| It’s been a helluva couple years for Sprint — new networks, new platforms, and new acquisitions have all been intermixed with a drawn-out recovery effort that’s undoubtedly weighed heavy on the hearts and minds of staff at the company’s dual headquarters in Kansas and Virginia. With more (albeit slower) subscriber losses in its most recent earning’s report, it’s still all but impossible to say whether they’ll be able to survive in the long term as an independent operation, and we’re not quite sure what to make of this latest move, either: a promise of 2,000 to 2,500 job cuts to be announced through the fourth quarter, many of which will be completed before the year’s up |
DROID and iPhone even steven
Bye Bye Garmin and Tom Tom
| As the endless brouhaha ringing from all corners of the Internet has proven, AT&T (or Apple, or whoever takes the blame in the end) really dropped the ball on this Google Voice thing. Whether it was rejected outright or shelved indefinitely, competing parties have been quick to play on their delays. |
| Now, Sprint has come along and done something rare: they’ve dropped long-established fees. With Google Voice’s new keep-your-number feature in mind, Sprint will be doing away with the call forwarding fees associated with third-party voicemail services come mid-November. |
| As it currently stands, call forwarding on Sprint currently costs $0.20 per minute. For example: if a user has their line set to forward to their Google Voice mailbox after a certain number of rings and the caller leaves a 5 minute message, that call would cost the user a buck. No longer, says SprintRead more at www.mobilecrunch.com |
I love google voice and this is another nice feature they have added | Google Voice is a great way to manage phone hell by giving you a single phone number that automatically rings your mobile, home, work and other phones based on your choice of rules and settings (who’s calling, when, etc.). But people are still stuck with their legacy phone numbers, and moving completely away from them is difficult. |
Not any more. Tonight Google is launching a third option, a new feature that allows mobile users to move their voicemail away from their carrier and over to Google Voice. The benefits: your mobile voicemails go into your Google Voice inbox along with other voicemails and text messages, plus you can create custom greetings for callers and your voicemails are all automatically transcribed (sometimes hilariously).Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is the top recipient of campaign contributions from large Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast over the past two years, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. McCain has taken in a total of $894,379 (much of that money going to support his failed 2008 bid for the presidency), more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) $341,089. |
Meanwhile, McCain has emerged as the ISPs’ biggest champion against new “network neutrality” rules from the Federal Communications Commission, which voted Thursday to move forward in the process to adopt such rules. Shortly after the FCC vote, McCain introduced a bill (the “Internet Freedom Act“) that would block regulation of the nation’s largest broadband networks. Read more at www.dvorak.org |
 The idea is that if you only use Google Voice to send and receive calls—and you set Google Voice so that it only displays your Google Voice number when it rings, all of your calls will be free, and you may never need to use another minute again. Each carrier is different, so we’re looking at what each plan looks like, and how to use it with Google Voice to get free calls.
Read more at lifehacker.com |
The Android marketplace is really stepping up providing really viable alternatives to the iPhone. Tonight, Google’s Android platform is getting another application that gives it functionality iPhone users can only gaze at longingly. This time, it’s Ustream , a mobile streaming application that lets you broadcast video directly from your phone. The application will be available on the Android Market by 9 AM PST tomorrow morning. |
Another great feature: Ustream for Android lets you ‘overtake’ a currently broadcasting stream, provided you’re the owner of the account. For example, we could use the mobile application to take over our CrunchCam stream while we’re on the go and have some breaking news. Then, when we finished our mobile broadcast, the feed would revert to the camera that’s constantly streaming from inside TechCrunch headquarters (you can see a demo in the video below). Very slick. Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
Usually manufacturers tie their hardware release to one carrier, but Motorola is looking to change that with the release of the Cliq, its first Android platform | T-Mobile doesn’t get to have all the fun with the CLIQ — we know with some certainty that the Sholes is destined to bring Motorola’s Android push to Verizon, and if CEO Sanjay Jha has anything to say about it, the fun doesn’t stop there. Speaking at an analyst conference, Jha mentioned yesterday that his company is “in talks with all large operators in the US,” meaning that Cellular South and Cincinnati Bell are probably out of luck in the short term — but AT&T and Sprint are likely getting the full-court press to sign up for a MOTOBLUR-powered phone or two as we speak.Read more at www.engadget.com |
Happy to see the adoption rate increasing. It will only lead to better phones in the end for all of us as the competition bar continues to rise | Though it already broke cover at IFA out in Germany a few days ago, LG’s just sealed the deal on its very first Android phone — the GW620 landscape QWERTY slider. Interestingly, the “Etna” name seen at IFA is missing from the official press release, but otherwise, the 3-inch touchscreen mentioned lines up nicely with what we’d previously known. Camera specs aren’t mentioned here, but as far as we know, it’s going to clock in at 5 megapixels and the phone looks to be loaded with a very bone-stock Android build sans LG-specific enhancements like an S-Class port.Read more at www.engadget.com |
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Sprint Cutting up to 2500 Jobs
