WASHINGTON-The House telecom subcommittee last week voted to include wireless carriers in a new scheme for carriers to compensate each other for carrying each other's traffic.The bill, which now goes to the full committee for consideration, would end the process known as reciprocal compensation...
Amrel SystemsAmrel Systems Inc. released a more powerful version of its Rocky II+ ruggedized mobile notebook computer, certified under MIL-STD 810E, MIL-STD 461C and IP54, offering an Intel Pentium III processor at speeds up to 650 MHz. Amrel said the faster processor provides better...
As the calendar turned over from the '90s to the '00s, the wireless industry has seen a surge in companies targeting the wireless enterprise enablement space.While outsourced solution providers such as wireless application service providers have made a name for themselves earlier in the...
NEW YORK-Dallas-based Texas Instruments has begun making samples of its new Bluetooth chipset available and will begin shipping them by year-end, Christian Dupont, general manager of the short-distance wireless unit, said.Developed by Butterfly VLSI Ltd., an Israeli company TI acquired early last year, the...
Until you have actually bought a good or service using a mobile device, it is difficult to comprehend the sheer power of the phone as an electronic wallet. In Europe, recent initiatives by innovative carriers such as Sonera allow users to buy candy, to...
COSTA MESA, Calif.-The CDMA Development Group announced the availability of three $1,000 annual scholarships for students attending the University of California, San Diego Extension's certificate program in CDMA Engineering.The scholarships cover about one-half of the tuition cost for UCSD Extension's specialized certificate program in...
Burst Wireless Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. are collaborating in a trial of high-speed wireless Internet services that Burst says will offer data rate speeds up to 144 kilobits per second, and, using Lucent's infrastructure equipment, keep in step with burgeoning third-generation technologies.The trial...
EndwareBroadband wireless product supplier Endware Corp. appointed Mike Roush vice president of manufacturing and operations, Nick Ingrao director of wireless programs and Chris Brown system engineering manager. Roush will oversee the expansion of the company's Diamond Springs, Calif., manufacturing plant in his new position....
SEOUL, South Korea-The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has extended the deadline for third-generation mobile licenses until the end of October, one month later than its original deadline.The postponement is due to a dispute over technology standards, Reuters reported.The country's three expected...
HELSINKI, Finland-Vodafone Hungary plans to use Nokia Corp.'s InSite Base Station solution to provide indoor coverage and capacity solutions to its new headquarters in Budapest, Hungary.The agreement includes equipment supply, solution planning and implementation."For a large company like Vodafone Hungary, dedicated indoor coverage helps...
LOS ANGELES-The average price for monthly wireless service dropped 0.8 percent from June to July in the 25 largest markets to $40.31 per month, according to a survey by Econ One."The modest decrease in July's prices, following the larger drop in June suggests that...
The second handset vendor Nextel Communications Inc. was counting on to make an iDEN phone by this year has decided to pursue other technology avenues.Japanese vendor Kyocera Corp. and Nextel late last year signed a letter of intent calling for the vendor to produce...
It was no surprise. Powertel Inc., one of the last major U.S. regional carriers, will fold operations with VoiceStream Wireless Corp. Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, which weeks ago announced plans to buy VoiceStream, has agreed to purchase Powertel for around $5.89 billion.Analysts speculated on...
BEIJING-China's telecom circles are hotly debating whether the country's own standard for third-generation (3G) mobile communications-Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA)-will be the goose with the golden eggs, allowing it to claw back precious terrain from foreign equipment suppliers.Still, the Chinese are...
BANGALORE, India-Although the Indian cellular industry is growing quite well, with the country's cumulative cellular subscriber base at 2.18 million at the end of June, operators are still hesitant to expand coverage outside high-density population centers.When the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) originally divided the...
FranceFrance released details of its plan to award four 3G wireless phone licenses based on a beauty contest. Bidders, given a 31 January, 2001, deadline to submit proposals, will be judged on the strength of their business plans, before being selected to pay US$4.5...
DUBLIN, Ireland-The myth that prepaid cellular users are by definition low-value customers has been firmly discredited, and prepaid services did much to increase GSM penetration among the young and cost conscious at a time, around 1997, when European growth rates were slack.Now European operators...
NEW YORK-The Financial Accounting Standards Board, Norwalk, Conn., expects by early next year to complete its project to eliminate the advantageous tax treatment of mergers as pooling of interests, rather than outright purchases.By dollar volume of recent transactions, companies in the high-technology sector, including...
WASHINGTON-Reminding the Federal Communications Commission that a federal appeals court said earlier this month that government must implement the digital wiretap act in a cost-effective manner, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association asked the FCC to suspend the digital wiretap compliance date until a new...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission said it will vigorously enforce wireless radiation safety rules that go into effect later this week."We are serious about this and will be checking," said Robert Cleveland, the FCC's expert on radio-frequency exposure rules. Cleveland said the FCC will conduct...
CHICAGO-U.S. Cellular Corp. launched SpanAmerica, a national rate plan that eliminates roaming and long-distance charges.The plan includes five combinations ranging in cost from $30 to $150 per month and offering between 100 minutes and 1,500 minutes of talk time. Additional minutes are billed at...
NEW YORK-Motorola Inc. said it is finishing a schedule to de-orbit Iridium L.L.C.'s 66-satellite constellation after the satellite company failed to find a buyer after months of searching.A scheduled bankruptcy court hearing last week to discuss possible takeover bids for Iridium was canceled after...
Handset subsidies are falling as digital mobile phones gain huge volumes, but as carriers begin targeting new segments and a new cycle of data-enabled handsets come to market, analysts wonder how low carriers can keep subsidies.The days of 1-cent handsets tied in with contracts...
In a surprise ending, six groups walked away with Universal Mobile Telecommunications System licenses in Germany at a total cost of $45.85 billion, the largest amount raised yet in a third-generation spectrum auction, hitting the ceiling of most analyst predictions.Each of the winners-Deutsche Telekom...
