The Wireless Report

It's been an interesting week here at The Wireless Report. Here are our top 5 stories of the past seven days. Enjoy!

1. Can cameraphones be used to fight crime?
   Who would have thought that cameraphones could be used to fight crime in the big city? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced a plan that will allow 911 and 311 callers to send digital photos and videos directly from their cellphones.
2. Carriers going full-speed ahead on 3G rollouts
   With 3G high-speed wireless data becoming the norm now, some of the country's largest carriers have announced new markets for their respective high-speed data services.
3. Long Island counties issue wireless network RFP
   Nassau and Suffolk counties on New York's Long Island have just issued a RFP this week to further explore their options in having a wireless network cover both areas.
4. Can your cellphone check you in at the airport?
   With cellphones stating to become the "swiss army knife" of electronic gadgets, there are two Japanese airline carriers -- Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways -- that are starting to use alternative methods for checking in passengers.
5. Could SF WiFi deal be in jeapordy?
   After a long period of negotiations, the city of San Francisco recently agreed to a deal with EarthLink and Google to develop and deploy a municipal wireless network. However, the contract still needs to be approved by the city council, and an EarthLink executive has been quoted as saying that approval is not a guarantee.

Who would have thought that cameraphones could be used to fight crime in the big city? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced a plan that will allow 911 and 311 callers to send digital photos and videos directly from their cellphones.

The mayor calls this a "revolutionary innovation in crime fighting." whereby if a bystander witnesses a crime or another dangerous situation, they can transmit an image directly to 911 to further speed the process of having emergency personnel respond. The 311 service is used for reporting problems such as potholes or city service inquiries.

Although there will be those who will call this concept "Big Brother-ish," the fact remains that 9-11 changed everything, and citizens have become more aware of their surroundings and are more roused to suspicion over just about everything. Plus, this system could be useful, especially in large-crowd situations where things can get out of hand.

A company that apparently wants to make some of the hotter web destinations mobile-accessible is Mdog, which is aiming to make eBay, craigslist and MySpace available to all mobiles. Funny -- except for Craigslist, I can access MySpace and eBay just fine on my mobile. What's going on here?

Well, Mdog wants to make the mobile experience of viewing and interacting with popular websites like eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, Citysearch and MySpace just as it would be on a PC (which is impossible, really) and I applaud the company for trying to make popular websites more accessible to mobile users.

It's a little unclear how that company will go about this except for the partnering with carriers to make these websites highly-visible on the Internet screens of mobile users everywhere, regardless of carrier.

Cincinnati Bell Wireless -- the smaller regional carrier in based in Ohio -- has launched its Ringback Tones service as of this past week. The company hopes that the next step beyond ringtones will be these new "ringback" tones, as I guess standard ringtones and graphics are already a tired game.

While this is not groundbreaking news, it shows that even regional wireless carriers see revenue streams in offerings like ringback tones, which let calling customers hear messages or music instead of just "ringing" when calling the wireless numbers of Cincinnati Bell Wireless customers.

In yet another attempt to get customers to watch movies on tiny, two-inch screens, online DVD rental king Netflix now says that it will begin to offer streaming videos and TV shows to PCs -- and that the capability will eventually reach the mobile handset.

I can see streaming videos and especially TV shows from the Internet into a PC these days (if the process doesn't take forever), but I'm still unconvinced that customers will want to experience anything video-like on a tiny cellphone screen. At least, for a while -- and my phone needs surround sound as well, please.

We've seen more attention paid to WiMax over the past few months, and with industry biggies like Intel, Motorola, and Clearwire clearly attempting to put their stamps on the marketplace, it looks like a clear alternative to WiFi is on the way.

In areas such as Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, WiMax is the focus of quite a bit of development and deployment. Clearwire has made WiMax available in parts of Oregon and Washington, as well as various other markets around the country. If all proves well, we will certainly see a wide-spread offering of service, and we also will see other vendors getting into the mix.

While the development of both fixed and mobile versions of the WiMax spec still need some tweaking, the fact of the matter is that 2007 should shape up to be a very good year for the technology.

With everybody and their dog getting into the wireless ringtone business, wrestling franchise Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling is jumping onboard the bandwagon as well.

TNA will somehow be integrated into certain multimedia with Spike TV's TNA pay-per-view and live events -- including TNA-branded mobile content. I was waiting for this.

The content will include wallpapers, ringtones and more and should allow the techie-wrestiling fan in all of us to get the double fix of....ringtones and face-painted wrestling wallpapers.

It's been a hectic week of wireless news and information, and here are five stories we think will keep you plugged in to the action. Enjoy!

