A new $50 unlimited-calling plan sold under the Boost brand has been a badly needed success story for Sprint Nextel Corp., luring hundreds of thousands of new customers, by industry estimates.
TAIWANESE stocks soared on Thursday after the island's government said it will allow institutional investors from China to buy into the island's stock market for the first time since the two sides split in civil war.
Microsoft is close to releasing a significant upgrade for its Windows Vista operating system, according to a company official.
WiMAX Forum Congress Asia concluded this week in Singapore with over 1,600 in attendance. Equipment provider Samsung reiterated its support for WiMAX unveiling new indoor mobile WiMAX solutions and announced partnerships with 24 major mobile operators in 20 countries. Amid speculation that they were backing off WiMAX, Alcatel-Lucent clarified its position that it is currently providing mobile WiMAX equipment for 14 commercial networks worldwide, including the largest - Packet One in Malaysia, and that it has secured 32 mobile WiMAX contracts overall.
Meanwhile, LG Electronics announced this week that it has been selected by NTT Docomo to supply it with LTE modem chips, a competing technology with WiMAX, while US equipment provider Motorola announced that it was cutting its 4G investments, both in WiMAX and LTE as a way to control costs.
The April 2009 WiMAX Guide is a FREE online resource published twice a year that contains feature articles and company listings for decision makers deploying WiMAX & 4G networks. It overviews the WiMAX Market by region with case studies on Airspan, Cisco and Alvarion.
The WiMAX Guide includes company profiles with information on each company. You must submit your company name, email and phone number to download the guide.
In other news, DigitalBridge Communications signed a distribution deal with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative in return for the NRTC’s “significant” investment in the WiMAX provider pdf. In addition, NRTC will acquire a seat on the company’s board of directors.
The deal comes just weeks after NRTC filed comments to the FCC saying that it is developing a plan to enable its members to offer universal access to broadband throughout rural America by using a combination of WiMAX and satellite. DigitalBridge Communications is a 4G wireless Internet provider using WiMAX to deliver broadband services to underserved communities nationwide.
AlphaStar, a hybrid satellite/terrestrial broadband wireless service, is promoting its system as a solution to rural broadband delivery. AlphaStar@Home does not go directly to your home via satellite, such as 2-way satellite providers Spaceway and Wild Blue. Instead, AlphaStar uses a hybrid delivery method with terrestrial wireless for last mile delivery.
WildBlue demonstrated it can deliver download speeds that are up to 12 times faster than its current speeds if it gets a new high-capacity satellite. The new satellite would be able to offer broadband (depending on the speeds) to between 1.5 million and 2 million rural Americans. WildBlue estimates there are about 15 million homes and businesses in rural, underserved areas in the US.
The company currently delivers services via two satellites, WildBlue 1 and Anik F2, which have enough capacity to serve about 750,000 subscribers at WildBlue’s current service/speed levels. It’s also in the process of leasing additional Ka band capacity from EchoStar’s AMC-15 satellite, a move that will allow it to support as many as 75,000 additional subscribers.
That should give it some fresh capacity to serve some areas that have the heaviest demand for its services –- East Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and portions of Kentucky and Tennessee, reports Light Reading. WildBlue has completed an agreement with EchoStar, but a new satellite would take 2-3 years, stretching the time frame of stimulus funds.
Some $6.39 billion in the stimulus bill will be targeted for broadband and administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service.
Organizations and groups can download the CTC authored Rural Reference Model (pdf). This model will help operators in their planning and budgeting process as it supplies baseline references, technical capability, and integration with other systems, says the company. It reviews the costs and benefits of delivering the last mile by various flavors of WiFi and WiMAX.
Proxim’s Government Grant Resource Guide provides an overview of the options that are available to help fund wireless broadband networks.
Alvarion also offers a complete line of RUS-accepted solutions with “Buy American” status using a range of unlicensed, semi-licensed and licensed frequencies. Alvarion says you can build your rural wireless network using 3.65, 5.3, 5.4, 5.8, 4.9, 2.3 or 2.5 GHz and qualify for funding by using RUS-accepted Alvarion solutions if you are currently working on projects to bring wireless broadband access to rural communities or have plans to develop such projects.
