May 5, 2008

T-Mobile USA launched its first commercial high-speed wireless service in New York City, and plans to expand the service to 20 to 25 other major U.S. markets by the end of the year.

April 23, 2008

The battle over cell phones in schools ended with the state's appeals court voting to uphold a ban on cell phones in public schools in New York city.

April 15, 2008

Cuban government has eased restrictions on buying cellular phones for the first time and also allowed registering those they had held illegally.

April 10, 2008

The FCC has approved a new nationwide alert system that will send text messages to cell phones to alert Americans when an emergency, disaster or attack occurs. The plan itself will deliver three different types of charge-free text alerts to mobile phone users.

April 8, 2008

The European Union has approved in-flight cell phone use for all of its 27 member nations. An on-board base station will relay phone signals to either a satellite or ground towers.

April 2, 2008

AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega said that AT&T was expecting a 3G iPhone within the next few months., when asked about plans to sell a third-generation (3G) iPhone.

AT&T To Offer Napster Music Downloads

AT&T Inc. is making Napster Inc.'s entire music catalog of more than 5 million songs available for wireless download starting early next month.

According to AP report, the service will expand the company's over-the-air download offerings beyond the independent music it offered through eMusic.com and allow it to compete with offerings from rivals Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp.

At $1.99 a song, or $7.49 for five songs, it's comparable to Verizon's pricing, but far off-kilter from Sprint's .99 a track. Issues with the price point are only compounded by computer based digital music stores like iTunes and Amazon distributing DRM-free tracks at .99. There is a little more work involved with those solutions since they don't provide the convenience of over-the-air downloads (yet), but in terms of price and selection they may prove to be strong contenders.

With this announcement, AT&T is reinforcing the company's commitment to delivering anytime, anywhere access to content. In addition, AT&T will be the only national provider to enable customers to purchase full-track songs over the air from both Napster and eMusic, the world's largest retailer of independent music.