Orange joins 3G fray with pitch to early adopters
610647
Orange joined the Christmas scramble for customers willing to experiment with new 3G services yesterday, offering four handsets, a competitively priced service and a target of four million customers, split between Britain and France, within two years.
409017
Britain's Vodafone Group Plc   launched the first of its own-branded 3G handsets on Thursday,  as the mobile phone giant tries to expand the market for  higher-paying 3G services by luring more prepay users.
480940
InfoWorld - Big names are coming to mobile video after a slow start for a service that has been touted as a perfect use for fast 3G (third-generation) networks.
238810
Now that&#160;WiMax has been certified as a form of 3G mobile data infrastructure, Sprint Nextel is changing its tune about the WiMax network it plans to launch commercially in April.Last year when Sprint was shopping around for a &quot;4G&quot; technology, it had a lot to say about how 4G would do something 3G networks couldn&#39;t. WiMax won out as its 4G network of choice. But in a keynote address Thursday at CTIA Wireless I.T. &amp; Entertainment in San Francisco, an executive of Sprint&#39;s WiMax business, Xohm, sang a different tune.&quot;I think we spend entirely too much time talking about the Gs,&quot; said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint. Last week, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union certified WiMax as a 3G technology, providing a seal of approval many governments require for carriers to deploy it. Wider deployment generally means lower equipment prices, which helps service providers.That&#39;s not to say the carrier no longer wants to differentiate WiMax. In his presentation, Gude played up the wide band of spectrum Xohm will be able to use, which he said will cut down on delays for individual users the same way a multilane freeway can move faster than a two-lane highway even when the speed limit is the same. In the real world, a lot of people want to use the network at the same time, he said.But more important is the business model of the two networks, Gude said, characterizing the traditional cellular business as more closed and controlled, while Xohm&#39;s business will tap into the dynamics of the open Internet. The company is opening itself up to partners for application development as well as connected devices, he said. The best known of these deals, announced in July, was&#160;an agreement with Google to develop a variety of Internet-based services.Sprint hopes a wide range of devices, including cameras, media players, and in-car electronics, ultimately will connect to the WiMax network. Instead of Sprint stores, they will be sold in the most logical places for their device types, such as consumer electronics stores. The first devices to come for Xohm next year will be wireless cards for notebook PCs, which Gude expects to be sold in the computer departments of electronics stores.The company will also have open API for third parties to develop services to run on the network. As an example, Gude envisioned a video portal that users could navigate using the five buttons traditionally found on video players. Xohm will probably charge for some of what it offers to third parties, but its aim is not to stifle innovation, he said.Sprint isn&#39;t getting out of its cellular business now that it&#39;s starting Xohm -- which it expects to reach 100 million U.S. residents by the end of 2008 -- but seems to be looking at it in a different light now.&quot;We are a content distribution industry,&quot; Gude said. It&#39;s just that for most of cellular&#39;s history, all the content has been user-generated and consisted of talking.
284590
Leading mobile phone operators in the European Union could save billions of euros on third-generation network access under a proposal to be launched next month by Brussels.
475069
Londoners to get mobile video, Reding to get annoyed Mobile World Congress Orange and T-Mobile are to try broadcast TV in London, using MBMS technology over the existing 3G infrastructure to provide 24 channels of video and ten of audio, all at "high resolution". The companies will try this out for six months to see if the service can be made economic.â¦
437550
Itâs a multi-protocol world Mobile Workshop It doesnât seem that long ago that we were debating whether Wi-Fi would make 3G redundant. Well it didnât happen, and with the âson of 3Gâ, HSDPA, now a mainstream option for business connectivity, and driving rapid uptake, it seems less likely than ever that cellular data options are going to go away.â¦
516255
Vodafone, the world&#39;s largest mobile phone operator, today finally launched its third generation (3G) services as it seeks to recoup Â£16.
253870
Third-generation (3G) network operators in the U.K. could begin testing a technology to improve indoor network coverage before the end of the year.
22866
And good luck with the portal, guys... Orange UK disclosed the details of its Christmas range of handsets last week - giving the bum's rush to two of the biggest phone manufacturers.â¦
79692
The mobile world is at 3GSM in Barcelona discussing how to get people to do more with their handsets.
617520
Vodafone has launched its UK third-generation (3G) services for mobile phones, offering video calls, music downloads and games. The 3G technology enables users to download data at a faster rate than before
293575
(InfoWorld) - Some of the world's biggest cellular operators have gotten together to promote their vision of what next-generation mobile technology should look like. Sprint Nextel Corp., Vodafone Group PLC, China Mobile Communications Corp., Orange PLC, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Royal KPN NV and T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG announced Thursday they have formed the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative. NGMN, a nonprofit group based in London, won't push a particular type of network but rather a set of guidelines that future technologies should follow, said Steve Falk, vice president of global standards at Sprint. "We think that we can speak with a more organized and concerted voice that we have in the past," Falk said. Vendors and standards organizations had stronger voices in the development of 2G (second-generation) and 3G systems. Carriers will represent the interests of their customers, the end users, he said. The group, which is already consulting with equipment vendors but will only include carriers as members, may be pitting itself against Qualcomm Inc., which developed much of the current 3G (third-generation) technology and has been criticized in some quarters for its royalty and licensing practices. The NGMN is looking toward the technologies to follow 3G systems such as HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). Carriers are still deploying and upgrading those networks, which are based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) respectively, but even faster technologies are coming down the road. Sprint, for one, has called WiMax its 4G technology and plans to roll it out across the U.S. within the next few years. In choosing WiMax, the carrier used some of the guidelines NGMN was formulating, Falk said. Among NGMN's recommended features are the following: - high data throughput with low latency - low operation and maintenance costs - support for authentication, security and differentiated quality of service Carriers also will favor technologies covered by FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) intellectual property rules, Falk said. "One of the principles of NGMN is an open and transparent IPR (intellectual property rights) regime," he said. The NGMN would like to see a single technology track and believes greater harmony will lower costs and speed up product development for vendors, too. "In some cases, 2G and 3G vendors have had to do very costly and time-consuming development on three to five different kinds of technology," Falk said. Being able to focus on one or two tracks, in turn, will help bring products and services to mobile subscribers faster and more economically, he said.
704394
Telecom giant Orange will use Sun's JES server software over three years, the companies plan to announce Monday.
645665
Cingular, the largest mobile phone operator in the US, is to launch a high-speed third generation (3G) network from next year. Mobile phone firms have been seeking new areas to boost revenue - and Cingular&#39;s
107719
Orange on Monday launched its long-delayed 3G mobile phone services in the UK, and predicted it would sell between 1.5 and 2m branded handsets by the end of 2006.
545108
The mobile phone industry called on  Monday for regulators to open up the airwaves to make  high-speed third-generation (3G) services available to about  300 million more people.