GigaOM

Sun Rocket, the so-called no-hassle $199 a year flat rate VoIP service is all set to go national next week, according to company officials. The company plans to add 50 more metro markets to its three current regions - Washington DC, Boston and Baltimore. The new market would cover about half the US population. In case you were looking for the much wanted 212 area code, well starting December 25 you could snag one from Sun Rocket. (I would be hustling from one given that I am a life long New Yorker at heart.) Continue »

Ever since Paul Boutin made it cool to write about retro-phones (read his review of Nokia 6600 in Slate magazine) we thought, perhaps it is time to offer some solid advice to phone shoppers. With four days to go, both I and Matt Maier, the fearless wireless guru at Business 2.0 are confident in recommending Nokia 6620 as a stocking stuffer. Matt has been using his brand new 6620 on a Cingular Network and I have been using it on T-Mobile. Well, despite lower speeds, I find the phone excellent at most basic tasks, and good at high end applications like music playback, video playback and web-surfing using the excellent Opera browser. The 6620 is Symbian powered, and does an excellent job of syncing with a PC. (Alas it has no love for a Mac, though you can send and receive files using a program called Nokia Collector.) I am hopeful the next upgrade of ISync is going to fix this problem. I have installed few applications such as Agile Messenger, and OggPlay music player at the urging of all mighty Russell Beattie. Any other recommendations are welcome. Matt’s brilliant review of the phone continues after the turn.
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Silicon Valley bashes are back. Our friends at Silicon Beat tell us that VCs and others are splurging on their big bashes.

The Woodside Fund brought out the big wines, Duckhorn and Caymus. Doll Capital Management, fresh from its hit with Chinese job site, 51Job, rented out the grand Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, offering an open bar and lavish food. Not to be outdone, Mayfield rented out the Computer History Museum last night, serving equally quality nosh. Continue »

DailyWireless: Motorola has completed the initial phases of a technical trial of the company’s first 4.9 GHz broadband solutions. According to the Motorola project team and public safety agencies in Tulsa, Okla., where the technical trial has been underway since September, the trial has proven the reliability and stability of the system. Continue »

C/Net News.com has an indepth analysis of Apple’s likely move into the flash memory based IPod market. And I expect a whiz-bang Flash-based iPod which sets a new standard for the whole category. It has reactions from the wannabes, who are possibly masking their fear with bold statements of market validation. Its coming, and perhaps time to run for cover. Continue »

Most of my readers know, I am not a huge fan of Skype. Stuart has taken me to task on this many times. Actually, rethinking Skype, I have realized that I am not a big fan of their lack of a clear cut business model, and their desire to build a Skype Network which is closed. Still, I find a lot of new things I like about Skype, the software, if not the company. (For a long elaborate and dispassionate review, click here!) For instance, Aswath reminded me this morning that Skype technology is a good for finding best routes to communicate. “If this is true then the value in Skype is not in voice communication, but in its ability to supplant IP routers as well,” he says. Skype has added new features like big files transfer that make a lot of sense for cross-platform communication.
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PC World: Boeing is planning to add live television to its Connexion by Boeing service during 2005. via its Connexion network, which allows 5 MBPS downloads and I MBPS uploads over the satellite-data network. Stan Deal, vice president of commercial airlines at Boeing’s Connexion unit tells PC World, “You’ll be able to view up to four channels of live TV over your laptop.” Continue »

The Korea Times: Hanaro Telecom has become the preferred bidder for troubled Thrunet but Korea’s second-biggest broadband operator faces adversities in the process. However, analysts warn against early celebration because Hanaro might bet too much money on Thrunet, which has been under court receivership since March 2003. Hanaro Telecom and Dacom refuse to give details of their offers but sources say the former had presented 480 billion won against the 430 billion won put up by the Dacom-Merrill Lynch consortium. The South Korean broadband market is going through a shakeout as growth slows. Continue »