Barney Robison Blog

WESTFORD, Mass. — In a continuing effort to provide the best wireless service for local residents in Middlesex County, Verizon Wireless, operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, has expanded its network with a new cell site. The new site increases coverage and capacity to the Nashoba Valley Ski Area, as well as the surrounding area, including the towns of Littleton and Westford, Massachusetts.

This network expansion is part of the company’s aggressive multi-billion dollar network investment each year, including nearly $318 million in New England in 2006 alone, to stay ahead of growing demand for Verizon Wireless voice and data services. Verizon Wireless has invested more than $40 billion since it was formed — more than $5 billion on average every year — into its national wireless network as part of its commitment to offer customers the most reliable service available, including wireless data services such as picture messaging, Read more

BURLINGTON, Mass. — Airwide?Solutions, the leading provider of next-generation mobile messaging and mobile internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, announced today that it has entered into a global reseller agreement with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), and that du, the new Integrated Telecommunications Service Provider in United Arab Emirates, is the first joint customer. Du was seeking a 3rd party messaging gateway solution to offer controlled access to network capabilities, such as SMS, MMS and WAP technologies to their content partners, and chose to deploy the Airwide technology together with Nokia Siemens Networks. The solution integrates with the NSN-delivered network elements, such as messaging centers, browsing gateways, and charging systems.

Airwide helps du to reduce the cost and time involved in bringing rich mobile messaging services to market, automating the partner sign-up process, while preserving and maintaining the security and integrity of Read more

ATLANTA — SaskTel today

announced that it is the first provider in Canada to offer Voice Mail to

Text service powered by SpinVox. Available on both the SaskTel cellular

network and SaskTel’s wireline telephone network, Voice Mail to Text

service automatically converts voicemail messages to text and sends the

text message to the recipient for viewing on a computer, a cellular

phone or another wireless device. The service is available for $25 per

month for unlimited messages, $10 per month for up to 40 messages or 40

cents per message on a pay per use basis.

SaskTel also announced the introduction of online access to SaskTel’s

Voice Mail Service for residential and small business customers as well

as wireless customers. Online Voice Mail, which has been available to

large business customers for several months, gives all of SaskTel’s

voice mail customers the ability to Read more

BIRMINGHAM — Appear, the leading provider of

context-aware mobile software, continues its European expansion with the

announcement of a strategic partnership with telent, a leader in the

provision of ICT services to the UK Transport and Public sectors.

Through the partnership, telent will promote, resell and integrate

Appear’s enterprise mobility platform for its customers. telent will

also offer consulting services for Appear customers in the UK. To

kick-start their collaboration, telent and Appear are exhibiting

together at the upcoming “Transportation Innovation” event at the NEC

Birmingham, on October 10-11 (http://www.transportinnovations.com/).

“When equipping a mobile workforce with PDAs, smartphones and other

wireless devices, it is critical to understand how employees will use

these devices, and what it will cost to deploy and maintain a Read more

RICHARDSON, Texas — Tango Networks?, the leader in seamless enterprise fixed-mobile convergence, today announced that Alastair Westgarth will become the company’s chief executive officer and president, succeeding Douglas J. Bartek, who will assume the role of chairman on the company’s board of directors.

William J. Turner, managing director at Signature Capital and former chairman of the Tango Networks board of directors, will remain on the board and will stay active on the compensation and audit committees.

Westgarth, who has been chief operating officer since March 2007, is a telecommunications industry veteran who had served on the Tango Networks board of directors and advisors before moving into his current position. He has 16 years of senior leadership experience with wireless and data communications companies. Previously, he held executive positions at Airspan, Inner Wireless, First Broadcasting, Nortel and Bell Mobility, in addition to being Read more

MILPITAS, Calif. — Kineto Wireless,

Inc., the key innovator and leading supplier of UMA technology, today

announced the availability of the latest software release for its

industry-leading UMA Network Controller (UNC). This new version adds

support for the 3G Iu core network interface, which enables deployment

of 3G femtocells and dual-mode handsets, and has entered trials with

mobile operators worldwide.

“The femtocell industry is moving rapidly towards commercial

deployments, with trials starting before the end of the year,” said

Vincent Poulbere, principal analyst with Ovum. “Commercially

available, standards-based femtocell solutions are critical to give

operators worldwide the opportunity to enter user trials today and

prepare for deployments in 2008.”

Femtocells are consumer 3G access points that improve coverage and

performance of mobile Read more

MILPITAS, Calif. — Kineto Wireless,

the key innovator and leading supplier of UMA technology, today

announced that it is working together with NXP to create a UMA-enabled

3G solution based on NXP’s Nexperia cellular system solution for UMTS.

“UMA as a technology addresses the needs of consumers and fits the

strategy of many mobile operators. With several commercial rollouts of

UMA-based dual-mode handset services worldwide, operators and handset

manufacturers are now focused on delivering UMA phones with 3G

capability,” said Ton Van Kampen, vice president of business

development for NXP. “NXP is continuing its successful relationship

with Kineto to meet this demand by UMA-enabling our leading Nexperia

cellular system solutions for 3G.”

Kineto’s UMA client software is fully compliant with the latest

3GPP GAN specifications (version 6.10). 3G Read more

WATERLOO, Ontario — Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the availability of new developer tools for creating and testing innovative, mobile-savvy applications for the BlackBerry? Storm?, BlackBerry? Bold? and BlackBerry? Pearl? Flip smartphones.

The developer tools include new versions of the BlackBerry? Java? Development Environment (BlackBerry JDE) that enable the streamlined development of mobile applications, as well as desktop simulators for the BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Pearl Flip smartphones that accelerate mobile application testing. The new BlackBerry JDE versions and simulators are available as free downloads at www.blackberry.com/developers and will be showcased at the BlackBerry Developer Conference (www.blackberrydeveloperconference.com) on October 20-22, 2008 in Santa Clara, California.

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM) Read more

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. and DALLAS — Today Sprint (NYSE:S) and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) announced key enhancements, including GPS to support Sprint Navigation, Windows Mobile 6.1 and the addition of Office Mobile 6.1 for the Samsung ACE.

Introduced in February 2008, the ACE combines the familiarity of Windows Mobile with advanced multimedia features for accessing business and personal essentials. With quad-band capabilities, the Samsung ACE also operates globally on CDMA and GSM/GPRS networks where Sprint has international roaming agreements. The new software’s downloading instructions are available at http://www.samsungmobileusa.com/i325/upgrade and offers:

Enhanced GPS capabilities – Provides advanced GPS functionality and allows support of popular applications such as Sprint Navigation. Sprint Navigation provides audio and visual turn-by-turn directions, more than 10 million local listings, and one-click traffic rerouting on Read more

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Funambol Inc., the

leading provider of open source push email and mobile sync for the mass

market, today announced the world’s first open source mobile sync app for

the Android G1 phone from T-Mobile USA. The Funambol Android Client syncs

contacts from a Google gPhone with a Funambol Server.

Funambol Android Client provides an open source Mobile’We’ capability

for gPhones to make it easy for users to sync and share contacts from other

mobile phones as well as from popular desktop apps such as MS Outlook and

webmail such as Yahoo!, Gmail and AOL. The software was developed by the

Funambol community, which demonstrates the speed at which an open source

development model can support the latest mobile handsets versus proprietary

approaches.

“The Google Phone is a great example of how the mobile industry is

embracing open source, but at Read more