We'd love to on one of the two flights that American Airlines is using to test their Aircell-equipped airliners' in-flight broadband data service. Following on American Airlines' announcement that they'll be retrofitting 15 of their Boeing 757 jets with Aircell hardware capable of providing 2Mbps data service, the US air carrier is set to test [...]

We've been hearing a lot about all the data service offerings that will allow airline passengers to get their data-fix while in-flight, so it's refreshing to here of some developments regarding in-flight voice calls. Following on Norwegian Air's plan to offer in-flight voice calls and internet services through its Call Norwegian venture, the Office of [...]

[Update] The network seems to be back up in Los Angeles. At least these outages are short-lived. What's this? Another outage for AT&T's data network? We've been getting reports (confirmed on our end) of AT&T data blackouts in the Los Angeles area. It looks like the EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA networks are out of commission as of the [...]

With Sprint still pushing hard to roll out their WiMAX-based XOHM data network (unfortunately labelled as a 3G tech ), the other big-dogs in the US wireless landscape should be worrying about possible loss of data-revenue to Sprint. But, it turns out that Verizon Communication’s President and COO, Dennis Strigl, isn’t at all worried about Sprint’s impact on Verizon’s choice of LTE as their 4G data network. Strigl reiterated at Citi’s 18th Annual Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference that data revenue was the future greenback-maker for the wireless arm of Verizon. Apparently, only 50% of Verizon users have data-capable devices, so there’s a lot of room to grow in that sector - especially with Verizon’s plan to open their network this year . However, it seems that Strigl isn’t fazed by Sprint’s looming WiMAX network rollout in a few months (at least publicly). Trials of the 4G LTE data network are slated to kick off this year , but won’t go live for a couple more years. In that light, Verizon may be starting to feel the heat from Sprint - being first to market with a national broadband network is sure to put a dent in Verizon’s data-revenue. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - “First to market, first in our hearts.” If Sprint successfully markets their XOHM network as the must-have data network in the US, we could see slower and lower adoption rates of the LTE technologies from Verizon and AT&T . Sprint is poised to turn around their struggling business with the first national wireless broadband network, and could redefine themselves as the premier data-network in the US. Of course, we’ll be adopting whatever network serves up the best coverage and reliability at any given time, but the run-of-the-mill road warrior will likely be sticking with what they know to work - Sprint had better get it right the first time around. [Via: MocoNews ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Lebanon gets its WiMAX onVerizon's Answer to AT&T's Apple iPhone - The LG KE850 PRADA Phone?Verizon confirms LTE 4G network trials with Vodafone; to share with AT&TD-Link getting in on WiMAXNokia Readies Shipments Of WiMAX Phones For 2008

Smartphones are more like super-portable, mini-computers than standalone handsets these days. But, what good is all that computing power if you can’t make use of all your old data? If you’ve managed to amass a veritable cornucopia of contacts, playlists, events, tasks, notes, movies, songs, etc. on your old smartphone (or not-so-smart-phone), then it can be a daunting proposition to transfer all that information to your new iPhone. Why not have Nova Media’s Fone2Phone application handle all that busy-work for you? Fone2Phone will take your Nokia, Motorola, or Sony Ericsson phone and download all those contacts, events, tasks, notes, bookmarks, photos, music and videos at the click of a button. “Fone2Phone will add the new content to your applications: as Address Book group, iCal calendar, iTunes playlist, iTunes movies, iPhoto album, bookmark and notes.” Sound interesting? Nova Media will be launching Fone2Phone on January 14th for $19. Just in time for MacWorld Expo. Check Nova Media’s website for their list of supported phones. [Via: iPhone Atlas ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:AT&T launches international iPhone data plans - Data Global PlanAT&T's data plan for the Apple iPhone may be called the 'iPlan'Save some bucks - drop the iPhone data planStop paying for slow iPhone internet performance - get a phone-only iPhone plan for $40Symbian introduces POSIX libraries on Symbian OS … is this [...]

