News From Around The Industry:

•Verizon Adds iPhone Lookalike In Challenge To Apple:
Verizon Wireless unveiled four new mobile phones for the 2007 holiday season, and it hopes that one of them is cool enough to shift the spotlight away from Apple's iPhone. Attracting the most attention is LG Electronics' Voyager, which resembles the iPhone in several ways. The Voyager, exclusively offered by Verizon Wireless, has a large external touch screen that also slides open sideways for a full QWERTY keypad. This gives users a choice on how they access the phone's features, Verizon Wireless said. The keyboard option is one advantage the Voyager could have over the iPhone's touch-screen-only design, in addition to Verizon Wireless' fast 3G data network that the Voyager will use to access the mobile Internet. The iPhone doesn't use 3G technology; instead, it uses the slower AT&T Edge data network. The Voyager also comes with multimedia capabilities, including an HTML Web browser; Verizon Wireless' V Cast mobile TV, video, and music service; and the ability to play MP3, WMA, and unprotected AAC files. For more storage room, the phone has a removable MicroSD memory slot that holds up to 8 Gbytes of memory.


•What Keeps Putting Mobile Video on Hold?:
The potential revenue from mobile video, given the ubiquity of cell phones in the U.S., has content providers and carriers salivating. But progress has been stalled. Some say carriers are limiting the growth of mobile media by adapting technology that curbs cross-carrier distribution techniques for fear of losing customers. Although there is some agreement among content providers, agency executives and analysts that carriers need to open up their systems to stimulate growth of the mobile video platform, specific solutions remain elusive. Navigation tools that help users find content on a mobile device are a critical issue. Technology aside, all of the constituents involved in the mobile video space are still trying to figure out exactly what content users want to watch on their phones.

•CastleCops attacker busted:
A 21-year-old California man has been arrested and charged with launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against CastleCops, an online forum and Web site that specializes in rooting out Internet scams. Gregory King, of California, was arrested last Thursday and arraigned Monday on four federal counts of attacking servers that hosted CastleCops and KillaNet, a Canadian Web and graphics design community. If convicted, King faces up to 10 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine. "All too often, victims of DDoS attacks are left feeling let down and with a sense that the system fails," said Robin Laudanski in a message posted to CastleCops' front page. "Today, the system didn't fail." Laudanski and her husband Paul run CastleCops. Way to go, Prolific Bunny!

•Keith Olbermann nominates AT&T for “Worst Person In The World”:
Russell Shaw writes in his ZDNet blog: "On each of his daily one-hour “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” shows, MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann offers up three nominations for what he considers the “Worst Person In The World.” Sometimes, the “honorees” are not individuals, but companies or institutions. Keith singled out AT&T as the “Bronze” (i.e. third place) “winner.” Keith reasons: the new “criticize us and you could be gone” Terms of Service language I wrote about here (and which more than 60 comments have been made so far). Here’s what Keith said:

But hey guess what During the commercial break after that segment, there appeared an ad from– AT&T."


•AT&T Goes Full Tilt with the Most Feature-Packed 3G Smart Device Available in the United States:
AT&T has announced that the AT&T Tilt™, the most feature-packed smart device available in the United States, will debut exclusively through AT&T beginning Friday, Oct. 5. The AT&T Tilt is the first AT&T-enabled Windows Mobile 6 smart device and features an innovative slide-out QWERTY keypad design, a 3-megapixel camera, 3G data speeds from AT&T’s UMTS/HSDPA-based BroadbandConnect network and complete global connectivity. “The AT&T Tilt is the most comprehensive wireless device on the market today,” said Michael Woodward, vice president, Business Voice/Data and wireless products, AT&T. "In addition to its innovative design, there is no device on the market that packs the number of features that are available on the Tilt.”

•For Motorola, WiMAX & Promise Of A Comeback:
Om Malik chats with Motorola’s chief technology officer, Padamsree Warrior, who says: "WiMAX is no longer a big bet; it is a big business. We have 40 trials in progress. The reason we’re excited about WiMAX is because I think it is a disruptor. Never before has there been a wireless technology that has been deployed globally at the same time, be it developed or emerging economies. It is very affordable and as a result, you can now connect rural areas and metro areas. Furthermore, it is complimentary with existing technologies."
"If you look at Sprint [see video at the end of the post], I think what they are doing is something radical. Sprint is talking about unfettered access to their network. That is pretty disruptive. Similarly in the Netherlands, one of the highest broadband-penetration countries, people are looking for more connectivity on the go. There is a company called WorldMAX that is going to offer a wholesale service, and I think interesting business models are going to come out of it. Because of the cost structure, it isn’t difficult to imagine devices like digital cameras being connected to WiMAX networks in the future."

•White Space Devices Will Kill Us All!:
Mike Masnick over at TechDirt writes: "The debate over white space spectrum has gone on for quite some time. Basically, the FCC handed out a ton of spectrum (for free, mind you) to TV broadcasters years ago. In order to prevent against interference, there's always been a requirement for some "buffer" space. However, as technology has improved, the need for this buffer space has decreased, and plenty of tech companies would be interested in making use of some of that basically unused spectrum by having it set aside as open spectrum. Earlier this year, some of those companies, led by Microsoft and Google, delivered a device to the FCC to test. Unfortunately, the device had some problems. However, the concept is sound -- and with some tweaking, it's quite reasonable that such a device could work without interfering with TV signals. But you wouldn't know that from broadcasters, who love to hoard their spectrum. Matthew Lasar writes in to note that in responding to the device, the broadcasters have gone way over the top in describing the horrible things that will happen if the white space is made available: 'Why would the FCC consider allowing millions and millions of these interference causing devices, like 'germs,' to spread throughout America with the ability to attack the TV receivers in people's homes, apartments, hotel rooms, hospital rooms, dormitories, etc., with no way for the owner of the TV set (the 'victim') to determine who was causing the 'illness' to his or her TV set?' They also suggest that allowing this white space to be used would 'risk the outrage of America's citizenry'."

• Online Video Streaming: Not There Yet:
Melissa J. Perenson reports on streaming TV: Beyond the convenience of on-demand video for the specific selection of titles Joost provides, well, what does online streaming really offer? If I'm willing to subject my eyes to inferior TV image quality, tell me: Why should I spend big bucks on a high-definition TV set, let alone a high-definition disc player and a whole new library of discs to replace my hundreds of DVDs? I'd rather pay a fee to a service that both aggregates enough content to warrant my signing up and provides a superior viewing experience. At this point, I see streaming as providing a limited service--useful for occasions when I miss episode X of show Y and need to catch up, for instance. Streaming is also filling a void, as in the example of the excellent WCSN, a site that delivers targeted, niche sports coverage that no one else on television, cable, or the Internet is doing (gymnastics coverage in a small window is better than nothing at all). Get the image quality up, improve the reliability, and bolster the title selection, though, and the potential for Internet-based streaming TV is only as limited as the constraints of the service provider's imagination.