This could likely enhance health care in remote regions.The national broadband plan includes a 25-page chapter on health care and the FCC has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to make e-care projects a top priority.

One suggestion is the creation of a health care broadband infrastructure fund to make sure all health care facilities — including rural ones — have adequate connectivity.

Clinics, hospitals and even doctors’ offices are expected to put health records into a secure database, which can be accessed by patients and their authorized care providers, wherever they happen to be located.

In addition to saving lives, video consultation and other “telehealth” techniques can save money by giving facilities remote access to world-class specialists without having them on their payroll.

The FCC said that avoiding the costs of moving patients from correctional facilities and nursing homes to emergency departments and physician offices could result in $1.2 billion in annual savings.

National adoption of electronic health records could save more lives by alerting physicians and patients of dangerous drug allergies and drug interactions when the doctor is entering the prescription.

In a study referred to in the FCC’s report, it has been found that by simply opting to electronic health systems with on-screen reminders to prompt doctors to recommend influenza and pneumonia vaccinations can save up to 39,000 lives yearly.

Mobile health delivery through laptops, smart phones and other devices is also seen as a possibility.

Lifescan, a Johnson and Johnson company, offers an iPhone application that connects to a glucose monitor to transmit data to a patient’s caregiver or physician. And there are many other such examples.

This step is now being considered as an effort to make up for the lost ground by Nokia. Nokia, the once leader in mobile phone manufacturing, have fallen behind in terms of product development and is losing the battle on the turf to Apple. Apple’s iconic product launches seem to have eaten into Nokia’s product shares and weakened the latter’s dominating position in the rapidly changing cell-phone market. Especially the fast increasing popularity of smartphones has dented Nokia’s undisputable position in the market. Amidst products like that of Blackberry, from Research In Motion and iPhone, from Apple, Nokia seems to be playing a ‘catching-up’ game.

However, though it seems like a desperate measure form Nokia, experts believe that Nokia’s huge repertoire of patents might yield dividends if the claims are proved to be true. But no silence is expected from the iPhone maker Apple in the current development and it could turn out to be a head-turning clash of the titans.

Another service provider succumbed to ‘excessive data demands’ of iPhone, this time on the other side of Atlantic. O2, one of the leading providers of wireless service in the United Kingdom, has apologized to customers for recent network issues including the inability to make or receive calls, or transmit data. AT&T also on Sunday temporarily stopped selling the iPhone on its website to New York City residents, supposedly, in an attempt to ease congestion on its network.

O2 customers have been hit harder than those of rivals since O2 was the sole provider of Apple’s iPhone, which expired recently in November. Orange, owned by France Telecom, started selling the phone in the UK in November, while retailer Tesco launched an iPhone service earlier this month. Vodafone the world’s largest mobile operator by revenue will join the iPhone battle in Britain and Ireland on January next year.

To address the issue, O2, is adding some 200 more mobile base stations in London in order to increase the amount of bandwidth available in the densely populated area. To better manage that bandwidth, the company is working with Nokia Siemens Networks to modify the software that controls the network. The company will also work with Apple, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, and other handset makers to learn more about the applications that are being run on these devices to better understand the way network use is evolving.

“Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologize to customers for that fact”. “But it would be wrong to say that O2 has failed its customers en masse,” Ronan Dunne CEO told FT. The problem faced by O2 and AT&T was same, what stands out is Dunne’s seemingly apologetic attitude, recognizing the problem and the resolve to get it fixed. AT&T did acknowledge contempt for its heaviest users – just three per cent of whom are using 40 per cent of AT&T’s data capacity. This gave a chance to AT&T’s main rival – Verizon Wireless (in which Vodafone has a 45 percent share), which wasted no time in aiming potshots by way of advertisements claiming it has a superior network.

