at&t Partners With China Telecom

AT&T Inc and China Telecom have agreed to broaden the range of their partnership in China and the United States and will look into supporting each other in other regions.

AT&T said the agreement would expand its services for business customers in China and that the companies would consider jointly developing services, including video conferencing and managed hosting.

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Intel Gives Details On Their Xeon E5 Processors

Intel finally gave more details at the supercomputing conference SC2011 about its upcoming Xeon E5 processors and been showing off its Knights Corner many integrated core (MIC) solution.

We don’t expect to see the new Xeons until the first half of 2012, but Intel has has been shipping the new chips to “a small number of cloud and HPC customers” since September. The E5 family has the same core as the 3960X which Intel launched this week. So far though Intel does not seem to be keen to ramp up any mass production. Some of this might have something to do with problems in production which were rumoured earlier this year. However early benchmarks indicate that it could be a winner.

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White House Threatens Net Veto

The executive office of U.S. President Barack Obama stated Tuesday that the White House strongly opposes passage in the Senate of a resolution that could impact the equal availability of the Internet to all classes of users.

The resolution introduced in the Senate disapproves a rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission in December on the net neutrality issue, and states that it should have “no force or effect”.

If the President is presented with the resolution, S.J. Res. 6, which would not safeguard the free and open Internet, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto it, the administration said.

The FCC Report and Order adopted the rule that fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic”. A “no blocking” rule states that fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. Mobile broadband providers are also prohibited from blocking lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed in April a Republican-backed resolution disapproving the FCC rules, and asking for their roll back.

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Cisco Offers Free iPad/iPhone Video App

Cisco announced improvements to its video product line Thursday to make it easier for businesses to create and share video, including a free app coming soon for iPhone and iPad devices.

The free app will make Cisco’s existing Show and Share software available for iPad and iPhone in late October through the Apple App Store, Cisco officials stated via a Webcast earlier this week.

Show and Share is Cisco’s video-sharing software, which allows users to search and watch videos as well as record and upload their own videos. That software has been available on other hardware, but until now not for the iPhone and iPad.

Also, Cisco said it is integrating its existing Show and Share with its Media Experience Engines 3500 and itsTelePresence Content Server, although it didn’t yet name the products that will provide the integration. Also, a new software release of the 3500 allows it to support Flash, H.264 and Windows Media formats.

An existing software tool called Pulse Video Analytics will soon allow searches of video content by keyword or speaker in the Cisco Show and Share product.

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PayPal Unveils New Payment System

PayPal has unveiled a mobile payment product for customers that doesn’t require near-field communication (NFC) technology inside smartphones.

The system relies instead on using smartphones and other mobile devices to scan product bar codes and to authorize payments through PayPal mobile accounts. Shoppers will also be able to use credit-card scanning terminals commonly seen in grocery stores: The user inputs a phone number and PIN on the terminal’s keypad instead of swiping a credit or debit card.

PayPal President Scott Thompson laid out the basics of the plan in a blog posted Wednesday. In the blog, he also took a swipe at competitors, including Google, MasterCard, Visa and others, who are working with NFC in smartphones for a mobile wallet.

“Let’s be clear about something — we’re not just shoving a credit card on a phone,” Thompson said in his blog.

PayPal is already a major global force in online payments, with 100 million customers. While PayPal’s new payment technologies don’t rely on NFC, they do propose making in-store payments possible from any device and support GPS-based offers, according to Thompson’s blog. PayPal will even allow for customers to set up payments on credit after they’ve checked out.

Dozens of merchants got a sneak peak of the technology Wednesday at an event PayPal sponsored. The event was covered by All Things D, which was not allowed to take photographs, but posted a story. In addition to the payment methods shown in the PayPal video, that story said PayPal will allow customers to continue using plastic cards, issued by PayPal, for payment.

In an interview posted on AllThingsD, Thompson said the PayPal approach doesn’t require merchants to install new terminals, nor does it require customers to buy a new smartphone.

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Intel Previews Android Tablet On Atom Chip

For the first time on Tuesday, Intel unveiled working prototypes of tablets computers with Google’s Android OS and the chip maker’s upcoming Atom low-power chip, code-named Medfield.

The tablet was about 8.9 millimeters (0.3 inches) thick and had a 10.1-inch screen, and was on display during a briefing at the Intel Developer Forum being held in San Francisco. The tablets ran on Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb, and alpha software developed jointly by Google and Intel.

Earlier on Tuesday, Intel and Google announced they would ally on developing future releases of Android for smartphones and tablets. Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off a Medfield smartphone running on Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread.

