The Wireless Report

If you are a fan of the Fox show "24" -- you'll be glad to know that Sprint Nextel has teamed up with the show to offer mobile content related to the show as it begins a new season tomorrow.

Sprint will be offering customers access to sneak peeks, show-related quizzes, games, images, ringers and the "24" logo. In other words, all kinds of phone-related content will be available to Sprint customers as part of the partnership.

In addition to those standard items, Sprint will be offering a Survival Guide manual that is updated bi-weekly. In case you need it, the guide will includes tips to overcome the direst circumstances that may arise during a "covert op."

Yeah, we all need that I think.

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.

Will Apple's iPhone be a threat to mobile carriers, hardware device makers -- or both? Both I say -- because Verizon, Alltel and Sprint Nextel will miss out on the frenzy that is sure to be caused when Apple releases the device this June.

I expect hundreds of thousands (if not more than that) to buy the device almost immediately, and if those customers don't have Cingular, they *will* switch. Hence, the CDMA carriers will have a few issues with defections.

What about hardware makers? It's already predicted that Apple will be shaking up the hardware industry and forcing mobile phone manufacturers to produce slicker and more easy-to-use handsets. That alone sounds great to me, as we need it badly.

How many text messages do you send and receive each month? A few hundred of a few thousand? Most of us fall in between that range, and if we ever sent about 20,000 messages, our hands would be falling off probably.

So then, can you imagine someone sending over 186,000 text messages in a month? This guy from India obviously set a world record by the feat, although I hope that was not his overall purpose.

He is scheduled for some new fingertips this month :-)

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.

With Motorola now realizing that it can't hang on to its older-than-old and unintuitive GUI on current and new handsets, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker is embracing Linux in many new handsets instead of just using the operating system in a few select higher-end handsets.

The new Motorola RIZR Z6 is a slider handset in the fashion of the older RAZR and KRZR that features, of course, a slim design and a similar design (down to the flat keypad) and now runs on Linux. With a built-in media player, the handset has just about every feature most users could want -- quad-band GSM/EDGE, 2 Megapixel camera with flash, stereo Bluetooth, MicroSD slot and a full-fledged media player with tight integration into Windows Media Player 11.

See, Windows and Linux can play well together, right?

With the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas right now, there are over a hundred thousand new people that have been unleashed on the city -- and finding your way to where you need to go can be a mess in a crazy mish-mash of people like that.

No fear - GPS firms are everywhere this week at CES touting their hardware and software solutions. In fact, mobile carrier Sprint Nextel and partner TeleNav announced a GPS navigation service at the start of CES that features traffic rerouting features on a phone.

Now, for those of you that live in high-traffic areas with cabs-a-plenty, this may be a lifesaver. TeleNav's president says that the system keeps tabs on traffic ahead of a subscriber's vehicle and alerts users if there are traffic problems -- and then presents re-routing solutions. Think of that -- something that alerts you to traffic snarls up ahead (out of eyesight) and then suggests a different path. Now, that sounds like a very useful mobile tool to me -- among many others that seem like novelties.

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.

Sprint said this weekend that it is the first wireless carrier to offer mobile video capability to more than one million customers over its nationwide Power Vision (EV-DO) network, which covers more than 8,700 cities and communities in the U.S.

Sprint now offers live programming, full-length movies, live concerts, Spanish-language programming and many other features on U.S. mobile phones -- including more than 50 TV channels viewable directly on your wireless handset.

With the "capability" of serving a million customers -- ones that probably have upgraded to EV-DO handsets recently, I surmise -- how many actually subscribe to some of Sprint's mobile TV services? Capability and actual subscriptions are slightly different beasts.

Will Verizon be launching a TV service using MediaFLO technology soon? That is the scuttlebutt on the street at the CES trade show that started this morning.

Along with that rumor, three network programming providers are expected to be part of a rumored announcement as well. The video quality of a MediaFLO network should be mile ahead of the jagged and pixelated TV offerings now available on Verizon's VCAST service.

A while back, The Wireless Report spoke to executives from both Sprint Nextel and Microsoft about their alliance in mobile search and the partnership that Sprint and Microsoft were going to form on Sprint's wireless web property (WAP deck).

Answers below were courtesy of Michael Inserra at Sprint and Matt Champagne at Microsoft. Thanks guys for being so kind in answering our questions! Let's begin.

1) Please explain the Microsoft Windows Live search and its capabilities related to its partnership with Sprint for our readers.

While developing Windows Live Search for mobile we had an essential understanding that mobile search is not the same as searching on a PC. Searching on your device, on the go, is more about immediacy and action, so we are designing software and striking partnerships that make mobile search more efficient and usable in the hands of a mobile customer. We've worked to make sure Windows Live Search for mobile allows consumers to search the Web and search for local points of interest, providing easy access to precise answers alongside actionable and useful information.