The event has actually gone on to raise doubt over the ability of AT&T’s network to handle iPhone traffic in the New York Area. This step came after earlier hints from AT&T that a tweak to its pricing in unlimited data plans would resolve some of the network problems that the carrier is facing. These controversies of late have resulted in a notion that the carrier is trying to keep the lid on its infrastructural flaws. These flaws would not only hinder iPhone users to get the most out of the cult device, but also such attempts by the network service provider to cap iPhone sales would lead consumers in high-population areas like the New York City to switch service providers.

However for the moment, considering that the iPhone is one of the largest and hottest selling products, the reasons stated by AT&T supporting the step hasn’t found many buyers.

Nokia has fired the latest salvo in the ongoing patent infringement tussle by filing a complaint with US International Trade Commission accusing Apple the California-based maker of popular computers and music players of violating multiple Nokia patents with its products. The imported electronic devices named in the complaint include the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G mobile phones, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iPod Classic portable music players, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air computers.

Nokia alleges that “Apple infringes Nokia patents in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players and computers.”

Paul Melin , in charge of patent licensing at Nokia said “While our litigation in Delaware is about Apple’s attempt to free-ride on the back of Nokia investment in wireless standards, the ITC case filed today is about Apple’s practice of building its business on Nokia’s proprietary innovation,”.

Both Nokia and Apple have engaged in verbal duet for the better part of the year. It began with Nokia demanding in May and then again in September that Apple pays a royalty to license its patents. The squabble reached court rooms when Nokia first sued Apple for patent infringement in October this year claiming infringement of 10 patents and seeking back royalties on the 33.7 million iPhones sold since the device’s introduction in 2007. Apple countersued in December, claiming Nokia infringed 13 of its patents

In the smart phone category, Apple has given the Finnish cell phone maker – Nokia a run for its money. Nokia- the world’s biggest cell phone maker and still the leader in smart phone with roughly 35 per cent market share, has struggled to keep pace in the fast-growing smart phone market since launch of the Apple’s iPhone. As of November, Nokia’s smart phone market share as determined by AdMob’s metrics had gone down from a high of 62 per cent in September 2008 to a mere 18 per cent. Apple’s worldwide share is now 54 per cent, crossing the 50 per cent threshold for the first time. Tied to the Symbian OS, Nokia’s share is slipping sharply and will probably lose to the newly launched Google’s Android by the time holiday season ends.  AdMob’s metrics, to be clear, don’t say what fraction of people own what. Rather, they measure the number of AdMob ads requested by different models of phone through AdMob clients.

Lets see who will reach the finish line first.

As reported via Returns, Chief Executive Ronan Dunne told the Financial Times that O2’s UK customers went into the network trauma many a times due to heavy increase in traffic of bandwidth consuming smartphones like Apple’s iPhones.

O2′s exclusive contract to market the Apple handset in the UK expired in November.

He added that the company made an investment of $48 million in its network above the capital city that eased the problems by December and included the deployment of 200 extra mobile stations.

He also accepted that “Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologize to customers for that fact, but it would be wrong to say O2 has failed its customers en masse”.

Though O2 made the smart decision to handle the network difficulties but AT&T’s move to stop the iPhone sales to NYC through att.com on weekend has still uncleared reasons for how this step could resolve the issue.

After raising lots of speculation AT&T finally resumed online sales of the iPhone Monday to New Yorkers, after they were unable to buy Apple Inc.’s popular phone on AT&T’s Web site over the weekend.

AT&T has always been giving false hopes that they are working regularly to resolve the network issues but till yet nothing has been shown to support their statements. Now we have to see that what positive steps AT&T will take to make their customers happy for availing them with a congestion free service.

Brisk sales of Apple iPhone this holiday season prompted analysts to upgrade Apple’s share target price. Apple iPod touch 8 GB along with the Kindle Wireless Reading Device and Garmin nuvi 260W 4.3-inch GPS were the best selling electronics devices, according to Amazon during the holiday rush from November 15 to December 16.

Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel raised his estimates for the quarter and lifted his price target on Apple from $245 to $250. Shares of Apple rose 1.2 per cent to close at $211.61 on Monday. “ Reid wrote in a report that “Checks suggest December quarter sales of iPhones are tracking ahead of their prior estimates, driven by increased market penetration in the United States, additional carrier agreements in multiple countries, and first-time launches in Korea and China,”.

Brian Marshall, an analyst of Broadpoint AmTech also raised his price target on Apple’s stock to $260, which is approximately 11% higher than previous target, based on high sales estimates for the company’s iPhone in the December quarter. He said that “Despite the enormous success of the iPhone since inception in July ‘07, he strongly believe the device is still in its infancy with respect to penetrating the global post-paid subscriber market,”.

With every passing day, Apple’s iPhone sales, App store downloads and footfalls on Apple store are on a rise and so is the stock price. One such report by Flurry pointed out that Christmas Day downloads for the 3GS shot up 900 per cent when compared to an average of the three previous Fridays. The report also points out that Software downloads for Apple’s devices grew 51 per cent in December from the previous month. Analyst Brian Marshall puts a figure of 11.3 million units sold for the three-month period ending December way ahead of analyst expectations.

Speculation is rife that Apple could release an oversized iPod Touch as a tablet computer or the tablet may take the form of a scaled-down notebook computer, though there was no official word on that.

Is the giant’s acquisition deal is in trouble? If not ‘YES’ we cannot say ‘NO’ even, as two consumer groups asked the US Federal Trade Commission to block Google Inc.’s proposed $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob Inc., on the grounds that the deal would thwart competition to the detriment of consumers. “Consumers will face higher prices, less innovation and fewer choices,” said John M. Simpson, a consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog. “The FTC should conduct the appropriate investigation, block the proposed Google/AdMob deal, and also address the privacy issues.”

The consumer groups also highlighted privacy concerns as one of the issue. AdMob, for instance, targets consumers through the use of a number of methods including age, gender and education. The association of Google and AdMob would provide “significant amounts of data for tracking, profiling and targeting US mobile consumers”, said the group.

It was Apple that started talks to gulp down AdMob, a few weeks before Google announced its deal, supposedly in an effort to prevent Google from obtaining detailed information about Apple’s iPhone App Store.

The appeal by Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy came after Google said Wednesday that the FTC sought further information about its AdMob deal.

Google, however, refuted such claims and said there are more than a dozen mobile advertising networks and that the company has proven track record of providing strong privacy protections “We’re confident that the FTC will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes,” said Kovacevich.

Google has drawn scrutiny as it attempts to expand its territory beyond Internet search and advertising and is not the latest in the anti-trust probes. The government recently filed a case against Intel Corp., accusing the computer-chip maker of using monopoly power to stifle competition.

Even Google itself has been in the crosshairs of the government scrutiny over previous deals. The FTC held an eight-month investigation of Google’s plan to buy DoubleClick Inc. in 2007 before finally giving its consent. Last year, Google walked away from a search deal with Yahoo after the US Justice Department indicated that it would seek to block the agreement.

How much will you like a phone with less apps and games? But Google seems to becoming careless on this. Gameloft a well-known name in the field of mobile games production, they have dozens of well-designed mobile games which entice people to play more and spend more time on their cell phones said “it and other software developers were cutting back investment in developing games and other applications for Google’s Android platform.”

French mobile phone game company said that Games for iPhone generated 13 percent of Gameloft’s revenue in the last quarter.

According to Returns Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference that “We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others. The company has cut back on investment mostly due to weaknesses of Android’s application store.”

According to them android apps store is not as neatly done as on the iPhone.

“Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” Rochefort said. “We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.”

The “Concierge” iphone application as reported by MacRumors would provide the Apple retail store customers many functions like those including online reservations systems, allowing customers to schedule Genius Bar and One to One appointments from their mobile devices. There are changes for addition of another feature to the app. This would allow users to keep a check on their premium membership subscription offered by the company.

There is not any official announcement for the application to hit stores but once it appears for free download it would provide greater ease to customers for the function related to Apple retail store.