Sprint Nextel expands unlimited calling

Sprint Nextel Corp.s limited experiment of offering subprime subscribers allyoucanuse cellular voice minutes and text messaging appears to have been a success, with the company expanding the service to a dozen states and adding unlimited Web surfing.

Sprint has offered the unlimited program through its Boost Mobile brand in Texas and California since this spring.

The company said 100,000 people signed up for the service during the second quarter, paying $45 to $55 a month to make unlimited local and longdistance calls while calling from their home calling area. Adding unlimited texting costs an additional $5 a month.

Sprint, based in Reston, Va., with operational headquarters in Overland Park, Kan., announced Tuesday that it has extended the unlimited service to 10 additional states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

With the metrics achieving to the expectations, weve decided to go to the next phase of expansion and that was to the South, said Michael Lanzon, vice president for sales and distribution for Irvine, Calif.based Boost.

He declined to say how many more customers signed up in the third quarter because Sprint is expected to announce quarterly results next week.

Besides the unlimited calling, the company said that starting on Nov. 12 it would begin offering unlimited Web browsing for an additional $5 a month and allow subscribers to expand their local calling zone for another $5 a month. For example, a customer in Houston could expand their calling area to include Dallas.

Calls outside their local zone cost 15 cents per minute.

Boost Mobile subscribers dont sign an annual contract, instead paying upfront for their service monthtomonth. Initially modeled as a youthoriented brand, Sprint Nextel has attempted to use Boost Mobile to grab consumers with spotty credit who might not qualify for regular service, many of whom Sprint Nextel has jettisoned by increasing its credit requirements.

Analysts have voiced concern that the unlimited service could encourage more lucrative Sprint customers who pay their bills at the end of the month to switch down to the cheaper service. They also said it wont help Sprint catch up to industry leaders AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, as neither is as interested in attracting subprime customers.

But they said Sprint can stave off some customer losses to MetroPCS Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc., which offer similar unlimited plans.

I think its a defensive move, Jonathan Atkin of RBC Capital Markets said Wednesday. Better to see some modest cannibalization and do it yourself than see a competitive loss to those competitors.

Sprint Nextel shares, which have traded in a 52week range of $16.93 to $23.42, closed down 16 cents at $17.49.


Source: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8SFQT2G0.htm

China Alibaba Ponders Microsoft Yahoo Bid

Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet company partowned by Yahoo Inc, has hired advisers to evaluate issues related to a possible purchase of its U.S. partner by Microsoft Corp after the Chinese government said it would scrutinize the deal, the Wall Street Journal said Friday.

Alibaba executives believe Microsoft will succeed in its bid for Yahoo, and has hired lawyers and financial advisers to evaluate issues related to a possible deal key among them, how Alibaba could increase managements control in areas such as board composition and voting rights, the Journal said on its Website.

The plan by Alibaba management flows from concerns about how the Chinese government would view a combination of Microsoft and Yahoo if the software giants bid for the U.S. Internet company is successful, the report said.

Microsoft on Jan. 31 made an unsolicited offer for Yahoo then valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share which Yahoos board this week rejected.

Alibaba has already been contacted by Chinese regulators seeking information on how it could be affected by a Microsoft purchase, the Journal said.

Yahoo owns 39 percent of Alibaba, which runs its Chinese operation as well as several other Web businesses, including Alibaba.com Ltd, Chinas largest listed Internet company.

The stake makes Yahoo the Chinese companys largest shareholder, but Alibabas management led by founder Jack Ma has retained effective control over its operations.

Alibaba executives are concerned that a possible acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft, a much bigger company with a tradition of more handson management, could cast doubt on its independence, the Journal said.

Alibabas fourmember board currently includes one Yahoo representative, Chief Executive Jerry Yang.

Another major shareholder in Alibaba is Japans Softbank Corp, which owns about 30 percent of the Chinese company. Softbank is also partners with Yahoo in Yahoo Japan Corp.



Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia31981120080216

Google Offers to Help Yahoo Fight Off Microsoft

Almost everyone that knows Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, knows that Microsoft are trying to buy Yahoo, and Yahoo has politely rejected the offer. However, the drama doesn't end there, Microsoft still openly expresses its interest in Yahoo. And to add the drama, now Google offers to help Yahoo fight Microsoft.

Read the full article below:

Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google.

In an unusually aggressive effort to prevent Microsoft from moving forward with its $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo, Google emerged over the weekend with plans to play the role of spoiler.

Publicly, Google came out against the deal, contending in a statement that the pairing, proposed by Microsoft on Friday in the form of a hostile offer, would pose threats to competition that need to be examined by policy makers around the world.

Privately, Google, seeing the potential deal as a direct attack, went much further. Its chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, placed a call to Yahoo’s chief, Jerry Yang, offering the company’s help in fending off Microsoft, possibly in the form of a partnership between the companies, people briefed on the call said.

Google’s lobbyists in Washington have also begun plotting how it might present a case against the transaction to lawmakers, people briefed on the company’s plans said. Google could benefit by simply prolonging a regulatory review until after the next president takes office.

In addition, several Google executives made “backchannel” calls over the weekend to allies at companies like Time Warner, which owns AOL, to inquire whether they planned to pursue a rival offer and how they could assist, these people said. Google owns 5 percent of AOL.

Despite Google’s efforts and the work of Yahoo’s own bankers over the weekend to garner interest in a bid to rival Microsoft’s, one did not seem likely, at least at this early stage.

