Telus CEO says merged Telus-BCE could keep wireless
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The controversial plan to create a  Canadian telecom &quot;champion&quot; by merging Telus Corp.  with  market leader BCE Inc.  would not choke competition and  require a sale of either company&#39;s lucrative wireless network,  Telus&#39;s chief executive said on Thursday.
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Clearwire's CEO said Wednesday that the company has been working with Sprint to ensure roaming between the two companies' nationwide WiMax networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Research In Motion expects to start selling a BlackBerry with both cellular and Wi-Fi wireless capabilities, the company's CEO said Thursday. Speaking at the JP Morgan Technology Conference on Wednesday, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said such a converged BlackBerry should come out "in the back half of this year." RIM is behind its competitors in developing devices with both cellular and Wi-Fi. Motorola and NokiaÂ were both selling phones with Wi-Fi and cellular aimed at business users last year. RIM had recently hinted at forthcoming converged phones, but until Thursday, it hadn't said when they would ship. "Wi-Fi was overhyped," Balsillie said. "I was not a big believer in it for the first two or three years because it was hyped as something that would subsume everything, that you would get rid of your cell phone. We feel it's complementaryÂ to a cell phone." The BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) that companies use to deliver corporate e-mail to BlackBerry users already supports roaming for customers that may travel between multiple operators so the BES would treat Wi-Fi networks just like additional cellular networks, he said. That capability enables the handoff of data connections and voice calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks as customers move. In addition, the BES "presupposes the airlink is insecure," and so encrypts all voice and data transmissions using either technology, he said. The BES already supports Wi-Fi connections because the BlackBerry 7270 has Wi-Fi. Many mobile operators, particularly those that aren't related to a landline service provider, have resisted FMC (fixed mobile convergence) because they can lose revenue by transferring calls from their cellular networks to a potential opponent's Wi-Fi network. But Balsillie said the operators are open to it. "Most of the carriers I've dealt with are supportive of FMC," he said. Also, he's finding that an increasing number of operators have both cellular and fixed-line networks, and those companies are looking for strategic ways to leverage both assets. Services like FMC can allow those operators to offer a value added service rather than simply offering a single bill.
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In a vote of confidence for BBDO Atlanta, the now-largest cell phone company Cingular Wireless will keep its business with the Atlanta advertising agency.
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Now that wireless is officially a land of giants, what happens to all the Lilliputians? With Sprint and Nextel announcing their merger Wednesday â- $35 billion deal
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Telecom company BCE Inc.  said  on Wednesday it is discussing with telecom company Telus Corp.   the possibility of combining the two companies.
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Don't expect new mobile phone services based on the Internet Protocol to become nearly as prevalent as those running over PCs. That's the view of Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International AG &amp; Co. KG, one of Europe's largest mobile phone operators.
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XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. XMSR.O chief executive officer Hugh Panero on Wednesday said he expected satellite radio and cellphone services to converge within the next five years.
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EarthLink founder Sky Dayton said he&#39;s stepping down as CEO of Helio, a move that appears to be part of the plan to&#160;reduce EarthLink&#39;s position in the mobile company.Dayton will become chairman of Helio&#39;s board and Wonhee Sull, formerly Helio&#39;s president and chief operating officer, will take on the role of CEO. Sull was chief operations officer at the founding of Helio and prior to that worked for SK Telecom, which launched the mobile venture in a 50-50 partnership with EarthLink in 2006.A combination of market dynamics and challenges at EarthLink have recently led to changes in the Helio partnership. In November, EarthLink said it would reduce its ownership in Helio to about 22 percent, as part of an announcement of a new SK Telecom investment in the venture. At the time, EarthLink said it wasn&#39;t expecting to invest any more in Helio and that SK Telecom would take over operating control of the joint venture.EarthLink has been struggling&#160;as its traditional customer base of dial-up subscribers continues to shrink. It is working through a restructuring aimed at reversing its losses, including putting its municipal Wi-Fi plans on hold and cutting back on sales and marketing spending.Beyond EarthLink&#39;s troubles, Helio faces a challenging market. Mobile providers that don&#39;t own their own networks, like Helio, have struggled recently. Amp&#39;d, a similar company geared toward young mobile users, filed for bankruptcy protection and put itself up for sale in the middle of last year, but ultimately shut down. ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile have suffered similar fates.Even though Helio has big-spending users and plenty of cash, EarthLink expects the company to report a year-end loss for 2007 of as much as $360 million on revenue of as much as $170 million. That&#8217;s after SK Telecom and EarthLink started the company with a combined $440 million. Since then, both companies have made additional investments.Helio has almost 200,000 subscribers who beat industry averages by some metrics, the company said. On average, Helio users spend more than $85 per month, compared with an industry average of $50, Helio said. In addition, Helio customers send an average of 550 text messages per month, and 95 percent of Helio users access the Web from their phones, according to the company.
