20
March
2008
|
22:00 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Newswatch 3.21.08: Verizon's big spectrum win

Verizon wins C block. The names are finally out on the winners of the exciting 700MHz spectrum auction. Big winner: Verizon, who not only won the nation-wide C block but also picked up a grand total of 108 licenses for $9.6b. AT&T picked up another 227 for $6.6b. Now it will be interesting to see how all this spectrum gets built out, especially with the Google-authored open access rules. (New York Times)

Comes with EMI. Nokia is negotiating with EMI to take part in its Comes with Music program, in which phone buyers can download unlimited amounts of music with a one-year subscription. Nokia reportedly pays Universal $80 per device. (Beta NewsFT) Politely, but apparently unenthusiastically. (News.com)

SP1 upgrade bugs. The "small number of device drivers" that are incompat with Vista SP1 includes a widely used Intel chipset used by HP, Gateway, Lenovo, etc. And for a host of reasons, there are reams of stories screaming about the upgrade. (InfoWeek)

Oh, look, I've got Safari. I took a quick look at my program list on Windows XP and was surprised to see that I had a brand spanking new copy of Safari 3.1. Where'd that come from? "It now appears that the Cupertino-based company aspires to use the advantage presented by the Software Update mechanism to muscle its way further up the browser charts at the expense Microsoft's Internet Explorer and other third-party Windows browsers." (Apple Insider)