• LTE wireless backhaul provider Ceragon Networks plans to acquire Norway-based Nera Networks for $48.5 million. Nera is a leading manufacturer of microwave radio systems and specializes in distance microwave links. The company is also known for its project management and turnkey project capabilities and counts several Tier 1 operators in Europe, Latin America and Africa among its customers. Following the close of the acquisition, the companies will combine into a single organization.
• T-Mobile USA has tapped Location Labs for its new FamilyWhere location service and its distracted driving prevention app, DriveSmart Plus. The FamilyWhere app for Android provides parents with real-time location information about their child or other family members and the option to receive location alerts via the Web, text message or e-mail. The DriveSmart Plus app, also for Android, automatically detects when a handset user is driving and sets the phone into "driving mode," which sends incoming calls directly to voicemail and prevents access to text messages, except through applications specified by the customer.
• Cricket Communications' Muve Music service is now available in Las Vegas. The music service offers unlimited music downloads for $55 per month and is available on the Samsung Suede. Muve Music will be available in Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Diego and several other markets next month, with additional coverage coming this spring.
• Facebook has launched a new feature phone app which works on more than 2,500 devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and other manufacturers. The app was built in cooperation with Snaptu and provides a better Facebook experience for feature phone users. The app is available through m.fb.snaptu.com/f, and comes with 90 days of free data access through some operators in Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Poland, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Tunisia, the Dominican Republic and Romania. It will soon launch in Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil and Bulgaria.
• Mobile search company ChaCha has received $3 million in new funding from Qualcomm Ventures, bringing its total funding since its inception five years ago to $75 million. ChaCha says it has nearly 32 million unique visitors every month and its service answers more than 3 million questions every day.
• Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has been elected as ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Eshoo is the first woman to ever serve in the position and plans to focus on freeing up spectrum, expanding affordable broadband services and moving to next-generation 911 services.
• Vlingo has added French, German, Italian and Spanish language support to its BlackBerry app. The paid app is available on BlackBerry App World or directly from Vlingo.
• Mobixell Networks says it is now optimizing one petabyte of mobile video traffic every month. One petabyte is 1 billion megabytes of data, roughly equivalent to 350,000,000 minutes of YouTube videos. Mobixell attributed the milestone to the increase in mobile video consumption and its recent customer wins with top operators in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Given the current rate of growth and additional sites being launched, Mobixell predicts that its existing customer base will reach the five petabyte per month marker by the end of 2011.
• JDSU announced that a major European communications service provider customer has selected its test solutions for the deployment of emerging 100GE and LTE next-generation networks. Specifically, the unnamed service provider chose the JDSU Optical Transport Network (OTN) and 100GE tester, called the JDSU ONT-506 100GE test solution, for its ability to evaluate new transmission technologies and key performance data prior to deployment.