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The iPhone is emerging as king of the corporate world as global shipments of smartphones reached a new peak. Defying speculation about a global recession, worldwide smartphone shipments climbed to just shy of 40 million units in the third quarter, according to the latest estimates from Canalys. That means smartphones now represent about 13 percent of the total mobile-phone market, up from 11 percent in the second quarter.

Tapping out text messages on a cell phone while driving is dangerous, the American Medical Association agreed on Monday, and supported state legislation to ban it.
The group, which represents about 240,000 U.S. physicians, voted to lend its weight to laws that would make it easier for police to pull over drivers who are doing it.

Forget e-tickets. Going paperless is the next wrinkle in air travel as American Airlines tests mobile boarding passes at OHare International Airport.

Travelers on American can flash a bar code on their cell phone screens to board flights and get through security checkpoints at OHare using new technology rolled out Thursday.

To use the feature, passengers must have an active e-mail address and an Internet-enabled mobile device to which their boarding pass and a 2-D bar code can be sent.

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We have made an effort to update many of the Telecom carrier settings see the updates for SNPP, WCTP, TAP and SMTP settings. Let us know if you have any suggested additions.

The Justice Department on Thursday effectively gave Verizon Wireless the go-ahead to buy Alltel Corp. in a $28 billion deal that would create the nations largest wireless carrier.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Britains Vodafone Group PLC, already has agreed to the governments condition that it sell assets in 22 states.

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Research in Motion is coming online with an application store uniquely its own. On Tuesday, RIM unveiled two distribution initiatives for BlackBerry smartphone applications at its annual developer conference: A new online application store and a new on-device application center that opens up BlackBerrys millions of users to developers vying for an audience.

RIM said it plans to launch the BlackBerry application store in March 2009, giving its users a one-stop shop for compatible applications and a user-friendly way to manage upgrades and purchases.

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The popularity of mobile phones in South Africa is helping to tackle HIV and AIDS in the nation.

Project Masiluleke will send one million free text messages a day to push people to be tested and treated.

Approximately 350,000 people die of AIDS related diseases in the country every year.

Trials of the system showed that calls to counselors at the National AIDS helpline in Johannesburg increased by 200% when messages were broadcast.

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Taliban insurgents said Tuesday they had told mobile phone operators to shut down their networks during the day in the Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, saying signals help track insurgent fighters.

The warning comes on top of a Taliban order earlier this year for phone operators to turn off their networks throughout the country at night.

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A Canadian company has unveiled software crafted to prevent people, particularly mobile device-loving teenagers, from making telephone calls or text-messaging while driving.

Aegis Mobility describes DriveAssist as advanced call management technology that essentially creates virtual personal secretaries to intercept calls or text messages intended for mobile telephones in moving cars.

DriveAssist software detects when phones are moving at automobile speeds and then tells callers that the person they are trying to reach is driving. Callers are invited to leave messages or call-back numbers.

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Research in Motion the maker of the Blackberry, unveiled its first smartphone with a touch-screen on Wednesday, its answer to the popular Apple iPhone.
The phone, the Blackberry Storm, will be available later this year through Verizon Wireless in the United States and Vodafone in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand, the Canadian company said.

The global mobile phone market should grow at much slower-than-expected rates next year as consumers put off buying new devices due to deepening economic concerns, according to forecasts from analysts.


While industry executives often say mobile phones are the last thing consumers will give up to save money, analysts are now citing lengthening phone replacement cycles and weakening economies around the world for their weaker sales estimates.

UBS analyst Maynard Um halved his forecast for 2009 global handset growth to 3 percent from 6 percent, pointing to particular weakness in Europe and North America.

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Verizon Wireless says it is moving forward with plans to acquire Alltel Corp. for $28.1 billion, although the countrys financial climate has worsened since the companies reached an agreement four months ago.

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Europes leading telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom, admitted Saturday that it has lost confidential data belonging to 17 million T-mobile clients.


The theft, in 2006, which is now subject to a judicial inquiry, involved telephone numbers, dates of birth, addresses and email addresses, subsidiary T-Mobile said in a statement.

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A growing number of Europeans do not bother to buy landline telephone service in their homes, relying instead on their cell phones, the European Commission said Thursday.


Cell phones, which first outnumbered human beings in Europe in 2006, did that by an even greater margin in 2007: nearly 112 phones for every 100 people, the EU executive body said.

One reason is that monthly line rental for fixed phones costs more on average than a prepaid mobile phone package.

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Research In Motion is preparing to launch the long anticipated touch-screen version of its BlackBerry smartphone, according to an official promotion e-mail from U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless .

