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700 MHz: Bidding to start Jan. 16

The Federal Communications Commission set Jan. 16 for the start of the 700 MHz auction, and asked for public comment on competitive bidding procedures for the 1,099 wireless licenses up for grabs. The agency will employ anonymous bidding as a safeguard against anti-competitive behavior...

Credit crunch impacting flat-rate carriers’ stock

Flat-rate wireless carriers serving the sub-prime sector have seen their stocks plunge in recent weeks, reflecting fears about sub-prime customers who could affect the carriers' financial results.Earlier this year Leap's stock had been steadily gaining value, and was trading as high as $99 per...

Leap, VZW, Qwest intro new gadgets

Leap Wireless International Inc., Verizon Wireless and Qwest Communications International Inc. are on deck this week with new phones. The announcements come as several carriers also cut prices on a variety of devices, including T-Mobile USA Inc. halving the online price of its recently...

WFI to owe $30M-$40M

An exhaustive internal review of Wireless Facilities Inc.'s stock option-granting and pricing practices from 1998 to 2005 concluded that the company will owe between $30 million and $40 million due to improprieties during that eight-year span.More than 40 million pages of electronic and hard...

I-play to support Nokia’s delayed N-Gage effort

I-play said it will support Nokia Corp.'s N-Gage gaming platform with a portfolio of casual titles.The U.K.-based publisher will begin to offer N-Gage games next year, starting with World Rally Championship and Super Mah Jong, and will focus on simple, "one-thumb" games. Glu Mobile...

Analyst Angle: More than Language Barriers: A Look at the Hispanic Mobile Consumer

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 Jupiter Research's Julie Ask, Current Analysis'...

Femtocell market to spur bundle offerings

Femtocells could become a catalyst for growth of triple-play service revenues in developed countries, said a new report from research firm In-Stat.Mobile triple play services offer a revenue solution as developed markets become saturated with little differentiation among carriers, said In-Stat. But in order...

Wireless capex up 4%

Wireless carriers spent 4% more on their networks during the second quarter than they did during the same quarter last year, according to research from analyst firm Ovum-RHK.Wireless carriers spent $5.3 billion during the quarter, said Ovum. Wireline operators, on the other hand, spent...

Movero changes name, remains focused on wireless

Movero Technology Inc. is hoping to strike a chord under a new brand name: Maestro.The Austin, Texas-based startup, which offers solutions for businesses looking to deploy and manage mobile devices, upgraded its platform and this week plans to begin marketing its wares with the...

Networking to drive user-generated content

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 to more than $5.7...

Gains in mobile banking

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 services in Europe, the...

Mobile banking services branch out

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 abroad have begun marketing...

Lead counsel remains at Qualcomm: Lupin taking leave of absence, not resigning

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 general counsel, which is...

Social networking sites vye for viewers

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 space to extend their...

Hedgehogging: hedge*hog*ging v. Interrupting conversations in an office environment

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 Editor Mike Dano all...

Shifting ground: W-CDMA baseband business in flux

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 Inc. was the global...

Xoom, Xoom

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 you plead with the...

Carriers not equal in innovation

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 Wireless News gathered does...

Hollywood, wireless struggle for control of mobile content: Carriers slow to innovate, entertainment execs charge

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 the best way to...

Etc.

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 the service. The company...

Qwest CEO has work cut out: Regional Bell must pick battles against much larger competitors

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. and now needs to...

LG makes tracks at AT&T Mobility, says hello to Virgin Mobile USA

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 network operator and first-time...

U.S. sales of Nokia’s N95: Erroneous report stirs interest

A mistake in a media report earlier this month suggesting that Nokia Corp. had sold as many as 450,000 units of its high-end N95 handset in the United States during the second quarter immediately set chins to wagging.The N95 packs advanced Web browsing, multimedia...

Nokia warns on overheating batteries: Very few likely affected, but phone maker chooses safe over sorry

Nokia Corp. advised that its self-branded BL-5C battery, found in more than 50 handsets, is subject to overheating and popping out of the handset during recharging. The company has offered to replace the offending batteries upon request, an offer that Nokia acknowledged could potentially...