Related DailyWireless Space and Satellite News includes; HughesNet’s Spaceway 3 Now Available, Hughes Launches Switchboard in the Sky, HughesNet & Broadband Corporation, Spot Beam Sats Multiply, Clearwire & SatTV Do a Deal, Sprint Beams Up with MSV, TerreStar: I-HSPA for Satphones, Satphones: Merger Ahead?, Inmarsat + SkyTerra = Spectrum Sharing, Mobile Satellite on the Move, TerreStar Gets a Slot, Satellite Repeaters - Grounded In Reality?, WildBlue Partners with DirecTV & Echostar, John Malone in Space, TerreStar Gets a Slot, BSkyB + Google, SkyNet Satellite Hacked?, Lockheed CEO: Space is Broken, MSS: AWS Alternative?, WildBlue: AT&T’s DeathStar?
Now, citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the software giant and the mobile-phone carrier are in talks to develop a multimedia touchscreen phone, code-named Pink. The device is expected to be available next year.
Jeffrey Nelson from Verizon Wireless, however, declined to confirm any of the reports, saying, "We're not commenting on this sort of marketplace rumor."
Project Pink
The Journal reported that Verizon has been working for several months on Pink, a project started by Microsoft, to develop the touchscreen multimedia cell phone for Verizon's network.
The device would include music and video functionality, as well as software that would add another platform to extend Windows Mobile. Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft's new app store, is also likely to be included, according to the Journal.
The Pink project is building on both the hardware and software knowledge that Microsoft gained from its acquisition of Danger, creator of the T-Mobile Sidekick, last year.
Too Little, Too Late?
Analysts believe it may be too late for any "iPhone killer," as Apple has had the lead for some time.
"It might mean that Verizon Wireless holds on to a few more customers," said Ken Dulaney, vice president with Gartner. "But it does not bring customers to Verizon Wireless."
As for Microsoft, there would be some issues with the operating system and user interface.
"One, it would have to be using Windows Mobile 6.5, which is nowhere near the iPhone in terms of user experience. That is why Microsoft is planning Windows Mobile 7, which we don't believe is due until year-end 2010," Dulaney explained.
The device could use HTC's TouchFLO interface, which is layered on top of Windows Mobile 6.5.
"They have been working...
The recently ratified Bluetooth 3.0 specification not only ups the wireless interface’s speed to 25 Mbits per second, but also defines a new function called Unicast Connectionless Data (UCD), putting it in direct competition with the RF4CE (FAQ), the wireless remote control specification that merged last month with the Zigbee Alliance (IEEE 802.15.4) efforts to replace infrared remote controls, says EE Times.
TV makers will have to choose between them.
Bluetooth was considered too power hungry and its latency too high for remote controls, burning through a set of batteries in three months and delaying a second or more before registering a button push. However, the new UCD functionality in the 3.0 spec extends battery life to about four years and lowers Bluetooth’s latency to milliseconds.UCD “allows you to keep Bluetooth in sleep mode most of the time, to conserve battery life.
Using Bluetooth 3.0 also enables additional capabilities for high-end TVs not possible with RF4CE, proponents claims, such as hi-fi audio transmissions, network access to download TV schedules for display on the remote, push-picture for automatically uploading digital camera pictures to a TV and integration with Wi-Fi for transmitting high-bandwidth audio and video using a peer-to-peer connection controlled by Bluetooth commands.
Bluetooth 3.0 also allows cellphones with music players to be virtually docked to TVs so that media played on a handheld device streams to TV speakers.
RF4CE chip makers like Freescale Semiconductor claim that Bluetooth is overkill for command-and-control applications traditionally handled by IR remotes.
Zigbee’s RF4CE spec increases the remote control range to over 1,000 feet compared to about 50 feet for IR and Bluetooth. But with more than 2 billion Bluetooth enabled devices shipped, including more than 50% of mobile phones sold worldwide, Bluetooth is becoming the solution of choice for connecting consumer devices.
However, the loss was smaller than analysts anticipated and Motorola indicated that there's light at the end of the tunnel. The company plans to launch a new line of Android-based smartphones by year's end that focus on the delivery of multimedia, messaging, Web browsing, and mobility, said Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha.
"We are in detailed discussions with multiple carriers around the world about a few of our Android smartphones that we intend to launch in the fourth quarter," Jha said. "Customer feedback on our smartphone road map remains very positive. We will launch with multiple carriers and not just in North America."
