Google’s End Run Around the Wireless Carriers

Via Tech Crunch

by Mark Hendrickson on September 25, 2008

In a recently published patent, Google describes a vision for an open wireless world, one in which mobile devices (and smartphones in particular) are no longer married to particular cellular service providers.

When you buy a phone in the United States today, you typical have to sign a contract that prevents you from using that phone with more than one provider for a predetermined amount of time. You’ll encounter no such requirement when purchasing a laptop, which can be used to connect to the internet through any service provider at any time.

The Google patent for “Flexible Communication Systems and Methods” contends that cellphone users should also have the freedom to connect through various networks and methods, and that the communication service they choose at any particular time and location should be determined by competitive market forces.

The idea is that you could, for example, make phone calls and browse the internet on your smartphone via WiFi when at home, Verizon when downtown, and perhaps AT&T when out in the countryside. You’d base your decision on both pricing and quality of service, with the quality of coverage in your current location playing a major role.

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Users Are Tossing Their Landlines Overboard

Via the New York Times

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Published: September 20, 2008

Still have a landline? You’re showing your age. The young, hip, cool people have cellphones only, and that is bad news for traditional phone providers. In a survey of Internet users, JupiterResearch found that 12 percent “do not subscribe to fixed voice service, and nearly two-thirds of them are ages 18 to 34.”

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It is true that 70 percent of online users still have fixed lines in their homes provided by a telecommunications company. Fifteen percent receive fixed-line service from a cable company (cable providers are attracting customers with “bundled” offers) and 3 percent from an Internet-based service provider.

Alarmingly for the fixed-line providers, though, “12 percent of online users indicate their intent to replace home phone service with exclusive cellphone use during the next 12 months,” Jupiter says.

For the adaptable young, it may be easy — even trendy — to abandon the old-fashioned landline. But older people will probably feel a pang if they make the move to cut that cord. PHYLLIS KORKKI

Snip! Nearly One-Fifth of Homes Have No Landline

Via the New York Times

By Saul Hansell

By the end of the year one in five American households may well not have a home phone line. That’s the conclusion of a new report by Nielsen, which says that already 17 percent of homes rely entirely on cellphones.

This trend has of course been brewing for a while, but the tough economy is pushing more people to snip the cord.

Indeed, the effect of the growing number of people without home phones is starting to ripple through various corners of society. Of course, the phone companies need to confront a declining base of income to support their century old web of copper wires. And the trend is causing trouble for political pollsters, aluminum-siding salesmen and the other banes of the dinner hour.

The converse of this trend is that when your cellphone rings as you walk down the street, it is less likely to be an angry boss or a chatty friend and more likely to be someone from the P.T.A. trolling for bake-sale volunteers or some other call you would rather avoid.

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Someone Stole Your Cell Phone? Tell It to Phone Home

Via the New York Times

By Claire Cain Miller

Maverick Mobile Solutions, an Indian company that makes mobile applications, has a new way to protect your cell phone: tell it to follow the lead of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and “phone home.”

Or, to bring E.T. into the 21st century, “text home.”

If your phone is lost or stolen, the application, called Maverick Secure Mobile, encrypts your data, sends you a text message with the location of the phone and, best of all, plays an annoyingly loud siren to torture the thief.

The application was unveiled at the DEMO technology conference in San Diego, Calif., this week, where it provided a few minutes of “comic relief,” according to Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat.

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New cellphone carrier launching in second half of 2009

Via CBC

Globalive is aiming for 1.5 million subscribers in its first three years.Globalive is aiming for 1.5 million subscribers in its first three years. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)

More cellphone competition is on the way as Globalive Communications Inc. is aiming to have Canada’s fourth national wireless service up and running in the second half of 2009.

The Toronto-based company made the announcement on Thursday after spending $442 million on wireless spectrum licences across the country — except Quebec — in a government auction earlier this summer. Auction participants had been under a gag order since bidding ended in late July and were prohibited from speaking to each other or from sharing their plans with the public until Thursday.

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Cellular signing: making cell phones usable by the deaf

from Ars Technica by zeotherm@gmail.com (Matt Ford)

New research by engineers at the University of Washington has resulted in a new video encoding scheme capable of allowing individuals to communicate via American Sign Language on US cellular networks.

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