Wireless Communications

Even more people will be able to hear Verizon Wireless now after the company announced Thursday that it had agreed to buy Alltel Corp. for $5.9 billion plus a mound of debt. By acquiring Alltel, which has little presence in California, Verizon Wireless would leapfrog AT&T Inc. to become the nation's largest cellular carrier. But consumers may not like the sound of another wireless provider biting the dust. "There's not enough aggressive competition in the wireless industry as it is, and this would take out one of the better players," said Bob Williams, a telecommunications expert at Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

Three of the nation's largest cable companies are quietly pulling the plug on a joint cellphone venture with Sprint Nextel Corp. called Pivot. Spokespeople for Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Cox Communications Inc. said they had stopped marketing the Pivot service and planned in the coming weeks to give their Pivot customers the option of switching to traditional Sprint mobile phone plans. Pivot customers will be able to keep their phones and their numbers and receive a month's free Sprint service for their trouble.

Despite raising a record $19.6 billion, the government's recent auction of prime airwaves was branded a failure by several lawmakers Tuesday for failing to accomplish its major goal: producing a national wireless network that would allow police and firefighters to share information during disasters and terrorist attacks.

It might not be long before the Verizon Wireless pitchman asks: "Can you see me now?" With 89% of U.S. adults signed up for cellphone service, carriers are trying to boost revenue by getting customers to receive more data on their phones -- and nothing contains as much data as video. The big carriers have done little to promote video, in part because most handsets can't show moving pictures. But that may change soon, industry executives said.

The highest bidder in the multibillion-dollar sale of prime airwaves disclosed its plans for the wireless spectrum Friday, and the most prominent loser explained why it was still a big winner. A day after rules prohibiting participants in the federal government's online auction from discussing their strategies lifted, Verizon Wireless said it would use the new capacity to roll out faster wireless Internet service by 2010. Verizon outbid Google Inc., paying $4.

Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 U.S. cellphone carrier, reaffirmed its commitment Tuesday to a next-generation system for delivering data that an increasing number of analysts are questioning. At an industry conference, Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse said the Overland Park, Kan.-based company was sticking with a wireless technology known as WiMax. It can send large amounts of information through the air, but it does better in areas with flat terrain.

The last thing the world needs is another social network that lets users chat with their friends, the head of Yahoo Inc.'s mobile Internet business said. What users need is a way to keep track of all of them. "Today, most people have too many forms of communications," said Marco Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life unit. "To keep in touch with all of them, you have to go to all of these different websites."

Starbucks Corp. and AT&T Inc. will start offering a mix of free and paid wireless Internet service in most of the international coffee retailer's U.S. shops, beginning this spring. The move announced Monday ends a six-year partnership with T-Mobile, which did not include free Wi-Fi and charged higher fees than AT&T will. Starbucks said it would give customers who use a Starbucks card two hours of free wireless access per day. More time than that will cost $3.99 for a two-hour session.

More than 850,000 people requested $40 coupons for converter boxes that will let old televisions receive digital signals after the U.S. abandons traditional analog broadcasts next year, according to a government agency. Each household is entitled to two coupons, and the total requested since the program started Jan. 1 exceeds 1.6 million, said a spokesman for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which handles the program. The $1.5-billion program is aimed at readying the U.S. for the end of analog TV on Feb. 17, 2009.

Leap Wireless International Inc., operator of the Cricket and Jump mobile-phone services, said Tuesday that it planned to bid in a U.S. government auction of airwaves in January to expand its network. Leap will use a subsidiary to bid in the Federal Communications Commission auction, according to a regulatory filing from the San Diego-based company. Denali Spectrum License, a company in which Leap has a noncontrolling interest, also will bid, the company said.