|
Posted on 10.26.05 by Nikhil @ 2:13 pm
The move by wireless companies to target teenagers just picked up steam. Today, SK-Earthlink, the joint venture between Earthlink and Korea’s SK Telecom, announced that their MVNO will be called HELIO. I wrote about the joint venture in my October 16th post. The service will use the expertise SK Telecom has in targeting this particular audience, along with Earthlink’s technical abilities. HELIO will run its system initially off of Sprint Nextel’s network, and possibly later on Verizon Wireless as well. It will offer the sorts of applications Asia youth love: mobile blogging, downloading music and playing games. Of course, the company will be up against a lot of competition. While it may have a leg-up on service providers such as Cingular and Verizon, which have to market their products to a wide array of age groups, HELIO will have to compete against cutting edge MVNO companies such as Amp’D Mobile, founded by Peter Adderton, the founder of Boost Mobile, as well as Disney. You can read me more at Red Herring. Filed under: Infrastructure and Miscellaneous Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.25.05 by Nikhil @ 11:06 pm
Cable companies and telcos have long been competing with each other to provide phone service, data service, video and wireless. Now, it looks like the cable companies may be gaining ground. In an interesting twist, it looks like Cox Communications, along with Comcast and Time Warner may soon start selling Sprint Nextel’s services. The deal could be announced on November 1. By working with Sprint Nextel, the cable companies get not only access to its wireless services but also to its voice over IP service. I need to hear more about the details, but it sounds like the end result may not necessarily be fantastic for Sprint. Reuters has a bit more on this. Filed under: Stock Watch Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.25.05 by Nikhil @ 10:50 pm
Ericsson is going to spend $2.1 billion to acquire the struggling Marconi’s name and telecom equipment assets. Marconi will be renamed Telent and will operate its service business under that name. The deal will give Ericsson Marconi’s equipment assets which includes its softswitch business and its DSL businesss. Ericsson says the deal is necessary as it moves to broadband UMTS networks. To read more about this deal click here. Filed under: Miscellaneous Comments: 1 Comment |
|
Posted on 10.21.05 by Nikhil @ 5:28 pm
I’ve been doing some research recently, into the rise of citywide Wi-Fi networks to see how investors stand to profit. I’ll write about this in Forbes Wireless Stock Watch. But along the way, a colleague of mine, Matt Rand, alerted me to an article about a broadband technology that stands to make even citywide Wi-Fi networks look lame. Apparently, Inmarsat, a satellite telecom company, plans to launch its second “super satellite” within the next few weeks. The system, which will cost Inmarsat about $1.5.billion, is supposed to blanket the world with a service that can provide broadband data and voice services at the same time. While it sounds very exciting, I can’t help but be skeptical. I was a reporter at Forbes in the late 1990s when Craig McCaw was touting Iridium. He spent $5 billion sending 88 satellites into orbit to provide a service that would allow wireless connectivity anytime, anywhere. But he got only 55,000 subscribers. The company filed for bankruptcy and in 2000, Iridium began sending its 88 giant satellites spiraling toward Earth. It was a fiery end. Hopefully this latest venture will have a better outcome! Filed under: Stock Watch and Infrastructure and Cutting Edge Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.20.05 by Nikhil @ 5:12 pm
I just got back from a visit with Intel, whose executives are here in New York City to demonstrate how technology will change our lives. The company is doing lots of interesting research, but one project—a precision location based system for Wi-Fi networks— jumped out at me. Say you are watching a video on a plasma screen in your living room. You need to move to the office. You pick up a device, that for now is a small tablet computer, and you take it with you into your office. Immediately, the video you were watching in your living room now appears on your office desktop computer. Then, you find that you need to go to the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee. Off you go with your tablet. The video, now sensing that there is no other networked device available in the kitchen, moves the video onto the tablet PC - and you keep watching. No delay, no waiting - the movie just continues on whatever device the network senses is nearby. The reason this is interesting, is because the system uses highly precise location based technology to keep track of your movements. To a degree, Global Positioning Systems (GPS systems) can provide similar functions, but they don’t work well indoors -just in wide open spaces. Even in New York or other big cities, the buildings get in the way of the GPS signals. Besides that, GPS signals are not precise enough to track certain kinds of business applications, like inventory tracking for example. What I saw was a prototype of a precision locations system made up of a wireless local area nework, laptop computers and fixed access points. The laptop communicates with each access point and knows the location of every access point. By knowing the distance between any two access points, it can triangulate its own position—leading to highly accurate location information. Potentially, Intel’s technology could become a complement to GPS locations systems. It could also be used in a wide variety of potential applications, such as indoor navigation and equipment tracking in real time. Intel gives the example of a physician in a hospital who is searching for the nearest defibrillator. To access more on this from Intel, click here. Filed under: Infrastructure and Cutting Edge Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.19.05 by Nikhil @ 10:43 pm
Ever feel the need to hook up your Nintendo game player while in a McDonald’s? Didn’t think so. But pretty soon, you’ll be able to anyway. Here’s why. Today, Nintendo said it was working with Wayport, a wireless Internet service provider, to provide free Wi-Fi access in almost 6,000 McDonald’s. So if you have a Nintendo DS, you’ll be able to walk into any McDonald’s and play mobile games, such as Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk’s American SK8land, over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection network. Doesn’t matter if your opponents are sitting next to you or on the other side of the planet. The idea, I guess, is that you will become so involved with your game that you will spend more time eating french fries and drinking sodas. That may not be good for you, but it would be very good for McDonald’s. Read more about this at Gamespot.com. Filed under: Wireless Gaming and Applications and Infrastructure and Cutting Edge Comments: 1 Comment |
|
Posted on 10.19.05 by Nikhil @ 10:31 pm
A prototype of an interesting new Wi-Fi software tool was just released by Microsoft Research. The company’s new software allows a computer to connect to many different Wi-Fi networks at the same time. Microsoft’s software is called VirtualWiFi and it lets a single card act as multiple wide local area network cards. So, if you have this card, you can configure it to link to a different computer or any other device. Why on earth would you want to link to multiple Wi-Fi networks at once? Microsoft gives some reasons. One of them: With just one PC Card, you could connect to someone else’s computer or play games over an ad hoc network, while also surfing the Web via an infrastructure network. For more examples and for more details on this software, check out the Microsoft Research Web Site. Filed under: Infrastructure and Cutting Edge Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.19.05 by Nikhil @ 2:36 pm
Wireless growth is soaring in Brazil! A recent report just out says that wireless operators in Brazil added 14.3 million customers in the first nine months of the year, bringing the total subscriber base to 79.9 million consumers. That’s rapid growth-up 37.5% compared to the first nine months of last year. I’ll be looking for investment opportunities here for my wireless newsletter, Forbes Wireless Stock Watch. In the meantime, you can read more on this by clicking here. Filed under: Stock Watch and Miscellaneous Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.19.05 by Nikhil @ 2:27 pm
Intel and the Taiwanese government are working together on WiMax. The idea? To make Taiwan an early leader in developing products, such as notebook computers and PC Cards, for this high speed wireless broadband technology. The hope is that if WiMax takes off, Taiwan will get a big boost by manufacturing and selling critical hardware. So, Taiwan’s government says it will provide over $200 million to help fund development and make spectrum available. Another $1 billion will be coming next year to help further development in WiMax. Intel, which is a strong supporter of WiMax technology, says it will provide technical resources. Read more about this in Infoworld. Filed under: Infrastructure and Cutting Edge Comments: None |
|
Posted on 10.17.05 by Nikhil @ 11:41 pm
VeriSign, a company that I have covered in my wireless newsletter, Forbes Wireless Stock Watch, just announced today that it plans to beef up its Web logs business aimed at mobile users. The company says it will buy Moreover Technologies, which provides news and web logs for about $30 million in cash. This isn’t VeriSign’s first move into the business. Last week, VeriSign acquried Weblogs for $2.3 million. Apparently, VeriSign plans to take content from Moreover and Weblogs and target it to cellular phone users. While there isn’t much additional information yet on how the company plans to actually execute its plan, I do like the sound of it. There’s a great deal of business ahead in providing content to mobile devices and VeriSign is moving aggressively in that direction. You can read more about this at Yahoo News. Filed under: Stock Watch and Applications and Cutting Edge Comments: None |
| previous posts » |
