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A growing number of Europeans do not bother to buy landline telephone service in their homes, relying instead on their cell phones, the European Commission said Thursday.


Cell phones, which first outnumbered human beings in Europe in 2006, did that by an even greater margin in 2007: nearly 112 phones for every 100 people, the EU executive body said.

One reason is that monthly line rental for fixed phones costs more on average than a prepaid mobile phone package.

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Research In Motion is preparing to launch the long anticipated touch-screen version of its BlackBerry smartphone, according to an official promotion e-mail from U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless .

RIM Touchscreen

Turn off the rumor mills, pull down the mocked-up artwork, and say goodbye to the blogger speculation. Google and T-Mobiles G1, the first mobile phone built around Googles open-source, Linux-based Android platform, is officially a product.


Before a warm, if not entirely enthusiastic crowd in Manhattan, executives from T-Mobile, HTC and Google (including a surprise appearance by company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page) officially unveiled the T-Mobile G1.

Listing for $179 with two data plans ($25 and $35), the T-Mobile G1 is available now to existing T-Mobile customers in limited quantities (via T-Mobiles web site) and at all T-Mobile locations by late next month. It will also launch in the U.K. in November, and across all of Europe by early next year.

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Mobile phone makers and operators risk losing thousands of their most profitable customers as financial havoc whacks the global banking industry.


Analysts said the success of Blackberry-maker RIM is the most dependent on Wall Streets future.

In worst case scenario 40,000 workers may lose their jobs in finance following Lehmans collapse and problems at other big financial firms, New York Governor David Paterson said earlier this week.

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Federal investigators said Sunday they plan to obtain the cell phone records of two teenagers and the engineer of a commuter train to determine whether text messages played a part in a head-on collision that killed 25 people.

A commuter rail car lies on its side after a collision Friday near Los Angeles, California.

The Metrolink train had failed to stop for a red signal, triggering the Friday collision with a freight train, according to the commuter trains operators. In addition to the 25 fatalities, more than 130 passengers were injured.

On Sunday, Kitty Higgins of the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators have been in touch with two teenagers who told a local television station that they had been exchanging text messages with the Metrolink train engineer before the impact.

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A key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the nations top four wireless carriers to justify the sharply rising rates they charge people to send and receive text messages.


In letters to top executives at Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl said Tuesday that he is concerned that rising text messaging rates reflect decreasing competition in the wireless business.

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AT&T plans to offer, through its mobile Internet portal, a collection of Yahoos oneSearch mobile Web services including links to news, financial information, weather, Flickr photos as well as Web search via the phone.

The craggy gullies where Idaho cowboy Paul Nettleton runs 1,200 head of cattle are often precious minutes from reliable cell phone coverage.


That could spell disaster in this region where sudden summertime storms howl in from eastern Oregon, bringing dry lightning that can ignite fast-moving wildfires on sage- and juniper-covered hillsides. Unchecked, the flames could quickly turn this old mining towns historic wooden buildings to ashes.

This spring, Nettleton and six other Owyhee County ranchers who make their livelihoods in some of Americas most remote backcountry began carrying satellite telephones provided by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

It is an effort to turn men whose ranching families have been wedded to this land for more than a century into a high-tech advance guard against devastating wildfires.

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Nokia the worlds biggest cellphone maker, said it expects to lose market share in the third quarter as it fights to maintain profit margins, sending its shares as much as 14 percent lower.

Nokia warned its third-quarter market share would fall from the 40 percent notched up in the second three months of the year, compared with a steady market share it forecast earlier.

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