After Years and Millions, VTel’s Wireless Promises Unfulfilled
Springfield, Vt. — When it comes to VTel’s her alded plan to bring mobile phone service to Vermont, the company isn’t talking. The Springfield, Vt., telecommunications company in 2012 and 2013 won separate funding grants from both the federal government and the state to launch wireless mobile phone service to areas of Vermont that do not receive cellular phone service. The federal money was to make mobile phone service available along...
Smartphone-Only ATMs Coming Soon
To the long list of things you can do with your phone — including watch a movie, buy a latte and hail a ride — prepare to add one more: get cash. Over the next few months, the nation’s three biggest banks will start rolling out ATMs that will let customers withdraw currency using their smartphones instead of debit cards — the latest step toward a future in which phones could replace bank branches and wallets. “My boys are 5 and 6 — I...
Starbucks Reports Holiday Growth
Retailer after retailer has announced in recent weeks that they saw tepid or downright disappointing sales during the crucial holiday season. And then came Starbucks, dropping a blockbuster earnings report on Thursday that stands out as a clear bright spot in retail. The coffee giant reported that revenue soared 12 percent to a record $5.4 billion. Sales at its U.S. restaurants open more than a year were up 9 percent, and nearly half...
Retail 2016’s Hot Trends And Topics
The retail industry is in the final days of a year in which the athleisure trend continued to boom, the off-price category got even hotter and an ever-growing list of restaurants catered to our interest in healthy eating by announcing big changes to their food supply chains. So what are likely to be the hot topics in retail in 2016? We’ve rounded up some expert predictions. 1. Mobile payments will finally take off — with a little help...
A Holiday That Shows the ‘Power of Chinese Consumption’
In just a few years, Nov. 11 has become the busiest online shopping day on Earth. It is known as Singles Day in China, an event in which online retailers offer massive promotions and shoppers happily gobble up the bait. Some have called it “a 24-hour orgy of consumption.” The informal holiday was started as a joke by a group of Chinese college kids in the 1990s, a kind of anti-Valentine’s Day to commiserate over breakfast about their...
