France Telecom now has 14 million wireless voice customers in France, but only 600, 000 are signed up for its current wireless data service.
By the end of the year, it will have begun work toward its ultimate goal: giving away free wireless data service around the country.
The deal gives the company something that has been in seriously short supply in the mobile business: new spectrum to expand wireless data service.
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The company is trying to encourage those people to pay more per month to get wireless data service, but without having to create a new plan entirely.
EarthLink announced a buyout of wireless data-service provider Omnisky (nasdaq: OMNY - news - people ).
Now that SMS is taking off, a new data-service wireless-application protocol, or WAP, is taking hold for digital cellular networks.
The diversification appears to be paying off, with Cisco's data center, wireless and video service operations all showing robust growth during the most recent quarter.
His three big bets--the Nextlink national voice and data network, the Nextel wireless service and the Teledesic satellite venture--are now at critical junctures.
More flexibility in managing data traffic could also prompt wireless service providers to incorporate their own CDN-like technologies, thereby providing new competition for Akamai.
Clearwire is looking to build a high-speed voice and data service based on next-generation wireless standard WiMax.
But it is attacking with a radical business model: inexpensive flat-rate wireless data for any device (it plans to add voice service soon).
Mobile wireless telecommunications services play a critical role in the way Americans live and work, with more than 300 million feature phones, smart phones, data cards, tablets and other mobile wireless devices in service today.
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Backed by venture capital investment and funding from the Government of Canada, Fongo has pledged to match its unique free calling service with equally innovative and disruptive offerings for wireless data.
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The company said wireless service revenue was up 7.7%, while wireless retail service revenue was up 8.9%, with data revenue up 21.1%.
Some might have gladly provided the data if they had been told that doing so would improve their wireless service.
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These are paid because RIM's BlackBerry email service, which routes messages through its own data centers, takes pressure off carriers' overloaded wireless networks.
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The plans speak to the wireless industry's zeal to improve Internet access on cellphones and increase the lucrative data charges consumers pay for such service.
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