Carmen Nobel

WLAN protocol successor 802.11a is making headway as manufacturers take advantage of reduced component prices and growing user interest to prepare products for the speedier specification. The momentum has many calling 802.11a the heir apparent to the slower 802.11b—also known as WiFi—which itself is evolving beyond laptops into a variety of devices. Support for 802.11a […]

Continuing to streamline operations and shift focus to serving wireless carriers, Motorola Inc. last week announced plans to sell the companys Integrated Information Systems Group to defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. for $825 million. The planned deal comes one week after Motorolas chairman, Chris Galvin, issued a mea culpa and at an analyst meeting acknowledged […]

With interest in that tiny bit of real estate above your PDA or cell phone keypad heating up, service providers and industry advocates are debating standards for the coming onslaught of handheld advertisements. Among the first to weigh in on the matter is a special interest group called the Wireless Advertising Association, which spent most […]

Unable to find anyone to invest enough into the company to save it, Metricom Inc. announced that it will suspend its Ricochet wireless Internet service and that it plans to auction off its assets this week. The assets include all patents for the Ricochet MCDN (MicroCellular Data Network) as well as the radio spectrum upon […]

A new attack that can compromise the encryption cipher used on wireless networks has many users and security experts questioning the future of a technology that has long been touted as the future of enterprise computing. The latest blow to the already shaky security reputation of WLANs (wireless LANs) is the worst one yet. The […]

According to Oracle Corp. and Sybase Inc., a corporate application is only as good as a mobile employees ability to access it. While Sybase is making new strides in wireless data access, Oracle is working on making virtually all of its applications not only wirelessly available but also accessible by voice. Oracle last week announced […]

Linux backers are hoping their open-source operating system will end up being the dark horse in the smart-phone operating system race—especially if the other contenders continue to straggle. Linux leader Red Hat Inc. and 3G Lab last week announced plans to co- develop an open-source operating system for next-generation cell phones. Rather than Linux, the […]

Intel Corp. this week will release a mobile Pentium III processor that runs at 1GHz. At the same time, the companys usual supporters plan to announce notebooks that feature the CPU. Most major PC companies will offer gigahertz notebooks as soon as March 18. But while Intel officials said theres as much vendor support for […]

Palm Inc. last week announced more steps in its plan to arm all its devices with processors based on the ARM core. Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. will help Palm move to ARM, said officials at Palm, in Santa Clara, Calif. The three companies will develop reference designs to help Palm OS […]

A group backed by the nations largest carriers wants federal officials to pay NextWave Telecom Inc. to give up its claim to PCS spectrum licenses. In a letter sent last week to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Federal Communications Commission, the carriers suggested that the government pay […]

WLANs may have been around for several years, but that alone wont entice Tom Miller. “We have elected to wait until 2002 before taking any plunge into wireless LANs,” said Miller, senior director of corporate IS at Affymetrix Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif., and an eWeek Corporate Partner. “This hesitancy has been due to evolving […]

Acknowledging that not everyone is comfortable with hosted services, wireless application service provider Air2Web Inc. this week will announce a new version of its Mobile Internet Platform with the added option of installing the software behind the firewall at enterprise sites. The option, key to Air2Web Version 3.0, is the result of customer demand for […]