Holy cow, we're actually out of breath just thinking about how long it's been since Canada kicked this off. After running some two months and hauling in nearly three times as much cash as had been widely predicted -- $4.2 billion in Canadian currency, to be exact -- the Great White North's AWS auction has drawn to a close, and it looks like there's going to be some new competition in the mix whether Rogers, Bell, and Telus like it or not. The most prolific bidder has turned out to be Globalive, which runs the Yak brand and made off with licenses pretty much everywhere except Quebec at the cost of some $442 million CAD; several other new players came to bat for some licenses as well, and naturally, the big three incumbents took the opportunity to snap up some extra spectrum -- Rogers to the tune of nearly one billion dollars. It'll probably be a year or two before any of the rookies have service to offer, though they're helped out by new regulations that require existing networks to lease space on towers for new transceivers and offer roaming rates that aren't prohibitively high.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Believe it or not, this little maestro has nothing to do with our Keepin' It Real Fake series. Don't get us wrong, thanks to a juiced Dopod logo and "Windows" text in the upper left that the manufacturer was too lazy to bother trying to make look even remotely legit, it certainly could be a KIRF honoree, but the Sang Da SD999 has a neat trick up its sleeve that manages to keep it out of that dubious category. Turns out the phone (which looks absolutely nothing like an ASUS P750, coincidentally) can hook up with wireless camera equipped with infrared LED illumination up to 30 meters away, although the reviewer found that it pretty much craps out after 10. A pretty neat trick with some potential real-world applications, we'd say -- like monitoring your premises for corporate spies, for example.

[Via iTech News Net]

In the latest major twist in this epic battle between wireless chipmakers, a US District Judge has slapped a permanent injunction on any products containing those Qualcomm 3G chips ruled to be infringing on Broadcom's so-called '686 patents. Not only can Qualcomm no longer offer infringing devices nor the chips themselves in the US, the retroactive nature of the ruling means that the company can't even provide service or technical support for '686 products already on the market. At this point, with a voluntary licensing agreement seemingly off the table, the next move for Qualcomm is establishing a plan of action to show Judge James Selna how it plans to redesign its products into compliance. [Warning: PDF link]

[Via Reuters]

Nokia -- always known to break a phone-lover off some snazzy new junk -- currently wants to get up in your headspace with its new Bluetooth earpiece, the BH-101. What can the BH-101 do for you, you ask? Well for starters, it'll deliver eight hours of talktime, 180 hours of sweet, silent standby, Bluetooth 2.0 (with EDR, Handsfree v.1.5, and Headset v.1.1), plus it will go easy on the wallet with a€ 30 / $40 price tag. Ready to give the appearance that you're talking to yourself? Do it this "Christmas season" with Nokia's help.

In a wrap-up of the state of 4G networks over at BusinessWeek, the battle between the three competing 4G network standards -- WIMAX, Long Term Evolution (LTE), and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) -- is appraised, with WIMAX clearly edging out its other rivals. This could be a two horse race before long if Verizon chooses to back GSM's successor LTE over CDMA's sequel, UMB. That would leave Qualcomm without one of its most significant backers for CDMA's spiritual sibling, although it'll do just fine thanks to the multiple 4G patents it holds. Ultimately though, in all of this space there's very little discussion about what the consumer wants: do we really need two or three different standards that probably won't inter-operate, leaving us back at the square we've always been at? Frankly, for all the benefits that 4G is purported to bring, we'd like something a little more imaginative than the usual bickering amongst the big shots.

Update: Although it didn't come from VZW, last month Vodafone's chairman Arun Sarin made it clear that Verizon will go for LTE. Bad news for UMB!

