wireless

Yep, LG has finally come out with the most appropriate color for the EnV--green. Or as it looks like to me, army green. It's an exclusive to Circuit City stores though, for $79.99 after a $50 rebate (Quite a price drop from $149). The specs are about the same as the original LG EnV, so no rush to get this if you're not a fan of the color.

Regional cell phone operator MetroPCS Communications bid Tuesday to buy competitor Leap Wireless International in a deal worth more than $5 billion in stock.

MetroPCS, which went public in April, said in a press release Tuesday that it would offer 2.75 of its shares for each outstanding common share of Leap. This represents a value of $75.05 based on Friday's closing price and is only 3 percent higher than Leap's closing price on Friday.

MetroPCS also said it would refinance $2 billion of Leap's debt as part of the deal.

"We believe that the … Read more

Editor's note: This story incorrectly stated the speed of M2Z's premium service offering. The correct speed is 3 megabits per second.

A Silicon Valley start-up that sought permission to build a "free, family-friendly" wireless Internet service on a stretch of unused radio spectrum has been shot down by federal regulators.

Late Friday, the Federal Communications Commission rejected a nearly 16-month-old petition by Menlo Park, Calif.-based M2Z Networks to receive an exclusive, 15-year license to build and operate such a network in the 2155MHz-to-2175MHz band, in return for depositing a portion of its revenues into the … Read more

EarthLink said late Wednesday that it is bailing out of a contract to build San Francisco's free Wi-Fi service.

EarthLink backed out of the deal a day after the company announced it was laying off 900 employees--nearly half of its staff. EarthLink, which is trying to get its finances in order, announced earlier this summer that it would not invest in any new citywide Wi-Fi deployments until it came up with a better business model.

But it was assumed the company would fulfill obligations with cities where it had already signed contracts. Now it looks like EarthLink is … Read more

Jet-lagged travelers of the world rejoice! The latest portable video players from Archos promise new cures for inflight boredom, and the prices are staggeringly cheap. We've just posted full reviews of the (CNET Editors' Choice Award-winning) Archos 605 WiFi and Archos 405 portable video players and regardless of what next Wednesday's announcement reveals from the Apple camp, I think it's safe to say that these new Archos players will top more than a few holiday wish lists.

How can we be so sure? For starters, the 605 WiFi includes a shortcut for wirelessly downloading purchased or rented … Read more

Amimon, an Israeli company that's been touting a version of wireless HDMI, has come out with its first chips, a prelude to the wireless war that will waged at the Consumer Electronics Show this year.

The company, which landed an investment with Motorola, says its chips can pass uncompressed 720p, 1080i or 1080p streams around the house from one device to another. Thus, you don't have to clutter up the room with ornate coils of cable.

Amimon can send signals through walls up to 100 feet with a latency of less than a millisecond.

Loewe and Funai will … Read more

You might wonder why I'm posting again so soon after that twelve-post blogging marathon at Hot Chips. Well, I got a new gizmo last night and I just had to write about it.

Two years ago yesterday, I bought a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860 (a PCMCIA cellular modem card) from Cingular for my Apple PowerBook G4. I also… Read more

Well, I'll be darned. Wouldn't you know it? Verizon Wireless finally landed itself a new smart phone and a pretty exciting one to boot. Today, Verizon and Motorola announced the long-awaited successor to the Motorola Q and thy name is the Motorola Q9m.

The Q9m has added some notable improvements, including an excellent full QWERTY keyboard, a sexy red trim, and Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition. Motorola also decided to give the Q9m a heavy multimedia focus, given the Q's popularity with the younger crowd and consumers in general. (Did you know that 90 percent of the … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--Google is "probably" going to submit a $4.6 billion bid for a prime chunk of wireless spectrum, its chief executive said Tuesday evening.

Eric Schmidt told a dinner audience at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit that "it's highly likely that when we get to that point we will see the regulatory framework that is conducive to the bid (we wanted) to make."

In response to a question from a T-Mobile representative, he added: "probably is the answer to that."

The Federal Communications Commission recently announced details about … Read more