Startup Frontline Wireless shuts down
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InfoWorld - Frontline Wireless, a startup that had planned to bid in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's upcomingÂ 700MHz spectrum auction, has "closed for business," a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
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Blog: The downtown store shuts down for four hours in preparation for tonight's launch.
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Frontline Wireless, a startup that had planned to bid in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission&#39;s upcoming&#160;700MHz spectrum auction, has &quot;closed for business,&quot; a spokeswoman said Wednesday.Frontline, backed by veterans of the wireless industry and U.S. government, was one of the major advocates of a plan for the FCC to pair about 10MHz of spectrum set aside for emergency response agency communications to another 10MHz to be sold in the auction starting Jan. 24. The auction winner would then be required to build a wireless network that emergency responders such as police and fire departments could share with commercial interests.Frontline had also pushed the FCC to adopt so-called&#160;open-access rules&#160;on part of the 62MHz of spectrum to be auctioned.The FCC in July largely adopted the emergency communications auction plan advocated by Frontline and other groups, and it approved an amended open-access plan on 22MHz of the spectrum. The FCC required that the winner of the 22MHz allow any wireless devices to connect to the network, meaning wireless telephone customers could bring their handset devices from other carriers. The FCC also prohibited the winning bidder on the 22MHz block of spectrum from blocking or slowing wireless and Web content from competitors.Frontline spokeswoman Mary Greczyn said Wednesday the company would have no further comment beyond saying Frontline is &quot;closed for business at this time.&quot;Up-front payments for bidding in the 700MHz auction were due Jan. 4. The up-front payment for the D block, the spectrum for emergency communications, was $128.2 million, and the payment for the 22MHz C block was $282.1 million.Frontline, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, first made a splash in early 2007, when it&#160;proposed an open-access network&#160;that emergency responders would share with commercial providers. Frontline said then it planned to offer wholesale access to the network to other wireless providers.Frontline was backed by several heavy hitters in the wireless and tech industries, as well as former senior U.S. government officials. Haynes Griffin, founding CEO and president of Vanguard Cellular Systems, served as Frontline&#39;s CEO, and Janice Obuchowski, former head of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration, served as the company&#39;s chairwoman. Reed Hundt, a former chairman of the FCC, served as Frontline&#39;s vice chairman.James Barksdale, former CEO at Netscape, and John Doerr, a partner in the Kleiner Perkins Caulfield &amp; Byers venture capital firm, were among the company&#39;s backers.
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A wireless startup company that planned to build a national public safety communications system has apparently bailed out of the upcoming airwaves auction, a move that creates doubt about the future prospects for the network.
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EarthLink Inc.&#39;s current contract to build a municipal Wi-Fi network in San Francisco appears to be dead following a restructuring of the struggling Internet service provider.
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AutoPatcher, a popular alternative to Windows Update, was shut down today in response to a cease-and-desist e-mail from Microsoft.
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The biggest U.S. mobile operators, AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless, will close down their analog networks on Monday.
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Karoo boo boo Karoo, Hull's monopoly ADSL provider, has been hit by a major outage today that has forced much of the city's population offline.â¦
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Ireland's dominant telephone company, Eircom PLC, shut down services Tuesday to smaller rival Smart Telecom in a dispute over unpaid bills, leaving 40,000 households and businesses unable to make calls.
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Deploys new VoIP prefix, then steps back
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More than a thousand people who phoned in for assistance too often -- at least in the company's eyes -- find themselves suddenly cut off from wireless service.
