LONDON—Vonage Holdings Corp. reported plans to partner with European Wi-Fi hot-spot operator The Cloud to offer Internet-based mobile-phone calls. The companies are working to launch a service that would allow Vonage subscribers with Wi-Fi phones to make calls from The Cloud’s U.K. hot spots...
CHICAGO—U.S. Cellular Corp. can breathe a sign of relief, having finally released its operating results from the third quarter of 2005 and the financial restatements dating back to 2000, which the carrier has been working on since November. The company said it expects to...
RESTON, Va.—Sprint Nextel Corp. reported a mixed first quarter, with gross additions up compared to the same period last year and wireless revenues up; however, merger-and-integration costs pulled down the company’s earnings. Sprint Nextel’s earnings took a hit from costs of $105 million related...
SCHAUMBURG, Ill.—Sprint Nextel Corp. affiliate iPCS Inc. said it topped half-a-million subscribers during the first quarter, adding 13,000 net customers to its network. The company, which is one of the few remaining independent Sprint Nextel affiliates, said it now has 508,300 subscribers. Average monthly...
PORTLAND, Ore.—Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Siemens A.G. are just a few of the heavy-hitters aiming to certify interoperability requirements through a new trade group, the Communications Platforms Trade Association, which launches today. The CP-TA described itself as "an...
READING, United Kingdom—The worldwide smart mobile device market is in flux, according to a new study from market research firm Canalys. The firm defines smart mobile devices as handhelds, wireless handhelds and smart phones.According to the study, top-ranked Nokia Corp. slightly increased its market...
WASHINGTON—The mobile phone industry today launched an ad campaign through its consumer advocacy arm to draw policy-makers’ attention to state imposition of new taxes and regulations. The ad was produced and placed by MyWireless.org, an affiliate of cell phone association CTIA.Click here to view...
OKLAHOMA CITY—Dobson Communications Corp.’s wireless subsidiary, American Cellular Corp., expanded its spectrum position in Texas with the $25 million purchase of a Rural Service Area and additional spectrum in markets that the company already serves. The Texas 15 RSA covers nearly 12,500 square miles...
WASHINGTON—Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) is expected to introduce telecom reform legislation, dubbed the Broadband for America Act of 2006, meant to jumpstart discussion in the Senate by combining five already-introduced bills. One existing bill calls for using TV white spaces for unlicensed use, another...
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Wireless chipmaker Atheros Communications Inc. announced plans to pay about $23 million to buy ZyDAS Technology Corp., a privately held wireless local area network developer based in Taiwan. "ZyDAS is a proven wireless technology leader with its widely adopted and cost-effective 802.11g...
DURHAM, N.C.—Motricity is looking to expand its content business after raking in $40 million in venture capital. Advanced Equities Inc. led Motricity’s most recent round; fellow existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Technology Crossover Ventures also participated. The announcement follows July’s $30 million fundraising...
MURAY HILL, N.J.—Lucent Technologies Inc. says weakened North American wireless sales coupled with the delay in China’s third-generation network buildout caused the company’s second-quarter earnings to fall 32 percent. Lucent posted a second-quarter net income of $181 million from $2.14 billion in revenues. The...
WASHINGTON—Verizon Wireless said it expects this month to provide wireless priority service to authorized local, state and federal officials during times of emergency. Verizon Wireless WPS is set to be first available to subscribers in the nation’s capital, Maryland, Northern Virginia and Chicago, as...
WASHINGTON—Customers of at least one rural telecommunications cooperative are cutting the cord at the rate of five to 10 per month, J. Frederick Johnson, executive vice president and general manager of Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative, based in Rainsville., Ala., told RCR Wireless News.Johnson said that...
BANGALORE, India—Subex Systems Ltd., a telecom software products developer, announced it’s buying British revenue-assurance developer Azure Solutions Ltd. for $140 million. The companies said they will operate as Subex Azure Systems Ltd. and plan to offer fraud management and revenue-assurance systems led by Subash...
HELSINKI, Finland—Slice Wireless and U-Turn Media Group have partnered to acquire Finnish mobile software developer Oplayo. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.Oplayo’s platform enables the delivery of streaming video over cellular networks to mass-market phones. The company offers a mobile video player, and...
TORONTO—Canadian telecommunications provider Rogers Communications Inc. boosted its operating revenue by 28 percent from the first quarter of 2005, results driven primarily by a nearly 36-percent growth in its wireless operations. The company noted its wireless revenues were just over $1 billion for the...
LOS ANGELES—Mobile episodes of the hit television show "Lost" are once again in the works following an agreement between Walt Disney Co. and three Hollywood unions. Disney’s Touchstone Television reached an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Writers Guild of America (WGA)...
WASHINGTON—The Federal Highway Administration late Monday released the "presoliciation notice" for the next-generation 911 system, which would overhaul the current nationwide emergency-response system that relies on 6,000 public-safety answering points with divergent ways of handling calls. "This follow-on project will require the 911 system...
BERLIN, Germany—Handset maker Nokia Corp. launched three new models in its N-series and announced that it has sold about 5 million of the N-series multimedia handsets since last year. The high-end N-Series offer high-quality video and photo capabilities, Internet browsing and other multimedia abilities....
MUNICH, Germany—Taiwanese handset maker BenQ Corp. reported disappointing first-quarter results, including handset shipments of 7 million units, a 39.6-percent drop from the 11.1 million units the company shipped in the fourth quarter of 2005.Management blamed the drop in handset sales on the retirement of...
BONN, Germany—Blackstone Group, a private investment group, has agreed to buy about 4.5 percent of Deutsche Telekom AG’s outstanding shares, the German-based operator announced. Blackstone plans to purchase approximately 192 million shares from Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau, a German state-owned bank. According to DT, the...
WASHINGTON—CTIA dismissed plans to reform the way carriers pay each other to carry traffic because the plan was basically wireline centric, said Paul Garnett, CTIA assistant vice president of regulatory affairs. However, the wireless trade association plans to continue participating in the process to...
CALGARY, Alberta—CSI Wireless, which designs and manufactures products using wireless and Global Positioning System technology, has agreed to sell its fixed wireless telephone business to Illinois-based Telular Corp. CSI said the move will allow it to focus its energy on its GPS offerings. Telular,...
