China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest phone company by subscribers, said Wednesday it was investing $5.8 billion in a Chinese bank as part of a plan to develop mobile phone banking and business services.

Under the agreement, China Mobile will pay 39.8 billion yuan ($5.8 billion) in cash for 20 percent of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, the cell phone company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The two companies plan to work together to develop mobile phone services involving customer payments, bank cards, money transfers and other so-called e-commerce businesses.

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank is a mid-sized lender based in Shanghai.

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Google is adding a bike lane with its latest online mapping option.

The new bicycling directions available on Google Maps Wednesday supplement the guidance already provided to motorists and pedestrians. The biking directions initially will be available only for the United States.

Google spent the past six months tweaking its mapping service so it could recommend routes that would steer bicyclists away from big hills and heavily congested streets.

The new feature makes Google the first major Internet mapping service to provide bicycling directions.
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More than 100 Chinese consumers have filed an official complaint against Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) over faulty laptop computers, leaving the door open for a lawsuit against the U.S. technology company, a lawyer for the group said on Wednesday.

Jiang Suhua, a lawyer at Yingke Law Firm in Beijing, told Reuters the complaint centred on video cards which overheated and caused the laptop to malfunction.

He said that around 170 Chinese sent the complaint on Friday to the country’s quality control watchdog agency, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
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The United States is studying whether it can legally challenge Chinese Internet restrictions that hurt Google and other U.S. companies operating in China, but direct talks with Beijing might yield faster results, the top U.S. trade official said on Tuesday.

“We are still dialoguing not just with Google, but with other Internet providers, to make sure we fully understand what is happening in China,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in remarks at the National Press Club.

At the same time, U.S. trade officials are “trying to make our own determination whether we believe in fact this is not WTO compliant and if the best resolution is to go forward and file an appeal,” Kirk said.
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LG Electronics Inc, the world’s No. 3 mobile phone maker, on Wednesday launched a smartphone based on Google’s Android operating system in South Korea, as it seeks to boost its relatively weak smartphone line-ups.

LG, which is fighting an uphill battle against leaders Nokia, Blackberry maker RIM and Apple, plans to boost smartphone offerings with some 20 models this year, half the offerings based on the most popular Android.

The South Korean firm wants to claim a double-digit share of the global smartphone market by 2012. Currently the top three players control three quarters of the booming and lucrative smartphone market.

The model LG-KH5200, which will be sold by the country’s second-largest mobile carrier KT, will compete against Motorola’s Android-based smartphone MOTOROI launched earlier this year through top carrier SK Telecom.
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U.S. regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday.

The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later.

One way of making broadband more affordable is to “consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low cost wireless broadband service,” the FCC said in a statement.
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With shrinking audiences, deep layoffs and two management shake-ups, MySpace, the one-time leader in Internet social networking, has had a rocky year.

Mike Jones, who took over as co-president last month with Jason Hirschhorn, said that even within MySpace some employees have lost the will to keep fighting.

“We are at the point now where we need believers,” said Jones, noting that the News Corp unit has encouraged various individuals not fully committed to the cause to leave and has hired new talent.

The need for faith speaks to the scope of the challenge facing MySpace. With competition from booming social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and Google Inc jumping into the fray, MySpace hopes to become the first social network to regain its mass appeal.
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A coalition of cable and satellite companies will this week call on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to create a new process to resolve increasingly bitter disputes over carriage fees paid to broadcasters.

The group, which includes rival TV distributors such as Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N), DirecTV Group (DTV.O) and Dish Network Corp (DISH.O) serve more than 65 million U.S. homes. They will file a petition with the FCC, which argues the current retransmission consent regime is flawed.

The most recent dispute was when Walt Disney Co’s (DIS.N) ABC Network pulled its signals from New York’s Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N) on the eve of the Oscars. Time Warner Cable also had a public fight with News Corp’s (NWSA.O) Fox network on New Year’s eve.
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A dog walks past a landscape of central London, on Hampstead Heath in London, Tuesday, March 9, 2010. The British government have launched a new proposal which requires that all new dog owners fit their pets with microchips and that canine insurance is made compulsory.

LONDON  – British dog owners may be forced to microchip their pets and take out insurance, part of a proposed crackdown on the country’s dangerous canines.

Postmen are delighted, but civil libertarians grumble that Britain’s sprawling surveillance state now wants to track the nation’s estimated 8 million dogs. Others complain that the insurance plan would impose a financial penalty on innocent pet owners – while criminals who own violent animals will simply shirk the law.

“This is yet more surveillance and continuous data-grabbing by government who want to have as much information on us as it can possibly have,” said Dylan Sharpe, a campaigner with privacy rights group Big Brother Watch. Opposition lawmaker Nick Herbert said the proposal risked “penalizing millions of law-abiding dog owners with the blunt instrument of a dog tax.”
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SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cisco is upgrading one of its biggest pieces of networking hardware, an router that’s used to power the most trafficked parts of the Internet backbone.

Cisco Systems Inc., the world’s largest maker of computer networking gear, said Tuesday it is replacing its aging CRS-1 “core router,” which was introduced in 2004. The new CRS-3 is three times faster. Cisco says it can handle 322 terabits of traffic per second, or simultaneous video calls for every person in China.

Cisco competes in the core router market with Juniper Network Inc., which has updated its products more recently than Cisco. The CRS-3 will sell for $90,000 and up.
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