News

After posting its Q2 financial and performance results, Alltel reported a 10% increasing from the Q2 last year. In spite of that, Alltel had a net loss of $69.9 million, which it blamed largely on expenses related to its merger with its private equity investors.

Sprint has quietly announced that PCS Mail will be discontinued on December 31 of this year. Sprint did not state any reason for the shutdown. However, Sprint no longer uses the Sprint PCS moniker, and has disabled all other uses for the sprintpcs.com domain name.

Unlike other recent transitions, such as Apple's MobileMe transition from @mac.com to @me.com, users will be locked out of their email accounts completely. Sprint explains that this is because Sprint will no longer be providing email services of any kind, and wants to re-direct focus on offering easy access to third-party email services.

Japan's NTT DoCoMo allows their subscribers to make new accounts only on its 3G FOMA network, which was the first 3G network in the world, launched in 2001, stopping their acces to its older 2G mova network. The upgrade costs 2100 yen (US$20).

45 million are already using the faster 3G FOMA network, from the 53 million subscribers.

Telefonica of the Czech Republic, EMT in Estonia, and Bharti Airtel of India have all announced that they will start offering the iPhone 3G to their customers on August 22nd. Bharti Airtel does not have a 3G UMTS compatible network yet - so its users will be restricted to EDGE speeds in spite of the fact that they will be using a 3G device.

Citizens from Sri Lanka will have from now on  to carry a certificate of ownership for their cell phones after Sri Lanka  has been introduced a new legislation designed to thwart terrorism. It would make it illegal to share a cell phone with a friend, as they obviously would not have a certificate for your phone.

The legislation, which comes from the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, also states that all people buying a cell phone must present a photo ID. The law also requires that retailers must prove that the source of their handsets is legitimate.

Vodafone and MySpace team up to create "Vodafone Music Reporter", an online global interactive platform, allowing music fans in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK to experience music in the social networking space.

The "Vodafone Music Reporter" profile, hosted on MySpace, will share its existing music initiatives, including summer festivals such as Music Unlimited Cologne in Germany and Vodafone TBAs in the UK and will also feature user generated content to help create communities for all music fans initially in Germany, Spain and the UK with Italy to follow in the next few days.

All fans in the above mentioned countries will be able to enter a competition to demonstrate their reporting skills across the Vodafone Music Unlimited events this summer and win the chance to become part of an MTV show episode online and on mobile.

The profile can be found on www.myspace.com/vodafonemusicreporter_uk (_it in Italy, _es in Spain and _de in Germany).

Pantech has recently passed the C820 GSM smartphone through the FCC. Though the filings only reveal support for GSM (850/1900MHz) and Bluetooth connectivity, the C820 model number suggests that it will be headed to AT&T as the Duo 2.

The original Pantech C810 Duo is a dual-slider smartphone with a numeric keypad and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Powered by Windows Mobile 6 Standard, the Pantech Duo is positioned as an affordable smartphone. Time will tell if the C820 that has passed through the FCC really is a followup model.

Branson and the lucky 15,000 customers who buy a Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card phone by Kyocera Wireless will all have special access to the Virgin Mobile Guest Lounge at the upcoming Virgin Mobile Festival on August 9-10 in Baltimore.

Available nationwide from May 25 through July 31 exclusively at Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores for $99.99, the Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card also comes with 50 music downloads from eMusic and a one-year subscription to SPIN Magazine.

The Limited Edition handset is lick white casing, with blue keypad buttons, exclusive wallpapers, and graffiti-style Festival graphics around an internal screen that imitates a concert stage and features a full QWERTY keypad, ideal for texting and instant messaging, a 1.3 megapixel camera and support streaming music tracks.

Research In Motion is rumored to have a new touchscreen BlackBerry model in the works, called the Thunder. The Wall Street Journal says that they have verified the rumor, though they were not able to confirm any technical specifications.

The BlackBerry Thunder is rumored to feature only 4 hardware buttons, with the entire front face of the handset being taken up by a large touchscreen display. Verizon and Vodafone have reportedly secured a lifelong exclusive contract for the pending handset, with GSM and CDMA both being supported.

Research In Motion refuses to comment on rumors and speculation.

Orange has announced two new voice and data roaming plans designed to help reduce the roaming bills that travelers often receive at the end of a trip. The plans, called Favourite Countries and Travel Data Daily, offer a set fee and reduced per-minute rates.

Favourite Countries offers the most benefit to subscribers who travel often or who use their handsets close to the border. There is a monthly fee of 5EUR (US$8), and subscribers can then select one or more countries from a list of eligible countries. The plan allows discounted minute rates when calling to anywhere in the EU from the selected countries. The plan is currently available in France and Romania, with more countries coming available throughout the summer.