Sprint Nextel, a provider of wireline and wireless solutions, and Samsung Mobile have announced the immediate availability of the M520 by Samsung. This unique slider phone makes it easy for customers to access the web, find local restaurants, watch live television, download their favorite songs, send text messages or use GPS to find their way home.
Via: CBR
Over the past four weeks, the City of Sydney Council has been trialling the provision of free Wi-Fi services in its libraries. With only a fortnight to go before the hotspots are switched off, a spokesperson has said that users won’t have long to wait before access becomes a permanent fixture.
The council initiated the trials at five of its eight suburban branches in the City of Sydney area, including local libraries in Glebe, Newtown, Haymarket, Ultimo and the CBD branch at Circular Quay.
Via: ZDNet
For Vodafone Hungary, Swisscom, Telecom Italia and Vodacom of South Africa, the long-awaited arrival of the mobile Internet and wireless video - so-called third-generation technologies - could not have come sooner. Rising use is helping the operators finally repay the millions they invested in high-speed networks and licenses, money spent in some cases nearly a decade ago.But success, according to network equipment makers, is bringing strains on many operators, who are being required to invest more to soup up their networks and unclog the data bottlenecks caused by the high-volume Internet surfing and streaming video.
Via: IHT
Verizon Wireless has activated a new cell site to expand its voice and data coverage and capacity along Routes 177 and 88 in northern Westport, Massachusetts to provide its wireless services for local residents in Bristol County.
Verizon Wireless has invested nearly $44 billion since it was formed to increase the coverage and capacity of its national network and to add new services like BroadbandAccess and V CAST.
Via: CBR
The phone comes with all the standard features in handsets these days: a camera, compatibility with Bluetooth cordless headsets, a Web browser, and messaging capabilities. The speakerphone is superb, and the camera takes pretty good pictures. Because it comes with 60MB of internal memory, there’s room to store dozens of photos.
ZTE isn’t exactly a household name in the U.S., but the Chinese company’s cell phones are well known in its home country and India. Now ZTE is giving the U.S. market a try with a phone called the C88. Though a pretty basic flip phone, the C88 may provide insight into ZTE’s design and market philosophy for other handsets to come.
Via: NewsFactor
Dave Heck, CIO for the city of Tempe, Ariz., remembers when municipal Wi-Fi advocates talked four years ago about wireless networks as shining beacons that would bring the Internet to the masses. Today, in Tempe, that optimism is nearly gone. Tempe’s city-wide Wi-Fi system went live in 2006, offering some 900 access points installed on city-owned poles for the city’s 160,000 residents and businesses; now, it’s basically dead.
Via: Computer World
Verizon Wireless (VZ) Tuesday will unveil a plan that offers unlimited domestic calling for a flat fee of $99.99 to $139.99 a month.
Unlimited plans for BlackBerry devices and other smartphones will start at $129.99 a month. The pricier plans offer extra features, such as unlimited messaging, global e-mail and video.
The new “Nationwide Unlimited Anytime Minutes Plan” could rewrite the competitive rules of the wireless industry, which has long embraced the idea of selling “buckets” of minutes for a set monthly price. Verizon, which claims 66 million customers, now offers a bucket of 2,000 minutes for $99 a month.
Via: USA Today
Netgear isn’t pinning its hopes on the 802.11n wireless technology, which has been stuck in a pre-standard state for years.
The 802.11n technology, which offers significant throughput improvements over current 802.11-based Wi-Fi technologies like 802.11g, has been in a on-again, off-again, on-again, on-again (again), off-again, on-again pattern until May 2007, when the Wi-Fi Alliance began actually certifying so-called “pre-n” products.
Via: ExtremeTech
Public Wi-Fi hot spots have been popular for about eight years. During that time, companies providing the service have been groping about, trying to figure out how to monetize it. The dominant model to date has been to simply charge for it. Pay us $20 a month, and you can log in at any of our many locations.But this week, a kind of “tipping point” has been reached, and now — instead of being rented for a fee — Wi-Fi will increasingly be given away to motivate customers to buy other goods and services.
Wi-Fi is now just like the free toaster that banks used to hand out for opening a new account.
Full Story: Computer World
The battle for Internet turf is no longer just a figure of speech. Nokia (NOK) on Feb. 11 announced a quartet of new handsets designed to more closely link global positioning systems (GPS) with the mobile Internet, bringing the Finnish company into more direct competition with Google Maps and staking a bigger claim to the emerging market for so-called location-based services. The announcement came on the same day that Google (GOOG) encroached on Nokia territory by demonstrating a prototype of its Android operating system for mobile phones.
Both companies are betting that where people are located will become an important part of how they use the Net. Nokia is trying to claim that arena with handsets such as its new, top-of-the-line N96. The device allows owners to shoot videos, “geotag” them with info about where the images were taken, and upload to a Nokia Web site that sounds suspiciously like Google’s YouTube.
Full story: Business Week