Despite shockingly strong sales worldwide, Nokia has kept a fairly low profile in the US as of late -- not Sony Ericsson low, but still pretty stealth. Espoo wants to take a bigger bite out of the American pie, though, and as BusinessWeek notes, it pretty much has to play nice with the US megacarriers in order to do that. Historically, that has run counter to Nokia's corporate culture of rampant innovation with a general disregard for carriers' specific needs -- think Ovi, for example -- and that's where the winds of change start to blow. In the States, Nokia has now assigned a whopping 300 product development folks to AT&T and Verizon each, and it turns out that the 6555 is one fruit of that labor; in fact, AT&T specifically requested that the 6555's PTT button be moved to the top, and Nokia complied. That's a whole new level of cooperation that American carriers aren't used to when dealing with the Finnish giant that likes to throw its weight around, and if it keeps up, it sounds like we should start to see plenty more models available on contract in the not-too-distant future.

[Via PHONE Magazine and GadgeTell]

We know, we know, it may be difficult to understand how companies that lock you in the moment you decide on a phone / plan -- only to be about as helpful as a bottomless bucket the moment turmoil arises -- could be hated. Nevertheless, we can't say we're shocked at all to hear that cellphone providers are among the least liked in all of the service industries. In a recent report released by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, it was found that "fewer than half of respondents were completely or very satisfied with their cellphone service," and sadly, that's hardly different than in years past. Among the biggest gripes were high prices and mandatory contract extensions, and while pro-rated ETFs are fine and dandy, there's still a few less notable carriers that haven't swallowed that pill just yet. As for internal rankings, Verizon and Alltel each scored higher than the rest, and Sprint was found bringing up the rear.

[Via Wired]
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As quickly as wireless devices are obsoleting and replacing landlines in developed nations, needless to say, it's going down even quicker in a country where the landline infrastructure has been largely destroyed by war and a lack of investment. Less than 4 percent of Iraqis rock wired phones, relying almost exclusively on a cellular infrastructure currently being serviced by three short-term contracts awarded by the US in 2003. Those contracts are about to expire, though, making way for three longer-term licenses that'll be good for 15 years. Bidding started at $300 million plus 18 percent revenue sharing with the Iraqi government; when all was said and done, the licenses sold for a princely total of $3.75 billion. The winners were Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications and Asiacell along with Iraq's own Korek Telecom, all three of which already operate networks in the country. Should be a smooth transition, then -- for the sake of subscribers, let's try to keep billing issues to a minimum, shall we?

Concluding a fight that's been waged by smaller, regional carriers for a good long while now, the FCC has ruled in favor of the regionals by requiring that voice, messaging, and push-to-talk features must be offered at "reasonable" roaming rates between carriers of like technologies. Though the ruling is universal, it clearly benefits the smaller carriers whose subscribers spend more time blanketed by megacarriers' signals than the other way around. We'd be shocked if the nationals didn't get cracking on an appeal right away, but subscribers in rural areas should have an easy go of it in the meantime -- on voice and texting features, anyway; data roaming didn't make the FCC's list of "reasonable" roaming pricing, it seems.

The FCC has just approved rules on the highly-sought after, Google-attracting 700MHz wireless frequency band auction which will take place sometime next year. The agency has decided that one-third of the soon-to-be-empty band will be available to consumers under FCC chairman Kevin Martin's "open access" plan, which forces the winning bidder to keep the band accessible to any wireless device or application regardless of the maker, opening up options heretofore unseen on established networks. The 700MHz range -- which is being vacated by television broadcasters going digital -- is desirable because of its ability to travel long distances and easily penetrate walls, and Martin feels it could provide a "third pipe" to US homes, circumventing the established stranglehold cable and telephone companies have on bandwidth. A total of 60 megahertz will be auctioned off, with twenty-two of them "open," and another 10 set aside for a "national public safety" network. The auctioning off of the frequency is expected to raise as much as $15 billion for the federal treasury.

