Hedgehogging: hedge*hog*ging v. Interrupting conversations in an office environment by poking your head over the top of the cube.

So what’s up with Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin? He must have been pretty cranky when BusinessWeek interviewed him for a story published last week. Sarin, who admits Vodafone WAY overpaid for its 3G spectrum, sounded like he was dogging Verizon Wireless (of which Vodafone owns 45%). “They’ll need to go to LTE because [their technology, EV-DO] doesn’t have a forward path that’s nearly as elegant as ours. Our broadband path takes us all the way from [the current download speeds of] 3.6 megabits per second to 28 mbps.” Huh? Verizon, which seems to have its own hesitations about LTE, said it would go down the LTE path because it makes sense to achieve a common platform with Vodafone. And Verizon seems very pleased -almost giddy really – with its exsisting EV-DO network. You know, all those ads about the network? Sarin also says that even if VZW CEO Lowell McAdam were drunk, he still would insist he wants to be partners with Vodafone. Well, not if you keep dissing Lowell’s network.
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Further proof that the wireless industry is no place for the weak-willed: Nokia announces profits that are in line with what they were expected to announce, yet the company gets hammered by analysts for bringing some reality into the mobile space. Nokia merely mentioned that the strong growth enjoyed during the past several quarters might slow down a bit. This is more evidence that if there is anything that analysts and investors hate more than a BlackBerry network outage, it is a dose of reality from a profitable, long-term manufacturer that knows its business.
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Despite Apple’s clamp down on all news related to the pending launch of a 3G iPhone (and for that matter nearly all news that it does not want to get out) last week’s price-cutting of the current generation iPhone by a handful of European carriers seems to lend further proof that the new device is about to break cover. This is on top of a constant stream of comments from top AT&T Mobility executives that a 3G iPhone will be launched within the next couple of months. Why all the secrecy Apple? We all know you are going to announce the device at your developer conference in June. Right?
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It was good to see a handful of LTE backers get together around the campfire last week and pledge to play nice when it comes to divvying up IPR to the technology. The notable omission to the love-fest was Qualcomm, which in the past has been a bit of a stickler when it comes to IPR. We assume Qualcomm’s lawyers are feeling pretty good about their job security right about now.