Carol Pinchefsky

The Federal Communications Commission will investigate complaints that a contractor tried to extort potential bidders for a block of the spectrum set aside for emergency responders, and doomed the auction to failure. The auction of the agency’s D block of the 700MHz spectrum, reserved at a lower price for emergency responders and private ventures who […]

The 700MHz spectrum auction ended March 18 after 50 days of bidding, taking in $19.6 billion for the federal government, even though the D block-reserved for emergency access by the government but in use daily by private industry-did not meet its reserve price and may be reauctioned at a later date. Harold Feld, senior vice […]

A portion of the wireless spectrum, for which bidding closed March 18, failed to meet the government’s reserve price. Now, public interest groups and members of Congress are urging the FCC, which has imposed a gag order on participants, to lift its veil of secrecy over the identity of bidders. The failure of the spectrum […]

Sun Microsystems officials said they are ready to start working with MySQL customers and developers after finalizing its $1 billion acquisition of the open-source database software company. Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz, along with Rich Green, executive vice president of software, and M??ærten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL AB and now the senior vice […]

Which is more surprising? That Chevron, an oil company awash in cash, could become a wireless carrier? Or that Paul Allen, the multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder, may be planning to boost the profile (and bandwidth) of a cable company in which he owns a controlling interest? His company, Vulcan Ventures, as well as Chevron, are two […]

Linux kernel developer Ted Ts’o will be joining the Linux Foundation for two years as a fellow and chief platform strategist. There, Ts’o plans on extending the LSB (Linux Standard Base) to create programs that will work on multiple Linux distributions. This way, ISVs can support different distributions, such as Red Hat and Ubuntu, at […]

Third-party applications for mobile devices are nothing new, but open platforms, and the freedom to develop, like with Googles Android, mean we can expect a tidal wave of development that will evolve the industry. Treo owners have been installing applications on their Palm OS smart phones for years. Even with supposedly closed smart phones like […]

Roaming costs are expensive. The U.S. branch of T-Mobile charges .99 cents per minute for roaming in Europe, for both incoming and outgoing calls. This means an American T-Mobile customer visiting England pays about $30 for a half-hour call. Although the European Union has recently regulated roaming charges, the price is not right: Europeans now […]

Google has made its much anticipated and rumored play in the mobile phone market. But instead of a cell phone, Google is releasing an open platform, a one-stop software development kit for hardware manufacturers and software developers alike. The end result, say analysts, is likely to be less expensive phones for customers and more opportunities […]

Dell is experiencing delivery delays for its M1330 ultraportable notebook line. Bob Kaufman, a spokesman for Dell, said that strong demand for the new product, introduced June 28, created the conditions for supply constraints that ultimately means “some shipments for customers have been delayed.” Kaufman added that, “we have teams that are working around the […]