AT&T Announces Cutbacks in Wireline Business
By Teresa von Fuchs

AT&T announced late Friday that it plans to eliminate about 1.5% of its workforce or 4,650 jobs, specifically cutting back on managerial positions within its wireline business. The layoffs are part of the company’s previously announced plan to cut annual costs by about $7 billion by 2009. The country’s largest telecom said it expects to post a pretax cost of about $374 million for these cutbacks in its first quarter report.

Since the company’s acquisition of BellSouth in late 2006, AT&T has said it plans to reduce workforce overlap in operations, but the company, which reported having about 310,000 employees as of the end of January, says it plans to keep its employee levels stable throughout this year as it hires more people to support growth areas.

In more AT&T news, the company announced that through a subsidiary it has completed the Edge Wireless acquisition. Edge Wireless provides wireless communications services in Oregon, Northern California, Idaho and Wyoming.

AT&T said that with the addition of Edge's wireless network, it will be able to deliver broader wireless coverage to customers in the Northwest, including Edge's existing subscribers.

The acquisition follows review and approval by the FCC.

Motorola Invests in Virtualization Company
By Teresa von Fuchs

Virtualization software maker VirtualLogix announced that Motorola’s investment arm, Motorola Ventures, has invested in the company. VirtualLogix is working on a real-time virtualization application for mobile phones that would allow handsets to run multiple operating systems. Other financial backers and partners include Cisco, Intel and Texas Instruments.

In a statement, Motorola said that VirtualLogix’s technology “enables the mobility of applications from the desktop to devices, improves quality of service and security in an open mobile world, and will enable a new generation of dynamic individual user experiences.”

Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures, said in the statement: “As the mobile ecosystem grows increasingly complex, demand for simplified product designs that allow dynamic mobile experiences to run across multiple platforms will intensify. Virtualization offers a solution to this complexity. Our investment in VirtualLogix will help accelerate the delivery of their technology to next-generation communications devices and infrastructure equipment.”

Most recently, VirtualLogix announced its solution’s compatibility with Microsoft Windows.

IBM Launches Mobile Web Research Initiative
By Teresa von Fuchs

As part of IBM’s 10th anniversary celebration of its India Research Lab, the company announced a new mobile Web initiative. The new research program will focus on bringing simple, easy-to-use mobile Web services to users whose main Web browsing device is the mobile phone, not the PC.

“The world is entering the 'Era of the Mobile Web.' In many countries, the mobile phone has become an electronic wallet, the window to the World Wide Web, an education device and more, and globally, mobile devices outnumber PCs, credit cards and TVs,” said Dr. Daniel Dias, director of IBM’s India Research lab, in a statement. “Today, we are launching projects that will make a mobile device even easier to use than the PC, allowing you to do everything you can with a PC and much more.”

The Indian research lab will lead the mobile Web projects, but work also will be done in eight other IBM labs in six countries.

Specific projects include: voice-enabled mobile commerce, instant translation applications, mobile computing applications, mobile social networking and mobile health care information-sharing applications.

In a statement about the project, IBM said that its Indian research facility will serve as the company’s hub “for delivering new mobile Web solutions to emerging markets around the world.”

“The rise of globalization is shifting the way business works," said John Kelly, senior vice president of IBM Research, in the statement. “Business leaders need to anticipate how these changes will affect their ways of operating and look to new technological innovations to help them succeed in this new landscape.”

IBM's Institute for Business Value predicts the number of mobile Web users will grow by 191% from 2006 to 2011, reaching 1 billion.

Rumor: Acer Reportedly Working on WiMAX Laptop
By Teresa von Fuchs

PC maker Acer is reportedly planning to add a WiMAX module to its Aspire 5920 notebook. Reports claim that the notebook will be available later this year and will be manufactured by Quanta Computer.

PC World reported that Sprint Nextel could be a reseller of the notebook and that it could be sold along with service contracts, similar to the way the carrier sells handsets.

Sprint refused to comment on the news, saying only that Acer may be working on “developing a device that works on the WiMAX network, but they are not a core ecosystem partner.”

The PC World report cited a product marketing manager’s comments from a WiMAX news conference in Taipei.

Skype Announces International Calling Plans
By Teresa von Fuchs

Skype has announced new long distance calling plans including an unlimited plan for international calls to 34 countries. The eBay subsidiary said the new plan allows unlimited international calls for $9.95 per month; available countries include Australia, Canada, Chile, China, most of Europe, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.  The plan includes calls to landlines, and calls to mobile phones are included in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Skype also announced plans to expand its unlimited calling plan to the United States and Canada to include certain cities in Mexico for $5.95 per month.

“This move is a natural step for Skype. Skype was founded on the principle of making free voice and video calls available to people all around the world,” said Stefan Oberg, vice president and general manager of telecoms at Skype, in a statement. “And now we’re making it even easier for the Skype community to call their friends and family who are not yet on Skype. Our subscriptions give people an easy, hassle-free choice for how and when they want to catch up with their loved ones.”

