Mobile

New government rules that support Net neutrality, specifically rules that prevent Internet service providers from selectively blocking sites from their networks, are expected to be unveiled in Washington on Monday, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

During a speech on Monday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to unveil a new rule that would require all Internet providers--including wireless carriers--to use "reasonable" network-management practices in dealing with Internet traffic, unnamed sources told the WSJ.

The carriers have argued against such rules, noting that not all sites are created equal and that some, with their heavy … Read more

I've been a customer of AT&T ever since 2003, when I got myself my first cell phone ever, and I've been a very good one. The proof: I set my bill to autopay from day one and even convinced a few friends to move to AT&T (mostly so that we don't have to use the minutes to talk to each other.)

I found out Thursday that AT&T hasn't been very nice to me. … Read more

The European Commission has published a set of rules for when state aid should be used to roll out broadband networks, in a bid to speed up the deployment of high-speed next-generation networks in the European Union.

The guidelines (PDF), announced on Thursday, followed a public consultation. According to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, the rules will "facilitate the widespread rollout of high-speed and very high-speed broadband networks, enhancing European competitiveness and helping to build a knowledge-based society in Europe."

"We expect to see up to ($442 billion) of investment in both high- and very high-speed European broadband … Read more

Updated at 2:55 p.m. PDT with information from the conference call.

Sales of the Pre helped boost Palm's smartphone sales in the company's fiscal first quarter of 2010 by about 134 percent compared to the preceding quarter, but Palm still reported its eighth consecutive quarter of loss, and sales dipped over 80 percent.

The Palm Pre, available exclusively through Sprint Nextel, is gaining traction. The company sold 823,000 smartphones in the fiscal first quarter. Many of those smartphones are believed to be the Pre.

But even though sales of the Pre were strong, Palm still … Read more

BlackBerry Tour, which is available to both Verizon Wireless and Sprint customers, is under scrutiny for trackball issues that have led some Tour owners to return the smartphones.

The question is: how widespread is the problem?

TownHall Investment Research's David Eller said in a research note this week that he has consulted "experts" who have determined Research In Motion is having a "big trackball problem, especially with the Tour," which was launched in July.

Eller wrote that BlackBerry Tour owners are being forced "to clean the trackball frequently and preferably with compressed air." When they don't clean the trackball, the issues get worse, leading them to bring the device back to the store for repairs or returns.

It has gotten so bad, Eller contends, that Sprint's "return rates have been climbing toward 50 percent."

A 50 percent return rate on a mobile phone would be huge. But Sprint is telling a much different story.

"We experienced a small percentage of early production Blackberry Tour smartphones with trackball issues," a Sprint representative said in a phone interview Wednesday night. "As soon as the issue was identified, we worked closely with our partners at RIM to resolve the problem quickly. Any customer experiencing issues with the Tour should visit a Sprint service and repair center."

Sprint, which said it had never worked with TownHall Investment Research prior to the research note's release this week, said the number of BlackBerry Tour returns it experienced "weren't even close to 50 percent." The Sprint representative said it was "a very small percentage." He wouldn't release exact figures but did say the percentage was in line with other new devices that experience some hardware problems at launch.

But Eller didn't only mention Sprint. In the same note, he wrote that "Verizon is experiencing serious problems with the Tour." He claimed that "Verizon will soon be getting new smartphones from Motorola and Palm that compete with RIM. Verizon is angry about this recurring trackball problem and is telling its retailers to expect strong support for the new Motorola phone."

However, Verizon spokesman Jim Gerace said in a phone call Thursday that the "BlackBerry Tour has the lowest return rate of any smartphone Verizon Wireless is selling. In fact, its return rate is one of the lowest among all the products our company sells."

That said, Gerace did acknowledge that BlackBerry Tour devices did experience trackball issues when they were first released. He said that his company "caught it pretty early and we didn't sell many with the bad trackball."

Gerace offered a biting response yet when I asked him about the accuracy of Eller's contention that Verizon is angry at RIM and will be strongly supporting a new Motorola device.

"That is blatantly not true," Gerace told me. "Just look around at our advertising. Does it look like we're not pushing the BlackBerry Tour?"

RIM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.… Read more

Mobile data traffic is doubling every nine months, according to Cisco Systems. By 2013, mobile traffic will hit 2 exabytes--2 million terabytes--per month.

