Phone services get wakeup call
Last month, Japan’s largest cellular carrier, NTT DoCoMo, started selling a cellphone that works like any other: it uses standard cellular technology to transmit calls.
But if its owner is sitting at a desk in an office configured for the phone, the calls instead travel via the high-speed wireless technology known as Wi-Fi, and then over the Internet, using the voice-over-Internet calling protocol.
It has the potential to shake up the world of cellular calling.
Unlike a traditional cellphone call, which comes out of your bucket of paid minutes, calls over the Internet may not be counted at all. That means if you were in your office — or eventually your home or any place that has a Wi-Fi connection — you could make unlimited free calls (not counting the cost of the Internet service). Already, as voice increasingly moves over the Internet, traditional land-line telephone providers are facing a threat to their core business. The wireless carriers have so far been spared much of this tumult. That is likely to start changing with the advent of wireless calling via the Internet.
Web commerce underestimated
If online holiday sales keep up their current pace, investors might have significantly underestimated the growth in Web commerce.
Online retailers have rung up more than $11 billion in sales this holiday season, more than guaranteeing that virtual sales will exceed earlier estimates for the entire holiday.
Online shopping revenue during the holiday season was projected to be $15 billion, up about 25 percent from last year, according to comScore Networks. That estimate came out before the shopping began in earnest.
Now, comScore predicts online holiday shopping sales will help fourth-quarter sales top $20 billion.
More colleges offer free, legal digital music
More college campuses are adopting deeply discounted — and legal — digital music as the latest amenity for students.
Several top schools began offering these services recently, either free or highly subsidized. Now, student demand is spurring more universities to institute programs. “Our phones have been ringing nonstop,” says Brett Goldberg, CEO of Cdigix, which runs digital music, video and educational services at 11 campuses.