Attorney Black Horwitz has filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley and several police officers over the city’s ban of talking or texting over a cell phone while driving. Thousands of drivers have been ticketed since the law went into effect in 2005. Drivers are typically fined $75 if caught talking on their cell phones and up to $200 if they are involved in an accident.

Horwitz’s firm specializes in police misconduct and has sued Chicago over 100 times. The law which bans driving and talking on a phone includes a clause that requires the city to put up signs telling drivers not to talk on the phone and drive at the same time. The city hasn’t posted these signs across the city and therefore the fines and arrests are illegal, Horwitz said.

The city of Chicago has collected nearly $2 million in fines from cell
phone ordinance violators. Horwitz is asking the city to stop all enforcement of the law and that people who have paid the fine be reimbursed.

Motorists caught talking or text messaging in Britain face hefty fines and jail time under guidelines due to be published today. In the most serious cases drivers caught using a cell phone can be charged with dangerous driving which carries a maximum punishment of two years in prison and an unlimited fine to be determined by a court. Using a hand-held mobile phone while driving was banned in 2003 but thousands of drivers violate the law every day.

Currently, drivers face an automatic fine and three points against their license if caught driving and using a handset. Department of Transport statistics show that drivers are four times more likely to crash if they are holding a mobile phone to talk or text message while at the wheel.

Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald said earlier this year that drivers who flout the law and drive dangerously should face tougher penalties.

“There is widespread public concern about the use of mobile phones and other hand-held electronic equipment while driving,” he said.

One reason why people ignore the law is because police are lax in enforcing the law. Sheila Granger, campaigns manager at the RAC, told the BBC: “We’d like to see police on the streets taking action. The best deterrent is for a motorist to be either pulled over themselves or know someone else who has been stopped.”

Hands-free phones aren’t covered by the law but a driver can still be charged if the police think a driver isn’t in control of the automobile.

Yahoo has cemented a deal with Latin America’s top mobile phone company America Movil today to provide mobile Web services to 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yahoo’s oneSearch service will be the default on America Movil’s wireless carriers’ portals. Localized versions of oneSearch will be created for each region. This is the largest of 21 search deals Yahoo has entered into this year.

America Movil has 143 million wireless subscribers across Latin America. Yahoo’s second largest deal of this type involved Spain’s Telefonica SA and covers 100 million subscribers in European and Latin American markets. Yahoo is hammering out deals to attract subscribers to Internet services delivered over mobile phones and is spending less time trying to attract computer users. The service lets users search the Web on the first screen they call up, unlike browsers designed for computer users, which force users to navigate through several screens.

Yahoo is taking a different path in the mobile realm than its rival Google. Google recently unveiled plans to build a mobile phone operating system called Android. Instead of getting into operating systems and software design, Yahoo is focusing on mobile advertising deals.

Yahoo
America Movil

Intuit, the world’s largest provider of personal and small business finance software, is going to offer Quicken for iPhone users. The service will cost $3 a month and launches on January 8 of next year. Intuit hopes this will expand Quicken’s 14 million user base and boost the market penetration of a brand that already generates around 1.7 million new copies of software a year.

The new Intuit product is geared to appeal to younger people who aren’t leery of online banking. The software will help users track where and how their money is being spent.

“Our first mission is to make sure we are solving the needs of people who are not currently using a personal finance solution,” Intuit senior vice president Rick Jensen said.

Quicken online will be accessible through regular Web browsers and most mobile devices with browsers, protecting the data with the same technologies that banks use to secure online transactions. The version that Intuit has developed for the iPhone offers fewer features than the regular version for Web browsers.

The new online product will allow users to download banking information, credit card charges and electronic bills. It will automatically download new information from those companies as it is made available. In the case of credit card charges, transaction details will be pushed out to Quicken online users as they are accrued, rather than requiring customers to wait until the end of the month to see all charges for the billion period.

Intuit

Apple is talking with Japan’s mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo to launch the iPhone in Japan. According to a report published yesterday, Apple’s share of subscriber revenue is a point of contention between the two companies.

NTT DoCoMo spokesman Shuichiro Ichikoshi said company President Masao Nakamura met recently with Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs. Shuichiro declined to comment further.

Apple plans to launch the iPhone in other Asian markets in 2008. Last month China Mobile, China’s biggest service provider with over 350 million subscribers, revealed it was negotiating with Apple to bring the iPhone to China.

NTT DoCoMo has nearly 53 million subscribers and controls over half of the mobile phone market in Japan. But in recent months price slicing competition from KDDI and Softbank has made it difficult for NTT DoCoMo to add new subscribers.

Apple is sticking to its policy of restricting the iPhone to one service provider in each country the device is launched. There have been legal attempts to break the exclusivity of the iPhone but courts have upheld Apple’s right to restrict the iPhone to one carrier. To date the iPhone is available on: AT&T Inc. in the United States, O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and France Telecom's Orange wireless arm in France.

Look who’s bidding for 700mhz spectrum!

Yesterday, the FCC announced the list of applicants to the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction. Of the 266 applications submitted, only 96 were accepted, and another 170 were deemed incomplete (but these will be given a chance to provide the required information and participate). You can download both lists, along with the announcement here at the FCC’s Website. Some interesting names popped up in both lists, not least of which is Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures and (as expected) Google Airwaves, both accepted bidders. Most of the names are obscure holding companies or regional telecom companies.

Alltel Corporation
AT&T Mobility Spectrum
Chevron
Cox Wireless
Frontier Wireless
Qualcomm

via TC

For the first time, U.S. households are expected to spend more money on cell phone services than on land line services. In 2006 an average of $524 was spend on cell phone bills as compared to $542 for land line and pay-phone services. But government and telecom analysts predict 2007 will see mobile phones surpassing land line numbers.