For some vendors, the growth rate is even higher. AT&T says its network load has been growing by 4.5x per year for the last two years, in large part (I assume) because of iPhone sales. You may have read about AT&T's pledge to spend over $12 billion this year to expand its wireless and broadband networks, including new 3G spectrum with better coverage and trials of 4G service.

At the Linley Group's Tech Processor Conference this week in San Jose, Calif., we learned what effect this growth is having on equipment makers, especially the companies making the microprocessors that go into network gear.

According to that same Cisco study, the problem goes well beyond iPhones. A 3G-equipped laptop "can generate as much traffic as 450 basic-feature phones" and 15 times the traffic of an iPhone or BlackBerry.

Networks have also gotten smarter, so network processors have much more work to do. Instead of just hundreds or thousands of clock cycles of work per packet on the network, new functions like firewalls, intrusion detection, and antivirus scanning to keep smartphones and laptops safe can require 100,000 cycles of processing on each packet.

Factoring in the growth in the network itself, Michael Coward of Continuous Computing, a company that sells equipment, software, and services to the telecom market, said that network operators need to achieve a 1,200x boost in processing performance between the systems deployed in 2008 and those that will be needed in 2013.… Read more

Updated at 5:10 p.m. PDT with eBay comment.

Joltid, a peer-to-peer software company established by Skype's founders, filed a copyright suit against Skype Wednesday alleging Joltid's technology is being infringed on by Skype users "in the United States at least 100,000 times each day."

Just the latest in an ongoing license dispute between the popular VoIP service and its developers, the lawsuit, filed in Northern California U.S. District Court, seeks an injunction and damages, which Joltid "reasonably believes are amassing at a rate of $75 million daily," according to the … Read more

These days, Mozilla's Fennec and the Skyfire browser have been stealing all the thunder in the mobile browsing space. On Wednesday morning (that's Tuesday night for us in San Francisco), Opera yanked some of it back with the release of Opera Mini 5 beta for Java phones.

Introducing a graphically enriched layout topside and new features below decks, the new Opera Mini beta browser is snappier, more attractive, and more advanced than last year's predecessor, Opera Mini 4.2. Mini 5 beta brings over several features from Opera's desktop browser (Opera 10 for Windows | Mac.) Tabbed browsing is among them, as is a password manager. Each page opens with Speed Dial, a grid of nine thumbnail images and Opera Desktop mainstay, that you assign to favorite Web sites and can select among to quickly launch a Web page. The Speed Dial view replaces Opera Mini's previous landing page, a tangle of links capped with a search box and URL field. These thumbnail images make the landing page more meaningful, both in giving users a visual they can instantly recognize, and creating an easier target for users to accurately hit on touchscreen phones than a scrawny little link.

While the URL field and search bars haven't joined together in this beta as they have in other mobile browsers and in most desktop browsers out there, Opera has at least consolidated the two onto a single line. To address another long-overdue fix, Opera now lets you type directly into a text field. In previous versions, clicking a field opened up a blank page, where you were prompted to start typing before you could return to the main interface.

Opera Mini's navigation menu received another overhaul in Mini 5 beta. Opera moved it up to the top and made it completely icon-based. Press downward (on a D-pad for a keypad phone) to engage more items, like bookmarks, history, settings, and the Find in Page search tool, a new one for Opera Mini. Find in Page has previously been available in Opera Mini; it's nice to see it return.

The password manager that's new to Opera Mini works as expected, producing a dialog box the first time you log into a site asking if you'd like it to remember your credentials. You can turn this off in the Privacy portion of the Settings submenu.

Many additional features carry over from previous Opera Mini versions, including options to view the page as you would from the desktop versus a mobile view. There are also the usual shortcut keys and support for landscape mode on most phones (not on BlackBerrys, unfortunately, an ongoing omission). There are also additional options that pop up in response to long presses on the 'select' key or on the touchscreen, like for selecting and copying text, opening the image, and now, for opening content in a new tab.… Read more

iPhone and iPhone 3G users hit a roadblock last week trying to login to Exchange 2007 servers after upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1.

Because the problems began with the latest update, it may seem reasonable to assume that the update is to blame, but it's not. In fact, everything is working exactly how it's supposed to be, according to Apple.

"iPhone OS 3.1 is working properly with Exchange Server 2007," Apple representative Natalie Harrison told CNET News. "We added device encryption information to the data that can be managed by IT administrators using … Read more