In 1989, I started my career in wireless as an outside sales rep for Metro Mobile (which would later become part of Bell Atlantic Corp.) in my hometown of Columbia, S.C. Those were the heady days of thousand-dollar telephones, $3 per-day roaming fees, 3-watt...
SEATTLE-Point.com, an online retailer of wireless phones, service plans and accessories, announced two separate agreements allowing users of ZDNet, The New York Times on the Web and New York Today to compare and buy wireless products and services over the Internet.Through its agreement with...
Joining several other third-party developers creating applications for the Wireless Application Protocol, CMG Telecommunications introduced its WAP Service Broker, a platform designed to connect wireless phone users to WAP-based content.The WSB is a platform that carriers can place in their networks to complement WAP...
A number of Internet sites have popped up in recent months offering side-by-side wireless services pricing comparison and purchasing. But some are evolving to become much more.The wireless industry soon could see a total of eight to 10 Web sites offering consumers the ability...
Portals have a hidden agenda to capture the wireless e-commerce market.Carriers had better beware.Greek mythology chronicles the fall of the once-prosperous city of Troy, misled by the promise of a gift in the form of a Trojan horse. Looking back, it seems hard to...
The Wireless Data Forum celebrated its first birthday last week by releasing its first book, called "Going Mobile: A Cookbook of Wireless Data Solutions."The WDF said Going Mobile is the first in what is to be an annual publication on the state of the mobile...
When Wireless Knowledge L.L.C. announced its intention to create a service linking wireless devices to information based behind corporate firewalls, regardless of airlink standards, analysts had only one comment-"show me."But it seems the company is unable to meet that request just yet. In January,...
NEW YORK-As the Internet accelerates the globalization of telecommunications, mergers and acquisitions among traditional and nontraditional players have eclipsed initial public offerings as the preferred strategy for retaining competitive advantage."In the United States, the Internet economy generated $301 billion in 1998 and will generate...
NEW YORK-Wireless carriers can only imagine scaling back their costly call-flooded customer support centers and slashing the overhead that comes with them. And wireless users long to regain those wasted afternoons on hold with a receiver glued to their ears only to find they've...
HandsetsNokiaNokia announced a new NMT 450 analog handset, to be available in the third quarter, that features true 3-volt technology and the Nokia NaviKey concept. The Nokia 640 weighs 195 grams and has a standby time of up to 80 hours and talk time...
Wireless industry members agree smart phones will become a critical differentiating factor for handset vendors and mobile-phone operators within the next two years, but the proliferation of these devices remains relatively unknown.For handset providers, smart phones represent an opportunity to extend their products, boost...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission rejected privacy and industry concerns in approving six of nine additional capabilities to an industry interim technical standard implementing the digital wiretap act.The decision was not surprising. Last October, the FCC tentatively concluded five of the nine so-called punch-list items...
Aether Systems Inc. announced it will acquire mobeo Inc., a company that provides financial news and stock updates on wireless devices such as pagers.Formerly called DocuPro Inc., mobeo delivers quotes on more than 150,000 stocks, options, futures, treasury, foreign exchange and other market data...
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.-Matsushita Electric/Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba Corp. introduced a secure digital memory card that can support numerous new consumer products and enable mass distribution of copyrighted content as well as e-commerce in a variety of multimedia and wireless and Internet applications.The stamp-sized card...
NAPERVILLE, Ill.-Spyglass Inc. said it licensed its Spyglass Prism product to Seiko Epson for use with a new wireless device specifically designed to target the Japanese market.Spyglass Prism is an Internet content delivery platform that acts as a proxy server, which identifies the device...
The paging industry made further progress toward implementing content services last week, as both Motorola Inc. and Arch Communications Group Inc. introduced products and services targeting the space.Arch said it will offer personalized information services to customers via an agreement with Datalink.net Inc. Datalink.net...
BELLEVUE, Wash.-GTE Wire-less said it will test @mobile.com's Internet-based information services to customers in its Seattle and Spokane, Wash., markets.Services include a group text message broadcast service, a service sending Internet-based content to digital wireless phones at predetermined times and the ability to query...
SANTA CLARA, Calif.-Internet portal company Yahoo! Inc. added to its Yahoo! Everywhere strategy with the introduction of Yahoo! Mobile, which allows users to personalize the Yahoo!-based content and services they want delivered to their wireless devices.The first stage of the Yahoo! Mobile deployment allows...
Phone.com Inc.'s Unwired Universe conference attracted about 1,100 attendees from 29 countries, twice the number expected by conference planners.The conference was designed to act as a meeting point for vendors, carriers and application developers interested in Wireless Application Protocol technology. Several WAP-related announcements were...
Riverbed Technologies Inc. and Spyglass Inc. said they have entered a worldwide licensing agreement under which Riverbed will incorporate Spyglass' Prism technology with its ScoutWare mobile enterprise software.The agreement provides a much-needed entrance into the growing mobile enterprise market for Spyglass."The most significant aspect...
Intelligent agent technology has been long considered a potential boon for messaging applications looking to provide meaningful content to wireless devices.Agents are small bits of code capable of monitoring data, recognizing what information is valuable to its user and then transmitting it to a...
After a year of development and testing, Paging Network Inc. and Computer Associates Inc. have introduced a monitoring solution that integrates CA's Unicenter TNG enterprise management system with wireless capabilities provided by PageNet's VAST Wireless Solutions subsidiary.The strategic agreement between PageNet and CA was...
Since opening its initial public offering at $16 on July 9, Phone.com Inc.'s stock price recently has been closing in the $70 range, with sales during the day breaking $80.Whether this success will stand the test of time remains to be seen, but for...
BURLINGTON, Mass.-A new study compiled by research and consulting firm Ovum reports that although voice traffic will continue to dominate the communications market, the growing demand for information services and Internet content is forcing vendors and operators to rethink their mobile strategies.The report, "Wireless...
