2011

As the very last TouchPads leave the dusty shelves they’ve called home for the last month, making their way to consumers cashing in on fire-sale prices as low as $99, HP has announced it will sell its top-of-the-range Pre3 smartphone for just £49 ($80) in Europe only.

There was a victory for music owners and operators of so-called “music locker” services today as a judge in New York ruled such services do not infringe copyright, as claimed by a conglomerate of record labels in a case against website MP3tunes.com.

Telekom Austria | August 17, 2011 | Press Release Vienna, 17 August 2011: Today, the Telekom Austria Group (VSE: TKA, OTC US: TKAGY) announced that the supervisory board of Telekom …

Investor’s Business Daily | August 22, 2011 Source recently disclosed that China Unicom’s iPhone 5 talk team with Apple Inc.(APPL) had come back to Beijing and that China Unicom would …

The number of broadband access lines in Brazil could more than triple by 2020, and users could see significantly higher speeds if investments of R$ 144.6 billion by 2020 (US$ …

Khaleej Times | August 21, 2011 ABU DHABI – Etisalat on Saturday announced the launch of the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone in the UAE, making the telecom giant in …

Telecom NZ | August 19, 2011 | Press Release Telecom New Zealand has today announced adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxation, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) of $1,801m for the year to …

Bolivian’s Control Authority and Social Control of Telecommunications and Transport (ATT) said it will make a ruling on the fees it will impose on the country’s largest carriers beginning next …

DigiTimes | August 22, 2011 | Han Lee, Adam Hwang China Mobile, the largest mobile telecom carrier in China, brought in revenues of CNY250.080 billion (US$38.2 billion) for the first …

France Telecom – Orange | August 17, 2011 | Press Release France Telecom announces having purchased treasury shares within the framework of its 2011 share buy back program. View the …

Bloomberg | August 21, 2011 | Tracy Withers Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) agreed to a 10- year deal to take capacity on a new undersea fiber cable linking New Zealand, …

Alcatel-Lucent | August 22, 2011 | Press Release Paris, France – August 22, 2011 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) has introduced a new set of services to proactively …

VoIP firm Skype has reportedly paid $85 million for smartphone group text messaging service GroupMe, to put itself on competitive footing with rival messaging services from RIM, Apple and others.

I have a confession to make, I’m a history buff. I’m a sucker for historical novels, love a good period drama and, probably most importantly, I read history when I was at university. So it’s really no surprise that as soon as the HP TouchPad made the transition from current product to relic of the digital past, I absolutely had to run out and buy one. Oh, yeah, that and the $100 price tag, which you’d have to be a dodo to ignore.