Sounds creepy, but someday we may need to change out the blood cartridges in our printers before we can print out dinner. Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs is investing in a cultured food startup called Modern Meadow, which aims to combine in-vitro meat with 3D printing. Read more »
When the FCC and DOJ crushed AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, the competition gods rejoiced. But today regulators are content to let pass a Verizon-cable spectrum deal that would have huge implications for residential broadband competition. So much for the golden age of telecom regulation. Read more »
The Justice Department is giving Verizon clearance to close its $3.9 billion acquisition of the cable companies’ 4G airwaves. While it is imposing conditions on their joint-marketing agreements — basically non-compete pacts — to resell each others wireline and wireless services, the concessions are relatively minor. Read more »
Food Network is continuing its push into mobile media, this time with a new restaurant finder app called On the Road. The app isn’t Yelp or Urbanspoon. It draws its content and recommendation solely from FN’s TV programming, and that’s the way Food Network likes it. Read more »
With the addition of 34 new markets on Thursday, Verizon’s LTE network will envelope 235 million Americans or three-quarters of the country population. Four months before the end of the year it’s within spitting distance of reaching its 4G coverage goals, while competitors play catch-up. Read more »
Verizon may well gets it 4G spectrum and its co-marketing agreements from the cable operators, though it will be forced to make some minor compromises to get the deal approved. WSJ reports that regulators wants to put a five-year timeline on Verizon’s pact with cable. Read more »
Backbone provider XO claims it is the first US operator to build an inter-city 100-gigabit fiber network — other carriers have performed the feats in the confines of big cities, but XO has gone coast to coast. The upgrade boosts XO’s capacity by a factor of 10. Read more »
Every app in the Verizon Apps store now has the stamp of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The familiar nomenclature isn’t being used by Google and Apple, but Verizon and other carriers may use that fact to draw parents to their nascent app portals. Read more »
After leading two international carriers, Sol Trujillo might be coming home. According to Bloomberg, Trujillo is looking to buy T-Mobile USA with the help of private equity. So far he’s hit roadblocks, but if he’s successful he would certainly shake things up at the ailing carrier. Read more »
According to a new report from Chetan Sharma Consulting, the US has reached 50 percent smartphone penetration. The big operators may be leading the charge toward more sophisticated OS-driven devices, but smaller operators and the growing prepaid market is making a contribution as well. Read more »
Multiprotocol instant messaging app imo.im is getting more vocal. The new iPhone app now supports VoIP calls over cellular and Wi-Fi between imo users. Voice is a tricky business for a startup with no established customer base, but luckily imo already has 700,000 daily users. Read more »
Sprint is selected two of its small cell manufacturers, Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent, which happen to be the same suppliers building its big macro networks. If vendor number three Ericsson also scores a win, Sprint’s heterogenous network will be very vendor homogenous. Read more »
Home cooks are using digital tools to help them cook: smartphones, video streaming, cooking apps and social media sites, according to an Allrecipes.com poll. But our increased dependence on the internet for cooking advice is also destroying our faith in the recipe itself. Read more »
T-Mobile is giving its rather pathetic MyTouch voice-command feature a much-needed overhaul. It’s incorporating the same semantic-search technology Nuance uses in Dragon Go into Genius, allowing the voice assistant to search over 200 different content providers and understand intent rather than just words. Read more »
A regulatory filing shows Dish invested in $396 million in an unnamed company. Analysts believe that company is Clearwire and that dish could be preparing to partner with the ailing WiMAX provider to build its new LTE network — that is if gets permission to build. Read more »
After showing signs of shaking the AT&T merger specter, T-Mobile is shedding customers again, posting a 205,000 subscriber loss in the second quarter. T-Mobile has shrunk by about 400,000 subscribers in the last year while all of its competitors have grown. Read more »
Why check your phone for deals when you can check your car dashboard instead? Ford has integrated deal-broker Roximity’s location-based offers app with its Sync connected car platform, allowing drivers to verbally search for nearby bargains without slowing down. Read more »
MetroPCS became the first US carrier to take the leap to voice-over-LTE, combining its voice, messaging and Internet services onto a single IP network. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have VoLTE plans of their own but they don’t necessarily have the same motivations for getting there. Read more »
Philadelphia startup Connectify has turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for its latest PC connection management project. It’s developing software that will allow a PC to aggregate multiple broadband connections, ranging from Wi-Fi to 4G, into a single a high-bandwidth link. Read more »
As consumers begin chaffing at the prospect of paying for Wi-Fi in public spaces, Boingo is revamping its business model through a strategic acquisition. It’s acquiring sponsored Wi-Fi access firm Cloud Nine to help it set up ad-supported free access to hotspots around the country. Read more »
