Just a few years ago, a leveraged buyout of a company as big as Sprint Nextel would have been unthinkable. The No. 3 wireless carrier has $41 billion in annual revenue and a market cap of $56 billion. Add in the cost of a 25% premium and the assumption of more than $23 billion in debt, and a Sprint Nextel buyout could be nearly twice as large as Texas Pacific's record $45 billion proposed buyout of power company TXU.

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Government agencies would have a harder time communicating with the public in an emergency if imports of cell phones containing Qualcomm chips are banned, a federal official said.

The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will ask fellow commissioners to keep in place a ban on mobile phone use during airplane flights.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday that he has asked the commission to end its inquiry into whether mobile phones can be used safely on airplanes, based on concerns from ground-based wireless carriers that the calls could interfere with their networks. The FCC's proceeding to lift the ban on mobile phones, launched in December 2004, also drew comments from thousands of passengers who supported the ban.

The ping of a text message has never sounded so sweet. In what is being touted as a world first, Kenya's biggest mobile operator is allowing subscribers to send cash to other phone users by SMS.

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Google Inc. is developing its own mobile phone, according to industry insiders and analysts, while a Google official in Spain last week acknowledged the company is "investigating" such a project.

Google is not commenting directly on leaks from Europe and the United States which describe a low-cost, Internet-connected phone with a color, wide-screen design.

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There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.  Check out the things that you can do with it:
  
FIRST:  The emergency number worldwide for mobile is 112.  If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number (112) can be dialed even if the keypad is locked.  Try it out.
  
SECOND:  Have you locked your keys in the car? Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone.  If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone.  Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end.  Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.  Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
  
  
THIRD: Hidden Battery Power - Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370#.  Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery.  This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.
  
FOURTH: How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone? To check your mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #    A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code.  They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be  totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either.   If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
  
And finally....
  
FIFTH:  Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls when they don't have to.  Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option,  simply dial:
  
(800) FREE 411, or (800) 373-3411
  
without incurring any charge at all.  Program this number into your cell phone now.

Web-calling outfit Vonage suffered a major setback on March 8 when an eight-person jury found it guilty of infringing on three patents owned by rival telco Verizon.

After a weeklong hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a jury ruled that Vonage Holdings  must pay Verizon Communications $58 million in damages and a 5.5% licensing fee per subscriber per month.

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At restaurants and the movies, it's a question of courtesy; on airplanes and at hospitals, it's been one of safety. But according to a new study published in the current Mayo Clinic Proceedings, using a cellphone at the hospital won't pose a risk to patients.

The Mayo study looked at cellphone use in such equipment-rich areas as the intensive care unit, echocardiography lab, and the pulmonary ventricular rehabilitation unit. Two types of Nokia phones were tested at varying radio frequency levels in 75 hospital rooms, where patients were depending on feeding pumps, ECG monitors, and external pacemakers, for example. After 300 tests, the researchers found no evidence that cellphones interfered with the life-saving machinery.

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Professional wrestlers will soon be fighting for space on tiny mobile phone screens thanks to Cingular Wireless.
The top U.S. mobile service provider, owned by AT&T Inc. , plans to announce an agreement with World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. to sell everything from ringtones with famous wrestlers' voices to graphics and videos, including weekly matches and the annual spring tournament.

The oldest theater in Russia has installed equipment to block cell phone signals in a desperate attempt to force patrons to stop taking calls during performances.