The business of Internet, wireless, and telecom law.
On July 23, 2008, a new 911 statute was entered into law. The “New and Emerging Technologies (NET) 911 Improvement Act of 2008” (the NET 911 Act) requires the FCC to enact rules implementing the Act’s provisions within 90 days of the effective date of the legislation, or October 21, 2008. The legislation was designed [...]
For this post on IMS and FMC developers’ intellectual property, I collaborated with my friend, Michael Dowd, a partner at Foley, Hoag, LLP, in Boston. I provide counsel on licensing patents and trademarks, and Michael’s practice involves developing patenting strategies and resolving inventorship issues, software licensing disputes and trade secret misappropriation claims. As we explain below, these are intellectual [...]
On September 17, 2007, only 10 days after the Pulvermedia’s FMC conference in Chicago where Sprint discussed its future femtocell plans, Sprint formerly announced that it would immediately start offering its AIRAVE femtocell solution in Denver and Indianapolis. Sprint included a cool marketing video about AIRAVE and femtocells on the Sprint web site. While two trials [...]
Femtocells were all the rage at PulverMedia’s FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) Conference in Chicago last week. One carrier in the U.S., Sprint, is leading the pack. As of today, there are no femtocell rollouts in any geography. There are a few trials, some announced and others not. Telefonica, as reported in WSJ last week (9/6/2007), is [...]
Femtocells are going to move fast in the coming 12 months. Wireless carriers will push the residential gateway from zero units to millions. On August 13, 2007, Xchange Magazine reported that In-Stat is projecting that by 2011 there will be 40 million femtocells in use and 101 million users of femtocells. Femtocells are micro cell phone [...]
Femtocells could revolutionize cellular service in terms of diverting cell traffic off the network, providing great service in buildings and homes, increasing bandwidth speed, and, most significantly, increasing the service providers’ footprints outside their licensed areas. Cell phone service providers, like Sprint or T-Mobile, would be able use femtocells to off-load traffic to their customer’s provided [...]
