Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works...
Wireless carriers should be expected to speak highly of their networks-it's arguably their greatest asset alongside spectrum holdings-but the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers are now enabling customers to build their own micro networks of sorts. Are they giving up some of the...
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., held forth from London this morning to orchestrate consumer frenzy over the iPhone's arrival in the United Kingdom, the first in as many as three European markets to announce this week.One can only imagine the spectacle of a...
The Federal Communications Commission took dramatic steps to improve the location accuracy of wireless 911 service, but the mobile-phone industry and some telecom regulators complained the agency was taking action before the completion of FCC studies on emergency calling.The agency clarified that cellular carriers...
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 RCRNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We...
Nokia Corp. is hoping to build a doorway directly to mobile consumers. Again.But whether carriers will tolerate the move is far from clear.The manufacturer-cum-mobile-media company last week outlined a surprisingly broad cross-platform play, introducing Ovi-which means "door" in the Finnish company's native tongue-at its...
By now you've probably read about the "teen whiz" who unlocked his Apple Inc. iPhone using software commands and a soldering iron. (George Hotz, unlocker from New Jersey, got a free car, three iPhones and a consulting contract from an admiring Terry Daidone, co-founder...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Current Analysis' Avi Greengart, Jupiter Research's...
Save the trees In addition to its advanced functionality, Apple's iPhone is also endowed with very detailed billing. AT&T Mobility said it was re-examining its current billing practices for the wonder device that provides customers with billing records of not just all calls made...
Femtocells could become a catalyst for growth of triple-play service revenues in developed countries, said a new report from research firm In-Stat.Mobile triple play services offer a revenue solution as developed markets become saturated with little differentiation among carriers, said In-Stat. But in order...
The W-CDMA baseband chip business is morphing in real time, as various market pressures push and pull the players to partner, diversify their customer base or pursue less-demanding technologies.Data from Forward Concepts (see chart) shows that last year Texas Instruments Inc. was the global...
THE IPHONE HAS given birth to the iEcosystem. Whether that's a good thing, though, is debatable.Apple Inc.'s decision to bar third-party developers from building applications for its high-profile device has drawn scorn in the software world. But there is no shortage of Internet-based applications...
I know most of us have had almost enough of the 700 MHz auction, what with the lobbying and saber rattling of those interested in the spectrum and the ultimate rule making handed down by the FCC last month.But, beyond the sexy names of...
WHEN A BEHEMOTH SHAKES ITS TAIL, some rise, some fall. The behemoth benefits.That appears to be the upshot of Nokia Corp.'s announcement last week that it had selected four main chipset suppliers for future business. The move boosted some fortunes and cast off others,...
Welcome to our Friday feature, Week in Review. Every Friday, RCR Wireless News will run through the major events of the past week, outlining what happened and speculating on what to look for in the coming weeks. Check below for news about carriers, handset...
Nokia Corp. is accelerating its research-and-development efforts in software to enable mobile Internet services while scaling back on research and development in chip-based radio technology. In tandem with this strategy, the Finnish company will pursue multiple sources for its chipsets, many bearing its royalty-producing,...
Editor's Note: Welcome to a special edition of our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Jupiter Research's...
"Serenity now!" yelled the character George Costanza in one episode of the 1990s sitcom, "Seinfeld."Costanza's anguished cry underscored the unbridgeable gap between his desperate need for serenity and the angst that gripped his soul.A roughly analogous gap may yawn between the public serenity of...
Speculation has sent network operators' stock up and down, but a British analyst said yesterday that Apple Inc. had not signed any deals with Euro-operators.The sticking point, according to Bill Ray, analyst with ARChart and columnist for the online technology daily, The Register, is...
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 Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the...
More than a dozen House Commerce Committee lawmakers urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to reject Frontline Wireless L.L.C.'s push to have the agency create a national 700 MHz commercial-public safety broadband license with an open-access component."We believe that it is worth considering...
Four days after launching the data-centric Apple Inc. iPhone, AT&T Mobility struggled with a regional crash of its EDGE network for several hours on Monday-but the carrier said the problem was with a data center in Texas, and had nothing to do with the...
AT&T Mobility said it put $50 million into data network preparations ahead of the launch of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, increasing network capacity and pushing its EDGE network from "good EDGE" to "fine EDGE," as the carrier put it. One of the major criticisms of...
The language being bandied about today by iPhone reviewers for consumer publications-think The New York Times and Wall Street Journal-is revealing. The gatekeepers have been seduced. But at least they appear seduced by the device-if not by AT&T Mobility's network coverage and capabilities-rather than...