Here we go again with the ridiculous mobile phone charges. This one comes from the UK. The Mirror reports that Vodafone customer Ian Simpson apparently started using his mobile phone as a wireless modem, after realizing that his Vodafone handset could be tethered to his computer for faster download speeds. Well, Mr. Simpsons started downloading TV shows and music albums over his mobile phone’s data connection. After something like 20-30 TV shows and four albums, Vodafone pulled the plug on Ian’s mobile data connection. Now, here’s the kicker. Ian called up Vodafone to question why his £7.50 data plan had been cut off. Vodafone informed Mr. Simpson that he had charged up £27,322 (!) in mostly data-related charges. It seems his data plan wasn’t unlimited, as he had assumed (where have we heard that before ?). Vodafone said that they limit this particular data package to 120MB per month, and Mr. Simpson’s data usage legitimately exceeded that limit. Here’s Vodafone’s take: “Our advice would be to never use a mobile as a modem. We will try to come to some sympathetic arrangement. And we hope he won’t make the same mistake again.” Right. We’re sure Vodafone hope he won’t make that mistake again. Not that Mr. Simpson should have known better, or that he’s not playing with a full deck of cards. But, carriers should really reconsider their data-billing practices. Afterall, this isn’t an isolated incident , by any means. [Via: textually ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Canadian man gets a $85,000 mobile phone billVodafone's fights iPhone defection by taking customer service offlineUsing a cellphone abroadVodafone working on an unlimited music download serviceVerizon ONE-BILL, integrated billing

Turns out that O2’s claims of the iPhone being the fastest selling device in the carrier’s history wasn’t all marketing-talk. O2’s head honcho recently paid his Jobs-ness a visit in Cupertino, California to presumably give each other their “high-fives” over how well the iPhone is doing in the UK. Despite reports of slow-sales , O2’s Matthew Key told Steve Jobs that O2 should move around 200,000 iPhones by the end of January (we should note that other reports indicate that iPhones have been selling very well). More importantly (especially for O2), Key told Jobs that the iPhone has spurred incredibly high data-usage rates on the UK network. With 60% of iPhone users clocking more than 25MB of data per month, O2’s data revenue has gone through the roof (compared with 1.8% of O2’s general subscriber base using 25MB of data every month). With data-revenue the key money-source from O2’s iPhone customers, it’s pretty much a lock that O2 will be picking up the 3G iPhone when it launches next year. Good for you, O2. Way to meet your iPhone sales goal. [Via: MocoNews ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Apple cracking down on unlocked iPhone sales - limits iPhone purchases to 2 per credit card, no cashAT&T CEO Randall Stephenson confirms 3G iPhone for 'next year'Apple iPhone sales eclipse all other smartphones in July!European carriers commit to revenue sharing plan for Apple iPhone - T-Mobile, Orange, O2Apple to announce 5 million [...]

You would think that the head-honcho of one of the US’s premier technology rags is fairly proficient with the latest gadgets and doo-hickeys. Especially those gadgets that he actually uses everyday. You would think that, and you’d be wrong. Kevin Allison, of the Financial Times, has reported that, “Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, the US technology magazine, has revealed he was hit with $2,100 in charges for using his iPhone on a recent foreign trip, thanks to a glitch that led him to be charged each time the mobile handset automatically refreshed his e-mail inbox.” So, here’s another case of a roaming iPhone causing a major, multi-thousand-dollar headache for a faithful AT&T customer. Or is it? It’s widely known that you should disable data-roaming on your iPhone when traveling abroad to ensure that just this type of data roaming charge does not occur - or at least subscribe to a global roaming plan . Further, Mr. Anderson was even contacted by AT&T customer service to advise him to be careful when using his iPhone in China, as it might lead to costly roaming data charges. Funny, we can’t recall any reports of AT&T calling any non-technical writers to warn them of costly roaming charges. But, the ridiculousness doesn’t stop there. Wired’s top-editor had to specifically call AT&T in order to enable his iPhone for roaming use in China, so he can’t even argue that he didn’t know about roaming issues with the iPhone.  “He said the bulk of the charges were due to the fact that his iPhone was set to check his e-mail account for new messages every 10 minutes. The Wired editor said that he receives ‘hundreds’ of e-mails every day. ‘This is a phone that I wasn’t using,’ Mr Anderson said. ‘I was simply walking around with the phone in my pocket,’” according to Allison. Right, you weren’t using it, but it was set to automatically check your email. It’s hard to pinpoint who is more dim-witted here - Anderson or Allison. So, is this another case of AT&T being incredibly callous and overcharging their loyal customers? Or is this a case of a possibly-staged story with skewed facts - FUD? We’re going to leave it to you to decide, you probably already know where we stand on this one… [Via: FT ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:AT&T: No more hundred-page long detailed billsForum Nokia PRO Awards announced at Nokia WorldAT&T iPhone bill comes out to hundreds of pages!Verizon ONE-BILL, integrated billingVideo: iPhonami, or the art of making the iPhone stand from a standard dollar bill