Nuance is offering up a new SDK that will allow big consumer-facing companies to embed virtual voice assistants directly into their mobile apps. Called Nina, the software is intended to cut through app clutter and allow customers to accomplish complex transactions through simple speech commands Read more »
AT&T’s current 4G spectrum holdings are all over the place, but if it can execute its grand plan for the Wireless Communications Services airwaves it will have a consistent nationwide 20 MHz band designated solely for LTE. It just has to pull it off. Read more »
TV broadcasters are making their own contribution to the growing mobile video market with Dyle, a service that plucks their programming out of the DTV airwaves and renders it on mobile phones and other small-screened devices. A Samsung Galaxy phone will be the first Dyle device. Read more »
The complimentary Wi-Fi network will go into company-owned locations, but the vast number of franchisees will make their own call on whether to offer the service. Still, even if all 6000 locations signed on they would barely make a dent in Boingo’s already 500,000-strong hotspot footprint. Read more »
Sprint isn’t holding anything back when it comes to supporting its MVNO partners. Ting will not only get access to a device Sprint started selling only last month, but it will gain immediate entry onto Sprint’s brand new LTE network — permissions other carriers would never grant. Read more »
By buying NextWave, AT&T removes the biggest obstacle to its plan to convert the Wireless Communications Services band from a worthless patch of airwaves to highly valuable 4G spectrum. The deal will cost AT&T $600 million but would pay dividends in new LTE capacity. Read more »
Mobile operators big ambition to expose a common global API to developers has evaporated, but carriers are still searching for that holy grail — relevance to the developer community. Carriers are signing their own API deals and launching new standards efforts, but ultimately they’ll be disappointed. Read more »
Indoor-positioning-startup Wifarer has landed its first customer, the Royal BC Museum, in Victoria, Canada. Wifarer and the BC, however, aren’t just slinging location-triggered coupons. The museum is using Wifarer technology to create an object-aware virtual guide to its exhibits. Read more »
Republic is still in beta, but it’s now a much bigger beta. The mobile virtual network operator has fine-tuned its proprietary hybrid-connection technology and Wi-Fi hotspot network with the launch of a new Motorola phone. So it’s opening up the gates to its long waiting list. Read more »
Free data, a 4G sleeve that wraps around the iPod touch, and a VoIP client — FreedomPop now has all of the pieces for a full-fledged mobile service though its technically just a data-only mobile virtual network operator. Read more »
As connected car platforms become more fragmented, Stitcher has an answer to the problem of developing for so many different vehicles. Instead of building to automaker’s in-dash APIs, it’s asking automakers to tap into its own API. Read more »
When enterprise employees finish up their work at home they’re increasingly turning to tablets rather than powering up their laptops or desktop PCs, according to new survey from Alfresco. The tablet isn’t replacing the PC of smartphone, but it’s definitely carving itself a business niche. Read more »
The U.K.’s O2 has launched a 100-hotspot Wi-Fi network just in time for the Olympics, offering up its capacity to all takers gratis. But there’s something else under the hood of these Ruckus access points: a slot waiting for a future O2 small cell. Read more »
Clearwire lost subscribers for the first time in the second quarter as a result of Sprint discontinuing new contract WiMAX device sales. Sprint has tied its star to LTE, and Clearwire would like to follow, but if the 4G carrier may have already reached its apex. Read more »
Motorola is giving its suburban digs for a new home in downtown Chicago, where it will anchor the Windy City’s emerging tech community. The corporate HQ will officially be in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, along 3,000 employees, but the big brass will reside in Silicon Valley. Read more »
Faced with increasing pressure from its telecom vendor rivals as well as the poor economy, Alcatel-Lucent is cutting its workforce by 7 percent. In order to generate revenue, the vendor is looking toward its vast patent pool, setting up a new intellectual property management division. Read more »
Global LTE connections increased from 10 million at the end of 2011 to 27 million at the end of June. The U.S. and Verizon Wireless still lead, but South Korea and Japan are catching up with each country boasting multiple new 4G networks. Read more »
Sprint saw 1 million Nextel and Boost customers kick their phones to the curb in Q2. But Sprint managed to steer 600,000 of those departing subscribers to CDMA contracts or its prepaid brands. Helped by steady iPhone sales and its MVNO business, Sprint managed to grow. Read more »
Flush with new funds, social dining startup Grubwithus has made its first acquisition, Vancouver’s The Social Feed. The deal will allow the Grubwithus to expand to Canada as well as explore the “supper club” format The Social Feed has popularized. Read more »
Huawei reported 2012 half-year revenues today that make it the largest telecom infrastructure maker in the world — a title formerly belonging to Ericsson. The two, however, are neck and neck and a new contract or fluctuation in currency could see the two changing places once again. Read more »
