U.S. carriers are demanding more of a place at the content trough, content provides say, whittling away at already onerous revenue-share deals. And publishers are feeling the squeeze. Ringtone vendors and others have long complained about operators that pocket the lion's share of content...
GLENVIEW, Ill.—BSG Clearing Solutions North America L.L.C. acquired VoiceLog L.L.C.’s third-party verification business. The $15.6 million transaction closed June 30. VoiceLog’s TPV business involves gaining automated or live confirmation that businesses or individual customers switched telecom providers, which is required or authorized by the...
NEW YORK—The Yankee Group once again pulled together a quality list of speakers for its Wireless Leadership Summit, including executives from Sprint Nextel Corp., Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and Verizon Wireless, as well as representatives from a handful infrastructure vendors and wireless content providers. Notable...
You can call it off-deck, off-portal or off-network, but the stampede of companies looking to sell content directly to consumers is unquestionably on. Off-deck activity has long dominated the wireless market in Europe, where a lack of garden walls has encouraged subscribers to use...
NEW YORK—Cingular Wireless L.L.C. is not completely opposed to its customers running Voice over Internet Protocol services over its high-speed UMTS/HSDPA wireless data network. However, the carrier would like to work out the billing and operational kinks before fully supporting such activities.The guarded comments...
ST. LOUIS—Amdocs is looking to tap the booming market for off-deck mobile content with a new Web-based offering targeting media companies looking to build direct-to-consumer Internet storefronts. The product, dubbed OpenMarket Exchange, is designed to support digital purchases and minimize revenue leakage from third-party...
Companies looking to monetize surfers on the wireless Web should consider giving stuff away. That was the consensus of the three speakers featured last week in RCR Wireless News' first webinar, "Wireless portals: Who owns the mobile Web user?" While content providers and carriers...
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of thousands of people were scattered across the country. People's homes were destroyed, their neighborhoods were flooded or left without power, and many had no way of calling for help or simply to let loved ones know...
MBlox is rumored to be looking to expand both its global footprint and its business plan with a $175 million acquisition of content provider LaNetro Zed. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based mobile data and billing services provider declined to discuss the buyout, but industry sources say...
Wireless carriers are spending big bucks in promoting the use of their flashy, fast new data services: full-length music downloads, three-dimensional mobile games, Web surfing and the like. But with carriers relying on revenue from those transactions to boost their average revenue per user,...
WASHINGTON—The attorney general of the District of Columbia is reportedly suing InPhonic Inc. as a result of more than 2,000 consumer complaints filed against the company during the past three years. The attorney general filed suit against InPhonic yesterday in D.C. Superior Court, according...
WESTON, Mass.—Proxpro Inc., which provides mobile search and social networking products, said it launched a new mobile tool that allows Sprint Nextel Corp. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. customers to access the profiles of 28 million business executives. The company’s Research People tool allows users...
Wireless industry trade association CTIA is hoping to spur direct-to-consumer revenues by expanding the industry's short-code program. The industry group, along with short-code administrator NeuStar Inc., announced open registration for six-digit short codes. Wireless subscribers can access content or services by sending a key...
As RCR's online editor, I am starting a weekly column at RCRNews.com. It's called Worst of the Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us to rant about whatever rubs us...
WASHINGTON-Even as wireless carriers won the right to stop collecting a 3-percent federal excise tax, they may be caught in the middle of a paperwork nightmare as customers try to collect government refunds. Already, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. said they would no...
Hello! And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCR to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way....
"News of my death has been greatly exaggerated," Mark Twain is said to have written in 1897, when he remained hale and hearty. Qualcomm Inc. has taken a page from Twain and added a biblical twist, as it hails its new incarnation of BREW...
The nationwide investigation into executive stock-option grants seems to be widening daily. And some major players in wireless are coming under the microscope. At issue is the practice of retroactively changing dates stock-option grants become effective. Stock options-allowing employees to purchase shares of the...
SEATTLE—Qpass is hoping to tap the user-generated content market with the launch of a self-service mobile storefront. The offering, dubbed TheContentMarket.com, is designed to enable amateur content providers to build fully functioning storefronts on their own Web sites. Site owners can create free accounts,...
BEDFORD, Mass.—Prepaid services provider Boston Communications Group Inc. appears to be the latest wireless company to fall under suspicion for questionably timed stock-options grants. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, BCGI approved stock-options grants to senior executives three times during a...
SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Wi-Fi aggregator Boingo Wireless Inc. launched its Embedded Wi-Fi Toolkit, an open source software package that enables developers to integrate Wi-Fi connection management technology into small devices such as dual-mode phones, MP3 players and digital cameras. Carriers, device makers, chip vendors and...
WASHINGTON-A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta is scheduled to hear oral argument this week in a key case that turns on whether a common billing practice by mobile-phone carriers is pre-empted by federal law. After the Federal Communications Commission last year ruled states are...
Within the past two years, the number of national carriers in the U.S. has gone from six to four. Between Cingular Wireless L.L.C.'s acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Sprint Corp.'s acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc., the companies that need to have their...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Trade Commission last week filed civil complaints against five data brokers, urging the court to find that the data brokers violated the FTC Act and that they must give up any money they obtained from the practice of obtaining and selling customer...
