Prepaid mobile giant TracFone had a massive quarter, adding 839,000 subscribers and even beating out Verizon Wireless. TracFone didn’t say why, but not coincidentally its Straight Talk brand and partner Walmart began selling the iPhone 5. Read more »
Apart from Los Angeles, this week’s expansion mainly targets smaller cities and towns, but Sprint is going urban once again this summer with a big 120-city push. Read more »
OpenSignal is expanding its mobile networking crowdsourcing project from Android to the iPhone. Though OpenSignal uses that crowdsourced data to generate its own detailed metrics, there’s plenty in the app for consumers as well. Read more »
Verizon’s generated some impressive activation numbers in the normally slow first quarter: 5.9 million LTE devices; 7.2 million smartphones; and 4 million new iPhones, half of which were the LTE-capable iPhone 5. Read more »
Solavei will sell the device for steep price of $700, but unlocked versions of the new iPhone 5 will work with its SIM cards. Solavei resells T-Mo’s service, giving access to its nationwide HSPA+ network, but not LTE. Read more »
Online food delivery and takeout portal Foodler is now accepting Bitcoin alongside credit cards and cash-on-delivery for orders from more than 17,000 restaurants. Read more »
Carriers and handset makers have long made Android updates a patchwork process, leading to long delays in new getting new OS updates. The ACLU claims that practice poses big cybersecurity risks. Read more »
Brands claim they’re taking to social media, but they’re really inserting ads into other people social engagement streams — not engaging themsleves, says the founder of the Dachis Group. Read more at paidContent »
We upgrade our smartphones every one to two years. Why not our smart cars? Nvidia has developed a chip architecture that could let us boost the brainpower of our connected cars after they roll off the lot. Read more »
Sherpa is trying to build a more flexible virtual assistant technology that can easily adapted for new tasks. To that end it has developed its own conceptual meta-language which it uses to process all voice commands. Read more »
Softbank certainly has the money to counter Dish’s offer, but Dish has much more to offer than cash, namely valuable spectrum and a huge TV network. Read more »
Boland founded a wireless chipmaker in 2002 and sold it to Nvidia in 2011 for $367 million. Now he’s taking his expertise to white spaces startup Neul. Read more »
We’re connecting cars, homes and ourselves. Why not our pets? A lot of options are emerging to quantify and manage the activities of our furry friends, but there are still obstacles to creating a true internet of pets. Read more »
Verizon has never been the operator you would associate with the word cheap. After years of focusing on the high-end of the market, Verizon is going after the budget carriers with a new $35 prepaid plan. Read more »
MetroPCS has delayed the final shareholder vote necessarily to finalize its merger with T-Mobile USA. Fearing rejection, T-Mo owner DT is offering up a new deal with better terms. Read more »
Quantance has gone back to its investors for a $12 million Series D, which it plans to use to bring its envelope tracking chip to market. The technology promises significant gains in LTE device battery life. Read more »
Verizon is seeing video on its mobile network surge. Though it surely would like to encourage the trend, there’s only so much video Verizon’s customers can consume without going broke. Read more »
PayPal is offering two new extensions that will let Magento’s merchants set up shop in PayPal’s mobile app and support mobile payments anywhere in their stores. Read more »
Just a few months old, Wandera has attracted a sizable Series A round with Bessemer Venture Partners as the sole investor. Wandera’s technology, mobile data optimization, is nothing new, but its enterprise focus is. Read more »
SMS formerly has been a mobile-phone only club, but cloud-messaging provider Zipwhip has virtualized the SMS client, allowing you to send text messages from any wireline number — if not from an actual wired phone. Read more »
Qualcomm’s big MediaFLO flop hasn’t dissuaded it from pursuing mobile TV. It’s championing a new technology called LTE-broadcast that purportedly solves FLO’s many problems. Read more »
AT&T’s new deal offer gives international plan customers 1 GB free access over Boingo’s global hotspot network. That wouldn’t be a bad deal if AT&T weren’t already charging you $60-$120 for your data plan. Read more »
Why would Google be interested in WhatsApp when it already has a bevy of peer-to-peer messaging and communications apps at its disposal? For the same reason Facebook bought Instagram. Read more »
Fraunhofer is testing optical communications components that will turn an off-the-shelf LED into a broadband transmitter. Read more »
It may be a contrary opinion, but I think Facebook should build its own phone — not a smartphone, but a cheap feature phone. I wouldn’t buy it. You wouldn’t buy it. But millions of people would. Here’s why. Read more »
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam is watching T-Mobile’s new contract-free, subsidy-free mobile strategy closely. If consumers start biting, McAdam says Verizon is willing to shake up its own pricing and contract policies. Read more »
Braintree is ramping up its mobile presence thanks to its recent purchase of Venmo. Using the peer-to-peer payment technology, Braintree is creating an in-app customer identity network that can be used to buy goods across iOS apps. Read more »
The Weightless SIG claims the new standard will allow for ultra-low-power transmissions at long-range and at a cheap manufacturing cost. If true, that would make the technology ideal for M2M communications. Read more »
According to TMoNews, at the end of the week Apple will ship the over-the-air update necessary to make the current generation iPhone 5 work on T-Mobile’s new 4G network. Read more »
There’s a lot of HD-Voice activity in the U.S., but chances are you’ve never made an HD-Voice call. The reason is the same one that has always plagued the mobile industry: the lack of interoperability. Read more »
The $245 billion deal would be the single largest M&A transaction in history, according to the Financial Times. But just as with any rumor about Vodafone and Verzion’s joint venture, there are reasons to be skeptical. Read more »
Sometimes an April Fools’ fake news item is more than just a gag. Here are a few pranks we think hint at larger trends in the tech industry. Read more »
Nuance powers speech interfaces in phones, TVs, cars and websites. Now its creating advertising that will both listen to your questions and respond to them. Read more »
There’s a lot of confusing noise out there about whether you can bring an unlocked iPhone 5 over to T-Mo’s network and get it to work properly. Here’s the low-down on what the GSM iPhone 5 can and can’t do. Read more »
Sorry, you can’t buy a $580 iPhone 5 from T-Mobile and then sign up with another carrier — you have to give T-Mo at least once month of service. Read more »
Ever wanted a single app that check you into any airline or an app that could aggregate healthcare data from multiple doctors and insurance companies? Apigee’s new API Exchange aims to make those apps possible. Read more »
nTelos was one of the first small carriers to land the iPhone, and now its adding to its prestige by launching a new LTE network. Not bad for a little rural carrier. Read more »
Springpad takes in a lot of loose information from the web and organizes it, but that information stays on Springpad. With its new Embedded Notebooks tool, however, Springpad plans to expose that organized content back to the web. Read more »
T-Mobile’s new 4G service will keep pace with its competitors’ initially, but as the company fine tunes its deployment, its speeds will increase. Eventually T-Mo will field a network capable of supporting a theoretical 150 Mbps connection. Read more »
Locking phones down to a specific mobile operator is an unpopular practice, and T-Mobile is maintaining it but only for customers who make use of its device financing options. Read more »