Right, we all know just how much faster 3G data speeds are in comparison to EDGE speeds. Theoretical speeds are one thing, straight-up throughput numbers are impressive, but what about the most important aspect of any device’s wireless data connection - actual web-browsing performance? Unless you’re one of the harder-core mobile warriors that uses their mobile phone as a wireless modem (tethered to a laptop), chances are your cellphone’s data connection is predominantly used to serve up webpages on your handset’s display. So, just how much faster does a 3G data connection allow you to surf the web? Or, conversely, just how much does the iPhone’s EDGE-only data connection slow down the web-surfing experience? (Hint: not that slow) Well, we set to find out exactly what kind of load-times you can expect in real-world situations and with real-world devices. For this test we used an AT&T Tilt 8925 ( HTC Kaiser TyTn II ) on AT&T’s 3G network, and squared it off against an Apple iPhone on AT&T’s EDGE network. Webpage load-times were the focus of this test, and load-times were rounded down to the nearest second. Load-times were recorded from the moment the page started to load until the status-bar indicated that the page was finished loading (until the progress indicator-bar disappeared). Hit the link for the video. Hypothesis: Webpage load-times are bottlenecked by the device’s processing power and page-rendering technology. This should result in similar load-times between the iPhone and the Tilt. Results: What we found was completely expected. There’s more at play then just throughput. The iPhone’s web-kit based Safari browser allowed it to load pages almost as fast as the AT&T Tilt. We used the Pocket Internet Explorer that comes pre-installed on the Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional-based AT&T Tilt - and it proved to be the device’s downfall. Both devices had similar processor speeds, so that aspect was fairly controlled for in this test. Check out the video below to get an idea for real-world load-times. Summary:

• The AT&T Tilt loaded the ShopBop.com webpage in 37 seconds, whereas the iPhone took a whole 26 seconds.
• IntoMobile.com took 51 seconds to load on the Tilt and 83 seconds on the iPhone.
• Load-times for CalBar.com were the most comparable - 15 seconds on the HTC Kaiser and 18 seconds on the iPhone.

From a purely objective standpoint, the iPhone is an incredibly competent web-browsing device - especially given its EDGE-only limitations. The AT&T Tilt is most definitely the faster web-surfer, but only marginally so (the load-time gap is more pronounced for image- and javascript-intense webpages such as IntoMobile.com). Interestingly, the iPhone beat out the Tilt in loading the ShopBop.com webpage. The rendering engine combined with good processing power keeps the iPhone nipping at the heels of 3G devices. From a subjective standpoint, we’d have to say that the iPhone’s web-browsing experience is clearly superior and is worth waiting a few extra seconds. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test any Opera browsers. We expect that Opera on the AT&T Tilt would blow the iPhone out of the water. On that note, keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up test with the Opera browser! We can’t wait for the 3G iPhone… ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Use your iPhone as a wireless modem - tether your iPhone to your Mac laptop with TinyproxyApple: 1 million iPhone sold in next three monthsT-Mobile Germany leaks 16GB iPhone with 3G HSDPA - may launch November 12Microsoft Announces The Beta Release Of Their Deep Fish Mobile BrowserAT&T / Cingular improving EDGE speeds [...]

So, remember when Virgin Mobile went public and reported incredible earnings on their IPO? You know, the IPO where Virgin Mobile banked $412.5 million. Well, it seems that Virgin Mobile’s IPO performance was based on some slightly fudged information. And, by slightly fudged, we mean they misreported their Q3 earnings - which have been revised to reflect a $7.3 Million loss. The news of Virgin Mobile’s Q3 financial performance revision caused a 14.4% drop in shares. Presumably disgruntled investors have sparked a class-action investigation into Virgin Mobile’s ethics in this matter. But, to Virgin Mobile’s credit, they’ve issued a statement saying that the allegations of purposeful misreporting their financial data are “completely without merit.” Right, we’re sure the hundreds of millions of potential stock-earnings had nothing to do with the all-too-coincidental financial goof. Good thing this is America where you’re considered innocent until proven guilty. [Via RCRNews ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Virgin Mobile USA files for IPOVirgin Mobile USA to increase IPO offering to $506 MillionVirgin Mobile USA raises $412 million; Market still cautious on MVNOsVirgin Mobile Australia sued for insinuating Texas teen's virginityVirgin Mobile USA partners with Facebook; Intros "My Mobile" app