Leap Wireless International Inc. enjoyed a busy holiday season, topping its prior view by adding 152,000 net customers during the fourth quarter of 2007.The San Diego-based carrier ended the year with 2.86 million customers and saw a quarterly churn rate of 4.2%. Leap, which...
A judge has refused to grant a temporary restraining order that would have forced Alltel Wireless to drop an advertisement.The commercial, which hit the air last year, implies that Verizon Wireless (among other carriers) requires users to extend their contract in order to make...
The future of Frontline Wireless L.L.C., the Silicon Valley-backed and politically connected startup that spent months positioning itself to bid big in the upcoming 700 MHz auction, has suddenly become shrouded in mystery."Frontline is closed for business at this time. We have no further...
Verizon Wireless will follow Sprint Nextel Corp.'s lead in bumping text messaging rates from 15 cents to 20 cents per message.The carrier is informing postpaid subscribers that the cost for domestic text messages will be increased in March; messaging rates for prepaid users will...
Editor's Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.--Napster announced it...
Have you had enough of the year-in-review pablum? Up to your ears in oh-so-bold predictions about how 2008 will see a slight uptick in, say, mobile video consumption among younger mobile users?Same here.So instead, we're issuing a little wish list for this year. Here's...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Reality Check, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile content industry to give their insights into the marketplace. In the coming weeks...
The following list details this week's infrastructure awards for the cellular, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX industries. The contracts are broken down by transmission technology, country and vendor. The value of the contract is included when available.Cellular--Austria: L.M. Ericsson said it has been chosen by Mobilkom...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and...
LAS VEGAS -- Bill Gates may not be slowing down on the professional and charitable projects that he holds near and dear, but it's clear he's having fun in his final months as chairman of Microsoft Corp. Gates took plenty of light-hearted jabs at...
Verizon Wireless unveiled a converged business device, packing the sexily named SMT5800 with features that make advertising copy a nuanced task."Part compact phone, part messaging device" begins the carrier's description, before the list of features makes categories difficult -- standard keypad, slide-out QWERTY, with...
Promising to take consumers "beyond music" with a music-centric phone -- a tri-band HSDPA Walkman W760 -- Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications offered two Walkman handsets yesterday in a prelude to the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.The W760 offers built-in GPS with the vendor's...
Those looking for Motorola Inc. to unleash a post-Razr platform to fuel the company's turnaround are still searching at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. The company itself had raised expectations by promoting its launch event prior to the show and...
Sprint Nextel Corp. has become the first national mobile-phone operator to embrace targeted emergency-alert technology, choosing SquareLoop Inc.'s solution for testing in Contra Costa County, Calif., in advance of a wide-scale deployment on the No. 3 carrier's CDMA and iDEN wireless networks."Sprint is excited...
This "openness" thing is contagious.Yahoo Inc. is the latest to court third-party developers, announcing its intention to "enable and lead a mobile ecosystem" to spur the creation of mobile applications. The company unveiled a developer platform and said it will support "mobile-optimized applications" such...
NAVTEQ subsidiary Traffic.com is teaming with mobile developer Skyward Mobile on a direct-to-consumer mobile traffic application.The companies launched Traffic.com2GO, a downloadable, J2ME-based offering that delivers real-time traffic updates, congestion information, travel times and construction news on the roadways of U.S. cities. The application, which...
Mobile content company Handmark Inc. will bulk up its game library with the acquisition of Astraware Ltd., a U.K.-based game studio, for an undisclosed sum.Handmark, a Kansas City, Mo.-based firm, develops and distributes enterprise and entertainment applications for BlackBerry devices and other smartphones. Astraware...
U.S. Cellular, the nation's sixth-largest carrier in terms of subscribers, said it expects a shortfall in the number of its 2007 customer additions. The carrier also reported it spent $13.1 million to acquire eight spectrum licenses covering four states. The licenses "will provide U.S....
The biggest upset of this football season may have been Appalachian State University's victory over Michigan. But for the mobile-marketing industry, it came the day ESPN had more visits to the NFL content on its mobile Web site than it did to the same...
San Francisco's long-delayed plan to bring free, citywide Wi-Fi coverage to its more than 800,000 residents seems to have been revived. Meraki Networks Inc. announced that it will deploy such a network throughout the city by the end of the year thanks to a...
Standalone navigation devices will give way to mobile phones as the worldwide portable navigation market explodes over the next several years, according to a report from Telematics Research Group.The market research firm said 30 million dedicated navigation devices were sold last year, outpacing navigation-enabled...
Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. urged the Federal Communications Commission to embrace a plan to allocate vacant TV channels -- known as white spaces -- on a fixed-licensed basis for wireless backhaul services. The move injects a new element into an already...
Pudding Media announced it raised $8 million in its first round of venture funding. VC firms Opus Capital and BRM Capital led the round.Pudding, which offers technology designed to deliver ads based on phone conversations, said it will use the funding to expand its...
Sling Media Inc. announced its video-viewing software will run on Blackberry devices starting later this year. The company will demonstrate the new application on Research in Motion's Blackberry Pearl 8120 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.Sling Media said the BlackBerry...
