Mobile Phones

The Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that Baby Bell telephone companies cannot resell long-distance service to local subscribers. Last June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a Federal Communications Commission decision …

HELSINKI, Finland-Nokia Corp.’s mobile phones division introduced four new phones covering a broad range of services and uses at CeBIT 2000 in Germany. The 9110i Communicator, an upgraded version of the 9110, is a Wireless Application Protocol-enabled phone that continues …

WASHINGTON-A new study failed to find an increase in cancer and other diseases among nearly 200,000 employees who worked at Motorola Inc. from 1976 to 1996. The study, published in the March issue of Epidemiology and underwritten by Motorola, was …

Canada Granite Systems Inc.’s Xpercom solution has been selected by Bell Mobility Inc. of Canada to provide network configuration management to all of the company’s sites. According to Granite, the Xpercom solutions automate network engineering and administration, including facilities assignment, …

NEW ORLEANS-The outlook for adoption of rules for calling party pays is now seen as murky by many of those who attended last week’s CTIA Wireless 2000 conference. Calling party pays is similar to long-distance toll calling where the person …

I missed out on the conga line of carriers, vendors and Digerati who stole the show last week in New Orleans. It’s a wireless data world after all. The Net is revolutionizing the wireless industry. It’s revolutionizing everything, everywhere. Just …

There’s an ancient Japanese custom in which a man wooing a woman leaves romantic haiku poems tied to flowers or branches on her front lawn every day for as long as it takes until the woman agrees to accept his …

WASHINGTON-The sponsor of a controversial antenna-siting bill in the Virginia General Assembly pulled the measure last week apparently at the urging of top officials. The bill, recently passed by the Senate, would have repealed last year’s Virginia Supreme Court decision …

MELBOURNE, Australia-Telstra’s new CDMA mobile phone network has come under fire from rural Australians following the closure of about 80 percent of the carrier’s analog AMPS network on 31 December. Most of the criticisms of the new CDMA service surround …

BEIJING-China Unicom and Qualcomm signed a landmark agreement in February, paving the way for Chinese manufacturers to get CDMA production licenses. Unicom wants to build a 10 million-line CDMA network this year and is evaluating 12 bidders to supply the …

JERUSALEM-Bezeq Israel Telecom Ltd., the state-owned telecommunications company, announced a plan to allow cellular telephone users to route incoming calls through either their mobile phones or the nearest fixed-line phones. The proposed One Phone service requires government approval. The company …

TOKYO-An NTT laboratory is gearing up its efforts to develop Advanced Wireless Access (AWA), a next-generation wireless system that will enable users to access data at a speed of up to 36 Megabits per second (Mbps). NTT Network Service Systems …

The UMTS Forum said it welcomed proposals by the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Conference Preparatory Group (APG) for adoption of the 2520-2670 MHz band to support the terrestrial component of IMT-2000. APG proposed that administrations make up to 160 megahertz of additional …

NEW DELHI, India-Countries in Asia and Southeast Asia specifically hit by economic crisis in the late 1990s are on the recovery path, paving the way for exponential growth in the wireless industry in the next two years. Early signs of …

WASHINGTON-Baltimore superlawyer Peter Angelos is teaming with George Carlo, who headed the U.S. industry-funded mobile phone-cancer research program before breaking with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) last year, to create a new radiation-protection project that will include follow-up studies …

SEOUL, South Korea-Korean mobile telecom carriers are looking to stake out the biggest share in the fast-growing wireless Internet and data market, shifting from a voice-oriented strategy. The explosion of the Internet and mobile-phone use is driving the convergence of …

MANILA, The Philippines-Globe Telecom, the second-largest cellular telephone operator in the Philippines, announced a US$2.3 billion merger with another Philippine wireless service provider, Isla Communications. The agreement allows Ayala Corp., Singapore Telecom and Deutsche Telekom to partner on the island …

British Telecom and AT&T said they are beginning trials to test roaming services for high-speed Internet phones. The tests will involve General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology and partnerships with wireless operators SmarTone of Hong Kong and Taiwan’s FarEasTone. The …

Italy NEC and Telecom Italia Mobile said they have agreed to work together in technical trials in March for Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems. Siemens also will cooperate in the trial. NEC will provide infrastructure and handsets. A series of further …

TEL AVIV, Israel-In a country like Israel where the number of mobile phone lines surpasses fixed lines (2.9 million compared with 2.8 million), where there’s intense competition among the three carriers and churn is high (sometimes 60 percent), and where …

Things are going well for most mobile companies around the globe. Penetration rates are increasing, subscriber numbers are reaching all-time highs and wireless data holds future promise for the industry. The last year has been especially profitable for wireless handset …

DENVER, United States-While Vodafone AirTouch recently advanced its merger with Germany’s Mannesmann AG, the company indicated it may look to fill in its footprint with some smaller acquisitions. In particular, the company has been closing in on a bid for …

IBM and AT&T announced an alliance to offer wireless data services to their business customers. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. The companies said they expected significant opportunities for wireless services linking corporate information systems with a wide …

International roaming is a key selling point for all three digital cellular standards. The GSM community in particular often claims that roaming capability is not only a prime factor in the widespread acceptance of GSM but also a reason for …

SINGAPORE-Singapore has fast-forwarded its liberalization plans for the telecommunications sector by a staggering two years, effectively throwing the industry wide open almost immediately. The move, which comes into effect on 1 April this year, is the island state’s boldest move …