LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Rural carrier Alltel Corp. beefed up its coverage through a pair of nationwide reciprocal roaming agreements with larger rivals Sprint Nextel Corp. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. Alltel’s 10-year deal with Sprint Nextel begins July 1 and covers CDMA voice services along with...
WASHINGTON—Motient Corp. and SkyTerra Communications Inc. said they signed agreements to consolidate ownership and control of mobile satellite service assets, whose value is tied to plans to build and operate next-generation hybrid satellite-terrestrial communications networks covering the United States and Canada. As a result...
LONDON—Vodafone Group plc and T-Mobile International’s UK subsidiary announced plans to substantially reduce their European roaming rates, which have been under pressure from European Union regulators who want to reduce rates for consumers and are threatening to do it by regulating wholesale roaming rates....
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc. tapped Wirestone to manage marketing strategies in the carrier’s retail and e-commerce divisions. Wirestone, an interactive advertising firm, will be responsible for shaping SunCom’s in-store marketing efforts. The company will also work with SunCom to develop online campaigns including...
HOUSTON—Dexa Wireless, a Mexican-owned mobile virtual network operator, threw its hat into the MVNO ring, announcing it launched commercial operations last week in Los Angeles. The company said it is targeting the Hispanic population with prepaid service under its Va Contigo commercial brand. Alejandro...
SAN MATEO, Calif.—Digital Chocolate Inc. scored dual MVNO agreements, announcing deals to offer its games from the decks of mobile virtual network operators Amp’d Mobile Inc. and Helio L.L.C. Each operator plans to carry about two dozen titles from the publisher, which specializes in...
SCHAUMBURG, Ill.—Motorola Inc. hopes to simplify application developers’ access to the company’s resources with a new network dubbed Motodev, the company announced. The program will combine Motorola’s current developer efforts—including Motocoder, iDen and Horizon—into a single Web resource, to be rolled out in phases...
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.—The handset market in the United States continues to run hot, with new figures from The NPD Group reflecting an 11-percent growth in sales for the first quarter over the year-ago quarter. The biggest beneficiary in the United States is Motorola Inc.,...
HOUSTON—Crown Castle International Corp. is picking up 468 towers with the purchase of Alexandria, Va.-based Mountain Union Telecom L.L.C. for $309 million. CCI said it expects to close the deal with privately-held Mountain Union by July 1, a move the company said would add...
GREAT FALLS, Mont.—Nokia Corp. announced it won a contract with MTPCS L.L.C., otherwise known as Chinook Wireless, to build a GSM/GPRS/EDGE network throughout Montana. Though financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, Nokia said the 5-year deal includes equipment, network-planning services, deployment services...
SAN ANTONIO—AT&T Inc. has agreed to settle several class-action lawsuits for a sum of $150 million, according to the company’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The suits had been filed in response to the offering of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. tracking...
Helio L.L.C. made its long-awaited debut in the wireless marketplace last week with two high-end handsets linked to social networking site MySpace.com and plans to have its services available through 1,000 retail locations by the end of the month. Helio’s target audience is young...
Electronic Arts Inc. has bought its way to the top of the mobile game-making industry. Thanks to its recent acquisition of Jamdat Mobile Inc., EA's Mobile division owns the two most downloaded mobile games in the United States, according to the latest figures from...
WASHINGTON-Apple Computer Inc. is attracting attention with two new patent applications that outline plans for a wireless iPod.The application, filed 18 months ago but only recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, describes a device with a wireless browser "interacting with the...
News continued to churn out of the various municipal Wi-Fi projects gaining steam across the country, as one city's Wi-Fi contract made its way to a politically charged city council for a vote and another swirled in rumors of being temporarily shelved. In the...
Be astonished (the layperson), be jaded (the analyst) or be jubilant (the handset vendor), but most will have some reaction to the growing chorus of industry players who've raised their forecasts for this year's handset shipments. Undoubtedly, all the world's handset vendors will read...
ESPOO, Finland-ATI Technologies Inc. and Nokia Corp. announced that the two firms have entered a long-term strategic partnership to enable multimedia experiences such as 3D gaming and mobile TV on the Finnish vendors' handsets. The partnership will promote open standards to attract the interest...
SAN DIEGO-Qualcomm Inc. raised its revenue estimates for its third quarter ending in June, indicating it expects revenue at or slightly above earlier forecasts of $1.77 billion to $1.87 billion based on strong demand for its chipsets destined for both low-end and 3G phones....
Wireless drove revenue growth at Alltel Corp. and aided Qwest Communications International Inc. with success in bundling services in the first quarter of 2006, but regional wireless operator SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc. had a rough quarter and was roundly punished for it by Wall...
WASHINGTON-Three groups this week could file a lawsuit in federal appeals court to stay the June 29 start of the advanced wireless services auction if the Federal Communications Commission does not agree by today to drop changes it recently made to the small-business bidding...
WASHINGTON-A health-related lawsuit that sought to block the June 29 start of the advanced wireless services auction was abruptly withdrawn last week after the Justice Department challenged a U.S. District Court's jurisdiction to hear the case. However, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers said the...
Within the past two years, the number of national carriers in the U.S. has gone from six to four. Between Cingular Wireless L.L.C.'s acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Sprint Corp.'s acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc., the companies that need to have their...
I'm seriously thinking about launching my own MVNO. I mean, how hard can it be, really? All the mobile virtual network enablers out there keep telling me it's quick, easy and cheap, so why not? I'd call it Mike's Awesome MVNO, and it would...
The advanced wireless services auction is scheduled to begin in less than two months. The filing deadline for short-form applications is Wednesday. The upfront payments deadline is three weeks later. And yet the unknowns are many.If the objective is to create suspense in advance...
