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.
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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.”
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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.
Posted in Cell Phones |
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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.
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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%.
Posted in Cell Phones |
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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.
Posted in Cell Phones, Privacy, eLaw |
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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.
Posted in Cell Phones, p2p |
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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.
Posted in Cell Phones, Gadgets, Google |
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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.
Posted in Cell Phones, eLaw |
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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.
Posted in Apple, Cell Phones |
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