Not really sure how much mileage Apple is going to get out of this patent, with Zune and pretty much everybody else already swapping songs and such wirelessly, but we'll humor 'em all the same. A September 1st, 2006 filing describes methods "for delivery of data to a portable electronic device from another electronic device." For sake of argument, we'll assume they're talking iPhones and iPods here. Applications are pretty broad, ranging from various protected and unprotected media files, to news subscriptions and shopping lists, and syncing can be done automatically and manually. In a definite step above the level of sharing offered by the Zune, subscription files can be shared in an unlimited manner with other subscription users -- though of course that would all be contingent on Apple ever offering a subscription-based iTunes to its users.

And you thought going away to college was the first step to freedom. Au contraire, students (and faculty, no less) entering Pennsylvania's Slippery Rock University will actually be faced with an RFID tag made for their handset, which will "allow them to pay for everything from laundry and copier services to movies and groceries in the surrounding town of Slippery Rock." The 13.56MHz tags were developed by Heartland Payment Systems and utilize NFC to make spending their parents' cash all the more simple. Of course, high rollers should be aware that their guardians can log in at any time and view their purchasing habits, so we'd be careful before pulling out the long face and car trouble story. The cards will reportedly cost around $1 apiece, but will be "available for free" to all of the SU students.

[Via Textually]

Palm has slapped its new Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard up on the Palm store site for all you mobile workers who crave that office away from office type of thing. Featuring 5 rows of full-sized keys and an adjustable easel to sit it on while at work, it all folds up to stow in wherever you currently stow stuff while on the move. Palm claims five months of battery usage from just a pair of AAA batteries, though we're feeling that a handy dandy rechargeable option might have been a better option here. Device support includes the Treo line of devices (of course) and can be had at ye ole Palm shoppe for $99.

[Via Brighthand]

Another day, another donut Bluetooth headset announcement. The BlueAnt Wireless V12 LCD Bluetooth headset, brings little new to a marketplace positively brimming with like devices. If there is one thing we know, it's the age-old trick to help a product stand out: simply place several cool backlit ants on it -- but sadly, that wasn't in the cards this lap 'round the track. What BlueAnt Wireless did get right, however, is to pack a barge-load of features into this 16 gram, 2.3 inch long set. Featuring call display with 10 number redial, vibrating alert, 12 hour talk time, and 300 hour standby (the site labels this as 15 days – apparently the days are shorter in Australia). Throw in ambient noise reduction, and the stylin' brushed aluminum finish rounds out what we would expect to see at the $99.00 price point. Best feature? The magic words 'V12' are on the headset, baby! Anything with V12 in it, or on it, is fine by us.

[Via PHONE Magazine]

One of the many, many perils of cellphone ownership lies locked in the handset's memory: data loss. Nothing ruins an otherwise pleasant day worse than sending that Samsung t629 for a dunk in the pool (at least, that's your story on the insurance report, though we all really know you dropped it in the loo) -- or, even more catastrophically, running it over with a 5,000-pound SUV. Of course, the loss of the phone itself sucks enough, but the real challenge is resurrecting those contacts. T-Mobile's bringing a solid solution to the table with wireless synchronization of contact lists to its server, a la Sidekick. The service is initially launching with the aforementioned t629, along with Nokia's 6600 (how's that for an S60 throwback?) and 3220. Finally we're able to flush our phones down the toilet with wild abandon.

[Thanks, The Fish]

It wasn't much of a secret, we saw last week that Verizon's USB720 EV-DO Rev A dongle was slated for a February 1st release, and it makes sense that Verizon would be launching a network to feed the fat wireless pipes to it on the same day, but all the same we're quite relieved to hear Verizon Wireless is finally doing the Rev A thing all official-like -- after being all sneaksy about it up until now. The locations look to be the same ones we were rumoring earlier, at least for the most part: Massachusetts, including Boston and its suburbs; Richmond and Hampton Roads, Virginia; Chicago and its suburbs; Gary Indiana; Salt Lake City along with other cities in Utah; and Florida throughout Verizon's existing broadband network. There are already websites that have been tracking Verizon's subtle spread of Rev A across the country, and it seems like Verizon, while maybe not in a position to challenge the 66 million people currently covered by Sprint's Rev A network, wanted to wait until it got dang close to launch. Verizon expects your connection speeds -- for those of you lucky enough to live in Florida or one of the other metro areas -- to be about six times faster, with average download speeds of 450-800kbs, and upload speeds of 300-400kbps. The word on the street is that that download speed estimate is a tad conservative, while the upload speed mark is fairly optimistic, but we're sure you get the idea.

