by alec on February 13, 2007
The net is buzzing this morning with the announcement of RIM’s stylish new Blackberry 8800. The business companion to the Pearl, this new device sports a full QWERTY keyboard, as well as onboard GPS, and the Pearls’ trackball (which is a huge improvement over the trackwheel!) but otherwise no other significant changes excepting the removal of the camera. That’s a significant loss. The camera is a useful and fun feature.Â
RIM already has the full feature set posted on their Discover Blackberry site, along with some dazzling photographs, but availability information is hard to come by. It seems, however, that the first carriers to have the 8800 will be Rogers and Cingular, here in North America, and Vodaphone in Europe… apparently later this month. Blackberry afficionados are no doubt already drooling.
Various sites are painting the 8800 as RIM’s response to the Apple iPhone. They’re either misguided, or trying to make a story from a controversy that doesn’t exist. iPhone is a consumer play. The 8800 is a business persons tool, which Jim Balsillie understands all too well.Â
RIM employees have been known to occasionally carry a new device, prior to launch, and I had the opportunity to play with one of these about a month ago for a few moments. It’s a little heavier than the Pearl, with a keyboard that’s similar in size to the 8700. Slim, and pretty to look at too. I definitely want one. Now.Â
by alec on February 13, 2007
Over the weekend, I had a piece of email from a reader which said:
You are aware that Cubic Telecom is mentioned in page 14 of the at&t vs. Superior, et. al. lawsuit, right? They are not listed as a defendant, but related to the service.
This is the $2 million suit that AT&T has filed against Superior Telephone Coop, and which resulted in the shutdown of FuturePhone, the company that gave away international long distance calls for “free” when you made a call to their relay number in the 712 area code. Cubic Telecom is Irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan’s company, which is behind AllFreeCalls.net, and AllFreeCalls.ie.Â
The Irish telco’s are already stalking Pat’s business, and he has had to make some changes to his service as a result. When asked about the AT&T suit, though, he discretely said: “Cubic telecom has not received and has refused any payment from its Iowa provider until the current legal situation is resolvedâ€.
The Irish papers had a longer story, which is linked from John Collins’ Tagging Tech blog. In that story, there is a little more detail:
Cubic would not take any payments from the Iowa company until the case was resolved, he said, but Cubic could sustain the cost of providing the service “indefinitely”.
“AT&T are trying to squeeze us out of business by stopping payments for three to six months,” said Mr Phelan. “AT&T should be suing the FCC and not us.”
Indeed.
While it’s not uncommon for ILECs to dispute termination charges, it is unusual for them to dispute those charges in court. In making its case so publicly, AT&T is deliberately politicizing the dispute — a blatant attempt to engage American politicians in a discussion of the rural telco subsidies.
