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Bloomberg: Blockbuster to sell phones at brick-and-mortar locations
If the sight of remaining Blockbuster stores shocks you, brace yourself for another surprise: it could soon be selling smartphones alongside your '80s comedies. Dish Networks may have dashed its dreams of turning Blockbuster into a Netflix competitor, but according to a pair of Bloomberg sources, the firm will be pushing the veteran video rental chain into the smartphone retail arena. Blockbuster has already been peddling handsets online, but it's said the sales will be extending to the chain's roughly 850 remaining brick-and-mortar locations. According to the outlet, Dish CEO Charlie Ergen has planned on charging Blockbuster with smartphone sales since picking the company up last year. Bloomberg also notes that the move could signal Dish Network's entry into offering mobile phone service, a la AT&T and Verizon -- it's sure gaining the spectrum to do so. Sure, the move might take the video store in an odd direction, but its not as if you won't be able to watch movies on your Blockbuster-bought smartphone. [Image Credit: Josh Smith, Flickr]
Contact Japan for free via AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and more (update)
We imagine that many of you, like us, have been making frantic calls to friends and family in Japan over the last few days without regard to the costs. Now, in the face of otherwise devastating news, we have some good news to share courtesy of AT&T. Ma Bell is offering wired and wireless billing relief for calls made on AT&T between March 11th and March 31st. Under the plan, AT&T wireless postpaid customers will not be charged for international long distance or text messages to Japan from the US and Puerto Rico. Likewise, residential wireline customers can seek credits for up to 60 minutes of direct dialing to Japan. Sure it's a shameless publicity grab but this one seems genuinely helpful. Update: Sprint and Verizon have both now elected to waive call and text message fees (in Verizon's case, the move applies both to landline and wireless numbers). Update 2: Dish Networks is also getting in on helping people stay up to date. Boris wrote in to let us know you can now watch TV Japan for free as well. Update 3: Comcast is also in the game, providing free calls for Xfinity Voice and Business Class Voice customers. Update 4: And that ain't all! Cox Communications has announced that calls and texts placed to Japan with Cox Digital Telephone and Cox Wireless will be free of charge through March 31. Update 5: Kelly let us know that Verizon has added Japan TV for free for FIOS subscribers too. Update 6: Don't worry, pay-as-you-go customers: Cricket has been kind enough to inform us that their customers will be able to make phone calls effective immediately, until March 29.
AT&T and DISH Network's marketing deal changes status to "it's complicated"
AT&T and DISH's tumultuous relationship seems to be ending, with the satellite company filing an 8-K form with the SEC indicating its received notice from the telco that it plans to end their marketing collaboration as of December 31. The possibly ill-fated from the beginning arrangement hasn't necessarily gone beyond the point of no return, since AT&T reps have indicated this was simply necessary for a six-month notification, but the company is still "discussing options" with DISH. Multichannel News contacted DirecTV and they indicated they too, are also still negotiating with AT&T in a bid to market triple-play services in areas where it hasn't rolled out U-Verse service yet. At this point we're expecting a drunken teary phone call from one or both (or all three) parties wondering where things went wrong any minute now.Read - ReutersRead - Light ReadingRead - Multichannel News[Image courtesy GiftsByExpressions]
Does Dish have a Media Center tuner on deck too?
All this information about DirecTV's Media Center tuner has gotten us excited about Vista Media Center again. The last time we were this excited about MS's DVR platform is when we learned about the ATI CableCARD tuner -- that excitement was quickly dashed when the reality of obtaining one set in. But this new tuner offers us the same promise, but only enables one additional provider -- or so we thought. It seems that a commenter our friend Chris Lanier blogs and that he seems to put some merit in, claims that beta program letters have gone out to some Dish subscribers as well. Chris also points out that most of the technology like DVB-S and h.264 are already there, and that the main missing component -- a big one -- is Dish's conditional access system. Of course we always knew that collaboration between big companies like this is almost never limited by technology.
