Seems like Qwest has been busy… very busy.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has selected Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) as its contractor for the delivery of voice and data services valued at approximately $60 million to connect the VA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and nearly 1,300 hospitals, regional offices and other facilities across the nation.

“Caring for the men and women who have defended our nation in the armed services is among the federal government’s most important missions,” said Diana Gowen, senior vice president and general manager of Qwest Government Services in Arlington, Va. “The VA has taken advantage of emerging technologies resulting in tremendous advances in medical treatment and the delivery of remote services, such as telemedicine. Qwest is proud to use our state-of-the-art, secure and converged network to support the VA’s vision of providing veterans the world-class benefits and services they have earned.”

Qwest is providing VA with voice and voice-related services and wide-area network (WAN) data services. Qwest will deliver the services under the federal Networx Universal contract, which is part of Networx, the largest government communications procurement program in the world.

Originally released for the Apple iPhone; FlyCast has released their FlyCast Mobile Network application for the BlackBerry smartphone platform.

FlyCast today announced at the BlackBerry® Developer Conference, where the company is a finalist in the BlackBerry Developer Challenge, that on November 1st, its mobile broadcast network will be ready for the BlackBerry® Curve, BlackBerry® Bold™ and BlackBerry® Storm™ smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) . FlyCast’s mobile broadcast network is one of the first of its kind to be available for BlackBerry smartphones. It will be available as a free download from the FlyCast mobile website (mobile.flycast.fm) beginning November 1st.

The FlyCast network is the first specifically designed application to deliver radio, video and podcasts over mobile broadband and Wi-Fi networks to mobile devices. As a compelling free alternative to satellite radio, the FlyCast network has experienced explosive growth in users and content since its launch in January 2008.

Find out more and (future) download from FlyCast Mobile’s website.

Remember how I was trying to raise awareness in this post about “Disaster Fatigue”? Enter Rebtel…

People are in desperate need of help in China and Myanmar (Burma). Rebtel wants to help. We make this offer with no strings attached. Until May 28 you may use Rebtel completely free of charge to contact your friends, family and colleagues in China and Myanmar to make sure they’re okay and offer your help

What:
Free calls to China and Myanmar

When:
Through May 28, 2008

How:
1. Sign up at http://www.rebtel.com/callforhelp
2. Enter your mobile number and your friend’s mobile number in China or Myanmar
3. Rebtel will give you a local number where you live to reach your friend
4. Dial the local phone number to speak with your friend in China or Myanmar

Who:
Available to anyone in 47 countries
http://www.rebtel.com/en/Rates/Rebtel-countries/

I’ve actually used Rebtel in the past when I was looking for a suitable VoIP complement to whenever I was traveling and wanted to call back to the US or allow others in the US to call me. The directions on how to do so aren’t hard at all, and I kept a balance with them for almost a year or so. To me, they had provided a good service… and now they’ve proven themselves to be good people as well.

If your company and/or service is also offering ways to allow others to contact friends, families and colleagues in those countries, feel free to contact me directly: removethelabels [at] gmail [dot] com.

Students taking a class at MIT this year have been working on developing different applications for Google s Android. Using little-to-no funding, they managed to create a series of seven apps that have the potential to be of interest to the wireless market (or so it would seem considering that representatives from Google, Sprint, Verizon and HTC all showed up at the class presentations to find out what was going on). One of the applications, Locale, was a Top 50 winner in the Android project competition; it s a dynamic settings manager that lets you program the phone to forward calls, go silent or show different screens at specific times throughout the day. Other applications included social networking and geo-location apps as well as an application that lets you control your car from your phone.
read comment(s)

What’s Fido Uno, you ask? Besides probably having one of the coolest entrance pages in internet history - seriously, where else do you see a dog with an afro? I dare you to find a corporate site an afro sporting dog as part of their corporate identity… I might move up to Canada just for the dog mascot alone… c’mon. It’s too cool…

Oh yeah. Fido UNO. Back to the business at hand…

Fido recently launched a Canadian first for the wireless industry with its new service, Fido UNO. Fido UNO works by connecting calls from a specially-enabled handset to a high-speed Internet connection when at home and through the Fido network when on the go. Customers now have the freedom to talk as much as they want on their Fido phone while at home without using up their wireless plan minutes and all the benefits of a mobile when they’re not.

Fido UNO offers plans for $15 / month (unlimited local calling) or $20 / month (unlimited local and Canadian long distance) for wireless calling at home, in addition to the regular wireless voice plan. Existing customers can add the service to a current voice plan with the purchase of a UNO-enabled handset and receive the voice-optimizing wireless router free of charge.

Ok, if you’re in the US, this probably sounds a lot like T-Mobile’s Hotspot@Home, doesn’t it? Well, it is invariably powered by the UMA powered phones that seamlessly switch between cellphone to wireless (VoIP) in order to save on those package minutes. The cool thing, the people on the phone will not know when it happens.

Did I forget to mention that this is the first it was done in Canada? Yep… the company named after a dog, with the coolest afro dog mascot ever (for now) brings this new offering to you… in Canada.

Find out more about Fido UNO right here or if you’re looking for a visual way to learn about it, hit up the YouTube video here.

Qwest Communications and Verizon Wireless just announced that they’ve signed a 5-year agreement for Qwest to market and sell Verizon Wireless service beginning this summer. Qwest customers will have access to the full line of Verizon Wireless handsets and devices, as well as high-speed broadband wireless services for e-mail, Internet access and multimedia services.

Read more about the Qwest and Verizon Wireless partnership right here.

If you’ve ever been in a proper network/IT/server room, you will invariably know the SMC Network brand name. Looks like they’re thinking ahead with two new technologies for faster speeds and for greener products. Nice to know that companies are taking this environment issues seriously.

SMC Networks will announce two new initiatives at the Interop IT Conference in Las Vegas this week.

More on this as it develops.