Corrected: Nothing travels swifter...

 


Nothing travels swifter...
The tech industry, and wireless industry in particular, loves rumors. Today's issue boasts three of them: our number four story about Dell maybe developing a PDA, an "Also Noted" about more rumored details surrounding the supposed "Google phone" and this editorial regarding Sprint buying Vonage. While each of these three may sound implausible on some level, the third is certainly the less digestible. Dell just hired ex-Motorola executive Ron Garriques. Google said mobile is the future. Sprint, well, Sprint has enough problems--it doesn't need Vonage's too.

A recent report from Light Reading [1] claims that Vonage is considering selling itself to Sprint. The talks arose amid discussions over the patent issue that the VoIP service provider has with Verizon [2]. Of course, that issue could lead to a service shutdown for Vonage over three VoIP-related patents Verizon holds. In a week's time a federal court will decide whether to uphold a lower court order to prevent Vonage from signing up new customers because of the patents [3]. So why would Sprint want Vonage? It doesn't seem likely that Sprint has a license to use those Verizon patents, but that would be the only logical basis for acquisition talks.

As Techdirt points out, Light Reading's sister site Unstrung recently claimed that Palm would be sold by Thursday, March 22 [4]. No dice, there. Of course, that would factor in nicely with the Dell story below, so maybe time will tell. -Brian [5]