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(InfoWorld) - Several companies have challengedÂ spectrum auction rulesÂ recently set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, with Frontline Wireless protesting that the auction of the 700MHz band to be auctioned in January could shut out small bidders. In addition, AT&T has asked the FCC to reconsider requirements for the winning bidder of a block of spectrum to be used to build a nationwide broadband network for public safety agencies. The rules require bidders to reach a service agreement with public safety officials before the auction, and the FCC's decision to deny bidders the spectrum if an agreement is not reached is "an extreme penalty," AT&T said in its petition. AT&T and Frontline, a startup made up of government and wireless industry veterans, filed petitions for reconsideration of the auction rules with the FCC Monday. They were among 10 companies that filed petitions in the last week asking the FCC to reconsider the auction rules it set in July for the 700MHz band of spectrum being vacated by U.S. television stations. The FCC is scheduled to auction 62MHz of spectrum in the 700MHz band beginning Jan. 16. The FCC set a reserve price of $10 billion for the entire 62MHz, but many observers believe the auctions will raise much more than that. The spectrum is currently controlled by U.S. television stations using channels 52 to 69. The U.S. Congress in late 2005 passed legislation that requires the stations to move to digital broadcasts and abandon this spectrum by February 2009. Frontline raised several objections about the auction rules. The company and someÂ consumer groupsÂ had called for the FCC to require that the winning bidder of a portion of the spectrum resell the spectrum at wholesale rates, but the FCC declined to do so. FCC members talked about including small businesses in the auction, Frontline noted. But the FCC denied bidding discounts, called credits, for small business wholesalers, Frontline said. Small businesses can't compete against large wireless carriers unless they adopt a wholesale model, the company said. "Wholesaling is also the only model a new nationwide wireless network operator could realistically afford to adopt, given the massive costs associated with providing retail service -- consider Verizon's 2,300 retail outlets and its $1.9 billion annual advertising budget," Frontline said in its petition. Frontline also suggested the reserve, or minimum prices, for two blocks of spectrum are too high. Frontline objected to a reserve price of about $1.3 billion for a 10MHz portion of spectrum to be paired with 12MHz set aside for emergency response communications. Frontline said the $4.6 billion reserve is also too high for another 22MHz of spectrum, for which the FCC adopted so-called open access rules. If the reserve price is met, the FCC will require the winning bidder to allow customers to bring wireless devices from other carriers and prohibit the winner from blocking or slowing competing Web content. Under the FCC rules, both blocks of spectrum would be re-auctioned under new rules if the reserve prices aren't met. "The unlawfully high reserve prices will nullify or disrupt and damage the Commission's carefully considered decisions as to the highest and best use of this spectrum, encourage bidding strategies that defeat these sound allocations decisions and seriously reduce auction revenues," Frontline's lawyers wrote. Earlier this month, Verizon Wireless asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the FCC's decision to require open-access rules supported by Frontline and some consumer groups. Those rules are "arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by substantial evidence and otherwise contrary to law," Verizon Wireless said in a brief filed with the court.
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VoIP startup SunRocket appears to be shut down, pointing up the continuing woes of companies trying to make a buck exclusively out of IP voice services.
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BlackBerry mobile data services were disrupted Monday afternoon due to a problem with Research In Motion&#39;s infrastructure, apparently affecting customers of all major North American mobile operators, an AT&amp;T Wireless spokesman said.RIM told AT&amp;T the problem began at about 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time and that the Waterloo, Ontario, company was working to identify and solve the problem, said AT&amp;T spokesman Mark Siegel. RIM officials were not immediately available for comment.After 6 p.m. Eastern, users on a BlackBerry Internet message board began reporting that service had returned to normal.The popular smart phones rely on both a cellular network for transport and RIM&#39;s own network for pushing e-mail to end-users. Last month, problems with AT&amp;T&#39;s network disrupted service to some of its subscribers with BlackBerrys, as well as iPhone users.Several users on various mobile networks reported connection problems on Monday afternoon on the message board.BlackBerry users may not be able to send or receive messages, browse the Internet, or use the BlackBerry Internet Service Web site, according to a message from RIM that some users on the board posted. In addition, BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may not be able to connect to RIM&#39;s infrastructure, and carriers and resellers may not be able to create accounts or provision services, the notice said. The outage happened because &quot;a component of the network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption.&quot;Zenprise, a maker of service management software that monitors BlackBerry service and notifies administrators of problems, detected the outage and notified customers at 3:23 p.m. Eastern, according to Ahmed Datoo, Zenprise&#39;s vice president of marketing. After running a series of tests, Zenprise determined that the root of the problem was in RIM&#39;s infrastructure. The Fremont, California, company, which counts about 100 enterprises and SMBs among its customers, has not determined the total scope of the outage. BlackBerry service for Zenprise&#39;s own customers has been going up and down during the outage, Datoo said.
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Industry analysts said Frontline Wireless' demise throws into doubt the viability of the ambitious plan, which would impose unusual constraints on a private operator by forcing it to share airwaves with public safety agencies.
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Spectrum troubles, defections, and a new CEO? Best to look elsewhere.
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BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 18  /PRNewswire/ -- Aztek Networks (formerly Aztek Engineering), a leading provider of Emergency Stand Alone (ESA) switching and IP gateway products, today announced the closing of $6.6 million in Series A funding.