As brought to life by this announcement with Sprint, we have also worked very hard to ensure that Windows Live Search for mobile is optimized for the needs and business models of our partners, such as Sprint. This "optimization" delivers more accurate search results of content in the operator portal, monetization opportunities for local businesses and advertisers, and more meaningful results for mobile search customers. Translated to devices, when a Sprint customer pulls up the Sprint vision deck, at the bottom of listing page is a search box. This search box is now powered by Windows Live to connect users to people, places and businesses. Any search will return relevant location-based content from the Internet as well as Sprint's catalog of ringtones, games and related services. For example, a customer who searches for "sports" on their wireless phone will see results from Sprint's catalogue such as NFL-related wallpapers, screensavers and ringtones, in additional to local information available online such as business listings like sports stores, maps, directions to the nearest ballpark or relevant advertisements from local businesses. The user can see driving directions or execute a save-as for contact information (phone numbers, street number/names) to their handset.

From Microsoft's perspective, we're approaching the mobile search opportunity looking at the technology and user experience, while also considering partnerships and the best way to engage with the industry to not only deliver the best services to customers, but also provide new opportunities for mobile operators, OEMs and advertisers to drive new revenue streams and build up the ecosystem.

2) Will Windows Live Search completely replace the search tools and capabilities across the WAP decks for Sprint? How about Nextel?

Other local search applications we offer on devices will still be available. However, a major difference is that Sprint's mobile search powered by Windows Live combines the functionality of local search services with the ability to search internal content such as ringtones, applications, etc. Also, Sprint's local search text entry box is integrated on the Sprint mobile web home page - where it is more easily accessed, discovered and used then other solutions. Additionally, Sprint's service will be immediately available, and at no extra charge, to Sprint data users (on compatible handsets) without requiring a download, web page re-direction, or any other action from the end user - unlike other search applications.

Sprint's mobile search powered by Windows Live is not available on Nextel devices today (those that operate on our iDEN network) but it will be in the future; the specific date is TBD.

3) With Sprint recently acknowledging that it will provide a link to the new downloadable Google Gmail java application for mobiles, will the Windows Live Search feature some kind of mobile access to email beyond the searching applications for Sprint's entire WAP deck?

No. The search application and email applications are separate. We do offer access to Google Gmail from the device, as you indicate. In late November, Sprint launched Sprint Mobile Email, a new downloadable email client powered by SEVEN. The application provides easy access to multiple email accounts in one place and users can access their accounts from well-known providers including Windows Live.

Movie house Paramount Pictures wants to promote its latest theatrical and DVD releases -- and will be enlisting the world of wireless to help it on its quest.

The movie company has enlisted mobile content management provider Crisp Wireless to manage its new mobile phone portal. But getting customers there will be, um, a possible challenge.

I know that one of the first places I browse to on my handset is a movie studio's WAP site. Just kidding. Although Paramount wants to build a direct-to-consumer relationship here, there are already multiple sources for movie reviews from mobile website providers with more information than Paramount could possibly supply.

So, I ask -- what is the value add here?

While the push-to-talk (PTT) feature has been the main differentiating feature of Nextel's handsets and network, the feature has come to carriers Verizon Wireless, Sprint (as ReadyLink) and Cingular Wireless as well.

While the Nextel solution is easily the most elegant and fastest from many reviews, PTT technology will be arriving on BlackBerry devices soon, as RIM has signed a deal with Kodiak Networks, a leader in PTT implementation.

Kodiak's solution relies on a J2ME application that will be embedded into future RIM handsets with features like availability status, call me alerts, call waiting, contact list privacy, voice messaging and convert-to-cellular capabilities.

It appears that 80% of the USA's population now reside in areas where phone calls to the emergency services 911 service from a mobile phone now includes delivery of the caller's call-back number and location to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).

This is great news, as I had no idea that the penetration rate for wireless e-911 was so high. Why doesn't the wireless industry trumpet this as a selling point? Yes -- 100% penetration would be great, but 80% is no small matter either, and it would serve as a powerful marketing message to a certain segment of the wireless customer base. Why isn't it marketed? Well, because it's not a revenue generator most likely.

Google -- which is actually second on the Chinese marketplace for Internet search -- said today that it will offer Internet search services to some China Mobile mobile-phone users early this year.

Chalk a win up for Google, which is trying to place itself as the most-popular search service in the world's most-populous country as local sensation Baidu.com continues to beat it there.

Mobile search, on the other hand, is a huge step for users of China Mobile's wireless service, who already do several things on mobiles that many of us don on PCs now -- like searching for things.

China Mobile is the largest mobile carrier in the country, with 296.41 million users at the end of November, and the total installed user base in China -- the world's largest mobile-phone market -- has 455 million users.