This week a series of firsts – LTE, a Google phone and a spot market for cloud services.
TeliaSonera kicked off the first commercial LTE services in Oslo and Stockholm with bargain basement prices.
Google ended months of speculation by announcing it would issue its first handset, the NexusOne, in January.
Amazon launched the world’s first spot market for cloud capacity, Verizon and Nortel lit the first commercial 100 Gbps lightwave service, and BSNL opened India’s first mobile Wimax network.
The FTC filed an anti-competition case against Intel, saying it was aiming to prevent the chip firm from using its market power to dominate the emerging video graphics chip market.
Apple filed a counter-suit against Nokia, claiming the handset firm had infringed 13 patents. In a complaint to the FTC, privacy groups said that recent changes to Facebook had violated US federal laws.
Bharti Airtel sought approval to buy Bangladesh operator Warid for a reported $900 million. Rival Reliance Communications denied drawing up plans to sell off the FLAG cable network.
Samsung appointed its second CEO in 20 months.
India slapped stiff anti-dumping duties on Chinese telecom gear.
Gartner forecast a 9% rise in handset shipments in 2010 after a flat 2009, while the internet is expected to account for 12.3% of worldwide ad spending, up two points from last year.
The IDA capped telecom service contracts at two years, while Chinese regulators simplified roaming and long-distance call charges.
Microsoft suspended its new China microblogging service, MSN Juku, after admitting a large chunk of the code had been lifted from Canadian startup Plurk.
China banned individuals from registering domain names. From now on, only government agencies and businesses can obtain a .cn domain. The Australian government decided to press on with its internet filtering scheme, claiming a trial showed it was 100% accurate
The French military pitched in to help build the Thunderbird 3 email client, deciding that the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook.
SK Telecom took a $346 million stake in Korean mobile money firm Hana Card.
With 120 million views, Susan Boyle topped the YouTube chart of the most-watched videos for the year.
Talks began between the US, Russia and a UN ars control committee about limiting the military use of cyberspace.
Best-selling author Stephen Covey signed an e-book deal with Amazon, bypassing traditional publishers entirely – the first of its kind by a major writer.
And the Cuban government arrested an American citizen for distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists.