About 23 percent of world’s connections are now mobile broadband, according to new statistics compiled by Wireless Intelligence. 3G networks still predominate with WiMAX and LTE accounting for a mere 5 percent of the 1.6 billion total. Read more »
The $60 unlimited talk, text and data plan is back, but MetroPCS has removed some of the perks. No more Rhapsody and unlimited video and audio downloads for MetroStudio included. But for most customers the restored plan is still a much better deal. Read more »
Ford has lots of developer programs up its sleeve. After opening up Sync to developers this week, it announced Thursday OpenXC, an open-source software and hardware program that exposes the internal workings of the vehicle to a future generation of apps and devices. Read more »
Still waiting on that FreedomPop iPhone sleeve you ordered last summer? Well, you’ll have to wait at least a few more weeks. The devices are delayed at customs while the FCC goes through its certification process. Read more »
Nuance is buying online virtual sales and support assistant developer VirtuOz for an undisclosed price, our sources tell us. VirtuOz gives Nuance a stake in the enterprise virtual assistant market to match its presence in the enterprise mobile apps. Read more »
By multicasting popular content over cellular networks, carriers figure they can conserve valuable 4G capacity. But as consumers use their smartphones and tablets to personalize their multimedia consumption, the ship may have already sailed on multicast’s potential. Read more »
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is opening a proceeding to clear 195 MHz of new 5 GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi use. The allocation would be the biggest bonanza of new unlicensed airwaves since 2003 and would help bring about new gigabit wireless technologies. Read more »
T-Mobile CEO John Legere says a magenta-branded iPhone will be on the carrier’s shelves in three to four months. Given T-Mo’s accelerated network rollout that will put the phones launch right in sync with its LTE launch. Read more »
Verizon revealed some impressive 4G stats at CES 2013. It’s LTE network is now in 473 markets, covering 273 million people. It will complete its 4G network in mid-2013, just two-and-a-half years after it started. Read more »
Dish Network isn’t taking Sprint’s takeover of Clearwire lying down. The company has submitted a bid to acquire all or part of Clearwire at a price 11 percent higher than Sprint is offering. Are we witnessing a bidding war or two telecom giants posturing? Read more »
It was a very merry Christmas for Verizon and AT&T. In the fourth quarter, Verizon reported record net subscriber additions of 2.1 million due to LTE gadget sales while AT&T activated a record 10 million smartphones. Read more »
Swedish DJ and producer Avicii has agreed to work with network builder Ericsson to experiment with a crowdsourced music composition on. Starting on Wednesday, the public will be able to submit audio tracks that could wind up in Avicii’s new single. Read more »
FreedomPop and textPlus have matching philosophies: Give a baseline service away for free and upsell additional megabytes and minutes. Later this quarter FreedomPop will incorporate textPlus’s IP messaging and VoIP services into its mobile broadband service. Read more »
AT&T is using the big CES pulpit to talk up its work in services and applications, rather than just unveil its latest handsets. It’s exploring a new universal phone number APIs, expanding its smart home program and launching a new video streaming service. Read more »
Nuance plans to integrate its growing number of speech command platforms into a universal assistant for the internet of things. It’s also trying to make its speech technology more dynamic, using crowdsourcing to capture the language zeitgeist. Read more »
SkyCross’s new active antenna can support 12 frequency bands in a single phone. That’s important because it means handset makers like Apple could start shoving more LTE bands into their devices, instead of creating specific devices for specific regions or even specific carriers. Read more »
Cohda is building the hardware and software that will allow vehicles on the road to form intelligent ad hoc mesh networks. Cisco and NXP both like what Cohda is selling and are investing undisclosed sums in the Australian startup. Read more »
Red Pocket is letting third-party voicemail provider YouMail at its customers. The move could be a precursor to virtual operators dumping their antiquated voicemail services. If customers are bringing their own phones and apps, why shouldn’t they bring their own voicemail? Read more »
Cooking inspiration is already one of Pinterest users’ biggest reasons for using the popular social network, and Pinterest has decided to make the most of that trend. Its first acquisition is recipe aggregator and culinary inspiration portal Punchfork. Read more »
The Wi-Fi and WiGig alliances are turning their collaboration into a full-fledged merger, making emerging wireless gigabit technologies part of the Wi-Fi cannon. The WiGig name will stick around, and the Alliance plans to jointly certify devices with both technologies by year end. Read more »