[Via Mobiledia]

While it didn't bring it a massive posse or hundred foot banners, Germany's PEIKER did manage to deliver an "award-winning" in-car connection device during CES last week. The company's BluetouchMusic claims to be the "world's first" system to integrate handsfree calling and music into your car's stereo, but clearly it's missed quite a few other applications that have already graced American soil. Nevertheless, the device is meant to be "professionally installed" into your car's stereo system, and allows you to converse wirelessly on your Bluetooth-enabled phone, stream tunes from your A2DP-enabled device, listen to your iPod via an optional cable, or connect any music device via a 3.5-millimeter aux input. The diminutive device touts an intuitive-looking menu with oversized buttons to navigate from music to your address book and everywhere in between, but interestingly enough the "handsfree" aspect becomes somewhat laughable when many functions need a few button presses to get things in order. Regardless, PIEKER's first device to be sold and distributed here in America should start hitting "aftermarket channels" shortly for a currently undisclosed price.

[Via BlueTomorrow]

We've got all sorts of incredibly tiny chips serving very unique purposes, but Kyocera has developed a 10- x 8-millimeter wireless LAN wafer that should feel right at home in those oh-so-cramped innards of certain diminutive mobiles. The FWMG0-03 module comes in at just 1.25-millimeters thick, and provides full support for 802.11b/g protocols; aside from mounting all of the circuity on a single side of the board, compactness has been aided by the low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) used, "resulting in an enhanced bending strength of 400 MPa which is approximately double that of the general LTCC." The chip draws just 0.85 milliwatts while in standby, 550 milliwatts when transmitting data, and 291 (802.11b) / 345 (802.11g) milliwatts when receiving. While we aren't sure which cellphone manufactures are vying for batches of these minuscule modules, we do know that a trio of operating voltages will be available when these start "volume production within 2006," and SDIO / SPI will be the supported interfaces.

We're sure that you've been following the FCC's blow-by-blow coverage of the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum auction as closely as you would the "So You Think You Can Dance" competition, but just in case you've been busy for the last 161 rounds of bidding, we're here to let you know that the results are in and the winners have been crowned (assuming that they cough up the millions or billions of dollars they've pledged, that is). This wireless horse race has remained mostly unchanged for the last few dozen rounds -- after the DirecTV-Echostar consortium known as Wireless DBS dropped out of the running, even we mostly lost interest -- with T-Mobile finally emerging as the seemingly largest beneficiary. For a cool $4.1 billion (yes, that's billion with a "b"), the Mob picked up 120 licenses covering most of the US, a move that was essential for the company to kick-start its rather slow entrance into the 3G data game. Other big winners included Spectrum Co. and AWS Wireless, who picked up 137 and 154 licenses, respectively, along with Verizon (13 blocks covering most of the Eastern US) and MetroPCS, which snatched up 8 licenses in key areas such as Texas and Detroit. Overall, 104 bidders made it through the entire auction to pick up a grand total of 1,087 licenses, with the biggest winner of all being the good ole US government: the total amount of loot that was bid reached a staggering $13.7 billion, which is basically found money considering that everyone was simply battling over the right to use invisible radio spectrum. If you're at all interested in a more specific run-down of who got what and for how much, hit the Read link to check out the auction home page, where the FCC has thoughtfully posted about a million pages of charts, tables, and graphs laying it all out in excruciatingly boring detail.

[Via MocoNews]