Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Time Machine is a way to take advantage of our extensive history in covering the wireless space to fire up the DeLorean and take a trip back in time to re-visit some of the more interesting headlines from this week in history. Enjoy the ride!
Motorola’s vision going forward
Though much pent-up interest was focused on Motorola’s handset announcements, company execs talk about operations, supply chain, finances, product roadmap and whether Motorola could sustain its recent robust performance-in sum, both the “vision thing” and the nitty-gritty. CEO Ed Zander strode the stage, ignoring his allotted time, and talked at length about three elements essential to corporate success: vision, focus and execution. Motorola had done these things in reverse order, he said, beginning with execution in its turnaround in 2004, focus in 2005 and, finally, this year developing a compelling vision for the company’s reason-to-be, internal culture and world-beating direction. … Read More
Motorola-Huawei JV greeted with skepticism
As news of Motorola Inc.’s joint venture with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. sinks in, analysts offered insights as to what the partnership means to the two companies as well as the wireless industry as a whole. Technology Business Research’s Bill Lesieur said that the combined wireless network infrastructure product portfolio makes sense only if Huawei and Motorola can carry out a strong worldwide go-to-market strategy. But he cautioned that the deal is a band-aid for Motorola Networks as it reacts to sweeping consolidation within the telecom equipment sector, adding that, “the band-aid might not stick and could leave Motorola Networks as a casualty of the structural changes in the telecom equipment industry and the resulting new competitive environment.” … Read More
MVNOs resolute amid whispers of pulling the plug
The mobile virtual network operator bandwagon, cruising along smoothly a few months ago, appears to be suffering from a case of backlash. Recent MVNO news and rumors haven’t been particularly pretty. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a scathing assessment of MVNOs’ performance thus far. The Web was buzzing with a report that claims Helio L.L.C. had only scraped together 100 subscribers (the company, for its part, says its numbers are “in the thousands”). Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Rief Cohen concluded that Walt Disney Co. should pull the plug on Mobile ESPN L.L.C. after less than six months on the market, while EarthLink Inc. reported that its share of Helio’s operational costs totaled $13.3 million last quarter, and the company expects those costs to skyrocket to be between $75 million and $85 million by the end of the year. … Read More
Competition singes Samsung and LG in 2Q
When discussing the disappointing results for the second quarter by South Korean vendors Samsung Electronics Co. or LG Electronics Co. Ltd., one has to begin by noting the robust performances by Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp., which together account for well over half the mobile phones sold worldwide. The two top mobile-phone vendors wield globally recognized brands, broad product portfolios and economies of scale in their rivalry, not to mention global manufacturing and distribution networks, leaving fewer crumbs on the table to feed the aspirations of untold numbers of handset vendors scrambling for a seat at the global feast. … Read More
New York school cell ban draws lawsuit
Camella Price, a mother of two girls, is one of eight parents of New York City school children who consider wireless phones a lifeline to their youngsters—and they’re suing Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the chancellor of the city schools and the city department of education because the school district has begun stricter enforcement of a ban on communication devices, including wireless phones. Price said in an affidavit that her daughters used their wireless phones to call each other and her for help one day when her youngest, age 12, was beaten up by other kids while walking home from school. … Read More
Nortel secures piece of Verizon Wireless’ Rev. A build
Without divulging financial details, Nortel Networks Ltd. bagged what is likely a hefty contract to supply Verizon Wireless with CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A network technology beginning in the third quarter. Albert Lin, telecom analyst at American Technology Research, estimated that Verizon’s total Rev. A spending will be about $3 billion or $4 billion spread out over 3 years, peaking at around one-and-a-half years. Verizon Wireless said it expects Rev. A technology to help meet customer demand for more high-bandwidth, real-time wireless services such as Voice over Internet Protocol, video telephony and advanced multimedia services. However, the carrier has not specified when it plans to launch Rev. A services. Conversely, Sprint Nextel Corp. has announced that it plans to offer commercial Rev. A services by the end of next year, but the carrier has not yet named an equipment supplier. … Read More
All eyes on India: Country front line in ongoing GSM-CDMA technology battle
Amid speculation that some CDMA operators are turning to GSM technology, GSM proponents have stepped up lobbying efforts to tout the technology’s global success. Meanwhile, CDMA backers say the moves have little to do with technology and instead are based on government policies and simple economics. Nonetheless, the issue cuts straight to the heart of the long-running battle between CDMA and GSM, and could have serious reverberations for equipment, handset and intellectual property vendors on both sides of the technological isle. … Read More
FCC gives up on blind bidding; announces 168 qualified bidders for AWS auction
The Federal Communications Commission said late Friday that 168 bidders have qualified to participate in the advanced wireless services auction, and that it would not use blind bidding procedures during the auction. The auction “will be conducted using the information-disclosure procedures typically used during past FCC auctions,” said the commission. “The FCC concluded that if this measure of likely competition, or modified-eligibility ratio, is equal to or greater than three, the likely level of competition should be sufficient to make anti-competitive outcomes difficult to sustain and therefore the benefits of publicly revealing information on bidder interests and bidder identities likely would outweigh the potential harms. Because the modified-eligibility ratio is equal to at least three, this auction will be conducted with the typical disclosure of information from this point forward that is, revealing bidder license selection before the auction, as well as all bids and bidder identities at the end of each round.” … Read More
Mobile WiMAX to outpace fixed solutions, Juniper says
Mobile WiMAX is set to outpace fixed WiMAX technology, according to a new report from Juniper Research, which claims that mobile WiMAX will grow from 1.7 million subscribers in 2007 to 21.3 million by 2012. Juniper released its WiMAX report as the initial wave of mobile WiMAX Forum-certified products begin shipping. Senior Analyst Aditya Kaul said he anticipates that, “although fixed and mobile WiMAX were developed with a complimentary eye to serving different markets, the services they offer will inevitably become intertwined, creating complimentary as well as competing solutions—depending on the user environment.” … Read More
Securing phones for enterprise: It’s all data-in-motion now
The spate of recent headlines can only feed the well-founded paranoia of corporate IT managers struggling to serve their colleagues’ quest for mobility. The enterprise’s demand for data on-the-go naturally includes e-mail and requests for proprietary corporate information, including access to the corporate network-sending the paranoia-meter sky high. … Read More