1. SF WiFi contract a done deal
   It's taken a while, but the city of San Francisco and EarthLink and Google have finally agreed on a contract for the development and deployment of a citywide wireless network.
2. And it's official -- Apple intros the iPhone (finally)
   Just a little bit ago, our pals over at Engadget -- who were liveblogging the Apple MacWorld keynote address by Steve Jobs in San Francisco, dropped the bomb.
3. Vonage to sell wireless internet service, courtesy of EarthLink
   In an attempt to broaden its portfolio of services, Vonage says they will be selling high-speed wireless internet access provided by EarthLink. Under the terms of a deal announced by the two companies, EarthLink will allow Vonage to offer access anywhere that EarthLink provides WiFi services.
4. Democrats waste no time in addressing public safety wireless
   With the U.S. Congress now being in control of the Democratic party, public safety issues like nationwide communications interoperability is already on the radar of the new houses of Congress.
5. Free WiFi in Philly available for 10 days
   OK Philadelphians, now is your chance to see what this citywide wireless thing is all about.

Samsung will feature embedded access to Google's mobile applications like Google Maps, Google Gmail and Google search, according to both companies that announced the partnership at this week's CES trade show in Las Vegas.

With Google and Yahoo! fighting for the mobile crown, it's hard to pick a winner. Yahoo!, just this week, announced the second version of its "Yahoo! Go" service that will be embedded in many newer Nokia handsets.

With two new music-centric wireless handsets and another music-centric product at CES, Motorola is gunning for those customers who want to take their music with them in a mobile fashion. Ok, yawn -- hans't this been done before?

It's great that the new RIZR Z6 will feature a microSD card slot and syncing with Windows Media Player along with stereo Bluetooth. If the process to get music to the phone is buggy (probably not), it may be yet another failed attempt at, gasp, trying to take marketshare from Apple's iPod.

But wait -- with the new iPhone synching with the most widely-used music management software on the planet -- iTunes -- will any more music-centric phones really have a chance? 2007 will be the year that question starts to be answered.

Visa -- like rival Mastercard -- is getting into the contactless payments arena by accepting payments, coupons and working with other mobile commerce related items.

Visa's offerings -- which comes at the right time -- "is designed to foster collaboration between the financial services and mobile telecommunications sectors," according to the company.

With mobility being injected into just about every part of commerce these days from smartphones to laptop purchases, it's great to see -- finally -- the two largest credit card companies getting into the action. After all, it is 2007.

Modeo, the company that wants carriers to subscribe to its live, mobile television service (which is commercial quality, apparently), has launched a trial of that service in New York City.

The company wants to spur carrier interest using the trial in the nation's largest city at the same time it is unveiling the service on the other side of the country at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas this week. Can't wait to see that THC smartphone that Modeo will be marketing for use with this service? You may not have to wait long -- just until mid-2007 is all.

The beta testing in NYC will feature hundreds of analysts, industry professionals and business users and will include live video content from Discovery Channel, Fox News and other content providers.

Seems like the mobile phone industry is always pulling for extensions -- for the move to digital, for 911 services -- anything that is not a direct impact on revenue. Chalk one up for the FCC this time, though, as the federal agency said "no" to an extension request from the mobile carrier industry.

The FCC just passed a deadline for meeting e-911 handset-based requirements for location mapping, and the agency had to send a letter of non-compliance to a few carriers to pursue further action.

The 95% e-911 penetration rate is at issue here -- not 100%. Still, some carriers who have built-in GPS location into handsets for years still do not have that level of penetration. Sprint Nextel is right up there, as the level of location integration in its handsets led the industry for a while (maybe still does) -- but the carrier apparently does not have the needed 95% e-911 location assistance penetration.

After looking at Verizon's stuff yesterday, the company looks to try and get a foothold on "real" mobile television at the same time rival Sprint Nextel rolls out full-fledged MediaFLO as its "VUE" service.

The starting channel lineup and the phones were unveiled by Verizon at yesterday's CES show, but not pricing was given. I consider this to be the single most important facet of the entire service -- if Verizon can't price this right, it will fail as so many mobile multimedia offerings have already.

In fact, I'm not I'd pay anything for the ugly-quality mobile TV supplied by most carriers at the moment. Would you? The phones look nice and the data networks are there, but the implementation is, well, not up to par -- yet.

Yahoo announced yesterday at CES in Las Vegas it will be releasing its Go for Mobile 2.0 mobile phone data service, intended to deliver information such as news, stock quotes, and weather to cellphones.

The company believes the mobile phone data services market will experience signficant growth in the next few years, and it felt that it had to make the commitment now before the competition gets stiffer. The software is designed to match a user's settings, like ZIP code and stock preferences, on Yahoo's existing online services, and comes with an embedded search engine.

This is just another example of the growing phenomenon of cellphones being more than just a device to place and receive phone calls. Mobile phones are truly becoming a "one-stop shop" of communications.