We’ve heard it before: So-and-so year will be the year of the mobile payments. A group of mobile industry experts, however, believes 2013 will be the real deal. Google and the carriers had their chance. Now it’s the banks’ turn. Read more »
Google’s mapping and local search data is making its way into more connected car platforms. Automakers aren’t quite ready to let us download Google Maps directly into our dashboards, but they’re definitely leaning more heavily on the search giant to power their nav systems. Read more »
Mobile industry trade group CTIA hopes that replacing its two suffering conferences with a single fall event will halt its fall into trade show irrelevance. MWC and CES have been stealing CTIA’s thunder, but it might be too late to steal it back. Read more »
Chicago app developer MiGym is giving health clubs an app store presence, but it has bigger plans. It hopes to make the gym a critical element in the quantified self, tracking members’ workout data and sharing that information with fitness and health platforms. Read more »
A year ago RIM bought NewBay, presumably to join Apple and Google in the cloud storage and synch arena. Now it’s selling NewBay at a steep discount to Synchronoss. Maybe a consumer-focused BlackBerry cloud services platform isn’t in RIM’s future after all. Read more »
If you’ve ever ordered a dish off a menu, chances are it’s in Food Genius’s servers. The startup has compiled a mammoth database of menus with the goal of tracking what America is eating. In January it begins selling that data to food companies. Read more »
While charging stations are becoming more common, Brightbox hopes to differentiate itself by providing a secure box. It’s charging kiosks, which are popping up all over New York City, let you leave your phone unattended while you shop, eat or drink. Read more »
T-Mobile saved the biggest cities for the end of the year. T-Mobile revealed that it has completed its HSPA+ network upgrade in 14 more cities including metropolises like New York, Boston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. In those cities iPhones can now tap into T-Mo’s 3G network. Read more »
Berg Insight believes mobile content companies are going to figure out how to monetize mobile traffic. Berg’s analysts predict that ads and marketing won’t just become a much bigger part of the online ad market, but also a sizable segment across all advertising. Read more »
Nuance continues to revamp its semantic search app Dragon Go into a full-blown mobile assistant. New features on the app allow you to open third-party apps, access your music and even set alarms. Nuance also added support for Gingerbread, but there’s no iOS version yet. Read more »
Verizon is adding an additional 29 cities and towns to its 4G footprint, while Sprint and AT&T each brought LTE online in a handful of markets. All three have met their 2012 goals, but there’s still a big gap between Verizon and everyone else. Read more »
In January, Boost Mobile will start throttling speeds to its “unlimited” customers after they exceed 2.5 GB. Clearwire is experimenting with usage-based plans. It’s getting harder and harder to find a truly unlimited data plan anymore as carriers impose more restrictions. Read more »
By taking in a huge WCS spectrum haul from NextWave, Comcast and others, AT&T has nearly all the components in place to create a nationwide 4G band for its own exclusive use. Now AT&T just has to build it. Read more »
Last week SpotHero announced a $2.5 million round. This week competitor and fellow Chicago parking outfit ParkWhiz announced its Series A. ParkWhiz started out selling parking spaces online for special events like the Super Bowl, but it’s expanded into day-to-day spot reservations. Read more »
A consortium of European technology companies and universities wants to identify the technologies beyond 4G. Given a broad mandate, METIS is investigating everything from super-dense small cell deployments to virtualizing the radio network in the cloud. In 30 months we’ll see its first recommendations. Read more »
Cisco is the latest vendor to get into the policy management game. It’s planned acquisition of BroadHop will give it the foundation for new sets of service tiers that prioritize certain types of traffic over others. Read more »
Clearwire and Sprint have a long history. Together they dreamed of changing the wireless industry, but their grand plan was fraught with missteps that wound up leaving both their 4G strategies in limbo. Sprint now seems ready to bring Clearwire home. Read more »
A world of difference separates the Sprint Dan Hesse took over on Dec. 17, 2007 and Sprint today. On his fifth anniversary as CEO, Hesse talks with GigaOM about how Sprint emerged from its dark days and how AT&T-Mo eventually helped shape Sprint’s identity. Read more »
If Sprint really wants to buy Clearwire, why did it low-ball its offer, and why is Softbank reportedly choking off Sprint’s bargaining power? Analyst Tim Farrar thinks there is more to this deal, and many other related ones, than meet the eye. Read more »
If you travel overseas and want to maintain your mobile data connection, you’re either going to pay criminal roaming rates or endure tremendous hassles avoiding them. But a new breed of virtual operators like Voiamo are looking to create the first truly international plans. Read more »
