Unemployed fiber technicians aren’t the only ones getting back to work as a result of this summer’s broadband network construction boom. According to a Reuters report, a Belgian horse named Fred has a paying gig helping to lay fiber in rural Vermont. Led by his owner, Fred pulls fiber in areas with rough terrain that traditional vehicles would have difficulty reaching. Read the rest of this entry »
Unfiltered
Frank discussion with telecom's most experienced editors
HP confirms WebOS licensing plans
As the first WebOS tablet debuts in the form of the Touchpad on Friday, HP is preparing to put the operating system in a lot more devices—including devices it doesn’t make. HP CEO Leo Apotheker told Bloomberg that HP is currently in discussions with several consumer electronics manufacturers to license WebOS for their own smartphones and tablets. Bloomberg further reported that Samsung is one of the parties at the other end of those negotiations. Read the rest of this entry »
FreeConferenceCall.com study aims to justify company’s business model
FreeConferenceCall.com apparently believes the best defense is a good offense. Now that its business model has come under scrutiny, the company has released the results of research conducted by TeleSpan Publishing Corp. touting the benefits of free conferencing services. About 15-20 million use free conference calling services for a total of about $656 million in savings annually, the study found. Read the rest of this entry »
Cox launches wireless (without the network) in more markets
Apparently Cox only had to cancel its plans to build its own wireless network (CP: Cox may not find any buyers for its network, but the spectrum is a different story) to get its wireless strategy really rolling. Today it said it would bring its ‘Unbelievably Fair’ mobile service to 5 new markets this year and plans to have half of its cable markets covered by the end of 2011. Read the rest of this entry »
KeyOn Communications gets cash infusion from intriguing investor
Rural broadband wireless provider KeyOn Communications said this week it has received a cash infusion in the form of $2.6 million in a secured convertible note that is held by an entity controlled by KeyOn’s chief investor, an intriguing physician, scientist and philanthropist named Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. Read the rest of this entry »
Hey operators: You’re in the midst of a full-on mobile payment route-around
We’ve written a fair amount in recent weeks about the opportunities – and challenges – mobile money presents to operators (Analysis: Follow the mobile money; and Mobile commerce promises: Where have we heard this before?) Now comes proof that some mobile payment upstarts are having significant success – and it’s not even who you’d expect (ie, Google or Apple). Read the rest of this entry »
T-Mobile’s myTouch 4G Slide: Do high-end cameras matter on smartphones?
T-Mobile debuted the myTouch 4G Slide, an HSPA+-capable smartphone with a 3.7-inch WVGA super LCD touch display, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the Android 2.3 operating system, support for Adobe Flash and Qik technology for easy video chatting.
Its most distinctive feature, however, is its camera, which T-Mobile is calling the most advanced on any smartphone.
T-Mobile crunching 17 billion transactions a day — what does it do with all that data?
Each and every day T-Mobile processes 17 billion events, including phone calls, text messages and data. That high-impact, high-profile data crunching recently won the operator an award at IBM’s Netezza Enzee Universe event (Netezza is an IBM data warehousing/business intelligence unit).
The number is impressive enough, particularly when, according to Anthony Behan, global analytics solution owner at IBM worldwide, “last year the figure was 11 billion, so we have seen an increase of 6 billion transactions per day over the last year. Next year, who knows exactly what the figure will be.” Read the rest of this entry »
LightSquared’s customers keep coming despite network uncertainty
Even as LightSquared braces for a report this week that might spell doom for its network plans (Unfiltered: The LightSquared waiting game), it’s continuing its strategy of signing up future wholesale customers. The latest is netTalk, a company that sells low-cost VoIP services and devices and plans to launch its own voice and broadband service over LightSquared’s jeopardized long-term evolution (LTE) network. Read the rest of this entry »
Ericsson moves a step closer to LTE-Advanced (or did it?)
Industry gadflies have been clamoring for ‘real’ 4G ever since they started poking holes in operators’ mobile broadband marketing claims.
Today Ericsson delivered it, demoing in Sweden a live LTE-Advanced network in a mobile environment that surpassed the International Telecommunication Union’s minimum threshold for 4G downlink capacity of 1 Gb/s.