RIM Touchscreen

Turn off the rumor mills, pull down the mocked-up artwork, and say goodbye to the blogger speculation. Google and T-Mobiles G1, the first mobile phone built around Googles open-source, Linux-based Android platform, is officially a product.


Before a warm, if not entirely enthusiastic crowd in Manhattan, executives from T-Mobile, HTC and Google (including a surprise appearance by company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page) officially unveiled the T-Mobile G1.

Listing for $179 with two data plans ($25 and $35), the T-Mobile G1 is available now to existing T-Mobile customers in limited quantities (via T-Mobiles web site) and at all T-Mobile locations by late next month. It will also launch in the U.K. in November, and across all of Europe by early next year.

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Mobile phone makers and operators risk losing thousands of their most profitable customers as financial havoc whacks the global banking industry.


Analysts said the success of Blackberry-maker RIM is the most dependent on Wall Streets future.

In worst case scenario 40,000 workers may lose their jobs in finance following Lehmans collapse and problems at other big financial firms, New York Governor David Paterson said earlier this week.

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Federal investigators said Sunday they plan to obtain the cell phone records of two teenagers and the engineer of a commuter train to determine whether text messages played a part in a head-on collision that killed 25 people.

A commuter rail car lies on its side after a collision Friday near Los Angeles, California.

The Metrolink train had failed to stop for a red signal, triggering the Friday collision with a freight train, according to the commuter trains operators. In addition to the 25 fatalities, more than 130 passengers were injured.

On Sunday, Kitty Higgins of the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators have been in touch with two teenagers who told a local television station that they had been exchanging text messages with the Metrolink train engineer before the impact.

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A key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the nations top four wireless carriers to justify the sharply rising rates they charge people to send and receive text messages.


In letters to top executives at Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl said Tuesday that he is concerned that rising text messaging rates reflect decreasing competition in the wireless business.

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AT&T plans to offer, through its mobile Internet portal, a collection of Yahoos oneSearch mobile Web services including links to news, financial information, weather, Flickr photos as well as Web search via the phone.

The craggy gullies where Idaho cowboy Paul Nettleton runs 1,200 head of cattle are often precious minutes from reliable cell phone coverage.


That could spell disaster in this region where sudden summertime storms howl in from eastern Oregon, bringing dry lightning that can ignite fast-moving wildfires on sage- and juniper-covered hillsides. Unchecked, the flames could quickly turn this old mining towns historic wooden buildings to ashes.

This spring, Nettleton and six other Owyhee County ranchers who make their livelihoods in some of Americas most remote backcountry began carrying satellite telephones provided by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

It is an effort to turn men whose ranching families have been wedded to this land for more than a century into a high-tech advance guard against devastating wildfires.

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Nokia the worlds biggest cellphone maker, said it expects to lose market share in the third quarter as it fights to maintain profit margins, sending its shares as much as 14 percent lower.

Nokia warned its third-quarter market share would fall from the 40 percent notched up in the second three months of the year, compared with a steady market share it forecast earlier.

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A minor update has been made available for PageGate. PageGate is a network messaging gateway that allows messages to be sent via SMS, Fax and a variety of Internet protocols to wireless devices. The latest release version of PageGate is 5.09 and is available from the download section. If you are a current registered PageGate user the release is available free of charge. Details of the current version changes can be seen in the PageGate release notes.

The number of mobile users in China, the worlds biggest cellphone market, now tops 600 million, the government said, as subscribers increasingly abandon fixed lines.

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The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.


The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that do not find a link between increased tumors and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Herberman is basing his alarm on early, unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children.

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In the English-speaking world, many cell phone users leave emergency contact information in the devices address books under an entry labeled ICE — for in case of emergency.


Now, the U.N. International Telecommunication Union is trying to adapt that system for the rest of the world.

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The rising cost of food is a growing concern for many people across the world.

There have been protests, and even riots, in countries including Mexico, India and Egypt, clear evidence of the struggle that many people are now facing.

However, if Italians feel that their local food retailer is charging unreasonable prices, they can now call on a new service to help them haggle or walk away.

Thanks to a SMS  text system set up jointly by the Italian agriculture ministry and consumer associations, shoppers can check the average price of different foods in northern, central and southern Italy.

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Hundreds of mobile phone download sites are to be investigated after an EU-wide sweep of services.

Some 80% of the 500 websites offering ringtones and phone wallpaper breached regulations, the European Commission said on Thursday.

