Alltel Corp. has committed to LTE as its technological choice for a 4G network, but any significant network upgrades are still three to five years out, the company said on a conference call with investors after releasing financial results from the previous quarter."We do...
Verizon Wireless has been hit with another Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit.The lawsuit, pending in Alabama federal court, asserts the No. 2 wireless service provider and TransUnion L.L.C. are ruining the credit of a wireless subscriber.Plaintiff Johnny Howard said Verizon Wireless continues to try...
Inspired messagesThe Pope will send inspirational text messages to mobile phones during Catholic World Youth day this summer in Australia, according to a report from Agence France-Presse. "We wanted to make WYD08 a unique experience by using new ways to connect with today's tech-savvy...
A bipartisan group of senators urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to abandon a plan to use reverse auctions to award universal service fund support to eligible telecom carriers in rural areas."Reverse auctions leave too many unanswered questions about stranded investment and the...
As customers walk away from wireless retail stores, they are less satisfied with the experience, largely because of a lack of product information and promotional incentives, according to the latest survey released by J.D. Power and Associates. Indeed, customer satisfaction with wireless retailers has...
Rural Cellular Corp. sued Alltel Corp. in federal court, accusing the Arkansas-based cellphone operator of undermining a $48 million wireless deal between the two companies.RCC last year completed its purchase of several Minnesota markets from Alltel, a divestiture-related transaction required of the latter company...
Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell said he supports imposing an interim cap on high-cost universal service funds primarily benefitting wireless carriers that serve rural areas, paving the way for agency approval of a policy that the mobile industry and some lawmakers assert is...
Touchscreen devices have been with us for years but, for obvious reasons, they've been getting a bit of attention lately.Call it "touch navigation," arguably a more accurate term. Add the notion of touch-based input/output for productivity-minded business users, another topic du jour. (Fingers for...
A divided Federal Communications Commission voted to impose an interim cap on high-cost universal service fund payments to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers, a blow to some smaller mobile-phone carriers that rely on subsidies to bring competitive services to underserved rural areas of the country."This...
Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell said he supports imposing an interim cap on high-cost universal service funds primarily benefitting wireless carriers serving rural areas, paving the way for agency approval of a policy that the mobile industry and some lawmakers believe is technologically...
When it comes to wireless plans, it's all about the buffet, J.D. Power and Associates concluded in its semi-annual survey of wireless customers' level of satisfaction with contracts.The firm, which gave a nod to regional carriers in its latest survey on call quality, found...
Wireless providers continue to push back against proposed reforms to the stressed universal service program for rural America, arguing that they are being penalized at a time when consumers increasingly demand the kind of mobility and broadband capabilities that wireless technology provides.The FCC is...
When it comes to wireless plans, it's all about the buffet, J.D. Power and Associates concluded in its semi-annual survey of wireless customers' level of satisfaction with contracts.The firm, which recently gave a nod to regional carriers in its latest survey on call quality,...
Plaintiffs' lawyers have found a new weapon to pursue class-action consumer litigation against the mobile-phone industry: the Fair Credit Reporting Act.Verizon Wireless and Alltel Corp. are facing class-action lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Georgia federal courts, respectively, based on alleged noncompliance with the law.Under 2003...
Microsoft Corp. subsidiary TellMe said it added a GPS location feature to its voice portal to give BlackBerry users information about businesses, movies, traffic, weather, maps and driving directions. The "voice in, visual out" way of receiving information is useful to people who are...
Public-interest groups reiterated their call for federal regulators to protect text-messaging rights, framing the debate as far-reaching in terms of the potential implications for free speech, disability access and competition in the wireless industry.Public Knowledge and other organizations want the Federal Communications Commission to...
A class-action lawsuit filed against Alltel Corp. accuses the regional mobile-phone carrier of adding unauthorized charges on subscribers' monthly bills.The suit focuses on the relationships between Alltel and third-party mobile content providers and billing aggregators such as m-Qube Inc., a unit of VeriSign Inc."Alltel...
Regional wireless operator MetroPCS Communications Inc. introduced its ChatLink service, a push-to-talk feature that allows its subscribers to use PTT services with people outside of MetroPCS' network. Kodiak Networks, which powers the ChatLink service as well as other PTT offerings from a number of...
Public-interest groups reiterated their call for federal regulators to protect text messaging rights, framing the issue with far-reaching implication for free speech, disability access and competition in the wireless industry.Public Knowledge and other organizations want the Federal Communications Commission to rule that mobile-phone carriers...
NTT to test mobile aroma services Mobile music is floundering and wireless TV is struggling to gain traction. So NTT Communications is targeting users through their noses.The Japanese telecom announced plans to test a service that would allow subscribers to select and share scents...
Like a series of dominos, several of the largest regional carriers fell to consolidation pressures within the past year. The announcements came within a few months of one another: AT&T Inc. would buy Dobson Communications Corp., Verizon Wireless snapped up Rural Cellular Corp., and...
If you can get Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel Corp., to extoll the virtues of your jointly developed handset during the opening day's keynote address, you're well-positioned to make hay.Thus the new Samsung Instinct - which looked similar to the iPhone - gave...
In this age of on-the-go videoconferencing and eye-popping wireless games, Cequint Inc. seems to be making headway with . wait for it . a kind of caller ID. No, really.The Seattle-based company offers City ID, an application that displays the phone number of incoming...
The controversy over whether the Federal Communications Commission should regulate short code-related text messaging has opened a floodgate of weighty policy questions - from network management to consumer protection to free speech - that could make resolution of the matter far more difficult than...
