Telstra, the former state-owned phone company, has spent the last three years building out a so-called “Next G” network, which currently boasts download speeds of more than 14 megabits per second. The network is, at its peak, about seven times faster than top speeds frequently reported by users of wireless modems on U.S. third generation, or 3G, networks.

As a result, average Australian consumers are able to avail themselves of the high-bandwidth wireless services - streaming wireless video or video chat on cell phones, say - most commonly associated with Japan and Korea, two countries that traditionally have been on the cutting edge of wireless services.

Adele Whish-Wilson, CEO of Momentum, says her company counts on ubiquitous wireless coverage - emergency workers sometimes get dispatched to rural areas that simply aren’t served by Wi-Fi or Wi-Max networks, the wireless broadband standards often cited as alternatives to upgrading traditional wireless networks.

Whish-Wilson says Telstra’s network has the potential to turn her home country into a technology center. “It is allowing Australian companies to build world-class technology because we have the infrastructure,” she said.

Indeed, upstarts in Australia are using wireless broadband networks to provide physicians with remote, rapid feedback on radiology scans or to help mining companies monitor their far-flung sites for environmental and safety hazards.

In the United States, carriers eventually plan to migrate to fourth generation, or 4G, networks that could provide network download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second. Sprint (S, Fortune 500) has launched an early version of 4G service in Baltimore that serves up download speeds of two to five megabits per second, using the WiMax standard; other wireless companies like AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) seem to prefer a standard called LTE - short for Long Term Evolution. But based on the telcos’ public statements, ubiquitous 4G coverage is several years away.

This is definitely another blow to US’s miniature wireless network. It’s ridiculous that most of the innovative technologies are developed here yet we do not have the infrastructure to support them. Soon Australians will have faster wireless bandwidth than what most people have in their broadband at home. I hope the politicians and private companies get their act together so that we can slowly catch up to other countries.

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Reports indicate that Motorola may be preparing to lay off thousands of employees, and this doesn’t bode well for all sorts of projects and divisions.  However, it seems that Google’s Android is being regarded as a potential company-saver, since it should both survive the cuts and become a central focus.

Sara Silver reports that Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO, “is betting on Google’s Android operating system and just two other software platforms to speed development of sorely needed new models.  He plans to jettison at least four other platforms, limiting the number of employees required to do customization work for different wireless carriers.”

This represents a huge compliment to Google, which has dedicated all sorts of time and energy to creating and advertising Android.  Motorola’s essentially putting the search giant’s first try on an equal footing with what other companies have spent years refining.

The move also means that Android’s market share may grow more quickly than anyone had previously predicted.  Talk of it becoming as ubiquitous as the iPhone sounds a little less silly now.

Silver reports that Motorola’s first Android-based devices should appear sometime next year.  Stay tuned to see what happens.

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Apple has announced today with their fiscal Q4 financial statements that the recent economic downturn is not effecting them as badly as other mobile phone vendors and that smartphone sales continue to flourish.

The company has so far sold 6.9 million iPhone 3G units, eclipsing the 6.1 BlackBerry sales pushed by RIM in the same quarter.

“Apple outsold RIM last quarter, and this is a milestone for us. RIM is a good company that makes good products, and so it is surprising that we could outsell them in any quarter after only 15 months in the market,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

iPhone revenue hit $4.6 billion for the Q3 2008 making Apple the third largest mobile phone vendor in terms of revenue behind Nokia and Samsung. Behind Apple are such big names as Sony, LG, Motorola and RIM.

With the high iPhone 3G sales, Apple has surpassed its goal of selling 10 million iPhone (1st gen and 3G) units for 2008, and there is still the holiday season to come.

“Not bad for being in the market for only 15 months,” added Jobs.

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Frustrated by lack of action among Europe’s cellular carriers, the European Commission said Tuesday it would move to mandate lower prices for intra-European texting.

An average of €0.29 ($0.46 USD) is charged for messages, virtually unchanged since February when the EC first asked for a voluntary price drop at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Officials argued there that the higher pricing goes against the “borderless market” concept that European countries first started working towards a half-century ago. While fees are roughly equivalent to what the rest of the world pays while in the consumer’s home country, it skyrockets when traveling through the rest of Europe.