China Mobile Posts 37% Jump in Net Profit
By Teresa von Fuchs

China Mobile posted a 37% increase in net profit for Q1 2008 compared with the same quarter a year ago. China’s largest mobile telecom said the rise was due in part to a rapidly growing subscriber base. China Mobile reported net profit for Q1 2008 of $3.44 billion, up from $2.5 billion for the same period a year earlier.

Net profit, however, was lower than analyst’s average expectations of $3.56 billion.

China Mobile posted revenue of $13.29 billion for the quarter, up year-over-year from $11.1 billion. The carrier said it added 22.8 million subscribers during the quarter, up from 19.7 million the previous quarter.

Handset Database Tracks Hundreds of Attributes
By Evan Koblentz

Tira Wireless will announce public versions of its handset device database tomorrow, starting with 1,257 devices from 54 manufacturers, officials said.

Called modd – mobile open device database – and spelled in lowercase, Tira will offer a free version and two commercial versions, said Simon Keogh, VP of product management.

The company started in 2001 to develop mobile games.  A few years later, “We began to focus our attention a little bit more than on addressing the challenges of mobile content,” Keogh said.  Tira refocused on testing and porting services for other developers.  “One of the things that we had been constantly fearing is that they need information about specific device attributes,” he explained.

With the new modd service, the free version is available now in beta form, and users can perform simple searches.  The standard edition costs $10,000 per year.  It’s a downloadable program, allows any form of database query and users get an export feature.  The enterprise edition has various license fees, includes programming interfaces and offers options for letting  customers republish data.

Meanwhile, “Our definition of ‘open’ is that we are going to be enabling application developers to profile handsets that they have and to get the data sent back to them,” Keogh explained.  That works by installing a Tira program on a handset that’s not in the database. The program sends a signal back to the Tira software, which analyzing the device attributes, and the data is saved for future tests.

Future versions may include data related to market share and mobile operating systems.  That could be useful, for example, when a content developer needs to decide which devices and OS versions to write for first.

Count Calories on the Go
By Monica Alleven

Now there’s no excuse for blowing your diet while out and about. About.com Health is launching Calorie Count Mobile, a free service that allows mobile users to receive nutritional data and ratings of more than 70,000 foods.

The mobile service is an extension of the company’s Website. It includes two parts: a WAP site and SMS. They complement each other, but About.com Calorie Counter directors found that some people are more comfortable using SMS than trying to access a mobile site. Information can be accessed by texting the word “food,” with the name of the food for which you want data, to 432584.

About.com had been looking at the mobile space for a while; the calorie counter is the first thing to go live. It’s one of those things that people are constantly checking, but they can’t always be in front of a computer when they’re getting ready to have lunch. “It was a natural fit,” said Erik Fantasia, a director of Calorie Count at About.com.

It can resolve a lot of bets on the spot, too, he says. When friends are mulling over how many calories are in a salad or fries, they can look it up. The database includes food at popular fast-food restaurants and ratings.

A text with the word “food mcdonalds” generates a return text message with “small French fries C- and medium French fries C-”. Texting “food mcdonalds cheeseburger” generates a message saying “double cheeseburger, 460 cal, Grade F.”

It’s apparent from the mobile searches that people are using the information to make decisions at restaurants, said Igor Lebovic, also a director of Calorie Count. On the Website, the searches are more aligned with the types of food you would find in a kitchen.

News Briefs for April 21, 2008
Companies in today’s briefs include: Alltel Wireless, Research In Motion, Nokia Siemens Networks, China Mobile Beijing, AT&T, Cisco Systems, Antenova

• Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Curve 8330 will be available in Alltel Wireless retail stores beginning May 1. The handset is available starting today for pre-order from Alltel’s Website.

• Nokia Siemens Networks announced that it has been selected by China Mobile Beijing (CMBJ) to provide its Usability Consulting Service, focusing on the company’s color ringback tone service and Web portal user experience.

• AT&T has announced a video conferencing partnership with network equipment maker Cisco Systems. The two said they will start jointly selling a top-end video conferencing system in 23 countries during the second half of this year, expanding into more countries in 2009. The partnership allows the companies to sell video conferencing as a telecom service rather than simply an equipment sale. The new service includes Cisco’s video conferencing system called TelPresence. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

• Antenova, the integrated antenna and RF solutions company, announced the availability of two new high performing multiband High Dielectric Antenna embedded antennas for mobile handset and portable device applications; a 4 mm low profile penta-band antenna and a 6-band antenna. Antenova says its 4 mm low-profile penta-band HDA antenna is suited for ultra-thin mobile handsets, and the new 6-band HDA antenna is suited for mobile handsets, PDAs and UMPCs for the global markets.