Carmen Nobel

Officials at several U.S. agencies and wireless industry companies last week agreed on how to allocate spectrum in the hotly contested 5GHz band in a deal that gives wireless LANs more space but less priority over other signals. The agreement among the Department of Defense, NASA, the Federal Communications Commission and others benefits the wireless […]

Swedish wireless telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson AB last week named Carl-Henric Svanberg its new CEO and president. Svanberg, 50, will take the helm on April 8, said officials at the Stockholm company. Svanberg will replace Kurt Hellstrom, who announced that he will retire as he approaches age 60. “[Svanberg] will continue Kurt Hellströms successful work […]

Software giant Microsoft Corp. this week requested that a federal court dismiss a lawsuit by British startup Sendo Ltd. that claimed Microsoft purposefully undermined the small cell phone company. Filing a response to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Texarkana, Microsoft denied claims that it had a “secret plan” to […]

Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson on Monday reported a significant loss for the fourth quarter of 2002 and warned that the market for mobile systems may decline by 10 percent in 2003, but officials still said the company plans to make a profit before the end of the year. The wireless network equipment giant reported a […]

IBM last week introduced a ThinkPad notebook that takes advantage of multiple WLAN technologies. The ThinkPad R40 comes in several versions, one of which is the first IBM notebook to integrate 802.11b and 802.11a wireless LAN technology. 802.11b, which is widely adopted, offers connection speeds of up to 11M bps. It runs in the 2.4GHz […]

With 802.11g moving closer to ratification, previously gun-shy manufacturers are showing confidence in the latest iteration of the wireless networking specification by incorporating it into new products. But while the current 802.11g overcomes some speed issues of previous versions, the technology has not adequately addressed compatibility with the popular 802.11b, according to officials who studied […]

Wireless LAN equipment maker Proxim Corp. on Monday announced its entry into the wireless switch business. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company later this year will start shipping Maestro, a platform that centralizes the intelligence of a wireless LAN into an edge switch, rather than keeping it in the access points. It will work with existing access […]

Texas Instruments Inc. on Monday announced plans for several new chipsets designed to run applications on wireless phones and PDAs as much as eight times faster than current processors, while greatly reducing standby current. The chipsets use TIs Open Media Applications Protocol (OMAP), which is designed to support Java, graphics and multimedia content for small […]

AT&T Wireless Services Inc. on Tuesday reported a narrower net loss for the fourth quarter than the same period last year but a worse loss for all of 2002 than for all of 2001. The Redmond, Wash., company had a fourth-quarter 2002 loss of $131 million compared with a loss of $1.23 billion for the […]

A cadre of networking companies is striving to make it easier for customers not only to integrate WLANs into their existing wired infrastructures but also to manage them. To do it, the vendors are taking advantage of an upcoming IEEE standard that adds power management to the overall management mix. PowerDsine Ltd., AirWave Wireless Inc. […]

Three major wireless industry companies are teaming to help business travelers stay connected to their businesses even when they are moving between networks. Motorola Inc., of Arlington Heights, Ill.; Avaya Inc., of Basking Ridge, N.J.; and Proxim Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., are collaborating on devices and supporting software and hardware that can roam between cell […]

IBM this week will introduce a line of ThinkPad notebooks with new wireless and mouse options. The ThinkPad R40 comes in several versions, including the first IBM notebook to integrate both 802.11b and 802.11a wireless LAN technologies. 802.11b, which is widely adopted, offers connection speeds of up to 11M bps. 802.11a, which runs in a […]