Wireless Federation

Sprint Nextel, US, has reported it’s quater losses wherein it lost a total of 901,000 subscribers. Sprint reported a loss to $344 million compared to a loss of $505 million the previous quarter.

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Qwest Communications International Inc. will now offer Verizon Wireless services to all new subscribers in its residential service area.

Qwest said that it would stop reselling Sprint Nextel Corp.’s wireless service and move its subscribers to Verizon’s network under a five-year agreement. Qwest says it will begin contacting existing Qwest Wireless customers soon with recommendations for Verizon Wireless calling plans and handsets.

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AT&T has asked the Federal Communication Commission to deny the merger request from Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. A merger that was announced last month, to facilitate a national wireless internet network that  would operate on a block of airwaves partly reserved for schools, cities and other nonprofits.

Sprint Nextel has sold it’s 3,300 mobile towers to infrastructure operator TowerCo for USD 670million, which are concentrated in large metropolitian markets throughout the US. The sale will help Nextel focus more on it’s core communications services business while also increasing its liquidity.

Sprint will lease back the towers for use in its CDMA, iDEN and WiMAX networks.

Motorola phones which once ruled the market and were clamored by AT&T for exclusive rights to sell the best - seller Razr and this has taken only one Motorola phone Z9slider this year.

Motorola’s underscores at AT&T due to it’s persistent failure to release handsets that grab the attention of consumers and the service providers whose marketing is crucial to sales. Motorola’s lack of producing new  phones has lead to a depression in it’s market share, which threatens plans to spin off the handset division.

Sprint Nextel offers a software update for the HTC supplied Touch and Mogul smartphones to add support for EV-DO Rev. A data speeds as well as Windows Mobile 6.1. The upgrade also includes enhanced GPS capabilities, allowing support of popular applications such as Sprint Navigation. Sprint Navigation provides audio and visual turn-by-turn directions, more than 10 million local listings, and one-click traffic rerouting, similar to an in-vehicle GPS system.

A new virtual QWERTY keyboard for the HTC Touch gives customers another option for easily responding to emails, text messages and inputting other information - and the Opera mobile web browser is now bundled with the upgrade package.

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SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile carrier by revenue, on Thursday denied of seeking a controlling stake in a major US wireless operator.
In response to the speculation by the media over mobile carrier taking over a US telecom company, SK Telecom, in a regulatory filing stated that it is looking at various business opportunities in the U.S. market.

The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter, reported that SK Telecom and Sprint Nextel are in preliminary talks to form a strategic partnership to develop new handsets and services.The companies have discussed the idea of SK Telecom making a minority investment in Sprint, but they aren’t discussing an outright merger.

The launch of the first iPhone model a year ago boosted interest in the technology tremendously, and the updated model available Friday likely will stoke enthusiasm further, according to analysts, quoted by an Associated Press report.

The report touch-screen manufacturers are going flat out, and more devices will soon be controlled by the tip of your finger.

“After the iPhone came out, a lot of mobile-phone companies said ‘Oh, I can make that kind of touch-screen mobile phone, too,’” Jennifer Colegrove, analyst at iSuppli, quoted by the report said.

In the US, Sprint Nextel just introduced a touch-screen phone, the Samsung Instinct, that’s very reminiscent of the iPhone. Verizon Wireless this year introduced its first two phones that use touch screens as their main interface.

Research In Motion is believed to be making a touch-screen version of the BlackBerry. Sony Ericsson is bringing out its first touch-screen model in a few months.

Colegrove projects that 341 million touch screens will be shipped worldwide this year, up from 218 million in 2007 and 81 million in 2006.

In the first half of 2007, before Apple’s iPhone launched, a big maker of touch sensors for portable electronics would make perhaps a million units per month, Colegrove said.

Apart from the iPhone, demand for touch screens is driven by new phones in Asia that allow the user to write Chinese or Japanese characters on the screen, usually with the aid of a stylus.

Most touch sensors are made in Japan, Taiwan and China by companies that are relatively unknown in the US, like Nissha Printing, Wintek and Truly Semiconductors.

Balda AG of Germany supplied the touch sensor for the first iPhone through a joint venture with a Chinese company.

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Virgin Mobile USA LP has agreed to hire International Business Machines Corp. to handle information technology operations and develop new applications.

Under the Friday agreement, New York-based IBM  will hire 44 Virgin Mobile employees at current pay levels for two years.

The companies expect a five-year initial term for the agreement, from May 15, 2008, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. New Jersey-based Virgin Mobile  can extend the agreement, which also includes engineering services, for one year. The agreement will provide undisclosed IT-related operational cost savings and help the company compete in new product and service delivery, according to a release.

Virgin Mobile will pay IBM through fixed and variable charges, the latter of which will change depending on Virgin Mobile’s need for services. Fees for operations and infrastructure will depend on factors such as the number of servers or workstations needed, the filing said. Network operations center, application development and certain other fees will be hourly. Charges will be adjusted beginning in 2010 based on general economic indicators.

Financial terms of the agreement are not being released.

Virgin Mobile can cancel the agreement with 180 days’ notice plus a fee and deferred transition costs. It may also have to pay wind-down charges for canceling third-party agreements, ending leases or firing employees. The charges wouldn’t apply if IBM didn’t meet certain service levels or violated the agreement.

If either party ended the agreement, Virgin Mobile could ask IBM to provide continuing services for one year to 15 months.

Virgin Mobile plans to file the agreement with the SEC in conjunction with its second-quarter financial report.

On June 27 , Virgin Mobile agreed to buy Helio for about $39 million in equity.

United Kingdom-based Virgin Group and Sprint Corp., the predecessor of Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp, each invested as much as $150 million in mid-2002 to form Virgin Mobile.

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Verizon Wireless’ deal to buy Alltel for €3.7 billion (US$5.9 billion) was applauded by investors and should mean a greater range of choices for Alltel subscribers, but some worried that Alltel’s commitment to rural coverage will get lost, an Associated Press report said.

The report quoted several customers expressing worry over the deal.

Dan Yahro in Bishop, Calif., close to the border with Nevada, has two options for wireless service: Alltel and Verizon Wireless. Now that one is buying the other, he wonders what will happen.

“Alltel has twice the coverage of Verizon here. When you get into Death Valley National Park, which is where I spend a lot of time, Alltel is the only game out there,” Yahro said.

Alltel’s wide-ranging rural coverage in 35 states has given it 13.2 million subscribers and plenty of fans. In its area, mainly in the interior of the country and in the Southeast, it provides an alternative to the four big national carriers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA.

John Wilfong, 29, of Alexander, Ark., said he had service on his Alltel phone everywhere when he worked as a deliveryman.

“When I used to go into a lot of fringe areas, it got a better signal,” Wilfong said. “When I was living at home before I got married, my dad had Cingular and he couldn’t get a signal in the house, but I could.”

Having the No. 2 carrier, Verizon Wireless, swallow the No. 5 carrier, Alltel, would catapult it beyond 80 million subscribers and past AT&T to become the largest carrier in the country. It could also reduce competition in areas where Verizon Wireless and Alltel overlap.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency “would be interested in looking at the proposed transaction.”

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