Verizon Wireless

From the BaltTech blog: Big news today: Verizon Wireless will soon start selling the iPhone 4. The Verizon homepage has been updated to include the iPhone 4. Apple's homepage has it, too. Verizon will be selling the 16 GB version for $199 with a two-year plan, starting Feb. 10. I'm checking to see the details on the monthly plans that are offered... the rumor was that Verizon would offer an unlimited data package to differentiate itself from AT&T, which offers tiered/capped plans.

Verizon donates phones for victims of domestic violence Verizon Wireless has donated 100 digital wireless phones, with airtime, to the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence. The network will lend the phones to women who are threatened with domestic violence. The women can use the phones to call 911 or domestic violence hot lines such as 800- MD-HELPS, the network's toll-free, statewide help line. Verizon's nationwide initiative for wireless phone recycling is a program called HopeLine.

Choice of streaming video, Bluetooth available with latest, greatest phones Camera phones are getting better, with much improved imaging, flash features for better lighting and now, with video. I've been playing with two brand-new offerings for the past week or so - Samsung's Multimedia MM-A700 phone from Sprint (shown below) and the Motorola V710 phone from Verizon Wireless. These are the most advanced imaging phones we've seen so far. They are almost identical in size, both open like a clamshell and will shoot still pictures and 15-second audio and video clips.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- To get into his first Texas Rangers game, Brian Gorham didn't need a ticket. He flashed his cell phone. His baseball ticket had been sent via text message a few days earlier to his Motorola KRZR. "I thought it was really cool," said Gorham, a native of Greenville, N.C., who was visiting Dallas for job training. "What it says is that text messaging has become mainstream. It's not some kid technology just for chatting." Indeed, the text-messaging craze has successfully graduated from just another technology toy to a crucial communication tool firmly woven into our lives.

Eric Anderson would like to use his cell phone more at work, where his job as director of tech services for a law firm keeps him away from his desk. But on the upper floors of the Sears Tower he usually cannot get a wireless signal. "If my cell phone worked, it would give me another communication option," Anderson said. Wireless signal problems at the downtown Chicago skyscraper underscore a problem also found in subway tunnels, airports and other high-traffic areas. As people become more dependent upon cell phones, loss of signal becomes more frustrating.

Verizon Communications Inc., the dominant phone company in Maryland, will spend $3 billion over the next two years to upgrade its wireless and wired networks to carry high-speed data, Ivan Seidenberg, the firm's chief executive, said yesterday. Verizon also will introduce new technology to integrate cell phones, wired phones and Internet services onto a single device, providing a range of new features for consumer and business users. How much of the $3 billion will be added to the $12 billion or so in capital improvement expenditures the nation's largest phone company normally spends on network upgrades will depend upon market conditions, Seidenberg said.

NORMALLY, IT'S HARD to get excited about surfing the Web at 56 Kilobits per second. That's about as fast as a dialup modem can communicate over a good phone line. If you're accustomed to broadband Internet access though cable, DSL or an office network, 56K is downright pokey. But if you're surfing the Web on a laptop computer from your your car in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven 30 miles from downtown Baltimore, 56K looks very good indeed. That was my introduction to 3G-1X, or CDMA2000 1X or something like that - acronyms for the first generation of the third generation of wireless communication services.

A Verizon Communications executive said yesterday that "very significant progress" had been made in the talks between the company and its union workers - on the fifth day of their strike - and expressed hope that a new collective bargaining agreement could be reached very soon. Union officials characterized the progress with a bit more reserve. About 87,000 workers from the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went on strike at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, just after their two-year contracts expired.

JUST WHEN you think things can't possibly get any more annoying in Cell Phone Hell, they find a way to stoke the flames a little higher. Case in point: the walkie-talkie feature. The walkie-talkie feature, of course, raises the question: What's worse than listening to someone having a loud, boring cell phone conversation in public? And the answer is: listening to both ends of that loud, boring cell phone conversation. Yes, that's right, with the walkie-talkie feature, the level of pointless cell phone chatter we're exposed to every day is rising dramatically.

WASHINGTON -- After a decade of deal-making, the phone industry is running out of buyers and sellers. The latest deal, AT&T Inc.'s agreement Sunday to buy BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion, would remove one of the few major targets left in the phone business. BellSouth, the dominant local carrier in the South, may be the best-managed phone company in the United States. Its key asset, though, was its 40 percent stake in the fast-growing Cingular Wireless, the nation's biggest wireless phone provider.