A small study by usability consultancy User Centric Inc. found that first-time users of the Apple Inc. iPhone took twice as long to compose text messages on the device as they did with their own phone, and that many users …

“Big Brother” is coming to the small screen in a whole new way beginning Sunday. For the final month of the TV show’s eighth season, MediaFLO USA Inc. is launching a new dedicated channel to air real-time activity from inside …

Welcome to our new Friday feature, Week in Review. Every Friday, RCR Wireless News will run through the major events of the past week, outlining what happened and speculating on what to look for in the coming weeks, months and …

Nokia Corp. fired yet another salvo at Qualcomm Inc., filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging Qualcomm is infringing on five of its patents. The news serves to widen the gulf between the two companies as each …

VIENNA, Va.-Although Sprint Nextel Corp. made headlines yesterday with news of its WiMAX branding and push-to-talk plans, the carrier also-apparently inadvertently-gave its “Technology Summit” attendees a glimpse of several as-yet-unannounced handsets. Although Sprint Nextel representatives refused to allow attendees to …

Nokia Corp. said it will team with online casual gaming destination Shockwave to offer Flash Lite-enabled “mini games” on its handsets in Europe and Asia.Shockwave, a property of MTV Networks, offers about three dozen no-frills, inexpensive titles under the brand …

Sprint Nextel Corp. has dubbed its planned mobile WiMAX service “Xohm,” and demonstrated use of the technology at an event today in Virginia, detailing some of its plans for WiMAX and reiterating its timeline for the network’s launch. The carrier …

Sprint Nextel Corp. has reverted to its Nextel branding for all of its push-to-talk products, regardless of whether they run on its CDMA or iDEN network. The Nextel Direct Connect name will represent the carrier’s entire portfolio of PTT services …

Clearwire Corp. said it completed the process for a $1 billion secured term loan to refinance existing debt and support expansion plans. The Kirkland, Wash.-based company, which was founded in late 2003 by wireless industry veteran Craig McCaw, has been …