JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Israel is determined not to be shaken from its pristine position of having one of the highest cellular penetration rates in the Middle East by the current unrest in the region."Penetration in Israel is growing steadily at a double-digit rate for next...
TOKYO-Japanese vendors are in the final stages of developing third-generation (3G) terminals. Japanese 3G services are scheduled to be launched earlier than any other country in May 2001 by NTT DoCoMo, followed by J-Phone, the mobile business of Japan Telecom and the newly merged...
TOKYO-Multi Channel Access radio, Japan's name for specialized mobile radio service, has been widely used by industries for allocating and controlling taxies and delivery trucks. But recently, these industries have begun using new technologies, such as packet data communications networks and global positioning system...
Bank of America launched a wireless banking and brokerage offering last week in limited markets through a partnership with 724 Solutions Inc.Bank of America Private Bank customers in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., will be able to conduct banking transactions...
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...
SAN JOSE, Calif.-Intel Corp., the world's biggest chip company, last week announced a new chip architecture designed to benefit a wide variety of wireless Internet and networking infrastructure applications.Intel said the XScale microarchitecture has the flexibility to handle requirements for both ultra-low power and...
LONDON-Yahoo! Europe announced two new wireless partnerships this week, including one with a handset manufacturer and one with a mobile operator.Yahoo! Europe and Trium, a Mitsubishi subsidiary, said Yahoo! will provide a range of content and services to Trium's WAP-enabled mobile phones. The handsets...
The speculation started in late June. Analysts began questioning whether the mobile-handset market was going soft.Their suspicions appeared justified when the world's largest handset vendor, Nokia Corp., said third-quarter results would be lower because of the Finnish company's timing of new product introductions. Investors...
NEW YORK-To catch a thief, at least two companies are turning to wireless technology.The first out of the box is Aeris.net, San Jose, Calif., which provides back-up wireless messaging for residential alarm systems when the wireline connection is severed.The company's MicroBurst technology enables short...
NEW YORK-AirLink PCS, the E-block fledgling of a century-old local exchange carrier, has found a niche providing its prepaid "Super Cordless" service for calling from and within a six-county area of Michigan."We've had visits by dozens of people from the E- and F-block licensees,...
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. said it will offer two-way short messaging service later this year, giving the carrier a more seamless data offering with its affiliates.AT&T Wireless offers SMS service today and relaunched its PocketNet service, based on Cellular Digital Packet Data service, earlier...
BUCHAREST, Romania-At the end of May, the principle vendors of mobile telephones in Romania held a meeting to discuss the country's black market for mobile handset sales.In the other Eastern and Central European countries, the illegal import level is much less than in Romania,...
The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block the US$129 billion merger between WorldCom and Sprint, the second- and third-largest U.S. long-distance telecom carriers, respectively. The lawsuit, combined with European Union opposition, effectively killed the deal.ICO-Teledesic Global, a holding company controlling Craig McCaw's...
TOKYO-Intel Corp. and Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corp. announced they will co-develop a cellular chipset for the third-generation wireless technology market. The companies said work on the chipset has begun, and they will develop and market the new chipset and associated software as Japan deploys...
Sirf Technology Inc., a developer of global positioning system technology, said it closed a mezzanine round of financing of $24.7 million, bringing the company's total funding to $47.3 million. Some of the company's new investors include Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi International Corp. and Hikari Tsushin...
As the thought of delivering multimedia services on wireless devices gains more attention, the Wireless Multimedia Forum aims to ensure interoperability among wireless multimedia protocols.PacketVideo Inc. last month established the new group with about 20 founding members, including representatives from vendors, carriers, content providers...
REDMOND, Wash.-AT&T Corp. introduced flat-rate data pricing for corporate wireless Internet phone and data service in more than 3,000 cities.AT&T PocketNet, which is AT&T's Cellular Digital Packet Data service, uses the Mitsubishi MobileAccess T250 wireless Internet phone.AT&T PocketNet business customers will pay a flat...
SigmaOneSigmaOne Communications Corp., a provider of location systems and services for wireless carriers and the wireless Internet, reported the development of the company's wireless location system for Global System for Mobile communications carriers in the United States and Europe. Designed to operate as either...
NEW ORLEANS-Cellport Systems announced it will begin shipping in March its Cellport 3000 universal hands-free system, capable of supporting a variety of phones through the use of changeable pocket adapters. The company also said the Cellport 3000 will be available with Motorola Inc.'s Telematics...
Geoworks Corp. last week unveiled a licensing program to collect royalties on a user-interface method employed by the Wireless Application Protocol and Wireless Markup Language for which it says it holds essential intellectual property rights.While others have made essential IPR claims on WAP technology,...
LOS ANGELES-AT&T Wireless Services Inc. launched its wireless data network in the Los Angeles market.AT&T Wireless Internet Protocol service will provide instant, wireless access to the Internet, as well as connections to e-mail, stock quotes, corporate databases and other network services using Cellular Digital...
At long last, a wireless carrier has announced its intention to launch the Revolv service from Wireless Knowledge L.L.C., the joint venture Qualcomm Inc. and Microsoft Corp. formed more than a year ago.AT&T Wireless Services Inc. said it plans to include the service as...
HELSINKI-Nokia Networks, the infrastructure arm of Nokia Corp., said it and Mitsubishi Electric initiated interoperability testing between their products and solutions supporting the Wireless Application Protocol 1.1.The intent of the tests is to enhance the compatibility of WAP-based products and services, ensuring they will...
Some confusion exists in the wireless industry over whether mobile-phone-component shortages are affecting the handset supply in the United States.Major handset suppliers say they aren't struggling with component shortages, but one major carrier said its lower subscriber additions in the third quarter were caused...
