Matt Hamblen

Sprint Corp., with support from Microsoft Corp., Monday will announce a nationwide service designed to help businesses locate, track and direct mobile workers via wireless text and voice messages. Analysts said the Sprint Business Mobility Framework is the first network-based location service for corporate users from a national wireless carrier in the U.S., although Bell Canada and several carriers in Europe and Asia already have similar offerings.

Sprint Corp., with support from Microsoft Corp., launched a nationwide service designed to help businesses locate, track and direct mobile workers via wireless text and voice messages. Analysts said the Sprint Business Mobility Framework is the first network-based location service for corporate users from a national wireless carrier in the U.S., although Bell Canada and several carriers in Europe and Asia already have similar offerings.

Computer Associates International Inc. this month formally announced a re-organization of its product operations into five business units with their own development, marketing and profit-and-loss responsibilities. The changes were set in motion earlier this year by John Swainson, CA

The wireless technologies available to police, fire and other emergency workers have improved since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a panel of government officials and vendor executives who spoke at this week's CTIA Wireless 2005 conference. But they said during the panel discussion and in later interviews that much work remains to be done to improve the interoperability of wireless devices for emergency responders and to set up effective warning systems in the event of another terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

To bolster the value of wireless voice and data communications for U.S. homeland security purposes, industry and government officials need to work closer together, security experts at CTIA Wireless 2005 said this week. The consensus among five experts who took part in a panel discussion was that wireless technologies have improved since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Research In Motion Ltd. has unveiled initiatives with two major equipment providers through which it will offer corporate customers Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry handhelds that connect to corporate voice switches through wireless LANs. At this week's VoiceCon 2005 event in Orlando, Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM said its new BlackBerry 7270 offers users secure access to IP telephony features, corporate e-mail and other capabilities. The new device, still in beta-testing, was demonstrated Tuesday at booths for both Nortel Networks Ltd. and 3Com Corp. Both companies have Session-Initiation-Protocol-compliant switches and servers that can provide access to corporate data and voice, as well as external voice networks.

Ten longtime customers of Nortel Networks Corp. say they want the networking equipment vendor to wrap up its yearlong internal accounting probe as soon as possible. But they all said they're still committed to using its products.

Some 1,700 Bluetooth products are already on the market, from keyboards and mouses to earpieces for cell phones, according to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.