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.

NEC Develops Cell Phone That Translates Japanese On The Fly

Japanese electronics giant NEC has created a world-first real-time translator on a mobile phone, which can instantly turn Japanese travellers' words into English. When a traveler speaks Japanese into the cellphone, it displays the recognized words and then attempt to translate it into English, which is then displayed on the screen.

The translator uses voice-recognition software and is able to translate about 50,000 Japanese words into English. Right now it only works from Japanese to English, and is intended to assist traveling Japanese.

New software, which includes voice-recognition and translation functions, have been made sufficiently compact that they can fit on a microchip mounted in the phone, NEC said.

An NEC spokesman said the company had not decided when the new mobile phones would be released.

(December 3, 2007)

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