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 Quit Pay Phone Business

With an enormous percentage o the American public using mobile phones, AT&T Inc. announced today plans to exit the shrinking pay phone business by the end of 2008.

To providers, pay phones are a pain to operate and maintain, subject to the elements, vandalism, and needing regular service and collection by way of a real life human being.

The company plans to phase out of the business as pay phone contracts with both public users and in prisons expire. The move will affect only AT&T’s own 13-state service area. BellSouth, which AT&T acquired last year, had already left the pay-phone business in its nine-state area.

Cell phones played a big role in killing the pay phone, acknowledged AT&T, which is also the nation’s biggest mobile operator. The number of pay phones in the U.S. fell from 2.6 million in 1997 to fewer than a million this year, the carrier said. In the same period, the number of cell phone subscribers rose from just 55 million to more than 250 million, according to the CTIA, a cellular trade group.

(December 3, 2007)