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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel's ambitious Xohm WiMax vision will be based on a radical change in the way users pay for the service compared with cellular plans. Users will sign up for wireless broadband for a day, a month, or a year without a contract tied to a specific device. Payment could be made via a credit card wirelessly. The pricing approach, described in broad strokes by Sprint chief technology officer Barry West Wednesday at WiMax World in Chicago, will be designed on the principle of "affordable" broadband and "around the needs of the individual," he said in an interview. That approach breaks down the concept now seen with cellular plans, in which users typically buy a two-year contract in part to subsidize the cost of a single mobile device that a user is locked into using. A Sprint spokesman explained that the proposed pricing will rely on subscriptions, but not contracts in the sense associated with typical cellular contracts. And the longer the subscription a customer buys, the cheaper the service will be, he said. West said Sprint will announce pricing early next year, but also said it will probably be based on tiers of service. The cost of devices, such as laptop cards able to transmit mobile WiMax, will approximate the cost of a 3G broadband laptop card today, he said. In response to a question from an audience member, West also said that Xohm will not be backed by what the industry calls service-level agreements, a kind of guarantee that a minimum bandwidth will be provided or the customer receives a refund. "We will give you a good experience, but not SLAs," West said. Several Sprint executives have described Xohm WiMax speeds that are expected to be 2Mbps to 4Mbps, although the technology is capable of 10Mbps. At a demonstration onboard a moving tour boat on the Chicago River Tuesday night using Motorola gear, mobile WiMax shared across 12 laptops and cell phones was clocked at 2.5Mbps downward. West noted that the demonstration was across only one channel, and that Sprint will be able to offer many channels to handle users at a single antenna site, offering plenty of bandwidth for many users. West, who calls himself a technology "pragmatist," said he does not envision any hidden technology bugaboos in the nationwide rollout of Xohm planned for next year. In the next three years, he has predicted 50 million devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, will be WiMax-certified. Getting the certification process for interoperability in order will be difficult, but he said that even if there are 100,000 different devices, it is conceivable all of them could be served from only 10 different chip sets. "That's not unmanageable," he said. By contrast, West said Xohm's biggest challenge will be servicing the needs of 210 million Internet users in the United States alone, and meeting their demands for access, applications, and services. In his keynote, West said some critics have already begun to question whether West's predictions for Xohm's growth are too ambitious. He said commercial rollouts are still on schedule for the second quarter of 2008, and work has begun on 10,000 base stations nationally, with 20,000 WiMax antennas. The initial rollout in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington in December is "pretty much on target," he added. As for competition, West said he doesn't see Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Shares of wireless carriers Nextel and Sprint rose Thursday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the companies are discussing a merger.
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Their merger will make them No. 3 -- no threat to Cingular and Verizon Wireless, but a worry for smaller outfits like T-Mobile. Faced with growing pressure to upgrade their networks and compete with larger
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Here are answers to some questions arising from the closing of Cingular Wireless&#39; acquisition of AT&amp;T Wireless. Q: With the merger, how will the combined company rank in the industry?
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Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. announced this morning that they will merge the companies in a deal that would create a new wireless telecommunications giant.-The Washington Post
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sprint Nextel Corp. on Wednesday said it would continue to support its Nextel-branded walkie-talkie network, which industry observers had speculated the company might shutter.
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Research In Motion expects to start selling a BlackBerry with both cellular and Wi-Fi wireless capabilities, the company&#8217;s CEO said Wednesday.
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Executives say the company's stake in the wireless provider caused losses, but they're confident in the venture's promise.