Wireless Blog

For apple growers like Abby Jacobson, making or losing money depends as much on what they don't do as what they do.

AT&T begins selling iPhone 3G today in its retail stores at 8 a.m. local time across the United States, along with a variety of attractive monthly plans that combine voice and unlimited data use.

The deal allows China Mobile to increase its network capacity and expand its mobile services in key provinces and cities across China, Nokia Siemens said.

Long lines and activation delays marred Friday's debut of Apple's iPhone 3G. Carrier AT&T blamed Apple.

AT&T said in-store iPhone 3G activations stopped at about 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, thanks to issues with the iTunes 7.7 software needed to configure the device. AT&T is recommending that customers activate the smartphones at home. Some analysts are certain the problem is getting blown out of proportion.

"Today's iPhone launch differs a little bit from last year because this is a global launch. This started in New Zealand and will continue on to California," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. "You literally have hundreds of thousands of people buying and activating iPhones. I am not surprised that we are seeing some issues with the activation process with some people in some locations. Frankly, that's probably to be expected."

Some Shortages Reported

Gartenberg visited both an AT&T store and an Apple store in New York City on Friday. He reported lines were moving along smoothly. However, an AT&T store in midtown ran out of the 16GB iPhone 3G as early as 9 a.m.

Whether consumers wound up disappointed with iPhone shortages after waiting in line, perhaps all night, might depend on where they were standing in line and the luck of the draw.

"At the Apple store I visited, they said they had plenty of iPhones on hand and they were not anticipating shortages. Of course, they didn't know what the demand would be like the rest of the day," Gartenberg said. "They've been selling the new iPhone since 8 a.m. The line was going around the block."

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The lines of people around the block would seem to indicate Apple has scored another big hit. But reports of glitches could be a bit of an ugly memory for some consumers.

"Any time...

Clearwire is readying WiMAX wireless deployments in four more US cities this year which will use equipment from Motorola, Jeff Orr, a senior analyst with the Maravedis told BetaNews.

“By the end of this year, we are poised to make service available in our first four WiMAX markets — Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Atlanta, GA; and Grand Rapids, MI — with commercial launches taking place [in those four cities] in 2009,” confirmed a Clearwire spokesperson today, in an e-mail to BetaNews.

“I would like to emphasize that while Clearwire and Sprint announced a transaction to merge our WiMAX businesses, the deal is still pending approval. Until the transaction is closed, we will continue to operate as separate companies and therefore our networks are separate as well,” according to the spokesperson.

“The mobile WiMAX technology continues to exceed our expectations. To date, more than 70 percent of our WiMAX sites for Portland are in construction or on air,” she said.

“We are building the WiMAX network in the three additional markets - Las Vegas, Grand Rapids, Atlanta - but we don’t have any beta trials under way [in those three cities] at this time.”

Unstrung talked to Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff recently, and asked him about the WiMAX overlay on existing networks.

He said that a lot of the infrastructure Clearwire has already developed with pre-WiMax, such as the towers and backhaul, can all be used in an 802.16e network build. It’s merely a matter of putting in a WiMax radio and antenna in some sites, he explained.

“We’ll have an overlay in some markets to maintain the pre-WiMax and build out the mobile WiMax and run them side by side,” said Wolff.

Dailywireless helped create a temporary free WiFi using Clearwire’s Mobile WiMAX network last weekend. It was an unofficial deployment for the Waterfront Blues Festival. We borrowed a Clearwire modem from a beta tester. It was not officially sanctioned by the company.

Configuration was a breeze. We just turned on the unit and it “found” the nearest Clearwire transmitter. It was simple and fast, delivering some 2-4 Mbps in downtown Portland, even keeping a connection when the home CPE was on a seat in the car driving around the region.

Since it was unofficial, we didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But it worked well for me, providing backhaul that was faster and easier to provision than DSL.

Clearwire says it wants to focus on the top 100 markets, filling coverage gaps with 3G. On paper, this would provide wireless broadband coverage for between 120 million and 140 million people and more than 200 million people beyond 2010. Clearwire CTO John Saw says the company can deploy its planned mobile WiMax network in the U.S. for far less than traditional cellular deployments thanks to its work on microwave backhaul and the use of a flat-IP architecture throughout its network. Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff says the company will launch later this year in Portland with some 300 basestations covering four counties. Some 70% are reportedly now activated for the Beta trial.

Sprint’s Xohm brand will launch Baltimore in September. Exchange Magazine interviewed CEOs Ben Wolff (Clearwire) and Barry West (Xohm).

The first certified implementation of mobile WiMAX has gone live in a deployment in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Idaho Falls, Idaho, from DigitalBridge Communications. The local tv station had an interesting story that ran their live camera through a laptop which connected (via WiFi) to the Alvarion client and to the television station.

Clearwire’s agreement in Grand Rapids is an unusual public/private partnership.

Clearwire will provide discounted service of $9.95 a month to up to 5 percent of the households in Grand Rapids for qualifying low-income citizens, and Clearwire will offer free Wi-Fi hot spots throughout the city for visitors and occasional users. It will even reimburse the city the $100,000 it spent on the due diligence process.

Ben Wolff, Clearwire’s co-CEO, told Seattle Times columnist Tricia Duryee that his company is definitely interested in working with municipalities.

With Portland’s MetroFi gone, you’d think city officials could do a deal. But Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman does not appear interested in bridging the digital divide — unless there’s a clear uprising among the disenfranchised.

Forums Intel set to launch Centrino 2 laptop chips next week Friday 11 Jul 2008 - 12:13 Intel on Monday is expected to launch its latest mobile platform, Centrino 2, which will deliver speedier performance and ...

