Stories about: UMTS

Ultrawideband (UWB) has long been promoted as the future of wireless personal-area networks (WPAN). But are WPANs still needed?

I recently ran into Paul Callahan at Interop New York. I've known Paul for a long time; he was one of the founders of AutoCell Labs, who developed a technology for automatically configuring and optimizing Wi-Fi that I consider to be sheer genius. It really works, but it so far has not caught on; something about added cost, non-standard elements, and other mostly-valid but completely short-sighted considerations. Anyway, Paul is now VP of Business Development at Airvana, a company best known for EV-DO base stations but which really has a much broader view of the wireless world. Paul is a huge fan of femtocells, and said some fairly negative things about public-access Wi-Fi. I still think the latter is going to be a major success, and Paul didn't change my mind. But he did invite me to visit Airvana to see what they're doing in femtocells, and I was quick to take him up on the offer.

Sony Ericsson has introduced a "world standard" 3G USB modem, and has extended its relationship with Google by announcing its first mobile phone with Google Maps and RSS newsfeeds as standard.

Nortel Networks achieved a measure of financial recovery in the third quarter as it posted a small profit, even while revenue for most of its businesses fell.

A Look at the all time greatest controversies in the history of the networking industry.

Qualcomm has quietly announced a new embedded chip set named Gobi for laptops. The goal is to provide WAN wireless data connections globally without locking in users to a particular telecommunications carrier.

The European Commission has begun an antitrust investigation of Qualcomm for suspected exploitative practices in the market for chipsets for mobile phones, it announced this week.

Broadband router provider, Billion, has launched Australia's first mobile hotspot that blends ADSL2+ broadband connectivity with backup Internet access through mobile phone networks.

HP has announced five new iPaq handhelds and three new HP Compaq laptops, along with dozens of handheld accessories, software packages and services.

Motorola announced the Razr2 mobile phone and five other mobile devices on Tuesday with hopes the products will turn around the company's slumping sales and defend its turf from Apple's iPhone.

Scads of acronyms and technologies cloud the crystal ball used to predict the future of wireless broadband. But look closer, and two things become abundantly clear.