Telephony Online

Oracle and consulting firm The Future Laboratory recently completed a study, “Capitalizing on the Digital Age”, which examines how the digital world and new communications services are changing consumer behavior. We talked with both companies to learn what service providers need to know about this vision of the future. Listen to this podcast HERE.

Social networking has infiltrated all things mobile from applications to address integration to the user interface of many devices. It has become so popular that Motorola (NYSE:MOT) is counting on getting social to guide its recovery

To date, the discussion on femtocells has always centered on indoor coverage—providing a better signal and more capacity for a handful of people at home or at work

This post is part of a series leading up to an upcoming Connected Planet feature story on open mobile. Road to Open: Read part 1 HERE, part 2 HERE, part 3 HERE, part 4 HERE and part 5 HERE. When popular card maker Hallmark decided to break into mobile, program manager Mike Adams knew it couldn’t do [...]

Mobile backhaul equipment has been a hot sector in wireless this year and last as operators invest more in high-capacity data technologies, according to a new research report by Infonetics. Backhaul gear investment among carriers grew 59% in 2008 to $3.7 billion globally and will jump an additional 60% in 2009, making it a $5.7 billion industry, [...]

As back-office specialist Telcordia closes out a relatively flat – in a good way – 2009, deals with strategic system integration and equipment provider partners and new pushes into wireless and advertising solutions loom in 2010

Voice app provider Ifbyphone, finding success offering build-on the-fly, pay-as-you go IVR-style apps to SMBs, is on the active hunt for a few good telco partners to offer its services as part of their small business service portfolios

Australia’s Telstra is deploying personalization technology from vendor Amdocs to add customized mobile news and information services to its BigPond mobile portal

In an impressive seven-slot jump, Facebook became the number three site for video streaming, trailing only market-leader YouTube and Hulu in total streams. The ranking, part of Nielsen’s latest VideoCensus numbers, was based on the fact that Facebook generated nearly 218 million total streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers. In September, [...]

T-Mobile (NYSE:DT) has come a long way in competing on prepaid since releasing a half-hearted unlimited, contractless service available to some customers on a trial basis. Last month it launched two new Even More unlimited service plans, and today it announced that it would offer a BlackBerry Curve 8520 as part of a prepaid plan [...]

Nokia Siemens Networks and private equity firm One Equity Partners have jointly bid for Nortel Networks’ (OTCBB:NRTLQ) Metro Ethernet business, challenging Ciena’s (NASDAQ:CIEN) bid for those assets in advance of an auction to be held on Friday, Reuters is reporting. NSN was expected to bid on the assets, which include Nortel’s optical gear, but NSN’s own [...]

While LTE vendors are still slugging it out for Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) and China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL) 4G business, a new large-scale network competition has emerged. SingTel today became the latest multinational operator to dangle a big fat LTE contract in front of equipment vendors, announcing plans for a LTE roll out spanning Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and [...]

I’ve had a lot of conversations lately with service providers — and some key vendors that serve the, such as DPI and policy server providers — about the explosion in data services, particularly mobile services, and the fickle yet demanding nature of customer expectations. In the U.S. in particular, operators have been very aggressive in launching [...]

Verizon Wireless’ (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) chances of launching the world’s first long-term evolution (LTE) network just improved. The first operator to launch a 3G network, NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM) announced today that it will launch commercial 4G services in the final month of 2010. Verizon hasn’t given exact dates for its own deployment in 2010, except to say will launch the [...]

CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL) is challenging a $3-million application for federal broadband stimulus funds filed in rural North Carolina by a local firm, Electronic Solutions. The firm has proposed setting up 27 antennas to serve nearly all of North Carolina’s Person County. CenturyLink has responded by arguing that the areas targeted in that application are not unserved or [...]

Start-ups targeting the need for search, discovery as programming explodes online

When dealing with criticism of IP multimedia subsystem — the somewhat mysterious, too often maligned telco architecture for IP networks and services

Apple’s tablet will deluge mobile networks when it launches, but which network – if any – it lands on is still unknown

This post is part of a series leading up to an upcoming Connected Planet feature story on open mobile. Road to Open: Read part 1 HERE, part 2 HERE, part 3 HERE and part 4 HERE. Independent application store Handango has always operated in what CEO Alex Bloom considers an open world. By working independently, as [...]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC) has signed an agreement to use the public wholesale fiber network being constructed in Ontario County, New York, joining Verizon Wireless as another customer of the five-city, 180-mile, 144-strand fiberoptic network that local government officials hope to complete early next year. Ontario County’s network is being built without the aid of federal broadband [...]

Consumers want a personal mobile content discovery process that goes beyond simple search, according to a Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) survey of US and UK consumers released today. If content was, foremost, easier to find, 63% indicated they would spend more time accessing or purchasing it. If it were also more personal, respondents indicated they would increase [...]

Rogue employees at a major mobile operator in the UK have illegally sold millions of customer records to competitors, the Associated Press is reporting. Authorities won’t name the carrier because an investigation is underway. The British government says fines for these crimes are no longer a deterrent because they’re dwarfed by the amount of money one can [...]

App stores and best-effort networks are already commodities; the future is in supporting mission-critical and life-saving value adds

Congress is holding hearings today to discuss proposed changes to the Universal Service Fund (USF) that include an auction process for wireless USF recipients and possibly require voice-over-IP providers

Twitter’s always had a mixed story when it came to SMS, and overall the emergence of mobile apps have made Twitter-to-SMS posting a non-issue for many users. But what about Twitter-to-MMS links? As services like Twitpic have emerged to let Twitter users attach photos to Twitter messages, they’ve been positioned more as competitors to already slow-to-take [...]

Clearwire’s WiMax network may be all about bulk Internet access today, but if what’s happening in Korea is any indication, a multitude of new applications may be in the pipeline.

The Android ecosystem is gaining traction as Aricent, ARM lend their expertise device makers building to the OS