Sprint Nextel Corp. said nothing substantial about its WiMAX plans yesterday and instead fell back on a new touchscreen device as the biggest news to share with a room packed full of invited press and analysts.There's no doubt the company and its new chief,...
The "old hippie" is headin' to Mars. Or, perhaps more accurately, Richard Branson - fearless leader of the ubiquitous Virgin brand - is hatching a plan with Google Inc.'s founders to send volunteers to the Red Planet to establish a city.There is a catch,...
Perhaps no other player has invested as much in the speech-recognition market as Nuance Communications Inc. The Burlington, Mass.-based company has spent more than $1 billion in the past two years as it acquired competing firms and broadened its portfolio. We talked to Steve...
Well, April Fool's Day came and went without much notice during the CTIA Wireless 2008 show. I find this disheartening; the CTIA show presents the perfect venue for companies both large and small to cause general havoc and mayhem in the name of April...
Change has never been easy for the cell-phone industry. And it's perfectly understandable. With the kind of wild success and wealth creation during its first three decades, cellular chieftains who collectively service more than 250 million subscribers have a history of being instinctively cautious...
The TV white spaces debate -- already highly controversial and politicized, but largely limited to potential unlicensed Wi-Fi use -- just got messier.The mobile-phone industry recommended to the Federal Communications Commission that most vacant broadcast channels be auctioned for area-wide licensing. Cellular trade group...
Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. are in discussions with the nation's two largest cable providers -- Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. -- to fund a nationwide WiMAX venture, according to the Wall Street Journal. Intel Corp., Google Inc. and Bright House...
Editor's Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.--Microsoft bought closely...
Google Inc., a major force in prying open the 700 MHz band for third-party applications and devices, could also become the pivotal deal-maker in the equally controversial and politicized debate over whether federal regulators should make vacant TV channels -- white spaces -- available...
Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility ran the table at the 700 MHz auction, accounting for most of the record $19.6 billion in bidding that broke historic ground on open access, lost ground on public safety and gave dozens of mostly white-male-owned small businesses a...
CARRIER DECKS AND AGGREGATOR STOREFRONTS are so last year. Because application developers are quickly discovering that the hottest places to showcase their wares are the top social networking sites.Facebook last year opened its platform to third-party developers, spurring a flood of applications that users...
Sprint Nextel Corp. last week rolled out an updated Web browser designed to deliver "a PC-like experience" on mobile phones. But not everyone is impressed.The carrier announced plans to launch Openwave Systems Inc.'s OpenWeb, a browser that transcodes Internet content for the small screens...
So we never expected that Google would actually become a wireless licensee, but the FCC certainly did not get its wish for a bunch of new competition in the wireless industry. AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless made up 85% of the proceeds from the...
Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility ran the table at the 700 MHz auction, accounting for most of the record $19.6 billion in bidding that broke historic ground on open access, lost ground on public safety and gave dozens of mostly white-male-owned small businesses a...
Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility won the vast majority of the 700 MHz spectrum up for grabs during the Federal Communications Commission's recently completed auction. Verizon Wireless was the event's biggest spender, doling out $9.63 billion (fully half of the almost $20 billion in...
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 RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way....
It took 38 days and 261 rounds, but the Federal Communications Commission's 700 MHz spectrum auction came to an end this afternoon, having raised $19.592 billon for the U.S. treasury. The haul is a record for an FCC-run auction and nearly double the high...
Sprint Nextel Corp. is touting an updated Web browser designed to deliver "a PC-like experience" on mobile phones. But some users aren't impressed.The carrier announced plans to launch Openwave Systems Inc.'s OpenWeb, a browser that transcodes Internet content for the small screens and limited...
In the hands of well-heeled, early adopters, the iPhone's large touchscreen, user interface and an unlimited data plan lead to high rates of browsing, video viewing, music listening and social networking, according to a new report from M:Metrics.Overall, that's good news for the mobile...
Editor's Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.--Google's YouTube.com announced...
AOL L.L.C. last week became the latest Internet player to bet big on social networking, agreeing to plunk down a whopping $850 million for Bebo.com. But turning Bebo's impressive online and mobile traffic into dollars could be a challenge.While MySpace and Facebook have drawn...
ONCE THE DOMAIN OF EARLY ADOPTERS on high-tech smartphones, mobile RSS is quietly moving into the mainstream.RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, first came to the Internet in 1999, and the format has become a must-have for savvy Web users looking to keep tabs on...
It's no secret that trying to find content or information on a mobile phone is a daunting task for most consumers.Carrier deck layers can seem like concentric circles of hell, wireless Web searches are often ill-suited for wireless devices, and the screen sizes of...
While Opera Software ASA continues to attract attention with its mobile browsers and a host of startups go directly to consumers with their transcoding technology, InfoGin is quietly making headway by cozying up to carriers.The 8-year-old Israel-based startup notched its first big win in...
