After a fairly slow month, news finally heated up in the last few days of July with news that Vonage has replaced its interim CEO with Marc Lefar, a telecom marketing guy.  Marc comes from a stint as chief marketing officer of Cingular Wireless.  Hopefully, he’ll be able to kick up sales in his new job as the head of [...]

Cellular networks were overwhelmed by yesterday’s moderate 5.4 magnitude earthquake in the Los Angeles area. How would they fare in a major disaster?

Sprint has announced the launch of a new mobile web portal.  Users of the 40+ devices currently supporting “Sprint Web” will have immediate access to the new service.  The selling point of Sprint Web is that it is “Adaptive” and displays content based upon your past browsing history. We hope that Sprint was paying attention [...]

IT geeks have long known about the open source world of Asterisk – the inexpensive PBX alternative which allows you to build the phone system you want in the way you want.  Over the last few years, Asterisk has developed a huge community of members who seek to build applications, create configuration schemes, bug test, [...]

Every so often, the specter of cell phone related cancers pops up in the media.  While there is no conclusive data linking cell phones to cancer, some doctors are beginning to warn children and adults to limit their exposure to the electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phones.  The latest such story broke in the Pittsburgh [...]

If there is one thing that I don’t like about the iPhone (and there are actually a few minor things I don’t like) it is the expensive text messaging.  Texting was included with my first iPhone plan but is no longer included with the iPhone 3G plans.  So, I’ve started looking for alternatives.  Here are a [...]

AT&T is quickly becoming the company who cried “Free” one too many times. Back in May, AT&T posted a web page announcing free WiFi for iPhone users at the company’s WiFi spots nationwide, including Starbucks. Then the page was suddenly removed and announced as an error by AT&T. That is a pretty embarrassing mistake, but [...]

Once in a blue moon, a new product comes along with an idea so obvious that you just want to slap your forehead that you didn’t think of it first.  For a couple of years, companies like Jajah and Skype have been offering “Free” phone service.  But both still collect your credit card number and [...]

If there is one thing that has prevented cellular networks from completely devastating traditional wired landline service, it is a lack of coverage.  Particularly a difficulty receiving a signal in buildings, underground, in remote locations, or other obstructed areas. Femtocells seek to resolve this problem by transmitting a localized signal over a specialized device that [...]

SK Telecom of South Korea is at it again.  They have previously attempted to buy an ownership stake in Sprint Nextel but Sprint had rejected the 5 billion dollar offer.  This time around the companies are purportedly only interested in a “partnership” arrangement with a potential minority investment by SK Telecom. This has been a [...]