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Will 'unlocked' cell phones free consumers? | CNET News.com 

I think more unlocked phones would be good for consumers; the carriers wield far too much power with their subsidies.

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Samsung's SGH-i310 8GB Windows Mobile 5.0 musicphone - Engadget

This finally looks like a respectable "convergance device": Windows Mobile 5.0, phone (instead of PDA) form factor, 8 GB of storage (hard disk), expandability, bluetooth, etc.  About the only thing that would make it even better for me is a flip-phone instead of the candy bar.

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Skype Journal: Katrina - the landline - Telecom's Response

Interesting suggestion for BellSouth to virtualize the non-functioning gulf coast phone numbers; additonal comments from Tom Evslin.  However, Slate explains why this might be a litlte more difficult than it would appear.

My 2¢ is that somebody like Sprint should offer to transfer anybody's number and give them six months of free service; BellSouth would loose customers in droves as many people would never go back to a landline.

[ Update: Sprint and Cingular are doing something: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050909/wr_nm/wireless_discounts_dc ]

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Om Malik’s Broadband Blog » Texas, Missouri, Bells Get Their IPTV

"... Cablecos should start an aggressive campaign to lure Bells voice customers. Cut broadband prices, boost speeds, and offer unlimited long-distance for $10 a month. ..."

My Cable company doesn't even offer its telephone service in my area.  Charter's high-speed Internet offering at $24.95 isn't even competitive with SBC Yahoo! DSL at $14.95.

It would be nice a low-cost telephone service; I keep thinking about transferring my land-line to TracFone which is as low as $7.50/mo (+ sales tax) which isn't bad for a phone I rarely use.  But I'd rather use my existing phones (answering machine, etc.) and I'm not sure I want to try out a cell phone docking station.

So a low-cost phone service from my cable company would be quite appealing.  My suggestion is for Charter to downgrade its existing offering to just enough bandwidth to support VOIP, and then throw in something like 500 minutes/month while dropping the price to say $19.95.  The low bandwidth will give people a taste of "always on" Internet, while still being competitive with VOIP offerings from Vonage or AT&T CallVantage.

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LG working on VX-1000 emergency cellphone for Verizon - Engadget - www.engadget.com

I hope the cell phone companies come up with an "emergency use" plan to go with the budget phone.  Paying $20/mo for a phone that is infrequently used seems a bit high.  Some plans let you add a second line for "only" $10/mo which is more reasonable, but you have already be on an expensive $70/mo plan to get this rate.

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PCWorld.com - Dialed In: Top 10 Cell Phone Wish List

Some good items; here's a few I'll mention:

• #8 - Bluetooth.  I want my cell phon to play nice with other devices w/o a lot of effort; see http://spaces.msn.com/members/jdanielsmith/Blog/cns!1pRjebUoVh0bNLSJvrecmAEg!288.entry
• #7/3 - USB Port/Backup. (Might not be stictly necessary with good Bluetooth support). I'm sure a decent percentage of cell phone owners also have access to a computer.  It would sure be nice to be able to easily keep my contacts, etc. in-sync (it's just barely possible now).  And with websites like Plaxo you don't even have to worry about your PC crashing.

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Sirius radio coming to Sprint phones - Engadget - www.engadget.com

This might get me to sign up for Sprint's "Vision" service, which would be another $15/mo for them.  Of note is "...the cost of the channels will be included in Sprint’s package...", although the "package" may not be a current Vision package.

Still, a service like this has a long ways to go.  Unlike the dorky commerical, I'm not going to listen to my cellphone (Sirus radio or something else) while waiting in line at the bank.

What I want from my cell-phone is good integration with my car, that probably means lots of bluetooth.

Not having to buy a Sirius receiver for my car will be nice, but I want the music coming over my cell phone to play through the speakers in my car.  And I want to be able to use the steering wheel controls too (station presents, volume control, etc.)

And then there's OnStar: my vehicle comes with it, but since the service is so expensive, I don't subscribe.  But my car has these nice hand-free phone features that I already paid for; I'd sure like to use them with my cell phone.  Again, more bluetooth.  And I don't care if GM's current business model is the subsidise the OnStar equipment with subscriptions; just charge me $300 more when I buy the car, I'll pay for hand-free myself if I want it.

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The N91, Nokia’s 4GB musicphone - Engadget - www.engadget.com /

Looks like a pretty cool phone.  The things I still want are

• flip phone instead of "candy bar"
• a docking device for my car (use the car's power, speakers, integrated controls, etc.).  Bluetooth may be good enough (assuming my car supported bluetooth)
• There's no mention of an flash memory slot (to print photos w/o needing a computer)

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Cell Phone Finder - A Whole New Way to Look at Cell Phones

Pretty neat site...it's a Flash application that lets you interactive pick the features you want in a cell phone.

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http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/3g.accidental.success.txt
"If prices go down by half, but usage quadruples, your revenue doubles."

(this assumes that with the 3G networks, carries have more than enough capacity to handle 4x voice usage).

I don't think wireless carriers have figured this out yet.  There's hardly a plan to be found for less than $40/mo.  Sprint's "Fair & Flexible" is $35, but what happened to the old $25/mo plans?  Or how about combining some of the pay-as-you-go monthly rates ($1.95/mo from MVNO http://www.stimobile.com/) with the low pre-pay per/minute charges.

I've got no problem paying a "reasonable" amount for my cell-phone usage.  But like a lot of people, I don't want to pay 40¢/min for overages, and I don't want to sign up for a more expensive monthly plan.  The end result?  I hardly talk on my phone until it's after 7pm when I know I've got unlimited time.  That's not a way to increase usage.

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German church sells ringtones of hymns - Engadget - www.engadget.com.

"We assume the Satanic ones are Hell’s Bells, of course.".  Cute.

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SkypeIn in beta - Engadget - www.engadget.com

This is pretty cool.  €30/year is about $40/year which is less than $4/month unlimited use incoming calls (you can get a pre-pay cell phone number that cheap, but you pay for all minutes and you have to add minutes every 60 days).

I'm sure Skype will run just fine on a very low-end PC, say < $300.  As I'm currently paying close to $25/mo for a home phone I hardly use (I usually make out-going calls on my cell phone), the $20/mo difference would cover the cost of an Internet connection.  The only rub is that you can't (yet?) transfer an existing number to SkypeIn.

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Virgin Radio - The Station - Listen via your mobile

This looks really cool; unfortunately, my Samsung VGA1000 phone (Sprint) isn't supported.  If it was, I might pay $15/mo for unlimted Vision.

[ UPDATE: 04-Apr-2005]

Something similar is now available for Sprint: http://www.mspot.com/, $5.95/mo (plus Vision).  No classical programming :-( (I really want Pipedreams).