When the Blackberries went silent last Tuesday, so did their marketer. It's not the sort of response you'd expect from a company that makes its living on instant communication-and industry pundits took note of Research in Motion Ltd.'s failure to clue in its 8...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Compete's Miro Kazakoff, Current Analysis' Avi...
Telcordia Technologies and mPortal Inc. are joining forces to provide an end-to-end content solution for mobile virtual network operators. The companies this week plan to unveil a platform that couples Telcordia's hosted delivery and billing services with mPortal's content library, which includes more than...
Nearly drowned out in broad policy debates over controversial public-safety and broadband wireless proposals are pressing questions about how the Federal Communications Commission will craft the 700 MHz band plan. A coalition of 21 small- and medium-sized wireless and wireline carriers and state regulatory...
The notion that government intervention should be an act of last resort when markets fail has gained popularity among economists and policy-makers in recent decades. It was Milton Friedman's credo. There is less certainty about what to do about government failure. The laissez-faire legacy...
Dear Editor, There is a wireless phenomenon taking place. For years the foot soldier in the wireless war against tower siting and site approvals was the site acquisition specialist. These unsung heroes scoured the landscape for suitable locations for wireless carriers to place their...
Big-box retail is second only to the network operators' own branded retail stores as the channel of choice among American consumers. Big-box retailers as a distribution channel are rapidly rising in importance among carriers as well. This evolution reflects the growing sophistication of the...
LAS VEGAS-Modeo L.L.C., which recently wrapped up a trial of its broadcast mobile TV service, said the 138 participants in the trial mostly gave positive reviews, according to the company's presentation at the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 convention in Las Vegas. The six-week...
LAS VEGAS-Rather than ceding control of the mobile TV market to the nation's wireless carriers, nine U.S. TV broadcast groups have formed an industry alliance called the Open Mobile Video Coalition to speed the development and standardization of a mobile variant for digital broadcast...
Following the mass murders at Virginia Tech, we received a number of e-mails touting the benefits of emergency broadcast alerts of one kind or another. Whether any of those systems would have helped in this tragedy, the issue is likely to garner more attention...
Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the Linux action. That includes Symbian OS champion Nokia Corp., which recently joined the Linux Foundation, and IMS Research, which just joined its brethren in issuing a report on Linux' pros and cons and the dynamics of...
Clearwire Corp. unveiled a handful of operating results for the first quarter, claiming "record subscriber growth" of more than 25 percent from its year-end 2006 customer levels. Clearwire said that it ended 2006 with around 206,000 wireless broadband users and had about 258,000 users...
As carriers tempt customers to move into data services beyond text messaging, some of them are designing service or accessory packages that specifically appeal to how different types of customers will make use of their phones. Sprint Nextel Corp. recently introduced a new...
T-Mobile USA Inc. continued to dominate the J.D. Power and Associates regional survey of wireless customer satisfaction, receiving the highest ranking in all six regions of the U.S. for the fifth consecutive time-although it tied with other carriers in three of those regions. Verizon...
Build it and they will come. Typically, this old saw is trotted out to underscore the odds that, in fact, "they" won't come when you build "it," whether it's a baseball diamond in a corn field or a "multimedia computing device" hiding out in...
Mbile software developers are coping with the headaches of the small screen by-strangely enough-cramming it with as much information as possible.Instead of forcing users to scroll through seemingly endless lists and drill through more layers than an archeologist could manage, developers are packing the...
WASHINGTON-A federal-state panel working on universal service fund reform is expected next month to recommend a temporary cap on government support for cellphone carriers seeking to serve rural areas, according to telecom analysts. "The cap will end up reducing wireless CETC...
It's been about a month since wireless number portability kicked in for consumers in Canada, and in the words of analyst Lawrence Surtees, "Guess what? The sky hasn't fallen." Surtees, VP and principal analyst of communications research for IDC Canada Ltd. of Toronto, said...
TV is on the move. It's everywhere. It's pervasive in the most insidious sense of the word. You simply can't escape it anymore.See, there was a time when TVs were locked in living rooms, doomed to get covered in dust and cat hair. There...
Killer phones?Residents of Kabul, Afghanistan, have become frightened that a deadly virus is spreading via mobile phone. Rumors have spread throughout the city that a biological virus is spreading via mobile phone calls and killing people. The government has tried to reassure the public...
LAS VEGAS-With more than 6 million users already on board in the United States and year-over-year growth of 188 percent last year, according to Telephia, mobile television is a force to be reckoned with-so much so that it got its own standout show at...
Everyone loves a horse race, and in the first quarter global competition in the handset industry has tightened, infusing the high-stakes race with a sense that the future is in play. While first-quarter earnings reports and market analysis found no change in overall tier-one...
Iraq has scrapped its long-delayed cellular auction and instead decided to license the three national wireless carriers in June under an arrangement calling for revenue-sharing and an upfront cash payment of at least $250 million from each operator, according to Iraqi government and industry...
As mobile banking and payments come further into focus, one of the potential areas for carriers to explore involves international remittances, or cross-border person-to-person transactions. Today, that market is dominated by players like Western Union, which claims more than 170,000 agent locations worldwide where...