A Long Way To Go
Still, Motorola undoubtedly is keeping an eye on North America, where smartphones sales are booming, racking up 69 percent growth in 2008. The introduction of new products in last year's fourth quarter, such as the RIM BlackBerry Storm and the Android-based T-Mobile G1, "helped smartphone sales grow to account for roughly 20 percent of total sales in the region," noted Gartner Principal Analyst Hughes De La Vergne.
But Motorola has a long way to go between now and the final quarter of 2009. The handset maker slipped to fifth place in the worldwide vendor ranking in last year's fourth quarter, with a market-share loss of 5.6 percentage points on a year-to-year basis. Gartner analysts cited a lack of 3G products and touchscreen devices, and poor support for "hot" features like GPS.
Jha noted that Motorola shipped 14.7 million handsets in its latest quarter on strong demand for prepaid phones, but that's a far cry from the 24.7 million mobile devices it shipped...
Starting Thursday, MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the official release candidate for testing. The general public will be able to get downloads beginning May 5. The RC version of Windows 7 will not expire until June 1, 2010.
There were some initial reports that demand for the RC software was so heavy that Microsoft's servers failed under the load, and visitors were greeted with the message "We're sorry! The page you were expecting to see has been removed or is unavailable." By early afternoon, however, the servers were back up and running.
Almost Perfect?
The release candidate is considered by Microsoft to be a "near-finished" product, with only minor changes likely before to the official Windows 7 release late this year or early next year. According to company representatives, the milestone means the software is ready "for partners to develop new applications, device drivers, and services, and ready for IT pros to evaluate Windows 7 and examine how it will operate in their environment."
"Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7," said Bill Veghte, senior vice president for the Windows business at Microsoft. "We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest-quality release candidate in the history of Windows."
Microsoft says more than 10,000 companies have signed up for access to development tools designed to help existing software and hardware work with Windows 7.
Home Run Needed
It's a little difficult to reconcile Microsoft's earnings last quarter of $13.65 billion with its palpable sense of urgency over the success of Windows 7. But there is no...
Craig Settles, who authored the book, Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless, and a proponent for municipal broadband network deployments, writes.
Sam,I don’t know if you’ve been following this, but in N. Carolina Time Warner and Embarq are trying to get legislation passed that prevents local governments from building broadband networks. If they win here, people are worried incumbents will take this tactic nationwide to subvert community involvement in the broadband stimulus program.
The heart of the story is that the small town of Wilson, NC couldn’t get the service they wanted, so they built a network that delivers 10 Mbps broadband up and down for $35/month. The incumbents have gone ballistic.
Best regards,
Craig
Thanks, Craig. You might also check out his commentary in Muniwireless this month: Will Broadband Projects Dodge the Missteps of Municipal Wireless?, as well as his own, excellent, municipal broadband blog.
Save NC Broadband.com has more.
Apple has been on a Silicon Valley hiring spree, wooing semiconductor heavy hitters. Apple appears to be focused on engineers who could develop multifunction chips used in smartphones to run software and do other tasks.
Bringing chipmaking capabilities in-house could give Apple yet another innovation edge to custom-design chips that accomplish goals like lower power consumption, better graphics quality, and high-definition video, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Meet the Team
Some of Apple's recent hires include Raja Koduri, formerly CTO of AMD's graphics-products group. Koduri officially started punching the clock at Apple this week. Bob Drebin, another former CTO at AMD, is also on Apple's side of the technology fence.
If that's not evidence enough that Apple is moving toward producing chips in-house, consider the flurry of online job postings. There are dozens of job openings at Apple for engineers and others who can develop new chips. Beyond innovation, the tight-lipped Apple could be trying to keep its plans for new products closer to CEO Steve Job's black turtleneck by cutting third-party chipmakers out of the process.
About this time last year, Apple bought P.A. Semi, a boutique microprocessor design company, in a deal worth $278 million. The firm was led by chip-industry veteran Dan Dobberpuhl and best known for its PWRfiecient processors for the multibillion-dollar high-performance embedded computing markets. At that time, analysts speculated that P.A. Semi's processors could provide advanced features in future iPods and iPhones.
"P.A. Semi was an early significant player in the embedded-chips space. This would be particularly applicable for next-generation smartphones, handheld devices, and highly mobile computing devices," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "As that market evolves,...
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