For example, French consumers may pay as much as €0.30 ($0.48 USD), Germans €0.41 ($0.66 USD), a UK resident €0.63 ($1.01 USD), and a Belgian resident may pay as high as €0.80 ($1.28 USD).

Compare this to American carriers: T-Mobile charges 35 cents for each outgoing message and 15 cents or a text message from the feature bucket when texting from abroad. AT&T charges 50 cents per message sent and 20 cents per message received.

Given that comparison, the EC is calling the typical European texting fee a rip-off. “It is not a good sign for the competitiveness of Europe’s mobile industry that it still hasn’t got the message that credible price reductions are needed to avoid regulation,” EC president José Manuel Barroso said.

“I will therefore recommend to my fellow Commissioners that we propose a regulation of SMS roaming in October,” he continued, adding it would also look into lowering data roaming charges as well at that same meeting.

The target price being set by regulators is between 11 to 15 euro cents, which when translated to US dollars would essentially price this messages on par with domestic messaging here, which currently averages around 20 cents.

It will also press the industry publicly, having redesigned its Web site on the topic of roaming to include information on how each carrier charges for intra-European texts.

Regulators in Europe have taken a much more proactive approach to price regulation than their counterparts in the US. While the EU appears to already or be on the way to issuing edicts on pricing for mobile voice, data, and text usage, the US is only now beginning to look at the industry’s pricing more closely.

Two issues that have already been bantered about in recent months are early termination fees, and carrier exclusivity deals with manufacturers over handsets — the latter gaining steam following AT&T’s signing of a deal with Apple over the iPhone.

So far, neither issue has resulted in any action at the federal level.

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A study released today shows 15.6 percent of mobile Internet subscribers use the mobile Web — the highest penetration of any country. With 40 million users, the firm believes the mobile Web has reached ‘critical mass’ for mobile ads.

Mobile Web usage expanded from 22.6 million users to 40 million here in the US since 2006. There is room for much growth: as many as 95 million may be paying for mobile Web services but not using them.

Of the 16 countries tracked in the survey, the US led in adoption, followed by the UK with 12.9%, and Italy 11.9%.

The firm also found that Yahoo Mail’s mobile site was the most popular destination. An estimated 14.2 million used this service during May, with Google search coming in second at 9.1 million. Rounding out the top five were The Weather Channel (purchased earlier this week by NBC Universal) with 8.6 million, MSN Hotmail with 7.9 million, and Gmail with 7.5 million.

Mobile Web surfers visit an average of a little over 6 different Web sites every month, a fraction of the more than 100 unique sites desktop surfers visit.

While the iPhone is certainly playing a big part in advancing mobile use of the Internet, it is the Motorola RAZR which tops usage in the US. Across the Pacific in Asia, consumers seem to prefer Nokia’s line of handsets.

Even with a small penetration in the market, the iPhone is driving usage. 82% of users were accessing the Internet, a rate that is five times higher than its competitors.

In any case, mobile advertising appears to be the next frontier. A quarter of mobile Web users reported they viewed a mobile ad, fueling the firm to say that the industry had reached a ‘critical mass.’

“A confluence of factors will only further ignite this market this year and into 2009,” director of insights Nic Covey said. “We believe the audience, inventory and planning tools are in place to make mobile Internet marketing an important part of the media consideration set today.”

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In purported efforts to help the public “understand the privacy risks of carrying a mobile phone,” the ACLU and the EFF are suing the Justice Dept. for “documents, memos, and guides” about procedures used to track individuals through cell phones.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation aren’t looking for money — except to cover their own costs — in their most recent lawsuit against the US Department of Justice. Instead, the two civil liberty advocacy groups want information about whether and how the government might be using the location capabilities in cell phones to find out where people are.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans — over 200 million people — carry mobile phones. This large number is steadily increasing. The information the ACLU seeks therefore bears on the privacy of a vast segment of the United States population,” according to the complaint, which was submitted this week under the Freedom of Information Act.