The Medfield tablet is a reference design for device makers who want to launch tablets, said Steve Smith, vice president at Intel. Smith didn’t say when Medfield tablets would be released, but said Intel is currently optimizing the chips for tablets to balance power and performance.

Intel is banking on Medfield tablets to prove it is improving on power consumption with its tablet and smartphone chips.

Intel already offers tablet chips code-named Oak Trail and Moorestown, which haven’t been successful. Only a few companies such as Cisco and Fujitsu have adopted the chips for business tablets.

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HTC Is On A Buying Spree

Taiwanese handset maker HTC has been on a shopping spree to reshape its business, though it remains to be seen if the strategy will help it gain ground on rivals such as Apple, Samsung and Research In Motion.

HTC has bought or invested in at least six companies this year, many of which provide technologies to improve how users consume and share content on its devices. It’s a big change for the Taiwanese manufacturer, which focused for much of its existence on hardware, leaving software and content to its partners.

Times have changed, however, with rivals like Apple and Nokia building whole ecosystems around their products, including app stores and content delivery systems. HTC has shifted its focus before, moving from contract manufacturer for Microsoft’s smartphones to selling its own HTC-branded devices. It must now evolve once more.

“It is no longer enough to focus only on hardware innovations,” said Ryan Lee, an analyst with Taipei-based Topology Research Institute. HTC’s acquisitions, which include both technology and patents, “pave the way for HTC’s greater competitiveness,” he said.

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Sprint To Be The First To Offer Galaxy S II

Sprint will be the first U.S. mobile carrier to offer Samsung’s Galaxy S II, starting Sept. 16, but T-Mobile and AT&T said Tuesday they also will sell the phone.

A follow-on to the popular Galaxy S, the phone will be the thinnest available at all three operators.

The largest mobile carrier in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, notably has decided not to sell the phone. Verizon recently said it already has an extensive portfolio of Android phones and so would not offer the Galaxy S II.

All models of the Galaxy S II will work on the 4G networks of the respective operators and will run Android 2.3, or Gingerbread. The phone will have a 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which uses technology developed by Samsung. It will have an 8-megapixel rear camera, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video conferencing.

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Dish Seeks To Add Cellular Services

Satellite TV provider Dish Network is aiming to build a 4G cellular network, if the U.S. Federal Communications Commission grants its permission, according to a filing the satellite provider made on Monday.

Dish, which earlier this year completed an acquisition of bankrupt satellite mobile operator TerreStar, asked the FCC to transfer TerreStar’s frequency licenses to a Dish subsidiary and to allow Dish to use the spectrum to build a broadband wireless network that it could then use to offer standalone cellular services.

Combined with spectrum Dish acquired in a separate deal to buy DBSD North America, the satellite provider wants to build a network using LTE, the technology of choice for most of the nationwide mobile phone operators, it wrote.

But it needs special permission from the FCC to offer standalone cellular service–as opposed to a service that is integrated with satellite service–and says it is crucial that it be allowed to do so.

“The requirement to make every device dual-mode severely limits a provider’s ability to enter into arrangements with multiple device and equipment manufacturers, thereby limiting consumer choice and severely impairing the business case economics,” Dish wrote.

The company also argued that customers want the choice of a smaller, lighter device with long battery life. Adding satellite capabilities to devices makes them heavier and reduces battery life. “Today, a mobile voice and data provider’s ability to attract customers depends in large measure on its ability to provide its customers with the types of devices that best suit their needs,” it wrote.

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AMD Not Chasing Smartphone Market

Advanced Micro Devices is not immediately pursuing opportunities within the smartphone markets as it does not align with the company’s strength in technologies like graphics, an executive said on Monday.

Smartphones are constrained on battery, pixels and screen space, and AMD has other areas it can focus on in order to grow, said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager for AMD’s product group during the Pacific Crest Securities Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado. The company sees an opportunity to apply its graphics and chip technologies to tablets, where customers are demanding better video and battery life.

“We haven’t announced any plans to go in that handheld space. We’ve got plenty of opportunities… in server, notebook and now tablets, that’s our immediate focus. But if the right circumstances come up and we can see a way to impact the market, we’ll obviously continue to look,” Bergman said.

AMD has faced criticism for not aggressively pursuing the booming smartphone or tablet markets. The company in June rushed to release its first dedicated tablet chip, called the Z-series. The chip is a low-power variant of PC chips based on the Fusion microarchitecture, which includes a graphics processor and CPU on a single chip. Based on the x86 architecture, the chip can help tablets deliver a full PC and graphics experience, the company has said.

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