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The Free Press has asked the Federal Communications Commission to confirm that all U.S. wireless networks must adhere to the same open Internet policy as landline networks. The policy gives consumers the right to access all online content.

The nonprofit media-policy watchdog said recent statements from AT&T strongly suggest the wireless carrier, in cooperation with Apple, is blocking the use of Skype’s VoIP application on the iPhone. Free Press also said applications which would allow the tethering of the Android-based T-Mobile G1 phone are not available to T-Mobile customers on Google’s Android Marketplace.

“The Internet in your pocket should be just as free and open as the Internet in your home,” said Free Press Policy Counsel Chris Riley. “The FCC must make it crystal-clear that a closed Internet will not be tolerated on any platform.”

A Critical Clarification

When it comes to forcing broadband operators to open their networks, the Free Press is no novice. Together with Public Knowledge, the media-policy watchdog filed a successful complaint with the FCC against broadband service provider Comcast last year.

Former FCC Chairman Keven Martin subsequently compared Comcast’s suppression of BitTorrent P2P traffic to post office employees opening an individual’s mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back stamped “Address unknown — return to sender.”

“Unfortunately, that is exactly what Comcast was doing with their subscribers’ Internet traffic,” Martin said last August. “Subscribers should be able to go where they want, when they want, and generally use the Internet in any legal means.”

Now the Free Press is asking acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps — who sided with Martin in last year’s Comcast decision — to inform AT&T and other U.S. wireless operators that they cannot adopt discriminating terms of service prohibiting the use of certain applications.

“As more and…

Columbia, Md. – April 2, 2009 – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies, announced that it has implemented a comprehensive Knowledge Center marketing database – featuring Alterian Acquire, the new enterprise marketing software solution for large-scale marketers — to T-Mobile USA, a national provider of wireless voice, messaging and data services.

Merkle’s Knowledge Centers are comprehensive and powerful custom-built technology infrastructures that enable companies to manage, execute and measure the results of multichannel marketing programs within a single platform. Today, Merkle’s Knowledge Centers support numerous Fortune 1000-ranked companies in markets that include insurance, financial services, retail, consumer products and telecommunications.

Tammy Benedict, vice president and client group leader, Merkle, said, “We are excited to be providing T-Mobile with a custom database infrastructure, data strategy, and fully integrated print production to support enhanced direct marketing campaigns. We expect this new approach will lead to substantial cost savings for our client, because campaigns will now be executed in the most efficient, automated and targeted way possible.”

About Merkle

Merkle is one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate Integrated Customer Marketing programs. With more than 1,000 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Little Rock, Philadelphia, Seattle and Hagerstown, Md.

For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

Just two days after announcing an application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, Skype has hit a roadblock. On Thursday, Deutsche Telekom, a German wireless provider, banned use of the application on the iPhone and said anyone caught using it will face a contract suspension.

Skype, owned by eBay, has more than 405 million registered users who communicate for free by voice, video calls, and instant messages.

Deutsche Telekom, which has exclusive rights to the iPhone in Germany through its T-Mobile business, said iPhone contracts block Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, which Skype uses. The blocking has been in the contracts since 2007, spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told the Associated Press.

Schmettow said using the iPhone application, which offers free Skype-to-Skype calls and fee-based calls to mobile devices and landlines, could slow down T-Mobile’s network.

Blatant Blocking

Skype’s legal counsel, Robert Miller, charged that Deutsche Telekom is using technology as an excuse to blatantly block Skype. He insisted the network is not slowed.

Nearly 24 hours after being made available, the free application had more than 600,000 downloads through Apple’s App Store, according to Skype.

“What amazes me is that Skype is the number-one download on the App Store in Germany, and yet the country’s dominant telecom operator, Deutsche Telekom, has already made it known that it would block the use of Skype on iPhone and BlackBerry, both for its mobile network customers and at its Wi-Fi hot spots,” Miller wrote in a blog post.

“I find it quite telling that Deutsche Telekom would be so bold as to announce this arbitrary blocking of Skype,” he said. “They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns; this is baseless. Skype works perfectly well on iPhone, as hundreds of thousands of people globally can already readily attest.”

Worlds Collide

“It underscores the tension as…

Motorola used its spotlight at CTIA 2009 to debut its broadband technology Thursday. The mobile-phone maker presented its next-generation wireless broadband technology at the Las Vegas event held each year by the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunication Industry.

