Mobile Notes: Phone market, Roaming, SMS, iPhone

Source: http://www.goingcellular.com/mobile-notes/mobile-n...

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Yesterday, we heard that mobile phone sales will slow this year. Well, you can’t grow forever, right? And with the global economy not having its best days, this is pretty expected. Now, though, ABI Research is saying that sales will pick up in the second half, and bring 2008 sales back to a respectable level. So which is it? For what it’s worth, the ABI report claims that growth likely won’t hit the “near 20% increase the worldwide market has seen in recent years.” So now this all sounds like semantics.

Consumers rejoiced last year when the FCC mandated that carriers provide non-discriminatory roaming services to its rivals. There was one exception, though: Markets where a company owned a license, but did not build out a network. FCC Chair Kevin Martin said this was in order to encourage companies to build out network rather than mooch off others. Given the recent AWS and 700 MHz auctions, though Martin would like to revisit that exception. “What has come back is there are several instances in which people don’t have access to the spectrum even though they bought the rights to it, or they just barely got the rights and it will take them a while to build. I think the commission is sympathetic to try to and adjust to those circumstances.”

Fujitu has developed a phone that secures itself with fingerprint technology. The best part is that the same system provides a touchscreen for the device. Sounds pretty neat. Too bad it’s across the Pacific with NTT DOCOMO, and likely won’t hit the states, well, ever.

If you work for a government entity, please don’t abuse your text messaging capabilities. Workers in Troy, NY had their text messaging capabilities shut off after they continued to rack up charges. You’d think a warning would be in order…unless, of course, one had already been issued.

Looks like you can get the iPhone 3G on prepaid without a jailbreak. That’s good news. The bad news is that you still need to figure out a way to get out of your contract.

This post was originally written by GoingCellular.com which also authors cell phone reviews of providers like AT&T and T-Mobile Wireless.

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