THE WRAP: A looming crisis, and a Nobel for optical

Robert Clark
09 Oct 2009
00:00

This week the FCC sounded the alarm about a spectrum shortage, while a retired engineer won the Nobel for his early work on optical.

With mobile data growing exponentially, the FCC chief Julius Genachowski warned of a looming spectrum crisis. He said mobile traffic was set to grow 30-fold over the next four years.

India faces its own spectrum crisis as the DoT admitted the armed forces had not yet vacated their 3G spectrum.

Hong Kong electronics engineer Charles Kao won the Nobel Physics Prize for his optical fiber breakthrough 43 years ago. Two former Bell Labs researchers shared the prize for inventing the charged couple device (CCD), the core technology in digital imaging.

Verizon hooked up with Google to sell Android phones and apps, while AT&T seems likely to sell an Android device from Dell early next year – the fourth of the big four US cellcos to join the club.

To cool reviews, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of Windows Mobile and opened its app store.

With an FCC consultation underway, AT&T relented on VoIP apps on its wireless network. It called for a constructive dialogue with the commission on new rules.

Ciena bid $521 million in cash and stock for Nortel’s metro optical and Ethernet businesses. Brocade has been quietly looking for a buyer.

Telenor and Alfa struck a deal on settling their five-year-old dispute over Vimpelcom.

The EC’s decade-long anti-trust suit against Microsoft also appears over after the commission accepted the software firm’s proposal on how it bundles its browser with Windows.

The US Justice Department began a probe into IBM’s conduct into the mainframe market, following a complaint from a Microsoft-backed industry body and a lawsuit from reseller T3.

Grameenphone raised $71 million from its debut on the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

By year-end 4.6 billion people will be using a mobile phone, said the ITU.

The NFL issued guidelines for fans on how to use social media like Twitter and Facebook in talking about teams and players.

And three out of 10 Chicagoans said they'd give up sex for a year rather than go without their mobile phones, a survey found.

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