The Wireless Misses of 2007
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A look at the uneven course of WiMax, municipal Wi-Fi, and other wireless stories of the year.
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Wired News names the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2007.
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Legal tussles, format wars, and (of course) the iPhone dominated technology news in 2007. Here are the biggest tech headlines of the year--including some we'd like to forget.
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The case for a losing year in 2008 for this leading electronics retailer.
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Driven largely by gains in its wireless and data businesses, Verizon Communications&#39; revenue was up 5.5 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2007, and net income was up slightly.Verizon on Monday reported revenue of $23.8 billion for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31, up from $22.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006. Verizon&#39;s net income rose from $1.03 billion to $1.07 billion this past quarter.Earnings per share was $0.37, or $0.62 before one-time items, matching consensus earnings expectations by analysts polled by Thomson Financial. However, analysts had expected revenue of nearly $24 billion for the quarter.Not counting one-time charges, operating income dropped 0.6 percent, to $3.4 billion. One-time items included severance packages for layoffs that will continue through 2008, and a spin-off of wireline access lines in parts of New England.Verizon reported &quot;strong growth in sales of all our strategic products,&quot; Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg, said in a statement. &quot;We see significant opportunities to grow revenues and expand our leadership in wireless and broadband markets, while reducing operating expenses.&quot;Verizon&#39;s revenue for the year was $93.5 billion, up by $5.3 billion from 2006.Verizon focused on growth in a couple of key areas, including its wireless business.Verizon Wireless&#39; customer numbers increased 11.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006, to a total 65.7 million, the company said. Wireless revenue for the quarter was $11.4 billion, up 13.3 percent from a year ago. Verizon Wireless added 2 million customers during the quarter.Wireless data revenue was particularly strong, said Doreen Tobin, Venison&#39;s chief financial officer. Wireless data revenue grew by 65 percent in 2007, she said during a conference call.&quot;We see enormous potential for growth in wireless data for years to come,&quot; she said.Total wireless revenue grew 15.3 percent in 2007, to $43.9 billion for the whole year. &quot;We have a proven business model,&quot; Tobin said. &quot;These results are further evidence of great execution, sustainable growth, and strong cash generation.&quot;In Verizon&#39;s data business, the company added 245,000 Fios fiber-based Internet customers, and 226,000 Fios television customers. The company added a total of 264,000 broadband customers in the quarter, including Fios and DSL (digital subscriber lines). Data revenue increased 12.8 percent to $4.8 billion.Some of those gains were partially offset by a 1.4 percent decrease in overall wireline revenue. Wireline revenue was $12.5 billion for the quarter, which includes the data revenue.Verizon had a &quot;very good year,&quot; but it faces some challenges in 2008, said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst.&quot;This year will be a little tougher with trouble in the housing market and debates about a coming recession, but so far, so good for Verizon,&quot; Kagan wrote in an e-mail. &quot;The telecom industry continues its strong growth, and cable television competitors have signaled price increases again, but at some point soon brisk competition will break out between the cable television companies and the telephone companies.&quot;The competitive action has started in many markets, but will spread dramatically this year,&quot; Kagan added. &quot;This will be an exciting year to keep our eyes on.&quot;Verizon has not yet seen slumping sales due to fears of a recession in 2008, Tobin said.
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The laws of physics make the promise of anywhere, anytime wireless hard to realize. Columnist Craig Mathias discusses ways to make wireless more reliable.
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With Americans cutting the cord to their land lines, 2007 is likely to be the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services, industry and government officials say.
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One of the big complaints lodged against wireless phone companies is poor signal quality inside buildings, especially homes.
