Vodafone says it’ll keep Verizon stake

Mobile-phone giant Vodafone said on Wednesday that it had decided not to sell part of its 45 percent stake in fast-growing U.S. cell phone joint venture Verizon Wireless.

Vodafone, the world’s second-largest mobile-phone company by customers, had until Thursday to exercise a put option and sell up to $10 billion worth of its stake in Verizon Wireless, which analysts have valued at about $45 billion.

Vodafone shareholders have been frustrated that the value of Verizon Wireless, which is controlled by U.S. telecommunications heavyweight Verizon Communications, is not fully reflected in Vodafone’s share price and that the unit is not expected to reinstate dividend payments until at least 2009.

But company investors last month overwhelmingly rejected calls by a small activist shareholder, Efficient Capital Structures, for Vodafone to spin off the stake into a separately listed company.

Some analysts have argued that any partial sale of the stake would trigger market expectations of a full sellout, hand control of the stake’s valuation to independent investment banks and hamper Vodafone’s bargaining position for any later deal.

Vodafone Chief Executive Arun Sarin has said only that the British-based company is examining all options in the United States, which contributes well more than 20 percent of the firm’s underlying group operating profit.

Verizon Communications, the second-largest U.S. telecommunications operator, has long voiced its willingness to buy out Vodafone.

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Podcast: Why customers are hanging up on Vonage

Work-arounds are set to go to address Verizon patent issues, but CNET News.com’s Maggie Reardon explains why legal woes have taken a toll on Vonage’s sign-ups.

Blockbuster, one of the nation’s largest video rental companies, has acquired Movielink, a video-on-demand service owned by five of the top six movie studios. But News.com’s Greg Sandoval reports that Blockbuster is still a company without a set Internet strategy.

Advanced Micro Devices is getting ready for what may prove to be one of the most pivotal product introductions in the chipmaker’s history.

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HSPA to dominate mobile broadband?

Mobile broadband looks set to be dominated by HSPA over the coming years, if hardware makers play their cards right.

A report by analyst firm Juniper Research predicts that 70 percent of mobile-broadband subscribers will use the souped-up version of 3G by 2012. Total mobile-broadband subscribers will number 1.2 billion by then, it said–equivalent to nearly one in three mobile subscribers worldwide.

HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) delivers mobile-broadband speeds in excess of 500 kilobits per second and up to several megabits per second. There are currently about 5 million HSPA subscribers worldwide, according to UMTS Forum, a 3G advocate.

Howard Wilcox, an analyst at Juniper Research and the author of a report called Mobile Broadband Markets: WiMax, EV-DO, HSPA & Beyond, 2007-2012, said takeoff of the mobile-broadband technology will depend on the success of HSPA-enabled hardware.

“If you take the iPod as an example, before the iPod existed, not many people would have probably imagined that you could have such a device with its capabilities, but right now, that’s an extremely popular device–everyone seems to have one,” Wilcox said. “It’s having that kind of innovation and attractiveness to particular end users which I think is key for mobile broadband.”

There are currently 128 HSDPA-enabled devices–which provide data downlink speeds 5 to 10 times faster than those of standard 3GSM (WCDMA) wireless devices–according to the GSM Association. That figure includes 46 handsets, 32 data cards, 30 laptops and one MP3 player.

HSPA has the edge over mobile WiMax, as it is “here and now,” according to Wilcox. “It is out there, it’s available and it is also a software upgrade from the existing 3G/GSM networks, whereas WiMax will take longer to establish itself because WiMax is essentially a new network build,” he said.

Wilcox said mobile WiMax is likely to net “a single-digit percent proportion of the global mobile-broadband subscriber base by 2012,” with EV-DO.

Community Wi-Fi comes to San Francisco

While EarthLink and Google are still hammering out details of their citywide Wi-Fi contract with San Francisco officials, a company called Meraki plans on blanketing the city with free Wi-Fi using volunteers who will deploy and manage the equipment themselves.

The company, which sells indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi routers, will expand its free Wi-Fi router giveaway in San Francisco starting Wednesday in an effort to create a free community-based citywide Wi-Fi network throughout the entire city.

Meraki’s indoor and outdoor routers typically cost $50 and $100, respectively. The company sells its routers to individuals or businesses who want to set up community Wi-Fi hot spots. The routers come with software that allows people to either charge for the service or offer it for free.

