Here’s a few of the things that got us talking in the edit room last week:
Has the IEEE ever kicked out all of the leaders of a working group before? Certainly, companies have always stacked the deck with their employees to push the standards-setting process their way. But how bad do you have to be to get the big boss to kick you all off the team?
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It’s good to be NeuStar. The company-which has a monopoly on issuing phone numbers and the like-got a four-year contract extension with the seven companies to which it delivers porting services. It also reduced its pricing because a 50-percent profit margin is just too much for carriers to take. Now it expects to post only a modest mid-30-percent profit.
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Well, the FCC’s spectrum auction is over … and the most unimportant place in the United States is officially Converse, Wyo. That’s right, the A-block license for good old Converse went for the paltry sum of $7,200-the cheapest license of the 1,087 licenses that were bid on. I wonder if the farmers and ranchers out in Converse are sad about being so insignificant? Probably not.
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Electronic payment company Cyphermint teamed up with a pizza delivery place in Marlborough, Mass., to demonstrate a service where people can pay for a pizza using their mobile phone. That’s right, now all of us lazy, pizza-gobbling couch potatoes don’t even have to get out our checkbooks. This is mobile commerce, baby. Forget driving directions and the rest of it. It’s all about the pizza at the front door. Let’s hope a few Chinese takeout restaurants are next on the list. And that they test it in Denver.
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One lucky soul in editorial got a new video iPod and is in love with it! (And nearly everyone else is appropriately jealous and that brings extra rewards.) It’s a thing of beautiful, really-and so easy to use. You can listen to music, play games, watch TV and video, get contacts and calendar information. Now if only you could make a call with it.
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We’ve always known competition among wireless carriers was cutthroat, but who knew that competition for funny ad campaigns was just as stiff? Who can decide whether Sprint Nextel’s cowboys are better than Alltel’s MyCircle sales guys or Verizon Wireless’ family on the front porch talking about the fact that their wireless service is better because it’s less predictable, and therefore, not boring. Catherine Zeta Jones just isn’t cutting it right now. Come on, T-Mobile, step up to the plate and take some below-the-belt barbs at the competition.
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Not to dis such a well-respected industry research firm as Pyramid Research, but last week Pyramid put out a new report touting the strength of the mobile market worldwide. The report cited such things as “compounded annual growth rate” to support its findings. In other news, the sky is blue.
