December 2011

Alcatel-Lucent wants to supply more than equipment to wireless operators. The company says that one of the most important assets the carriers have is their relationship with their customers, and it sees the opportunity to help carriers find appropriate ways to bring those customers to mobile marketers.

Michael Copps, a longtime commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, said Dec. 6 that he would resign from his position Jan. 1 — or sooner, should Congress appoint his successor. …

Mobile banking leader mFoundry says it raised $18 million from a consortium led by MasterCard Inc. Intel Capital, FIS and Motorola Mobility also participated in the round. MFoundry will use …

India’s Tata Communications today announced the launch of its IPX+ (IP eXchange) mobile broadband enablement framework. The company said that 70 mobile network operators have signed up for the new framework, which is designed to help capitalize on the latest technology innovations in the mobile broadband space via better interprovider mobile service delivery and management.

At an auction of frequency bands leftovers held by Brazilian telecom regulator Anatel on Dec. 6, carriers offered $132.7 million for 15 lots of frequency sub-bands used for the provision of personal mobile services.

The Brazilian unit of Spain’s Telefónica aims to be the biggest and best telecom provider in Brazil — and that consumers recognize it as such. That might not be easy, because Telefónica Brazil faced serious problems with its Internet broadband service Speed in 2008, and it took some time to recover from the brand damage. However, the current scenario is brighter: Little more than one year after the mobile carrier Vivo’s acquisition, all Telefónica’s products will be rebranded under the Vivo name.

Mobile broadband use has overtaken fixed-line access, GSMA Latin America says, adding that the main challenge for the region’s countries is to support the demand for data traffic. Public policies are necessary for mass access to networks, said GSMA Latin America Director Sebastian Hair, who opened the organization’s plenary meeting this week in El Salvador.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reassured the telecom industry today that his government is fully committed to sustaining growth, creativity and enterprise in a “vitally important” sector of the country’s economy.

AT&T Mobility continues to get hammered in highly publicized consumer surveys, with the latest blow coming from Consumer Reports, which claims that the nation’s No. 2 operator is anything but …

The need to bolster LTE networks could result in more than 14 million radio transceivers being deployed in 2016, with half of those specific to the mobile broadband technology, according …

In case of spectrum allocation beyond 4.4 MHz and up to 6.2 MHz to GSM operators, the service provider should have covered at least 50% of the district headquarters or any other town in lieu thereof, according to Indian telecom regulator’s recommendations for assignment of additional spectrum.

As the amount of data moving over wireless networks grows, so does the demand for the chips that generate and process that data. Strategy Analytics estimates that sales of smartphone …

The unemployment rate in Central Texas slipped to 7.1% in October, down from 7.5% the month before. The news points to a significantly brighter jobs outlook in Austin than in …

The past couple of weeks have witnessed several industry events that could reshape what the wireless industry will look like going forward. Those events have been centered on the growing …

India’s minister of information technology and communications, Kapil Sibal, is under fire for asking Internet companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo to prescreen user-generated content posted from India.

Although contact center solutions represent the biggest part of Avaya’s revenues, the company aims to be recognized beyond that business, as an important player of the multibillion-dollar enterprise market for communication tools.

After buying telecommunications infrastructure operator AES Atimus Group in July for $1.03 billion, Telecom Italia’s Brazilian mobile unit, TIM Participações SA, on Dec. 5 announced TIM Fiber’s business plan for the next year.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly 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. It is …

Leap Wireless (LEAP) put some numbers to its plans to swap spectrum with Verizon Wireless, announcing it would acquire a 12 megahertz patch of spectrum in the 700 MHz band …

Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR) looks to be making steps to secure its financial future announcing today plans to offer $300 million in Class A stock, plus up to $45 million more …

The subscriber base of Indian telcos increased by 7.9 million new users in September, an increase of 0.9% from August, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Texas Instruments (TXN) says it is scaling its multicore Keystone architecture for cloud radio access network base stations. The idea of replacing traditional cell site base stations with remote clusters …

While smartphones continue to make great strides in penetrating the domestic market, the third quarter of this year saw a slight lull in the action as consumers awaited the latest …