“What we’re finding is there’s a huge move of people giving up their land line service altogether and using cell phones exclusively,” said Allyn Hall, consumer research director for market research firm In-Stat.

In 2001 U.S. households spent three times as much on land line communication as they did on cell phones. But expanded wireless networks, mobile convenience and added features like text messaging have convinced many Americans to cut the land line.

“Frankly, I’d be shocked if (households) don’t spend more on cell phones at this point,” said Andrew Arthur, vice president of market solutions at Mediamark Research & Intelligence.

If corporate use of cell phones is put into the equation, spending on mobile service surpassed land line spending several years ago. It is estimated that the country has 250 million cell phones as compared to 170 million land lines. Traditional telecommunications growth has been flat for years whereas wireless has seen 15% to 20% growth in the last five years.

Eric Rabe, senior vice president for media relations at Verizon Communications says much of the cell phone growth is due to the popularity of text messaging and other services.

“As a company that once made the vast, vast majority of its revenue on phone calls, for 10 years we’ve been moving away from that and trying to re-establish ourselves in other businesses because we could see the traditional telephone was a mature business, it was not going to grow and indeed might even shrink,” he said

This doesn’t mean the death of the land line. Services like Internet and cable television are going to keep land line phones in business for awhile. But it is clear that wireless is the dominate way people in America are communicating on the phone.

Zipit Wireless announced today that it will launch a text-messaging plan for its Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 in February of next year. The Zipit 2 is a small device that allows users in a Wi-Fi hotspot to do free instant messaging with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Zipit users who register for the text-messaging plan will now be able to send and receive information over cell-phone networks, as well as communicate by instant message. For $4.99 users will be able to send 3,000 messages a month. Before February, people who signup for the service can text message for free.

The Zipit 2 costs just under $150 and has a keyboard and color screen. The device also hosts a 2GB hard drive for the storage of music and video files but isn’t able to connect to the Internet.

One nice feature about the text messaging service is that only messages sent from user approved numbers are accepted. Spam is eliminated. On the downside, a message can only be sent to one person at a time.

I don’t think the cell phone business is going to get much competition from Zipit. Messaging is restricted to Wi-Fi zones so the user isn’t very mobile. The text messaging service only allows the user to send a message to one person at a time. And a user can’t peruse the in Internet. The text messages are cheaper than most cell phone carrier plans but the downsides of Zipit outweigh the upsides. I suppose it might be good for pesky teens who can’t be trusted with a cell phone but anyone else should stay with mobile phones.

Zipit

The three leading Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are trying to reach younger voters by sending SMS (short message service) updates to supporters. No Republican candidate has yet used this technology to whip up support.

Political observers say that text messaging has been used in other countries to rally support for political causes. Text messages helped to fuel rallies that led to the ouster of Philippine president Joseph Estrada in 2001 and may have tipped the balance in the 2004 elections in Spain. Cell Phone technology has yet to be tapped in American elections.

In 2006 Americans sent over 158 billion text messages in a country with more than 243 million mobile phones. Around 43 percent of 18 to 24 year-olds in the United States text daily, according to Insight Express. About 10 percent of 55 to 64 year-olds also text daily.

“It could be an incredibly useful mobilization tool,” says Julie Germany, deputy director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

The use of text messaging “is catching on little bit in the US but text messaging in this country is nowhere near as big as it is in places like Europe, Latin America and Asia.”

Princeton University graduate student Aaron Strauss has researched technology and elections and said candidates are looking to use SMS to reach younger voters.

Strauss said his study showed that persons who received a text message reminder ahead of an election were about four percent more likely to vote than those who did not.

“The newest generation of voters is starting to use text messaging and as they become politically active I think you’ll see text messaging become more important in campaigns,” he said.

Mobile phone users can text for updates to Obama (62262), Clinton (77007) or Edwards (30644).

“By harnessing the power of text messaging, we can engage voters in the political process using the latest technology and provide personalized, local campaign updates to our supporters nationwide,” Clinton said in a statement on the launch of her service.

Republicans may not think younger voters are likely to support them, or their conservatism may make them leery of new technology. But the 21 Century is here and cell phones are an important part of it. If the GOP was willing to submit itself to the ridiculous YouTube debate, its candidates should be willing to spend a little money on text messaging supporters with updates and voting reminders.

Alltel’s new Voice2TXT service uses voice-recognition software that allows mobile phone customers to read their voicemail messages as text messages. Voice2TXT costs $4.99 a month and still has the option to listen to messages as usual.

“It’ll appeal to a broad customer base … people who are in meetings quite regularly and can’t take a phone call — it’s very useful in those settings,” said Wade McGill, Alltel’s senior vice president of product management.

The technology was developed by the British company SpinVox. It works on any Alltel cell phone that can receive text messages.

“It was one of those services that once you get it, you don’t want to give it up,” McGill said, describing the reaction of a test group.

SpinVox said its Voice Message Conversion System, which converts messages in English, French, Spanish and German, eliminates the need to search for a pen to write down the details of a message or navigate through a voicemail service.

“Voice2TXT as delivered by SpinVox eliminates the frustrations with dialing into voicemail by offering a discreet, efficient alternative,” said Christina Domecq, co-founder and chief executive of SpinVox.

I don’t think this service is for everybody but if you get a lot of voicemails with detailed information it might be worth the $4.99 fee. I find myself having to listen to messages more than once when there is a phone number or other specific information that needs to be written down.

Alltel
SpinVox