For example, a spokesman for the News Corporation said Sunday night that it was not preparing a bid, and other frequently named prospective suitors like Time Warner, AT&T and Comcast have not begun work on offers, people close to them said. They suggested that they did not want to enter a bidding war with Microsoft, which could easily top their offers.

A spokesman for Time Warner declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Comcast. A representative for AT&T could not be reached.

In the meantime, people close to Yahoo said that the company received a flurry of inquires over the weekend from potential suitors. Some people inside Yahoo have even speculated about the prospect of breaking up the company. That could mean selling or outsourcing its searchrelated business to Google and spinning off or selling its operations that produce original content, these people said.

“Everyone is considering all kinds of options and a deal on search is one of them,” a person familiar with the situation said.

One person involved in Yahoo’s deliberations suggested that “the sum of the parts are worth more than the whole,” arguing that its various pieces like Yahoo Finance, for example, could be sold to a company like the News Corporation for a huge premium while Yahoo Sports could be sold to a company like ESPN, a unit of the Walt Disney Company.

Executives at rival companies were less optimistic about such a breakup strategy. “No one can get to a $44 billion price,” one executive at a major media company said, “even if you split it into a dozen pieces.”

In making its bid for Yahoo, Microsoft is betting that past antitrust rulings against it for abusing its monopoly power in personal computer software will not restrain its hand in an Internet deal.

In the United States, a federal district court in Washington ruled in 2001 that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the law by stifling the threat to its monopoly position posed by Netscape, which popularized the Web browser. The suit, brought during the Clinton administration, was settled by the Bush administration. But as a result of a consent decree extending through 2009, a federal court and a threemember team of technical experts monitors Microsoft’s behavior.

In 2006, for example, after Google complained to the Justice Department and the European Commission that Microsoft was making its MSN search engine the default in the most recent version of its Web browser, Microsoft modified the software so that consumers could easily change to Google or Yahoo.

In Google’s statement on Sunday, it said that the potential purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft could pose threats to competition that needed to be examined by policy makers.

Google’s broadly worded concerns lacked detailed claims about any anticompetitive effects of the deal, and the company did not publicly ask regulators to take specific actions at this time.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?” asked David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, writing on the company’s blog.

Yahoo and Microsoft declined to comment Sunday on Google’s actions. Earlier on Sunday, Microsoft’s general counsel, Bradford L. Smith, said in a statement: “The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling No. 2 competitor for Internet search and online advertising.”

Google’s effort to derail or delay the deal on antitrust grounds mirrors Microsoft’s own actions with respect to Google’s bid for the online advertising specialist DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, announced in April.

The strategy is not surprising, considering that any delays would work to Google’s benefit. “Google can tap into all of the ill will that Microsoft has created in the last couple of decades on the antitrust front,” said Eric Goldman, director the HighTech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

The outcome of any antitrust inquiry will hinge, in part, on how regulators define various markets. MicrosoftYahoo, for instance, would have a large share of the Webbased email market, but a smaller share of the overall email market.

“The potential concern would be that Microsoft, if it acquires Yahoo, could do on the Internet what it did in the personal computer world — make technical standards more Microsoftcentric and steer consumers to its products,” said Stephen D. Houck, a lawyer representing the states involved in the consent decree against Microsoft.

Yahoo has not made a public statement about the proposed deal since Friday, when it said it was weighing Microsoft’s offer as well as alternatives and would “pursue the best course of action to maximize longterm value for shareholders.”

Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said an antitrust review of the MicrosoftYahoo deal could take a long time and “may well bleed into a new administration with an entire new view on antitrust than the Bush administration.”



Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/technology/04yahoo.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

Buying Phone Cards by MandarinTube

This is a Skype rechargable phone cards ad. The ad is in Chinese, but there's English subtitle. Enjoy!

Verizon Files False Advertising Lawsuit against Alltel

America’s second biggest mobile phone carrier, Verizon Wireless, is suing smaller rival, Alltel Corp., for allegedly making false statements about Verizon’s calling plans in its television advertisements.

Alltel, a regional carrier with a presence in 35 U.S. states, apparently suggested in a series of TV commercials that Verizon customers are forced to extend their contracts when they chance calling plans. The ads feature Verizon sales representatives trying to stop customers from switching to Alltel when they learn of Alltel’s supposedly more flexible contract policies.

“Whatever merit this comparison may have to other carriers, in the case of Verizon Wireless, the supposed ‘advantage’ is pure fiction,” Verizon alleged in its false advertising lawsuit, filed at a federal court in Richmond, Virginia on Wednesday.

Verizon customers have been able to change plans without extending their contracts since October 1, 2007, the Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based telecom giant clarified.


Source: Telecom News

Philippines Globe Telecom goes further to the EDGE

Nokia and Globe Telecom have signed a deal for Nokia to supply GSM/EDGE equipment for Globe Telecoms Phase 10 Network expansion project. The agreement covers the delivery of Nokia Networks equipment such as base station transceiver station, mobile switching center and transit MSC upgrades, home location register, intelligent network, as well as the implementation services related to the network subsystems elements.

This deal follows the recent announcement for Nokia to rollout Globes EDGE network solutions in Metro Manila. Deliveries are expected to start in first quarter 2004, with equipment put into operation based on a progressive schedule. Globes Phase 10 Network expansion project is aimed at providing coverage to rural areas and adding capacity to the network to meet forecasted subscriber growth in 2004. Globe Telecom, Inc. is primarily owned by Ayala Corporation and Singapore Telecom International. It also offers a broad range of wireline voice communication and data transmission services as well as domestic and international long distance communication services.


Source: www.mobilemonday.net/news/philippinesglobetelecomgoesfurthertotheedge