“Recent court decisions and media reports reveal that US Attorneys Offices (USAOs) are assisting law enforcement officers in obtaining information from mobile carriers that enables officers to track the location of individuals’ mobile phones,” the document says.

“Court decisions indicate that USAOs claim not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information. News reports further suggest that some field offices are violating a Department of Justice ‘internal recomendation’ that ‘federal procecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.’”

Filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit asks the DOJ to search several specific federal offices within the agency — including US Attorneys’ Offices in six states and the District of Columbia — for records related to cell phone tracking.

The types of records sought in the suit pertain to policies, procedures, and practices used for obtaining mobile phone location information; the DOJ’s “internal recommendation” and any violations of that recommendation; and the number of times the government has applied for a court order, based on less than probable cause, using that court order as authority to obtain mobile phone location information, “and whether such applications were successful.”

In an appendix to the court document, the plaintiffs have attached a news article that mentions a couple of location-based services already offered by mobile providers for tracking people outside the realm of criminal justice. The two examples include Verizon Wireless’ Chaperone service, aimed at helping parents to track their kids, and Sprint Nextel’s “loopt” service, for “sending an alert when a friend is near.”

It’s important to note, though, that if carriers are enabling cellular tracking — whether for parents, friends or law enforcement officials — any location data they’re obtaining really refers to the phone itself, as opposed to the mobile subscriber.

Many cell phone owners don’t carry their phones with them at all times. People also lose and temporarily misplace their phones, and loan them to family members and even casual acquaintances. Consequently, a cell phone’s location isn’t exactly a solid indicator of the actual current location of the owner of that phone. So beyond any privacy risks, there could be risks, too, of mistaken identity.

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Nokia’s Ovi portal has added a fifth service called Files, offering subscription-based cloud storage for exchanging files between PCs and mobile devices.

Ovi launched with three services: Nokia’s reborn N-Gage mobile gaming platform, Nokia maps, and a music store that is currently available in 10 countries (UK, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, France, Sweden, Spain). The service then grew with the addition of Share, the document-sharing service (still in beta) originally developed by startup Twango.

Now Nokia has added the beta of Files on Ovi, a service developed by startup Avevnu, which the Finnish phone company acquired at the beginning of 2008. The “digital locker” service allows a user’s always-on Windows Vista or XP machine to be remotely accessed via a mobile browser. Content can be marked “anytime” and be hosted on the Files on Ovi servers, allowing access even when the home PC is off.Each subscription has a 10 GB limit on hosted content which is available freely as a part of the beta. During registration, Nokia says this will eventually incur a fee and that in “the near future” it will ask for credit card information.

Once the user has installed the Files on Ovi manager (still called Avevnu Manager) and connected to the service’s site, his mobile device can access content by simply going to Nokia’s site. Though this is the first service from Ovi that utilizes the single Nokia/Ovi account ID, access to Files is not limited to Nokia devices, as it is browser-based. However, the connector software required to run the always-on computer is only for Windows XP and Vista.

In Techachino tests this afternoon, we attempted to access a PC connected with the Ovi/Avevnu client with a Wi-Fi connected T-Mobile Dash, but experienced numerous timeouts. With nearly three-minute long connection times, we’re still attempting to successfully browse and transfer files.

Posted in Cell Phones, p2p | 1 Comment | 1 Comment »

As Google expands its product line for mobile services, the Mountain View-based company announced BlackBerry Pearl users now have the ability to use voice search.

Specifically, users will be able to use Google Maps, getting directions or locations by voice instead of text searching.

Pearl owners can go to m.google.com/maps, press 0 to center the view of the map, press a side key and say a business name or location, and then release the button so the voice recognition software can begin to pull in results.Google designed the software for use when typing is not possible, a user isn’t sure of the exact spelling of a name, or the name is too long.

For now, the service is available only for the BlackBerry Pearl — models 8110, 8210, and 8120 — but could be expanded to other BlackBerry devices, including the Curve. It’s currently described as “experimental,” which means the results will not always be flawless.

