WiMAX dealt a blow in the US market

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire Corporation might be abandoning their plans to build a Wireless Broadband network based on WiMAX technology according to a Wall Street Journal report published today. This turn of event would be a serious setback for the WiMAX standard as this could see mainstream equipment manufacturers moving away from wireless devices and networking gear based on the standard. More later.

Microsoft and Facebook

Microsoft late yesterday entered a deal to solidify their alliance with social networking site Facebook. The deal, worth $240 million will give Microsoft Corporation a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. This latest move also leverages Microsoft's drive to increase revenues in Internet advertising as its main rival Google Inc expand its dominance of web-based market. Microsoft's online ad revenue stands at $1.84 billion compared to Google's recent ad revenue of $13.3 billion. More

RIM Shares up as Blackberry enters China!

Research in Motion shares jumped 8% today on the news that the Blackberry phones will now be marketed in China. CEO Jim Basillie made the announcement regarding the Alcatel-Lucent joint venture today which drove the company's share price to $120.42 on the TSX. This follows weeks of speculation as the markets were awaiting this long overdue announcement and reacted as expected. More

WiMAX now ITU Standard!

Last week was historic for the wireless broadband industry as it ended with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approving WiMAX technology as a part of the IMT-2000 set of wireless network standards. Thanks to the relentless efforts by the WiMAX Forum this tremendous milestone was achieved. The next step will be bringing service fees to acceptable levels as service providers and handset manufacturers converge. See full article from WiMAX Forum.

New Tax for online music sale in Canada

Canada's Copyright Board has introduced a new tax for online music transactions according to a report from technology news portal EndgadgetMobile. This is somewhat similar to the fees levied against blank video and data media (CD, DVD, etc.) and will impact customizable radio portals like as pandora.com.

Rogers expands HSDPA to 22 Canadian markets

As Rogers Wireless continues the roll-out of its Next Generation wireless network (3G), HSDPA service is now available to subscribers in 25 Canadian markets. There is growing speculation that Rogers may opt to introduce the HTC iPhone to the Canadian market as a more technology capable mobile device, better suited for Rogers' network when compared to the hyped Apple phone. Rogers is currently promoting a suite of mobile video services codenamed "Vision" and this ongoing campaign coincides nicely with the recent HSDPA launch. Lets see how this one is played out.

ICANN moves closer to multilingual TLDs

Internet domain name regulator ICANN is moving closer to allowing the use of domain names that are from languages using non-latin letters and numbers. ICANN has launched a test page that allows users to visit web pages with URLs in 11 languages not using roman letters or numbers. These languages are Arabic, Persian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. More.