The 700-MHz Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology is based on a radio frequency with high efficiency and uses an all-IP architecture. LTE has gained attention because it has 10 times the capacity of today’s technology and provides greater options to use streaming video, video conferencing, and 3-D maps while also costing less.

Motorola has been testing LTE with operators in North America, Asia and Europe; at some of its labs in China and North America; and will conduct trials at its recently opened lab in the United Kingdom. The company said it’s on track to make available the first commercial release of its LTE solutions for 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz this year.

“Motorola has once again demonstrated the maturity of our LTE solution and our ability to quickly deploy a live mobile broadband network in a real-world environment,” said Fred Wright, senior vice president for Motorola Home & Networks Mobility. “As demand for mobile broadband continues to grow, we’re seeing great operator interest in LTE because it can deliver data at a lower cost per bit.”

Healthy Speculation

CTIA is not only a place to showcase new technology. For Verizon Wireless it was a place to tease the audience on what’s next.

Speculation swirled after President and CEO Lowell McAdam talked about existing Verizon Wireless services, including Get It Now and V CAST, and the company put out a press release announcing “new mobile Web games” and “App Store.”

The company also told reporters at the show that it has teamed up with Vodafone and SoftBank to create one platform for developers to use for mobile…

Apple has taken offense at rogue iPhone application stores that are selling unauthorized software.

To thwart the practice, Apple has changed the terms of the iPhone software developers kit (SDK) to make authoring content for rogue sites against the rules. That means developers who are selling apps on the App Store cannot sell those same apps at unauthorized venues.

The SDK clause reads: “Applications developed using the Apple Software may only be distributed if selected by Apple (in its sole discretion) for distribution via the App Store or for limited distribution on Registered Devices (ad hoc distribution) as contemplated in this Agreement.”

Meet the Renegades

Apple seems to be responding to the rash of rogue stores emerging in the iPhone application marketplace. A trio of startups recently moved to compete directly with Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. Perhaps the most well-known is the Cydia Store, which offers unofficial iPhone applications — for a fee.

Cydia is an application installed as part of a software program that effectively jailbreaks, or modifies, the iPhone so it can run unauthorized software. Jailbreaking the device voids Apple’s warranty. Nonetheless, there seem to be a grey market for iPhone apps that don’t meet Apple’s approval.

Another renegade company plans to sell adult games for the iPhone. And a third company launched a mobile software store and bills itself as “the only independent iPhone application” that lets users enjoy the full potential of their iPhone apps without restrictions from Apple.

Who Owns the Device?

Rogue stores like these demonstrate that there are a lot of developers writing code that Apple doesn’t approve of and that other people want to buy, according to Mike Disabato, a senior analyst at The Burton Group. His suggestion: Maybe it’s time for handset makers to understand that when people buy devices they should…

Palm’s efforts to jump-start an ecosystem for its new webOS platform took another step forward Wednesday, when it expanded the release of its Mojo software development kit (SDK). The announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco also included plans for integrating cloud services into the webOS platform, as well as the unveiling of an application that will allow legacy Palm OS programs to run on webOS devices.

Release Later in 2009

Before the announcement, the Mojo SDK had been available only to a small group of developer partners, but now it will be provided to a wider group of developers who apply for access at the Palm Developer Network Web site. However, the company said access will continue to be limited as improvements are made, and a general release will be scheduled later this year.

Palm Senior Vice President Michael Abbott emphasized the importance of developers to the webOS ecosystem. With the SDK available to more developers, he added, “the enthusiasm for webOS will only grow and accelerate.”

Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at industry research firm Forrester, noted that an SDK is “only the first step” in getting developers actively creating applications for a new
platform like Palm’s webOS. Other essential issues for developers, he noted, include “what the overall ecosystem looks like,” what’s the business model, how well the application store works, and whether the barrier to entry is reasonable.

Palm is emphasizing to developers that “webOS is a new kind of mobile platform.” For instance, the company said, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are integrated into the architecture, applications can cache data locally and be readily customized, and the platform has true multitasking.

In the Cloud

Part of the new ecology for the webOS is in the cloud, with a new branded cloud service that provides resources over the Internet. The Mojo SDK, in its…