“Like many of Google’s experimental features, we released this on a subset of phones in order to learn more about usage patterns and optimize the technology,” a Google spokesperson told Techachino Thursday. “We chose the Blackberry Pearl as it does not have a full QWERTY keyboard, making voice an even more appealing feature for users. We are always looking for ways to expand our offerings to more devices and to more users, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Several new phones have Google Maps integrated, though similar direction services are available from mobile phone providers. AT&T and Verizon Wireless both have GPS-based services available for a few dollars per month, but voice with Google Maps is free.

Nielsen research indicates mobile phone owners use Google Mobile for 9 searches per month on average, and Yahoo for 6.7, but mobile answers service ChaCha receives more than 40 searches per month. Utilizing a voice-in, text-out platform, ChaCha users are able to search for something by voice and get a response via text.

Google already uses speech recognition with its free Goog 411 service.

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In purported efforts to help the public “understand the privacy risks of carrying a mobile phone,” the ACLU and the EFF are suing the Justice Dept. for “documents, memos, and guides” about procedures used to track individuals through cell phones.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation aren’t looking for money — except to cover their own costs — in their most recent lawsuit against the US Department of Justice. Instead, the two civil liberty advocacy groups want information about whether and how the government might be using the location capabilities in cell phones to find out where people are.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans — over 200 million people — carry mobile phones. This large number is steadily increasing. The information the ACLU seeks therefore bears on the privacy of a vast segment of the United States population,” according to the complaint, which was submitted this week under the Freedom of Information Act.”Recent court decisions and media reports reveal that US Attorneys Offices (USAOs) are assisting law enforcement officers in obtaining information from mobile carriers that enables officers to track the location of individuals’ mobile phones,” the document says.

“Court decisions indicate that USAOs claim not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information. News reports further suggest that some field offices are violating a Department of Justice ‘internal recomendation’ that ‘federal procecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.’”

Filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit asks the DOJ to search several specific federal offices within the agency — including US Attorneys’ Offices in six states and the District of Columbia — for records related to cell phone tracking.

The types of records sought in the suit pertain to policies, procedures, and practices used for obtaining mobile phone location information; the DOJ’s “internal recommendation” and any violations of that recommendation; and the number of times the government has applied for a court order, based on less than probable cause, using that court order as authority to obtain mobile phone location information, “and whether such applications were successful.”

In an appendix to the court document, the plaintiffs have attached a news article that mentions a couple of location-based services already offered by mobile providers for tracking people outside the realm of criminal justice. The two examples include Verizon Wireless’ Chaperone service, aimed at helping parents to track their kids, and Sprint Nextel’s “loopt” service, for “sending an alert when a friend is near.”

It’s important to note, though, that if carriers are enabling cellular tracking — whether for parents, friends or law enforcement officials — any location data they’re obtaining really refers to the phone itself, as opposed to the mobile subscriber.

Many cell phone owners don’t carry their phones with them at all times. People also lose and temporarily misplace their phones, and loan them to family members and even casual acquaintances. Consequently, a cell phone’s location isn’t exactly a solid indicator of the actual current location of the owner of that phone. So beyond any privacy risks, there could be risks, too, of mistaken identity.

Posted in Cell Phones, eLaw | Leave a Comment | No Comments »

After being unveiled a couple of weeks ago at the very consumer attractive price of $199 USD, the iPhone 3G is set to go on sale next month through Apple and AT&T.

According to new reports, it appears however that AT&T is subsidizing the phone, over $400 USD in some cases, just to be able to reap in the benefits of a 2 year contract including data plans.

Oppenheimer financial analyst Yair Reimer writes that as a general rule of thumb, wireless carriers subsidize the price of smartphones by about $200 USD and make it back from expensive data plans. AT&T it appears though, is losing $325-425 for each unit sold and could be buying each phone from Apple for as much $724 USD for the 16GB model.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also wrote a report estimating that Apple will make about $466 USD per iPhone. Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi, in a separate report says he anticipates Apple is selling each phone at $700 USD.

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