First there was the spectacular demise of ESPN Mobile (the MVNO), then there was slow and timely death of Amp’d Mobile. ESPN Mobile was idiotic – who is going to pay about $60 a month the whole year to watch ESPN on a small screen, when most fans follow just one sport (e.g. baseball or [...]
Archive of entries posted on July 2007
Crown Castle tunes out of Modeo mobile TV
Crown Castle International, the Tower operator is dumping its multimedia mobile TV service called Modeo that is based on the DVB-H standard that it tested successfully in New York City earlier this year. Crown Castle is now going to lease the U.S. nationwide 1670-1675 MHz spectrum it used for Modeo to Telcom Ventures, LLC and [...]
Why Skype is Better than Ooma
Ooma has a lot of buzz and hype around it, despite still being in private beta. But let’s look beyond the hype and compare Ooma with other telephony services. I’m specifically choosing Skype although there are other players to consider. This will give a good idea how Ooma stacks up against Skype and for who [...]
Verizon Wireless Enables YouTube Video Uploads
Verizon Wireless is now the first U.S. Wireless Service Provider (WSP) to enable YouTube Video. Now you can record videos on your mobile phone and upload the videos directly to YouTube using the shortcode YTUBE (98823) using MMS. This is a pretty easy to remember shortcode, but UTUBE would’ve been easier to remember (perhaps that [...]
Mobile Video subscriptions surge
The popularity of video and Internet TV is proliferating to the mobile! About 8.4 million wireless customers in the U.S. now subscribe to mobile video, reports Telephia – that’s 4% of all U.S. mobile subscribers. In the first quarter of 2006, there were 3.3 million mobile video subscribers, and in the first quarter of 2007, [...]
IThentic to launch under-three-minute mobile entertainment videos
iThentic, an online and mobile video content company, has teamed with Independent Television Service International to commission eight short films from award-winning filmmakers around the world. This work will be for a project dubbed “Global Mobile” banner with food as the common theme. Each segment will run under three minutes. iThentic has also completed pilot [...]
AT&T Video Calling service goes Nationwide
AT&T/Cingular started with a limited commercial rollout of the Video Share service in June 2007. Now, AT&T Video Share goes “nationwide” in nearly 160 Markets. While Europe has seen video calling services earlier (albeit with limited success), this is the first-ever service in the U.S. that enables mobile subscribers to share live video over their [...]
Amp’d Mobile Shutting Down Today
It’s been almost 2 months since Amp’d Mobile went bankrupt (Amp’d is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that runs on the Verizon Wireless network). Since then, it has been slowly but surely limping into the deathbed. Amp’d Mobile has sent a text message to customers announcing it will shut down today (Tuesday, 24 July). [...]
Anti-Caller ID Spoofing Law to put a few companies out of business
About a month ago, the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation passed S.704, the “Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007″, a bill that would outlaw causing “any caller identification service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information” via “any telecommunications service or IP-enabled voice service.” Essentially this bill makes it [...]
Concerns about Ooma
I haven’t tried Ooma yet, but it sure feels like the greatest thing since sliced bread, given all the hype and buzz surrounding it. And it’s just started private beta. You can find some of the greatest reviews at GigaOm, Crunch, Engadget, Mossberg, – some of the writing are pretty clear indications that Ooma reached [...]
