SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Yahoo Inc. took yet another step onto the wireless playground, inking a deal to preload its Go for Mobile service on "tens of millions" of handsets from Motorola Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.The application, which includes Yahoo-branded mobile services including...
The nation's wireless carriers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to net neutrality. When net-neutrality proponents make passionate cries for a "free and open" Internet, it's hard to answer with logic and pragmatism-yet that's exactly what wireless carriers...
WASHINGTON-Next month's advanced wireless services auction, anticipated for years due to the infusion of an additional 90 megahertz of spectrum into the U.S. wireless industry, may come to be remembered by who didn't show for the big dance. In the no-surprise category, Cingular Wireless...
The company working to establish a mobile-exclusive Internet domain is hoping to lure customers by extending its initial registration period. DotMobi-also known as mTLD, or mobile Top Level Domain Ltd.-said it will extend the trademark sunrise registration by a month, allowing companies to lay...
Finally, EarthLink Inc. did it. Last Thursday, the company launched its first municipal Wi-Fi network in Anaheim, Calif., offering the city's 328,000 residents, as well as local businesses and visitors "affordable and portable broadband." EarthLink said access to the network costs about $22 per...
LONDON—Yahoo Inc. scored a major wireless win with an agreement to provide mobile Internet services for Hutchison’s 3 Group carriers in Europe and Asia. The 3 Group tapped Yahoo to deliver mobile search, instant messaging and e-mail services as well as to provide the...
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...
WASHINGTON-The wireless industry continued to press for pre-emption as telecom reform plods along in the Senate. But the industry could be making some headway on universal service provisions that are more favorable to wireless carriers. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, CTIA President Steve...
WASHINGTON—The wireless industry continued to push for pre-emption, Sprint Nextel Corp. urged inclusion of special-access reform and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, floated a network-neutrality compromise Tuesday as the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the latest version...
WASHINGTON-EarthLink Inc. is set this week to respond to privacy concerns raised about its bid with Google Inc. to build a municipal Wi-Fi system in San Francisco. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier...
The upcoming AWS auction of 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz spectrum, now slated for August, raises the question of how many frequency bands might be jammed onto a handset and whether that poses technical challenges for component and handset vendors. The answer, at least...
"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...
REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft Corp.’s MSN is hoping to move onto the mobile marketing playground with the acquisition of Third Screen Media. MSN is negotiating to buy out the Boston-based company, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Representatives from Microsoft and Third Screen...
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google Inc. took yet another step into wireless, introducing a mobile version of its RSS aggregator service. The new mobile-friendly interface for Google Reader allows registered users with a personalized home page to use their phones to read news, e-mail and perform...
Sun Microsystems Inc. is hoping to boost sagging revenues by making its Java programming language available as free open-source software. Jonathan Schwartz, who took over as Sun's chief executive officer three weeks ago, told developers at last week's JavaOne conference in San Francisco that...
TOKYO—KDDI Corp. announced a deal allowing subscribers of its "au" service to access Google Inc.’s Internet search engine on their mobile phones. Japan’s second-largest carrier said the service, which is slated for a July launch, will provide search results for content targeted at PCs...
Remember the old adage about the weather? Everyone's talking about it, but nobody's doing anything about it. Well, the opposite is true of handset or even wireless service clones: Few are willing to talk about it, even when they've done something about it.Two recent...
News continued to churn out of the various municipal Wi-Fi projects gaining steam across the country, as one city's Wi-Fi contract made its way to a politically charged city council for a vote and another swirled in rumors of being temporarily shelved. In the...
WASHINGTON-A dispute among Democrats during a House panel debate on telecom reform underscored how lawmakers' views of network neutrality often corresponds to whether they think telephone companies should be allowed to compete in the TV space. In the end, a watered-down telecom reform bill,...
Google Inc. was finally awarded a patent for speech-recognition technology that allows users to search the Internet by uttering a few words. But whether that's good news or bad news for a handful of wireless software developers is far from clear. Voice-activated technology-which for...
IRVINE, Calif.—Mobile information service provider AskMeNow announced plans to acquire Israel-based IntelliGate Ltd., a specialist in information retrieval and natural language search technology. AskMeNow, a subsidiary of Ocean West Holding Corp., said the acquisition will allow it to offer mobile phone users automated search...
WASHINGTON—An intra-party dispute broke out late Wednesday regarding the issue of network-neutrality when Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) tried to require the Federal Communications Commission to study how content providers and search engines like Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. might distort the information delivered to...
There's no question that wireless users are searching for porn on their mobile phones. But in the United States, at least, it seems nobody is cashing in. A recent study by mobile-search provider JumpTap Inc. found that searches for adult content accounted for more...
Portland, Ore., city officials announced that MetroFi beat out Earthlink Inc. and VeriLAN to supply Wi-Fi networking across the city's 135-square miles. City officials said MetroFi won the contract "by submitting a proposal that excelled in demonstrated operational experience and its level of public...
