Telephony Online

As Yahoo reorganizes its business with a new CEO and talks of a Microsoft acquisition still in the air, the software company today brought its mobile strategy to the forefront. Yahoo Mobile, its open, personal mobile portal to the Internet, now has a place in Apple’s iPhone app store and on 300 handsets via the mobile Web. The company also used CTIA to preview a Yahoo Messenger app for the iPhone, which will bring the online chatting service to the handset. more

In the latest breakthrough from its labs, Qualcomm has perfected a new version of its system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology that can be embedded into animals, turning them into living, breathing highly mobile femtocells. By creating biological femtocells, Qualcomm is allaying one of the critical weaknesses of the wireless network: while the devices on the network are mobile, the infrastructure of the network is static. By turning the family dog, for example, into a femtocell, the issues of dead zones and coverage gaps disappear as coverage moves with you wherever you—and your dog—go. more

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg today did a little crystal ball gazing, using his keynote address at CTIA Wireless to describe a mobile future in which wireless connectivity became so pervasive that as many as 5 wireless connections would exist for every man, woman and child in the US. more

Research In Motion today opened the doors to its long-awaited BlackBerry App World, the hardware maker’s effort to stay on par with Apple and others and to woo third-party developers with its well-established business users and rapidly growing consumer base. Co-CEO and president Mike Lazaridis officially unveiled BlackBerry’s app strategy at his keynote today, just one day after Microsoft offered more details on its version, Windows Marketplace for Mobile. more

T-Mobile’s expanding 3G network, which today covers 130 cities, will cover 100 more, doubling its reach to 207 million consumers, by the year’s end, said Robert Dotson, CEO of T-Mobile USA. In his keynote presentation kicking off CTIA today, Dotson reiterated T-Mobile’s commitment to its 3G rollout, as well as advanced high-speed services, HSPA+ and long-term evolution. more

Alcatel-Lucent is taking the development of the long-term evolution (LTE) packet core out of the hands of its mobile networks division, choosing instead to leverage the skills of its wireline IP routing group to build the next-generation IP architecture. The company introduced its evolved packet core (EPC) architecture, which is built on the back of the 7750 Service Router, 30,000 of which already sit in the wireline networks of operators around the world. more

Level 3’s fiber network transport network consists of 42,000 route miles branching like tendrils through rural communities throughout the country. The problem is that fiber is just passing through on its way to some metro gateway. The thousands of tiny communities on Level 3’s rights-of-way have no access to it, until now. Under a deal with rural WiMAX provider Open Range Communications, Level 3 is cracking open its transport network in 500 small communities throughout the US, unleashing hitherto unheard of amounts of capacity to areas that traditionally have trouble getting DSL lines. more

Qualcomm’s MediaFLO managed to find a little wiggle room in the digital TV transition delay, announcing today it has filled mobile TV coverage holes in 16 markets and expand into 3 completely new markets despite broadcasters have another three months before they must vacate Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum. more

Mobile devices could be used for voting in the United States by 2016 – and not just for American Idol, but in government elections. Internet infrastructure vendor VeriSign today released its top five predictions for the

messaging and mobile media markets, including an increase of messaging in the government, enterprise and charitable organizations. In the next few years, the company forecasts that: more

Service providers are in danger of doing away with SMS campaign if the cost-per-thousand of page impressions established for SMS messages is set too high, according to the Mobile Entertainment Forum. The MEF, which represents the mobile entertainment value chain, today released results of a member survey assessing the impact of an anticipated increase on carrier tariffs for mobile terminated SMS text messages, expected to become effective this spring. The survey of United States-based aggregators, content publishers, service providers and carriers suggested that there is disconnect between what carriers expect and what content providers want. more