We don't like paying a couple bills to slide out from under a bunk two-year contract any more than the next guy, but at least we're cognizant of the tradeoff: subsidized hardware. Congress this week appears to have taken a special session to discuss state regulation of the wireless industry and turned it into a rant session, with several reps chiming in that termination fees and exclusivity deals (you can probably guess the device in question here) suck. We don't disagree, folks -- really, we don't -- but we hope these lawmakers (mostly rich people, we might add) realize the tradeoff of enforcing any sort of anti-contract, anti-exclusivity legislation will be higher prices on handsets. Naturally, carriers were quick to chime in that they're plenty competitive with one another and there's absolutely no need for any sort of government meddling. Let's start with significantly expanded carrier-subsidized lineups and greater manufacturer-direct unlocked presence before we start worrying about getting rid of contracts, shall we?

[Via AppleInsider, thanks Warren J.]

We know, jostling over the almighty 700MHz band may not be as exciting as tossing in your bid for the one and only PowerFest '94 cartridge, but for wireless providers and startups alike, this one is big. The FCC has finally announced technical specifications for the upcoming 700MHz band auction, which is being dubbed the "most valuable available slice of radio-frequency spectrum," but are holding out on the anxious bidders by "not deciding exactly how the spectrum will be divided and sold off." The Congressional Budget Office has reckoned that "as much as $15 billion" could be added to the federal treasury as a result of the auction, as the swath of airwaves in the 700MHz range is being "vacated by television broadcasters as they make the transition to digital TV," which makes for "prime territory for providing advanced wireless broadband services." The FCC Chairman was quoted as saying that this auction would hopefully enable a "third pipe to the home" to be constructed in order to provide "affordable broadband to all Americans." If all this sounds interesting, and you've got billions laying around collecting dust, it sounds like you're in for quite the battle come auction time.

So carriers have been preaching the need for platform standardization in the cellphone space for some time now, most notably with Vodafone's commitment to tossing anything that isn't Windows Mobile-, Symbian-, or Linux-based to the curb. The popular reasoning for the move, if you listen to the carriers explain it, is that the current sitch limits their ability to offer rich content and makes doing so significantly more expensive. Here's what we don't understand: only a small handful of mobile operating systems dominate carriers' smartphone offerings as it is -- Symbian (in its various flavors), Windows Mobile, Garnet, and BlackBerry -- and eliminating any one of those from the average carrier's lineup would rile up a healthy percentage of its customer base, while non-smartphone devices do a pretty good job unifying content as it is with Java, Flash, and the like. So what's the bellyaching all about? Are the carriers putting together a case for reducing handset offerings that are already, in some cases, embarrassingly anemic? Besides, the concern centers around their ability to offer content directly, a concern obviously rooted in profitmaking; some software publishers have apparently raised the same issue, but as long as every platform out there is shored up with a vibrant developer and enthusiast community, carrier-backed content can happily take a back seat as far as we're concerned.

[Via Slashdot]

It's no secret that rural and regional carriers don't enjoy the most amiable relationship with the Big Four here in the States; there's a plethora of reasons why the two groups don't always get along, but whether they like it or not, they're sorta stuck in the same boat. In terms of infrastructure, the national carriers obviously own (or hold exclusive leases to) far more property, leaving them holding nearly all the cards in the roaming game. That leaves the regionals in a bit of a pickle, and once again, they're turning to the FCC for help. This time around, the main complaint circles around the regionals' desire for the national carriers to be required to offer automatic roaming; that is, any carrier of the same technology (GSM or CDMA, that is) should be allowed to roam on their network at a "reasonable" price. Furthermore, they're asking the FCC to to require that any service offered by the nationals be offered to regional carriers' customers as well -- we're not really sure we're following that part of the argument, since it's the big guys that end up footing the bill for the technology build-outs (albeit by charging their own customers in kind) -- but then again, we're all about choice. Predictably, the nationals aren't happy; both T-Mobile and Cingular have come out against the proposal, and we're guessing Sprint and Verizon share the sentiment. It's not known when (or if) the FCC will make a ruling, but the outcome could ultimately determine the fate of some rural carriers relying heavily on third-party infrastructure to provide their user base with service.

[Via The Wireless Report]