Meraki’s routers are already being used to provide free Wi-Fi to 6,500 residents and businesses in San Francisco’s Mission, Haight and Alamo Square neighborhoods. But now the company wants to expand this network to as many neighborhoods in San Francisco as it can.

“This is really just a showcase to prove that grassroots groups can provide free Wi-Fi,” said Sanjit Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Meraki. “And it’s an approach that gets a network up in a weekend rather than waiting months.”

Meraki will rely on volunteers to run the network. Some of the available bandwidth will be provided by Meraki through agreements it has with broadband providers in San Francisco. But it will also rely on volunteers to share their own broadband access in some parts of the city. In this way, the concept is similar to a Wi-Fi service offered by the Spanish company Fon.

EarthLink and Google were selected by the city of San Francisco to build a Wi-Fi network that blankets the city. EarthLink plans to sell a commercial broadband service, but it will also offer free access for slower-speed services. The free network will be supported through advertising. But so far, construction hasn’t even started in San Francisco, because the company is still negotiating the contract with San Francisco’s city council.

Biswas said he doesn’t really see his company competing with the EarthLink-Google network.

“Our network is different from what they’re trying to do,” he said. “A lot of citywide Wi-Fi deployments are geared toward public safety. We are targeting consumers.”

An EarthLink spokesman declined to comment on Meraki’s efforts in San Francisco. He also declined to comment on the contract talks with San Francisco city officials.

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British rail passengers to get free Wi-Fi ride

Rail passengers on the London-to-Scotland east coast main line will get free Wi-Fi as part of National Express’ 1.4 billion-pound ($2.8 billion) winning bid to run the franchise.

National Express plans to take over the rail route from GNER in mid-December after fending off competition for the franchise from Arriva, FirstGroup, Stagecoach and Virgin Trains.

GNER completed the approximately $6.5 million installation of Wi-Fi broadband connectivity on all 41 of its east coast trains last year, and although the service has been free for first-class passengers, those in standard (coach) are charged either $5.96 per half hour or $20.11 for a full day’s use.

But in addition to faster journey times, National Express has also promised to extend free Wi-Fi to passengers in standard class as part of its seven-year contract.

The on-board Wi-Fi uses a combination of a satellite link and mobile 3G/GPRS networks to maintain 100 percent connectivity, even when going through tunnels.

A server from Swedish company Icomera on the train provides a 2MB satellite downlink, which is combined with the mobile connectivity. Wireless access points are then fitted at the end of each carriage on a train, which connect to the main onboard satellite server and can support about 40 simultaneous users in each carriage at a time.

National Express said it will also build a simpler “one-stop shop” Web site to highlight the cheapest tickets available, introduce smart cards by 2010, provide real-time travel updates to mobile phones, and allow passengers to print tickets at home or use “m-tickets” through their mobile phones.

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Missouri case may change cell phone taxes in U.S.

After six years, Missouri state court may finally decide whether municipal telephone license taxes, which apply to landline phone services, apply to mobile phone services, too. As subscribers move away from fixed-line services in favor of wireless, the courts are considering whether cell phones can be taxed the same as regular landline phones, which pay special utility taxes. Many states already charge sale and excise taxes for mobile services to guarantee universal coverage and e911, and carriers are unsurprisingly balking at the notion of more taxes for their subscribers. A Sprint spokesman, John Taylor estimated that 17 percent of the carrier’s bills are made up of taxes. Depending on the state, however, taxes for a cell phone service range from 4.1 percent to 21.1 percent of the total bill.

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QWERTY users struggle with iPhone keys

A new study that’s getting a lot of play claims the iPhone’s touchscreen is twice as slow as traditional QWERTY keyboards. User Centrics, an analyst group out of Chicago claims that the iPhone’s touch keyboard takes twice as long to type with than conventional QWERTY keyboards when it comes to formulating text messages. The firm used a relatively small sample size (20 participants) for the study, none of whom are iPhone users. Half the participants owned phones with QWERTY keyboards and half had a traditional numeric keyboard equipped phone. User Centrics found that it took the QWERTY users almost twice as long to create the same message on the iPhone as it did for their own phone, even after using the iPhone for 30 minutes. The other users with traditional numeric keypads typed their messages in about the same amount of time on both the iPhone and their own phone.

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