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Dell is currently testing a new Wi-Fi enabled digital music player, with the aim of launching the new product as soon as this fall.

As the Wall Street Journal's Justin Scheck notes, this isn't Dell's first shot at the iPod market. "Dell first entered the music market in 2003 with a line of MP3 players that let users buy music from a variety of Web sites," he writes. "But sales were disappointing. When Dell stopped making music players in 2006, its U.S. market share remained below 3%."

"What's different this time around?" asks BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl. "Well, last year, Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm..."

The Motley Fool's Rick Aristotle Munarriz is far from optimistic. "Dell is either a glutton for punishment or somehow banged its head on a rock and suffered insomnia from 2003 to 2006 when its first player crashed and burned. No matter what Dell's sorry excuse, I just hope it doesn't blow through too much money in its second attempt to jab at Apple's windmills. Prove me wrong, Dell..."

More here from Wired ... more here from Crave ... more here from Gizmodo ... more here from SiliconRepublic ... more here from Techtree ... more here from the Guardian ... more here from Forbes ... more here from InformationWeek ... more here from Reuters ... and more here from ZDNet.

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ABI Research has released its latest Vendor Matrix for ultrawideband vendors, naming WiQuest as the leading provider, with Alereon and Pulse~LINK close behind.

"The top vendors in the Ultra Wideband IC Vendor Matrix are established startup companies that have totally dedicated themselves to the UWB and Wireless USB market opportunities," says ABI senior analyst Douglas McEuen. "The key success in terms of innovation for the top vendors was the ability to offer complete chipset solutions, or MAC and PHY chips combined with an RF transceiver."

"Others in the top ten, in descending order according to the ABI ranking, are Wisair, Realtek Semiconductor Corp, Sigma Designs Inc, TZero, WiLinx, Staccato Communications and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems," writes EE Times' John Walko.

More here from TMCnet ... and the press release is here.

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This is gonna cut into the $670 million the company stands to make from the sale of its cell towers... a California court has ruled that Sprint's early termination fees are unlawful, and has ordered it to refund $73 million to its former customers.

"The ruling requires Sprint to pay $18.2 million in cash to those customers that actually paid off Sprint on their early termination fees - the remaining $54.7 million will be credited to customers who were charged the ETF but did not yet pay," writes Will at IntoMobile.

"Sprint will have about two weeks to come up with a response before a final decision is made in Alameda County, California Superior Court," writes InformationWeek's Marin Perez.

"The Federal Communications Commission is considering regulating early termination fees on a nationwide basis," notes Wired's David Kravets. "The FCC is also weighing whether to block class-action lawsuits like the Sprint case. No timetable for a decision has been set."

More here from Wireless and Mobile News ... more here from Dow Jones ... more here from the AP ... and more here from Bloomberg.

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Meru Networks today introduced RF Barrier, an 802.11-based solution for protecting wireless networks from access by so-called "parking lot attackers" who try to get onto a corporate network from outside the perimeter of the building.

"Meru's RF Barrier product is quite sophisticated, employing directional antennas mounted outside the walls and a special wireless access point (WAP) along the inside perimeter of a building," explains The Inquirer's Tony Dennis. "The WAP inspects the traffic in real time to determine which data appertains to the WLAN being protected and is therefore designated as sensitive. It then tells the directional antenna to block that bit of the RF spectrum. RF Barrier technology then uses the external antenna to block outbound traffic at the RF layer. Would-be attackers are limited in their ability to see useful packet information about the internal network."

"Start-up Xirrus offers a similar capability with the Sharp Cell technology in its Wi-Fi radio arrays that helps enterprises sharply define the edge of a coverage area and limit RF bleed," notes Network World's Joanie Wexler.

The solution will be available starting in September, with a four-antenna starter kit priced at $3,595.

More here from Wi-Fi Planet ... more here from IT Week ... and the press release is here.

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AT&T this week filed a petition with the FCC, asking it to block the planned merger of Sprint's nationwide WiMax assets with those of Clearwire.

"The 17-page AT&T filing claims that Sprint and Clearwire have sought to avoid the FCC review process by minimizing the full extent of their current spectrum holdings and 'have omitted any information relevant to the traditional public interest analysis applied by the FCC,'" writes Computerworld's Matt Hamblen. "AT&T argued that the Sprint-Clearwire application was 'fatally defective' and should be dismissed."

"It's clear that AT&T is nervous about the new Clearwire's plans," writes CNET News' Marguerite Reardon. "AT&T is currently still deploying 3G technology throughout its territory and is busy upgrading its existing network. But it is years away from taking the next big leap toward building a 4G network, which will use a competing technology known as Long Term Evolution, or LTE. By contrast, WiMax technology is available and working today."

More here from InformationWeek ... more here from IntoMobile ... more here from TMCnet ... more here from Ars Technica ... more here from Electronista ... and more here from FierceWireless.