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For less than $15, you can buy a cell phone loaded with minutes. You can buy more as you go whenever those minutes run out. Best of all, you are not locked into a long-term contract.

But in South Florida, New York, California, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, traffickers have figured out they can make big profits by purchasing thousands of these low-cost phones and tweaking the software so that calls can be made on any cell network. The altered phones are then sold all over the world — costing the phone companies tens of millions of dollars.

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The cost of sending a text message from the bar or the beach when mobile phone users are outside their home state in the European Union will be cut by 70 percent from next year under new plans, an EU source said.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding will announce outline plans on Tuesday that include extending price caps on roamed voice calls for another three years, the source added.

Pope Benedict XVI took a new hi-tech road to spreading his message Tuesday, sending a mobile phone text to pilgrims attending World Youth Day celebrations in Australia, organisers said.

Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI. Was the first message sent.

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Washington Nationals fans soon will be able to text in charity donations during a game, thanks to a partnership between the team, MLB.com, and the Mobile Giving Foundation. During the July 13 game against the Houston Astros, fans will be invited to text the word NATS to 90999 to give $5 to support the work of the Childrens National Medical Center to fight pediatric diabetes.

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The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Department of Justice to obtain official records concerning the U.S. governments possible use of cell-phone-tracking technology to spy on individuals without first obtaining a court order based on probable cause.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the civil-liberties groups said the DOJ failed to provide an adequate and timely response to a records request filed last year under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Mobile PhoneTools creates unlimited communication possibilities by synchronizing your cell phone with your PC and allowing you to exploit the most powerful features of your phone.

Mobile Phone Tools Discounted 50% for only 24 hours!

By a vote of 293 to 129, the House of Representatives passed a bill meant to protect telecom companies from being sued for eavesdropping. The Senate is expected to approve the bill sometime next week.

Lawmakers have crafted a compromise on a bill that would extend controversial eavesdropping legislation and add provisions meant to protect telecommunications companies from private lawsuits, including several already under way.

Ending months of negotiations, the House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill that shields cooperating telecommunications providers from invasion of privacy lawsuits and extends the powers of government agencies to order wiretaps without a judge-issued warrant.

The House passed the update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by a vote of 293 to 129. All but one of those voting against the bill were Democrats.

California will try to wrest cell phones from the hands of drivers, telling everyone from movie starlets and dot-com millionaires to surfers and soccer moms that conversations behind the wheel must be on a headset.

quarter of European Union households surveyed by the blocs executive body have turned their backs on fixed lines in favor of mobile phones, with a fifth now making calls over the Internet.


The European Commission's survey of 27,000 homes in the 27-nation bloc found that 24 percent were using mobiles only.

The worlds top cellphone maker Nokia said it has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services. Plazes provides location-aware services that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities.

The disposal of massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be a key focus of a five-day meeting on waste management which started Monday in Indonesia, organisers said.


The fate of the more than three billion of the gadgets in use today will be discussed by more than 1,000 delegates from 170 countries at the meeting on the Basel Convention in Bali, a statement said.

Cellular Disposal

Virgin Mobile USA is introducing a plan with unlimited calling for $79.99 per month, helping feed the price-cutting frenzy that has washed over the cellular carriers this year.


The prepaid plan will be available July 1, the carrier said. Virgin was charging $99.99 for 1000 minutes per month with no limit on night and weekend calls.

Verizon Wireless introduced a plan with unlimited nationwide calling in February for $99.99 per month that was quickly matched by its competitors.

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Associated Press on Monday unveiled an iPhone program for accessing its newly launched service that delivers news, photos and video to mobile phones.  

The APs Mobile News Network was launched May 5 for a variety of smart phones, including the iPhone. The service displays advertising-supported local news stories from more than 100 participating newspapers as well as national and international news from AP. The reports are organized by ZIP code.

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Targeting inexperienced motorists, several states have passed laws during the past five years restricting cell phone use by teenage drivers.
But an insurance industry study being released Monday that looked at whether teens are ignoring such restrictions contends enforcement and parental influence are just as important as new laws.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety studied North Carolinas law, enacted in 2006, which fines motorists under age 18 who are caught using a cell phone.
Researchers who watched as high school students left school found that teenage drivers used their cell phones at about the same rate both before and after the law took effect. In South Carolina, which does not have a similar restriction, cell phone use by teenage drivers was about the same for both periods studied.

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After years of go-go growth, the number of people signing up for cellphone service in the USA is finally slowing.

That could spell good news for consumers as carriers turn up the marketing heat, says Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research and author of a report documenting the trend.

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