The Mexican government, in an effort to fight crime, has been urging residents to register their mobile phones and identities, however it appears that over 30 million line still have not and those will likely be shut down in the coming weeks.
The law was passed in 2009 “to stop criminals from using cellphones for extortion and to negotiate ransoms in kidnappings,” says Reuters.
Critics of the law have called it ineffective, as criminals will now be more likely to pay off poor citizens to register the phones under their names.
America Movil, which controls 70 percent of the Mexican market, will lose about $10 million USD in revenue daily if those 30 million unregisterd lines are shutdown. The company has been trying to get an extension on the deadline for registering.
Result for: cellphone
Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg has made some interesting statements in the past and his latest has attracted attention as well.
Seidenberg says that popular online video site Hulu will be gone in two years, as users move on to something new or technology changes.
“When you think of the change, look at Hulu and the dialogue and debate, and you say, O.K. this is in for the next eight to twelve months and in two years it won’t matter because the world will have moved on,” he said.
To back up his point that technology is evolving fast, he noted the “Sixth Sense” project which is a mini-projector in a cellphone that will allow users to watch video and TV on any surface, wherever and whenever they want.
Result for: cellphone
The Japanese cellphone carrier NTT DoCoMo has suspended all sales of the popular RIM BlackBerry Bold due to overheating problems reported by over 30 users.
The overheating occurs during charging of the smartphone, and RIM says that one percent of all the phones sold in Japan experienced the overheating. RIM did say however that “temperatures remained within regulatory standards.”
“Although RIM’s analysis of the devices in question has allowed it to rule out a battery problem, the root cause remains under investigation,” read RIM’s statement.
There are over 21 million BlackBerry users globally.