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2007 could be called the year of the mobile operating system.Since Microsoft entered the scene around five years ago, the smartphone operating system industry has been fairly stable. Symbian, Linux, Research in Motion, and Windows Mobile make up the bulk of smartphone software, each to varying degrees of success in different regions.But in 2007,&#160;Apple introduced the iPhone, which runs its own brand of software, and Google announced that next year its&#160;Android mobile operating system platform&#160;will come out.The entrance of two new operating systems from well-known brands shakes up the plans of some mobile operators, creates some headaches for end-users, presents bigger challenges for application developers, and indicates some fundamental changes in the mobile industry.To put the discussion in perspective, realize that smartphones make up a relatively small portion of overall mobile phone sales. In 2006, 8 percent of phones sold were smartphones, said Chris Hazelton, an analyst with IDC. That&#39;s set to grow in 2007, but will likely hit only the low double digits, he said.Why all the interest then? The industry has high hopes that existing phone owners, who now make up a large part of the overall population in developed countries, will want to move on to the next generation of more capable smartphones.In addition, operators are gradually indicating that they&#39;re stepping aside from their role as gatekeeper and will allow more outside companies to offer phones and services to their customers, opening up new opportunities for software, hardware, and Web services companies.Verizon and AT&amp;T have recently made bold statements indicating that they&#39;re opening up their networks to more devices. While end-users might have the option to use a wider variety of devices,&#160;Verizon&#39;s announcement&#160;at least comes with a catch. &quot;It&#39;s like, &#39;OK, we&#39;ll bow to what you want, but be careful what you wish for. You can bring these phones to our network, but if you have problems, don&#39;t call us&#39;,&quot; said Hazelton. Verizon hasn&#39;t promised technical support for handsets that run on its network as part of its new open program.Still, at the very least mobile customers in general will soon be able to add the iPhone and new Android phones to the list of handsets they can choose from. That&#39;s good and bad for phone customers. &quot;End-users will probably need to do a bunch more homework,&quot; said Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business. That&#39;s because they&#39;ll need to figure out if the new software can support the features and services they want.At the same time that operators are opening up to new handsets, they&#39;re also beginning to ease restrictions on which online services customers can use. The trend started in Europe, where operators such as Vodafone have said that the bulk of their online data revenue came from services offered by third parties outside of its portal. Operators also learned how difficult it is to build a portal of desirable services. &quot;It&#39;s an incredibly resource intensive and expensive undertaking,&quot; Horn said. The shift away from the walled garden is just starting in the United States, he said.Allowing easier access to Web services is relevant to the software on the phones. Microsoft says that some handset makers and operators are interested in Windows Mobile because of its support of popular Microsoft services&#160;such as&#160;Live IM and Hotmail for mobile users. Google has a whole host of services that it targets at mobile users, from which it hopes to earn advertising dollars. And Apple has cleverly linked the use of the iPhone and its software with iTunes, where customers can buy content.All of these changes represent a major challenge for many operators. Some operators have in the last year or so said they want to support just a couple of operating systems as a way to cut costs related to support and training, Hazelton said. &quot;I think carriers are kind of backing down on the demand that there be fewer platforms,&quot; he said, as a result of the new software hitting the market.The additional operating systems might also pose a problem for application developers. &quot;It will be hard for application developers to pick,&quot; Hazelton said. Developers don&#39;t always focus on just one platform, but there will be so many operating systems in the mobile space that it will be difficult for them to choose which will be the most popular. For now in the United States, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have the largest developer base and that should continue in the foreseeable future, he said.But the new operating systems should also serve to grow the number of developers, Horn said. Developers will continue to have to make bets about which platform will pay off. &quot;That&#39;s always been the case. Developers say, &#39;Where&#39;s the biggest market for my talents and which market has the lowest cost to enter?&#39; In many ways, it&#39;s an economically driven decision for developers,&quot; Horn said.The experts agree that the new operating systems don&#39;t pose a threat to any particular existing platform provider. &quot;The more entrants in the near term means faster growth in the category, driving us all up collectively,&quot; Horn said. &quot;There will be big players and there will be niche players, we&#39;ll see different business models.&quot;Hazelton agreed. &quot;There&#39;s more a benefit than a threat because it serves to broaden awareness of smartphones,&quot; he said.
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Wireless broadband isn't the only wireless game in town.  Columnist Craig Mathias describes a slew of short-range but very important types of wireless that are starting to become widely used.
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Oversold technology, under-priced fees Citywide Wi-Fi was supposed to be the lifeline that would lead Earthlink to higher ground. With two of major deals suddenly declared dead and a third on suicide watch, it's starting to look like a ball and chain.â¦
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Wi-Fi to be sidelined Capex investment on pre-4G wireless systems will reach a cumulative total of $13bn by 2012 if new spectrum allocations, and technology roll-outs, stay on schedule. The main systems attracting this global spend will be 802.16e and its successor 802.16m, and LTE. However, while the latter will see a strong uptick in growth from the turn of the decade, it will not overtake WiMAX in capex terms until 2014.â¦
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Divide and blanket Analysis In the battle for the so-called 700-MHz band - a lip-smackingly juicy slice of the US wireless spectrum - somebody just pulled a fast one. And you can bet it was Verizon, yanking the rug out from under Google and a crazed Eric Schmidt.â¦
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Great innovations in wireless technologies have arrived in recent years, and their effect has yet to be realized. But those innovations may be hindered by thinking that an even better innovation is just around the corner.
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a perfect world, there'd be no wires. They clutter the view, get tangled behind desks and limit how far networks can reach. That's why the telegraph gave way to the radio. Cell phones unstrung telecommunications. Wi-Fi liberated computer data.
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Wireless phone service is one of the great bargains of the modern age. When The Post began its annual comparison of cellular calling plans in 1998, $40 bought a lousy 100 minutes of talk time a month.
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A look at the highlights and lowlights of 2007.