WASHINGTON-As the nation prepares for a sea change that will come when a new president is elected, the wireless industry's main trade association experienced some major changes recently and prepared for an upcoming campaign on one of its thorniest issues-driver distraction.From `industry' to `Internet'The...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-A survey of U.K. businesses has found more than 70 percent have no intention of implementing the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) in the near future, while just 15 percent have already done so, and only 14 percent have plans to. According to...
BEDMINSTER, N.J.-Verizon Wireless launched its National Prepay Wireless service.A specially-priced starter kit now is available. Customers who purchase a starter time card beginning at $30 and one of several tri-mode mobile phones get a mail-in rebate for two $30 prepay cards.Replenishment cards come in...
HELSINKI, Finland-Nokia Corp. acquired the remaining 49 percent of its Brazilian joint venture NG Industrial from partner Gradiente Telecom S.A. for $415 million.The joint venture was established in 1997 to manufacture mobile phones for the Brazilian market under both the Nokia and Gradiente brand...
WASHINGTON-A relatively minor mobile-phone case in Illinois state court-involving allegations of privacy invasion and health risk coverup in connection with an epidemiology study-has mushroomed into one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history.Judge Ellis Reid of the Circuit Court of Cook County in...
SINGAPORE-Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.-backed mobile phone company One.Tel announced its intention to pull out of the Singapore telecommunications market, citing Singapore Telecom as creating an unfavorable environment. One.Tel will move back to its Asian hub in Hong Kong. It further plans to channel back...
Nokia Corp. appeared to be the only mobilephone manufacturer to emerge unscathed from a tumultuous their quarter that saw Motorola Inc. and Ericsson Inc. stumble and their stock prices fall after global handset sales shifted and slowed.Nokia moved its earnings release up a week...
In my first journalism class, the instructor gave us an acronym to remember-KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. Little did I know I would some day work in acronym central, otherwise known as the wireless industry.In designing wireless devices, the KISS advice also holds true....
HELSINKI, Finland-Siemens Information and Communications Mobile Group joined the MeT initiative, formed earlier this year by Ericsson Inc., Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp. to jointly develop an open and common industry framework for secure mobile electronic transactions.Nokia said the inclusion of Siemens was an...
EndwaveEndwave Corp. said its ultra-high performance WavShapr base station antenna is now available for local multipoint distribution services bands. The antenna incorporates characteristics from earlier versions form the 24 GHz and 38 GHz bands. The antennas include flat horizontal radiation pattern, rapid azimuth pattern...
WASHINGTON-The Supreme Court, confronted with four appeals challenging the Federal Communications Commission's mobile-phone radiation standard and congressional intervention, last week granted the government's request for more time to respond to lawsuits seeking to have the high court hear their cases.Petitions for certiorari, filed by...
TOKYO-A three-hour bus ride from Tokyo will get you to Kakegawa, the leading production area of two popular Japanese items: green tea (ocha) and Panasonic wireless phones. But just like green tea, Panasonic's wireless phones have not achieved the same level of success in the...
A hue and cry went up among Clinton-Gore Democratics and political pundits when it surfaced that NBC and Fox would not carry the first debate between GOP and Democratic presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, last Tuesday night. Was there outrage...
TOKYO-Matsushita Electric Industrial, which manufactures cell phones under the Panasonic brand name, is discussing an alliance on third-generation mobile phones with European mobile carriers, according to a report in the Financial Times.The company did not name potential partners, but the negotiations are part of...
WASHINGTON-The mobile phone industry is expected shortly to unveil a privacy policy to guide carriers as they reinvent business plans to capitalize on the Internet and new location-based wireless technology.Michael Altschul, vice president and general counsel of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, said the...
WASHINGTON-The Supreme Court this session has before it three mobile-phone health cases, a sign of things to come in a Digital Age where technology outpaces the law and raises novel questions for the courts.The high court, which returned to work last week, must decide...
CHICAGO-Video content may be the new show to watch on the wireless Internet.Content is the name of the game in the wireless Internet evolution going forward. And while it is by no means a new concept, companies are paying more attention to the wireless...
Verizon Wireless turned the industry on its ear last week, announcing plans to support legislation in Illinois that would ban cell-phone use while driving unless the caller is using a hands-free device.The decision is "in direct response to the political situation in Illinois and...
WASHINGTON-There's a reason the waning weeks of Congress are collectively called Silly Season.It is because anything is possible during this fall ritual, when lawmakers scramble-against all odds-to complete spending bills before the start of the new fiscal year and try to pass legislation for...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission, having recently declared that state courts are not pre-empted by federal law from awarding monetary damages in wireless consumer fraud lawsuits, has now been asked to rule whether the common mobile phone billing practice of rounding violates the Communications Act.The...
The outgoing (and next) Congress and administration should be worried about losing the third-generation mobile phone market to Europe and Asia. Why? Because, in a very real sense, losing 3G is tantamount to losing U.S. high-tech leadership.American high-tech superiority in today's Internet economy is...
CHICAGO-Partnerships are the key to success in the wireless Internet space, was the resounding theme at last week's PCIA GlobalXChange convention keynote session."The wireless Internet is like the proverbial wild West or the first blast off into space," Janiece Webb, senior vice president and...
In this time of money-hungry megacorporations, there still exists at least one philosophy that ultimately benefits the little guy-Open Source.Since January of last year, Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Lutris Technologies Inc. has offered its Enhydra software up for public trial and error, and so far...
TOKYO-Mitsubishi Electric Corp., revised forecasts for its overall business performance for the first half and annual period in fiscal 2001 due to greater than expected sales figures.The company said the upward revision was due to the continued performance of mobile phones carried over from...
