February 13, 2008 2:05 AM PST
Alcatel, where are you?
Alcatel phones in the company's booth
(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)At last year's CTIA cell phone show, French telecom giant Alacatel announced that it was entering the U.S. and Canadian handset market. It showed off a gallery of phones and even staged a fashion show. But now almost a year later, none of the handsets have hit the market (AT&T was supposed to be in a testing phase) so at the GSMA World Congress to check out the company's booth. On display were many of the same models we saw last year, including the OT-C707A and the OT-C717A (not the best naming conventions, I know). Not that I'm particularly itching to see these phones land in North America, but I wanted to see if there was any update on availability just the same. And as of now, there's not.
Kent German is a senior editor for cell phone reviews at CNET. When he's not testing the newest handsets on the market, he's blogging about cell phone news for Crave. In his On Call column, he answers reader questions and gives his take on the rapidly changing mobile industry. E-mail Kent.
