Kevin covers mobile broadband, carriers and wireless infrastructure for GigaOM. He has been writing about wireless networks and technology for 11 years, working first at Telephony Magazine and its online successor Connected Planet. Kevin spent his early career at several small Texas newspapers. He made the shift to tech writing upon moving to Chicago, where he now lives.
The Sprint prepaid brand is testing out a financial services app that allows you to pay bills, transfer funds and cash checks within a mobile app. For physical transactions, Boost is supplying a prepaid Visa card. Read more »
Sprint has given into shareholder pressure and raised its bid for Clearwire by 14 percent. Clearwire immediately canceled today shareholder vote, rescheduling for next week. Read more »
Despite being late to the market, Nvidia is showing it can keep up with the latest technological advances in LTE technology. But like it’s exaggeration-prone competitors, Nvidia is falsely labeling its chip “LTE-Advanced.” Read more »
The world’s first international MVNO, Truphone is now offering shared plans for business, allowing companies to offer a single pool of minutes and megabytes their employees can use in multiple counties. Read more »
Square has launched an under-the-radar payments service that lets customers transfer cash through email. It’s certainly not a new concept, but it’s another tool in Square’s arsenal as it delves deeper into the consumer market. Read more »
The two food ordering startups didn’t reveal any financial details, but the merger will create the biggest take out and delivery portal on the web and mobile with more than 20,000 restaurants in 500 cities. Read more »
NCR is the top supplier of retail point-of-sale software for U.S. restaurants, so for LevelUp, getting its mobile payments app to work with NCR’s systems for dining transactions is key. Read more »
Sprint buyout of U.S. Cellular in Chicago and St. Louis closed Friday, and it won’t keep its networks running for long. Customers can either trade in their U.S. Cellular devices with Sprint or look for a new carrier. Read more »
Meridian works with companies that want to bring detailed location awareness to their mobile apps using their Wi-Fi networks as guideposts. If you’re Aruba, that’s not a bad feature to have in your access points. Read more »
ViaSat-1 went up about 18 months ago, but the satellite broadband company is already planning its next-generation bird, ViaSat-2. The high-Earth orbiter will far exceed Via-Sat-1′s already impressive 140 Gbps of total capacity. Read more »
Google Glass is still leagues short having the thriving developer community of Android, but at I/O Google began seeding that app ecosystems with the help of six big-name web and media brands. Read more »
Verizon’s prepaid plans are still more expensive than other no-contract operators, but you can now get 2 GB of 3G data on the $60 plan and 4 GB on the $70 plan. Read more »
Devicescape says nearly one in three smartphone buyers never bother to connect their devices to their home Wi-Fi networks, but it’s developed a means of luring those customers into the Wi-Fi fold. Read more »
With the next release of its WLAN software all Ruckus-built hotspots will be able to supply optional encrypted connections to any user who wanders into Wi-Fi coverage. Read more »
A third of all smartphones activated in Q1 were on prepaid plans, a trend that historically has favored Android, according to The NPD Group. Apple, though, is starting to make in-roads into the prepaid market. Read more »
Content providers will soon pay mobile carriers to exempt their traffic from consumers’ mobile data plans, says AT&T’s Randall Stephenson. That may seem like a good deal for consumers but in the long-term it’s actually a raw deal. Read more »
As more MVNOs populate the mobile landscape, it’s becoming harder for one virtual operator to distinguish itself from another. GIV is separating itself from the pack by focusing on charitable giving. Read more »
Connectify is going back to the drawing board — and back to Kickstarter — to develop a better version of broadband connection aggregation software. Read more »
Fifty-seven percent of drivers Cisco surveyed said they would let themselves be chauffeured around town by a driverless car. The number was even higher among Americans. Read more »
Open Garden hopes to make Google Glass — and any wearable computer — a node on its growing crowdsourced mesh network, and it’s asking for Google’s help to make it happen. Read more »
After three years of investigation, the GreenTouch consortium issued its first recommendations for energy efficient telecom networks. GreenTouch claims the roadmap, if implemented, would cut the communications industry’s power needs to a fraction of current levels. Read more »
Samsung has become the latest company to play fast and loose with 5G. It may have produced some impressive technology but it’s doing itself a huge disservice by conflating its accomplishment with technology that doesn’t yet exist. Read more »
ItsOn started out selling mobile plan customization tools to carriers as a cloud-based service. Now it’s becoming a carrier, using its own cloud service to show what the world can do with individually tailored voice and data plans. Read more »
The U.S., Japan, Korea and Australia are the foci of LTE activity, accounting for 90 million of those subscribers, according to Wireless Intelligence. Read more »
ESPN is reportedly in negotiations with Verizon to exempt its content from the carrier’s data caps. Such a deal would set a precedence for a very different mobile internet than the one we know today. Read more »
The FCC has identified 500 MHz of airwaves that could be used to deliver broadband connections to aircraft. The plan could make in-flight Wi-Fi accessible, cheap, and — most importantly — fast to all airline passengers. Read more »
MVNO Karma is trying to seed its social broadband mesh network throughout New York, so it’s starting with food trucks. Thirty mobile restaurants are now offering free Karma Wi-Fi. Read more »
The Tesla CEO says he’s weighing a form of autonomous driving technology that would do away with the expensive laser tracking systems adopted by most automakers and instead uses cameras to sense the car’s surroundings. Read more »
Quantenna has developed a 802.11ac chipset that uses multiple antennas and multiple frequencies to deliver up to 2 Gbps of bandwidth. The partnership with STMicro will expand Quantenna’s scope beyond home networking to other industries. Read more »
In a letter to shareholders, Clearwire argued that the Sprint’s proposed takeover represents the best deal for Clearwire’s shareholders despite Dish’s offer to invest in the WiMAX provider. Read more »
Feast CEO David Spinks is combining the e-learning model pioneered by education sites like Udemy and Coursera with his experience in building online communities, and he’s applying it all to building on online cooking school. Read more »
A small startup trying to gain traction in the Windy City, Evzdrop has designed geo-social network that doesn’t connect you to your friends but to strangers wherever you happen to be. Read more »
You’ll have to wait until July if you planned on turning your PC into a Kinect-style motion-sensing computer using Leap Motion’s new controller. Leap’s CEO said the company needs more time for testing. Read more »
It took two years, but New York’s MTA has expanded its subway station distributed antenna system pilot from six to 36 stops. Now there’s just 241 stations to go. Read more »
Francoise Brougher was in charge of Google’s mammoth small business advertising unit, which should serve her well in growing Square’s customer base at home and internationally. Read more »
Belly originally built its loyalty and marketing platform for local businesses, but it’s now gravitating toward big enterprise chains. McDonalds, Chic-fil-A, 7-Eleven and Domino’s are all running pilot programs of Belly’s service in Chicago. Read more »
The shareholder vote was the last step in a long chain of approvals necessary to cement the deal. On May 1 — just seven months after the companies announced their intentions — T-Mobile and MetroPCS will officially combine. Read more »
MightyText started out as a simple service allowing you to replicate your Android smartphone SMS client on your PC. Now its turning to other synchronization capabilities, starting with photos and video. Read more »
FreedomPop is tapping into Sprint’s CDMA network to expand its footprint beyond Clearwire’s 80-city footprint. The new 3G service is just a prelude to FreedomPop’s planned support for LTE later this year. Read more »
Sprint lost another 771,000 Nextel iDEN subscribers as customers, offsetting all of the gains Sprint made in its CDMA business. It sold 5 million smartphones, and activated 1.5 million iPhones. Read more »
