TeliaSonera’s revenues and subscriber base aren’t budging, but the Nordic carrier claims its costs are skyrocketing. In an effort to realign its business with new mobile data realities, the carrier said it will lay off 7 percent of its workforce over two years. Read more »
RIM’s QNX has pulled the wraps off the developer program for its new connected car platform, Car 2. Launching in early 2013, the SDK uses the same WebWorks tools as BlackBerry 10, creating the industry’s first dev program that bridges the smartphone and dashboard. Read more »
Chicago will become the first city to receive a fiber network as part of Gigabit Squared’s college town connectivity program. The Windy City may not be your classic college town, but the University of Chicago’s south side neighborhood makes an interesting testbed for the technology. Read more »
According to new reports, Clearwire isn’t part of Softbank’s US plans. Clearwire and Softbank have a lot in common when comes to 4G technology, but that doesn’t mean there’s room for the struggling mobile broadband operator in Sprint and Softbank’s marriage. Read more »
Big Switch, Nicira and Schuberg Philis share their insights on software-defined networks–how they’re being deployed today and how they will evolve to replace traditional infrastructure driven networks. Read more »
T-Mobile has two markets that are officially iPhone ready, but unofficially there is a lot of upgrade activity going on nationwide. Unlocked iPhone owners in Las Vegas and Kansas City can now access T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. By year end that list should be far greater. Read more »
There are multiple networks inside today’s cars, controlling everything from the power windows to switching gears in the transmission. Broadcom hopes to replace all of those disparate systems with a unified in-car Ethernet network and its recruiting automakers like BMW and Hyundai to its cause. Read more »
Unless there’s a major hiccup, T-Mobile and MetroPCS will become one next year. What does that mean for its customers? GigaOM breaks down how it will impact subscribers on both networks in both the short and long-term. Read more »
Verizon has given a date on when it expects to retire its 2G and 3G networks: 2021. But even that date isn’t hard and fast. According to the company, Verizon will keep them running as long as its customers need them. Read more »
T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray says MetroPCS voice-over-LTE services will definitely be supported post merger as long as customers own VoLTE phones. But, whether the new T-Metro expands VoLTE beyond the Metro footprint, however, remains an open question dictated by demand and logistics. Read more »
A week later, Sprint is now holding off on a counter bid for MetroPCS, choosing instead to see how the Deutsche Telekom’s deal to merge T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS plays out, according to Bloomberg. Read more »
The Wholesale Application Community’s dream of a single pool of APIs shared among all global carriers may have died, but Telefónica may be trying to revive it. It’s recruited fellow mega-operator Telenor into its BlueVia developer platform. Together they reach 400 million global subscribers. Read more »
MetroPCS is the most aggressive operator in the country when it comes to VoLTE, but its proposed merger with T-Mobile might put its rollout of mobile VoIP on hold. If the merger passes, the combined T-Metro would no longer face the same capacity constraints. Read more »
Yummly is been doing semantic recipe search for more than two years. Now it’s applying its food parsing algorithms to food advertising. Its new ad platform will go beyond on the usual keywords and seek to make deeper associations between taste, nutrition and products. Read more »
In two years, Verizon has signed up 11 million LTE customers, but those customers account for more than a third of all mobile data traffic. With LTE iPhone 5 sales getting into full swing, Verizon expects more than half of traffic to be on 4G soon. Read more »
Funambol’s first round of funding in four years comes just as mobile operators are mounting a challenge against the cloud storage services offered by Google, Microsoft and Apple. Funambol provides a white-label cross-platform service, which several of the big carriers have already tapped. Read more »
NetZero is giving each of its customers 1 GB of free bonus data each month. You can’t use that yourself, though. You have to give it to other NetZero customers in 200 MB increments, but there’s nothing to stop your friends from returning the favor. Read more »
Nokia once again is giving T-Mobile “exclusivity” on a new mid-range windows handset, which to be honest doesn’t give T-Mobile much. The Lumia 810 may be a perfectly capable device, but AT&T is selling the much more capable 920 along with 810′s twin brother. Read more »
Hotels, airlines and grocery stores already link everything imaginable to their loyalty card programs. Why not 4G, as well? Sprint wants to make it easy for the hospitality and retail industries to become mini-virtual operators renting and selling mobile data modems to their customers. Read more »
Sprint is working with Zoove to use its personalized dialing codes for a vanity phone number service. For $3 a month customers can select a vanity code up to nine numerals in length. Read more »