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay $21 million to settle a lawsuit filed by California customers upset with the company's early termination fees, a lawyer on the case said Wednesday.

Many details of the settlement still need to be worked out and authorized by an Alameda County Superior Court judge, said Alan Plutzik, an attorney for the customers.

"We are recovering cash" that would "be available" to Verizon mobile phone customers who paid fees to end their contracts early, Plutzik said.

Plutzik said its unclear how many Verizon customers will be eligible to share in the settlement, a decision that will ultimately be up to the judge. A spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc. could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Telecommunications companies charge early termination fees that can range from $150 to $225 when customers cancel their service contracts before they expire.

Wireless companies have said they must charge the fees to recover the cost of cell phones, which they subsidize when they sign up customers for new long-term service contracts.

Customers of six companies sued the carriers in 2006 in Alameda County Superior Court alleging that the fees violate California law.

Sprint Nextel Corp. faced trial first in Alameda County Superior Court last month. Judge Bonnie Sabraw has not yet issued her decision on the legality of the fees in California in that case.

Jury selection began last month in Verizon's trial, which will be halted now that an agreement has been reached. AT&T Inc. is next up for trial, Plutznik said.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin last month laid out a plan to regulate the fees, saying he was skeptical that the lawsuits would adequately resolve all pending issues about the unpopular fees. The industry supports Martin's proposal to prorate the fees in exchange for immunity from state lawsuits.

One of the benefits of Web-based e-mail is the ability to log on from just about anywhere -- at home, at work, a friend's house, a mobile device or even a public library or cybercafe.

But what if you forget to log off? Someone else who encounters an active session not only can read your personal correspondences, but they also can use that account to grab your passwords from many online services that offer to send reminders via e-mail.

Google Inc.'s Gmail service is trying to address that by letting you know if you're still logged on elsewhere and giving you a chance to disconnect remotely.

At the bottom of a Gmail inbox is a small notice of other active sessions. The new feature, being rolled out to users in waves, also offers some information on the time and location of recent Gmail activities.

The notification is bound to be useful, though it's by no means foolproof. You have to be log on somewhere to learn of other active sessions, and you have to look carefully for that notice. And if you have chosen to save your password on the other computer, someone else can simply log back on unless you change it.

But the feature does offer an extra level of comfort.

"Usually I remember to sign out, but every once in a while I wonder if I really did," Gmail engineer Erwin D'Souza wrote on a company blog. "Now I no longer have to wonder."

Other major Web e-mail providers -- Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL -- also allow simultaneous sessions, but they do not provide similar notice or ability to remotely log off. However, AOL does have a setting forcing automatic logoff after as little as 30 minutes of inactivity. Microsoft said Hotmail will ask for a password if the...

What are you going to listen to? Norway's 24-hour folk music channel Allttid Folkemusikk? The public hearings of the California Integrated Waste Management Board? Radio Banadir -- the Most Trusted News in Somalia?

It's a big world out there, and radios that grab their sound from the Internet rather than the airwaves can bring it home.

Wi-Fi Internet radio sets have been around for a while without getting much attention, but they're worth a look: Prices have come down, and features are up.

I tested four models, and found the best of them a great addition to the kitchen, the breakfast table, or maybe the patio.

The features vary quite a bit -- this isn't a category where any manufacturer has had a breakout and created a de facto standard for others to copy.

What unites the units I tested is that they all have Wi-Fi, so they can connect to the Internet via your home hot spot and broadband connection. They also have built-in speakers, unlike the devices known as "media bridges" and Apple Inc.'s Airport Express, which can play music through a stereo or a set of powered speakers.

With the exception of the Aluratek model, all the radios in the test can be programmed through a PC, though you don't have to keep the computer on for the radios to play music. Register your unit at a Web site, and you can find your favorite stations (and, in a few cases, podcasts) and add them to your "Favorite Stations" list or assign them to the preset buttons on the unit.

None of these radios are dead easy to use. People who don't program speed dials on their phones or set the VCR clock will be daunted by an Internet radio. It's probably inevitable that a device that vastly expands the usefulness of the radio...

Even before Apple's iPhone 3G hits stores across much of Europe on July 11, the highly anticipated handset has already run into a few problems. On July 7, a mad rush of British consumers looking to preorder the phone with network operator O2 caused the company's Web site to crash. "We've never seen any mobile device create [such] excitement," says Ronan Dunne, O2's chief executive in Britain.

As consumers prepare for the iPhone launch, Apple and its telecom partners, such as France's Orange and Germany's T-Mobile, are banking on similar surges in demand. That would mark a change from the first-generation iPhone, which was only a modest success in the Old World. When it was launched last November, Europeans were less enthusiastic than their U.S. counterparts, chiefly because the iPhone's price was high and it used slower, second-generation mobile technology, which put it behind multimedia 3G phones from the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

Now, the iPhone 3G's upgrades, including GPS and support for faster connections, could win over European consumers. By lowering the price for an entry-level model with 8 gigabytes of memory to roughly $199, Apple has pitched the phone directly to the Continent's mass market, where consumers are accustomed to heavily subsidized handsets.

Music and Video Appeal

The iPhone 3G's multimedia applications, including access to Apple's iTunes music and video store, also may help drive sales because Europeans have embraced mobile media faster than their U.S. counterparts. "The improvements to the iPhone have put Apple on a more competitive playing field with its rivals," says Tony Cripps, a senior analyst at telecom consultancy Ovum in Britain.

Still, Apple won't waltz away with the market. Nokia and Sony Ericsson remain powerfully entrenched in Europe, and even at its reduced price, the iPhone still comes in at the upper end of the scale....