June 19 - 2:40pm EDT   Sprint's next wave of cities to receive its Xohm WiMAX service after Baltimore will focus primarily on Texas and the northeast, the carrier is telling interested customers. In addition to extra launches planned for Chicago and Washington DC, the 4G service should be available in Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence in the New England area as well as its first southern effort in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. [full story]

June 18 - 4:10pm EDT   Sprint's long-delayed full rollout of its Xohm WiMAX Internet service should start in September, company chief technical officer Barry West said Wednesday at the WiMAX Forum's Global Congress event. The executive now claims that the 4G-class wireless network will start its normal, paid business in September with a first run in Baltimore; Chicago and Washington DC, which have also participated in early trials, will see their networks opened to the public sometime in the fall. Other cities should come soon after, West says. [full story]

June 10 - 2:10pm EDT   Apple's decision to allow subsidized prices for the iPhone 3G is an admission that it needs to follow the traditional cellphone provider model, Verizon's chief operating officer Denny Strigl claimed at the second day of the Deutsche Bank Conference. The executive downplays the impact of the new cellphone on his own company and contends that Apple and AT&T are simply learning to accept a conventional practice that discounts the phone's up-front price rather than insist on splitting monthly phone revenues. [full story]

May 27 - 6:00am EDT   VIA this morning set out its version of the future for micro notebooks with the OpenBook. The 8.9-inch portable is the sequel to last year's NanoBook and earns its name through its uniquely open-source chassis. Unlike most stock designs, the blueprints for the outer panels are put under a liberal Share Alike version of the Creative Commons license: this lets third-party PC makers freely remake the outside of the notebook without the trouble of negotiating for a license. The shift will give many companies a unique PC of their own that gets to market for less money and more quickly than rivals, VIA hopes. [full story]

May 15 - 8:10pm EDT   Sprint and Samsung on Thursday announced that the two companies are set to take advantage of the former company's recently finalized WiMax network in Baltimore and Washington later this year. Samsung's Express Card E100 and Q1 Ultra Premium Mobile PC have both been used to test the network heavily, and are expected to launch with Sprint's XOHM service. The announcement follows the company's April 2008 tests of interoperability of different vendors' devices. [full story]

May 15 - 2:05pm EDT   Alltel will use Long Term Evolution (LTE) for its next-generation phone network, according to statements made during a conference call discussing the provider's latest financial results. Company chief Scott Ford explained that the technology is Alltel's pick and that LTE will have a "significant" installed base for the company's cellular network within the next three to five years. Ford doesn't say when Alltel will start its rollout, but notes that there is no short-term budget and that nothing will be underway until at least 2009. [full story]

May 14 - 8:45am EDT   AT&T's cellular Internet access will be more than five times faster in 2009 than it is this year, the company's mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said today at Morgan Stanley's annual Communications Conference. The executive says that the company's HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) network will be improved from the theoretical peak downloads of 3.6 megabits per second common across most of the network today to about 20 megabits per second in 2009. [full story]

May 12 - 7:55am EDT   Sprint this morning reported its results for the first quarter of 2008 and has revealed continued severe losses in its cellular business. The carrier says its net revenue declined nine percent year-over-year to $9.3 billion and that it lost a total 1.09 million wireless customers in the most recent period. The company says the poor results were "expected" but that it's continuing to rework its strategy, including more focused advertising, cost reductions, and larger strategic decisions. Its news last week of a team-up with Clearwire for nationwide WiMAX also points to a turnaround, according to the company. [full story]

May 7 - 8:00am EDT   Sprint and Clearwire today announced the unification of their two WiMAX Internet services into a single company that they hope will drive the 4G wireless standard. Simply titled Clearwire, the business will share the services of both the old Clearwire and Sprint's Xohm network in a single national WiMAX provider and is said to help promote the concept of an open wireless standard that allows any device and software to run; the combined build-out of the two should cover between 120 and 140 million Americans by the end of 2010, the involved companies say. [full story]

May 5 - 10:10am EDT   Wins by Cox Communications during the recent 700MHz auction will let the company set up its own wireless data network, Cable Digital News says. The cable provider successfully obtained licenses in the frequency range that essentially overlap its existing markets, allowing it to switch on a wide-area broadband service that can handle all of its customers. The service is most likely to be based on 700MHz WiMAX and operate on platform-agnostic level that doesn't require locked devices. [full story]

April 23 - 3:50pm EDT   Cable provider Comcast is devoting significant resources to developing a wireless service of its own, information sent to GigaOM says. The company currently offers a rebranded Sprint service in select areas but is now said to be readying a dedicated division with at least one cellular veteran at the helm: Dave Williams has already jumped to Comcast as its new Chief Technology Officer from Telefonica in Europe and already has experience with Cingular (now AT&T) and the former SBC. [full story]

April 21 - 8:25am EDT   Acer started its week today by announcing a special version of its Aspire 5920 notebook for Intel's WiMAX technology. The modified 15.4-inch system will let the computer connect at broadband speeds within a few miles of an access point rather than the 300 feet or less of the best Wi-Fi hotspots. Other changes are unavailable, though the current model runs on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and includes a 320GB hard disk, a Blu-ray drive, and GeForce 8600M GS video. [full story]

April 19 - 3:00pm EDT   ASUS today broke out of its normal schedule to firm up the US launch schedule for the Eee PC 900. The 8.9-inch update to the design will ship on May 12th and will come in the same trim levels as its international counterparts. Every updated Eee will come with 1GB of memory, an unspecified Intel processor (initially believed to be the Celeron M), and a 1.3-megapixel camera. The company will ship both a Windows XP version with 12GB of storage and a version using the original Linux OS with 20GB of storage. Variants should also be available in black or white. [full story]

April 16 - 9:10am EDT   ASUS has officially released the Eee PC 900, the larger, 8.9-inch version of its popular micro notebook. The larger-screened system not only ups the screen resolution from 800x480 to 1024x600 but represents ASUS' fastest and most feature-laden version. Onboard memory is doubled to 1GB of RAM, while storage is also significantly increased: while all editions ship with 4GB of flash storage soldered inside the system, a Windows XP model adds 8GB more (for a total of 12GB) while a Linux version uses its less expensive OS to allow for 16GB more, or 20GB. A sharper 1.3-megapixel webcam is also part of the 900 series. [full story]

April 3 - 1:35pm EDT   Sprint's Xohm WiMAX service has been delayed from its original spring release date, the company said at the CTIA mobile expo. Originally penned in for April, the release is now slated to occur later in the year and is currently expected by other sources to appear in the summer. The company hasn't provided an official explanation but says the issue isn't technological, instead claiming that the delay is in place to ensure a smooth rollout. [full story]