new national carrier

So the federal government overruled the CRTC concerning the foreign ownership of Wind Mobile and Wind might be offering wireles service as soon as Monday in Toronto and Calgary.

Hilariously, Rogers CEO commented that “There’s no question in my mind that Canada cannot support more than three national facilities-based players [...] It’s inconceivable to me”. Hopefully he’s right and that means one of our shitty existing telcos will finally go under. Wind’s CEO also had a great response: “I’m sure somebody told Starbucks that there wasn’t room for more coffee shops”.

Wind also has some pretty funny ads comparing cell phone plans to hot dogs, bike locks, and sidewalks.

Google to Buy AdMob for $750 Million – NYTimes.com. kinda surprised by this since google had a decent competing ad toolset. i wonder how much revenue/traffic admob actually had?

T-Mobile: we probably lost all your Sidekick data. “Well, this is shaping up to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of cloud computing”. seems that Sidekick’s store a bunch of data in the cloud and cache used stuff locally. via ram.

globeandmail.com: Cellphone giants connect on chargers. 17 major cell phone manufacturers agreed on a standard charger cable for all cell phones (it’s the micro-USB that’s found on new RIM devices).

Inauguration Crowd Will Test Cellphone Networks – NYTimes.com. it’s gonna get busy.

FT.com – Google homes in on revenues from phones “Google on Wednesday said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset”

Meanwhile, Microsoft Buys Danger. they make the sidekick cell phones. interesting.

QIK | Streaming video right from your phone. you just need one of these nokia phones. kinda cool.

A 34-company committee couldn’t create a successful ham sandwich, much less a mobile application suite.
- on google’s mobile phone platform

GigaOM » Gizmo, now making browser based phone calls. it’s a flash plugin and it lets you make phone calls through a web browser. i didn’t try it out though.

AppleInsider | Apple to see near 50% gross margin on each iPhone sale. not too shabby.

Complicated Laws = Free Calls techcrunch is reporting about a new site, allfreecalls.net, that’s offering free long distance (available country codes) which you access by calling a number in Iowa. no limits and no catches. what’s insane is that they’re making money through an insane FCC loophole.

YouTube – A Closer Look At The iPhone. cbs news footage of the iphone in use. pretty slick. via ram.

CellSwapper Solves A Very Annoying Problem. a website for selling a cell phone contract that you don’t want. just in time for the iPhone rush.

GigaOM » Forget iPhone, Think Google Phone. rumor has it that google is talking to HTC and Orange about a possible google phone. Om fuels the rumor further by pointing out a purchase google made last year related to a possible mobile/cell OS.

Slashdot | Verizon Can’t Do Math. this poor guys takes 24 minutes to explain to three different people at verizon that 0.002 cents is different than 0.002 dollars. the confidence of the final manager is awesome.

The Seattle Times: Lawsuit against Palm makes patent-infringement claims. NTP, the fuckwad company that sued RIM and won $600+ million for patents that shouldn’t exist, is now sueing Palm.

Google Maps Mobile. with an actual demo using a java applet. its like 1999 all over!

NewsForge | Today’s cell phone system argues for retaining network neutrality. case and point.

HBO making Entourage mini-series for Cingular cell phones. 4-minute episodes starring Johnny Drama.