Bogus call sends SWAT team to home of unsuspecting family A 19-year-old Washington state man is due in court on Monday to face accusations he hacked into emergency 911 systems and faked a call that a sent SWAT team to the home of a sleeping family 750 miles away. Continued

Review Could it be a contender? Rock has a reputation for punching out high-performance laptops, and it’s latest line, the flagship 17in desktop-replacment X770 series, has a spec that suggests it’s no slouch either. Continued

ALK Technologies will finally launch the latest release of its CoPilot Live satellite navigation software across Europe this month. Version 7.0 will arrive - coincidentally - seven months after it was originally promised. Continued

French law bites Mac maker, again Orange will indeed offer Apple’s iPhone on France, but the most interesting aspect of the two firms’ partnership will be the availability, for the first time, of officially unlocked handsets. Continued

To subscribe to Channel Register’s weekly newsletter - seven days of channel news in a single hit - click here. As usual, we’ll start with the good news. Carly Fiorina is back in the public eye after far too long an absence following her departure from HP two years ago. Continued

Feeling left out by robust network T-Mobile joined the ranks of proper mobile operators with its own inadequately-explained network outage - losing data connectivity across its network for around four hours yesterday morning. Continued

Headed for HD showdown with BBC Britain’s communications watchdog has warned broadcasters they have no God-given right to reoccupy the analogue TV spectrum that they began vacating this week. Continued

Net profit slips Sony Ericsson has started to feel the margins pinch from its shift to lower-priced handsets, although it is still managing to keep a more successful balance than most of its rivals. Strong demand for its phones were the highlight of mixed third quarter results at Samsung, which remains hobbled by weakness in the semiconductor division. Continued

The UK’s ISP oligopoly Rapid consolidation in the UK broadband market means it’s now dominated by just six operators, who divvy up 94 per cent of home internet users between them. Continued

Cisco licking its chops? The persistent rumors that Cisco is close to making a WiMAX infrastructure acquisition resurfaced at WiMAX World last month, with most of the independent WiMAX vendors in the frame. Continued

Motorola has launched the Pebl-inspired U9 music phone that was forecast way back in July. The compact curvacious sliderphone sports a bright 1.5in OLED external display to give it that MP3 player feel. Continued

At last Motorola has taken a 50 per cent stake in UIQ, the phone user interface company spun out of Symbian last year. Continued

Which is it? It becomes increasingly hard to work out where the control point in handset design is. Once we all thought it was the hardware, then it was the operating system, and just as we start to think that it s the service layers above the operating system, then it s all in the network, an finally Apple comes along and tells us it s the hardware all over again. Continued

To subscribe to The Register’s weekly newsletter - seven days of IT in a single hit - click here Fries with that? Continued

Red and orange balls blush Cash credit giant MasterCard has had a week racked with technical problems. Continued

Review Could it be a contender? Rock has a reputation for punching out high-performance laptops, and it’s latest line, the flagship 17in desktop-replacment X770 series, has a spec that suggests it’s no slouch either. Continued

ALK Technologies will finally launch the latest release of its CoPilot Live satellite navigation software across Europe this month. Version 7.0 will arrive - coincidentally - seven months after it was originally promised. Continued

At a price Orange is to charge customers for extending network coverage into buildings with limited or no coverage, while still billing them for calls carried over their own broadband connection, according to the firm’s picocell strategy, announced today. Continued

Review 3G makeover Sony Ericsson has made the most of its Walkman resurrection and is cashing in on the brand’s cachet with a fast-growing range. But by filing the gaps with samey phones like the 3G-capable W660i, is Sony Ericsson in danger of losing its edge? Continued

Comment But the logic is unassailable Nokia has spent the greatest part of its life being misunderstood by US stock analysts, and its move to acquire US mapping company Navteq, for a colossal $8.1bn, at $78 a share, is no exception. Continued

Which is it? It becomes increasingly hard to work out where the control point in handset design is. Once we all thought it was the hardware, then it was the operating system, and just as we start to think that it s the service layers above the operating system, then it s all in the network, an finally Apple comes along and tells us it s the hardware all over again. Continued

Motorola has launched the Pebl-inspired U9 music phone that was forecast way back in July. The compact curvacious sliderphone sports a bright 1.5in OLED external display to give it that MP3 player feel. Continued

Comment Nokia to use Intel’s chipset in WiMAX devices The announcement that Nokia would use Intel chips in its forthcoming WiMAX devices was hardly unexpected, given that the two giants have been working together for more than two years in this area. Continued

Which is it? It becomes increasingly hard to work out where the control point in handset design is. Once we all thought it was the hardware, then it was the operating system, and just as we start to think that it s the service layers above the operating system, then it s all in the network, an finally Apple comes along and tells us it s the hardware all over again. Continued

To subscribe to The Register’s weekly newsletter - seven days of IT in a single hit - click here Fries with that? Continued

Interview TI predicts market surge Rumors of the demise of Texas Instruments’ (TI) Hollywood mobile TV chip are exaggerated, according to Yoram Solomon, director of strategic marketing, industry, and standards at the company. Continued

Coming soon to a screen near you… Karl Ferdinand Braun could never have imagined how fiercely competitive and technologically advanced the global market for displaying still and moving images on a screen would become during the hundred or so years since he created the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). Continued

Down-stream royalties hit choppy water The US Supreme Court will review a patent dispute between LG Electronics and a group of Taiwanese computer makers over whether various degrees of separation can exhaust licensing terms. Continued

Company begins SGH handset rollout Brits will next week get first dibs on one of Samsung s latest music handsets. The company is launching three music phones across Europe over the coming weeks, starting with the SGH-F210 in the UK. Continued

Yeah, but what’s that in cubic furlongs? Those among you who recently adopted the new Vulture Central standards of volume, length, area and, critically, the speed of sheep in a vacuum, might be interested to learn that Google Maps has decided to offer a few alternatives of its own. Continued