Ruckus is following a different path than its arch-rival BelAir Networks. Instead of preening itself for acquisition, it’s filed for an initial public offering. Hoping to raise $100 million, Ruckus will keep plugging away at building expansive outdoor Wi-Fi networks. Read more »
Huawei is reportedly giving some serious thought to listing itself on a US or international exchange, exposing its books and ownership structure to the world. An IPO won’t silence all of Huawei’s critics, but it would help the company close equipment contracts and acquisitions. Read more »
Reports are now surfacing that Sprint may counter Deutsche Telekom’s bid for MetroPCS. What would Sprint gain if it derails the Metro-T-Mobile merger? Sprint would get some attractive spectrum, but it won’t help its overall 4G strategy much. It’s licenses simply don’t line up with Metro’s. Read more »
This year’s top 20 in terms of total connections looks very much like last years, according to Wireless Intelligence. There’s, however, evidence of a subtle shift in the rankings in favor of Asian operators versus Western operators. Read more »
Spectrum and coverage maps show us exactly where the new ‘T-Metro’ will deliver on the promised 4G capacity. The gains in many key markets are impressive, but adding Metro’s assets won’t be a spectrum panacea for T-Mobile. Read more »
T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS aren’t jinxing themselves by blurting it out loud, but when of the benefits to their merger is much compatibility with the iPhone 5. The combination of Metro’s LTE network and T-Mo’s new HSPA+ network is a match made in Apple heaven. Read more »
T-Mobile’s aims for merging with MetroPCS are pretty clear: to harvest the regional carrier’s spectrum to bulk up its LTE network in key cities. But T-Mo wants to hold onto as many of Metro’s 9.3 million customers as possible. Can it have it both ways? Read more »
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Combining T-Mobile and MetroPCS — two carriers with completely incompatible network technologies — defies reason. According to the financial media, the deal is set to happen, but it will be a disaster in the making. Read more »
The iPhone drove Softbank’s enormous growth for years, but now Japan’s third largest carrier is looking to grow by other means. It’s bidding for smaller competitor eAccess, which would not only boost its subscribers but give it substantial 4G ammunition in the mobile broadband wars. Read more »
HughesNet has turns on its residential broadband service, offering 15 Mbps speeds in rural America where the quality of broadband connections have always suffered. Hughes isn’t the only one though. A new generation of satellite tech is dramatically boosting speeds available to underserved areas. Read more »
After much hype and anticipation, MVNO FreedomPop is officially launched, offering 500 MB of free data to anyone willing to fork over a deposit for one of its 4G modems. The iPhone and iPod Touch sleeves aren’t available yet, but they’ll arrive in the coming weeks. Read more »
The FCC wants to kick off an incentive auction in 2014 that would buy back TV airwaves from the broadcasters and sell them to mobile operators at a premium. The plan isn’t without critics, but in general it was lauded by both consumer groups and carriers. Read more »
T-Mobile is unloading its towers, selling the rights to manage them to Crown Castle for $2.4 billion. The 7,200 sites are only a small portion of T-Mobile’s 51,000 total cell sites, but the deal pretty much gets T-Mobile out of the real-estate business. Read more »
Comcast’s Wi-Fi network has pulled up stakes and is heading west to make its fortune in San Francisco and other California cities. The cable operators said it has deployed a “few thousand” hotspots around the state though the greatest concentration is in the Bay Area. Read more »
AT&T wants to rejigger a useless hunk of airwaves for LTE use, but to do so it needs special dispensation from the FCC. Today chairman Julius Genachowski signed off its plan and officially set the ball rolling toward opening the WCS band for 4G. Read more »
AT&T is launching a new program called Advanced Communication Suite which not only resells Twilio-powered cloud communications apps but lets more-savvy businesses tap into its voice and SMS APIs. What’s more, given Twilio’s broad reach, AT&T may overcome the problem of cross-carrier fragmentation. Read more »
GroceryServer and ZipList have bridged the gap between the store circular and the web. They’ve linked local and national grocery deals to the shopping list stored on your phone and created a hyperlocal marketing platform that benefits the farmers’ market as well as Whole Foods. Read more »
The Verizon version of the iPhone 5 will come with all of its radios, save CDMA, unlocked. That means any Verizon iPhone user can insert any carrier’s SIM card and be on another network. That’s great news for network switchers and even better news for jetsetters. Read more »
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is embarking on a gigabit fiber project, thanks to the suggestion of Google’s Eric Schmidt, taking advantage of the overhaul of its water infrastructure to lay new data pipes. The plan is create 15 tech zones to feed Chicago’s growing startup community. Read more »
T-Mobile is now ready to start marketing its HSPA+ service to unlocked iPhone owners in one city, though T-Mobile’s CTO said more will quickly follow. Previously iPhone users could connect to T-Mobile at mere 2G speeds. Now they have a 42 Mbps network at their disposal. Read more »
