If you ever want to feel ripped off, try sending an SMS to a foreign phone number. MVNO Ultra Mobile, however, is killing one of the industry’s most sacred cows by making all international messaging free. Read more »
MetroPCS will start selling smartphones and SIM cards that connect to T-Mobile’s GSM and HSPA networks starting June 12, according to a PhoneArena report. T-Mobile is wasting no time converting Metro’s CDMA customer base. Read more »
Reports are coming from Japan that Amazon is forming an MVNO. If true, it would be an interesting experiment for Amazon, expanding its mobile business beyond selling devices, apps and e-books to selling connectivity itself. But I suspect this is nothing more than an experiment. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
SIM cards, those tiny slivers of silicon that carry your identity inside a cell phone or connected device, are once again poised to get smaller as Giesecke & Devrient introduces the nano-SIM. If adopted, they could mean thinner devices or more room for larger batteries. Read more »
Imagine buying your SIM-free mobile phone from a local electronics store, logging in as soon as you turn the phone on for the first time and having the phone ready to use immediately. In the future, even the phone number itself will disappear. Read more »
The iPhone 5 is still only a beast of legend at this point, but that legend is taking on more detail every day. Here’s what we can expect from the next Apple smartphone based on current scuttlebutt, including a new release window just reported early Monday. Read more »
The mobile space is all about a tug-of-war of control between network operators, device manufacturers and software developers. But rarely do the players involved make the power play so obvious as did France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard during a recent interview. Read more »
Apple has submitted a proposal to make SIM cards even smaller than the micro-SIM currently used in the iPhone 4 and iPad. The new smaller SIM standard is also backed by French carrier Orange, and was submitted to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute last week. Read more »
While we in the U.S. ponder the implications if AT&T successfully buys T-Mobile, and takes the U.S. down to a mere three carriers, the citizens of Turkmenistan are suddenly faced with only one carrier, after one of its two operators went out of business. Read more »
Apple’s push for embedded or programmable SIM cards appears stalled by threatened carriers, but the GSMA is moving forward to research the use these chips. They may not appear in phones for some time, but there are other opportunities in web-connected machines and smartgrid devices. Read more »
The GSMA, the organization representing most of the world’s mobile operators, today changed its rules to allow for a programmable SIM card much like we described Apple building with Gemalto a few weeks back. It’s expected devices with remote-activated SIMs to be available by 2012. Read more »
