Open Garden teams with TextMe to connect the unconnected tablet
photo: Open Garden
Open Garden needs scale, TextMe needs a means for its customers to reach the Internet. These two might just be a match made in heaven. Read more »
Belkin to take Linksys from Cisco for an undisclosed sum
Cisco’s love affair with the home networking market appears to over. In March it will sell Linksys to Belkin and the two companies will partner to attack the home networking space together. Read more »
AT&T matches Verizon smartphone for smartphone; activates 8.6M iPhones
photo: AT&T
AT&T had another record quarter of iPhone sales, and while it didn’t come close to the huge new subscriber growth of arch-rival Verizon, AT&T beat its competitor out in overall smartphone sales. Read more »
Is Google pondering an experimental HetNet?
Google is launching yet another mysterious wireless experiment, this time using small cells at its HQ. Taking all of Google’s wireless projects together, a new kind of mobile architecture might be taking shape: the heterogenous network. Read more »
Cisco buying Intucell for $475M to build self-aware networks
In just two years, Israeli infrastructure startup Intucell has gone from a $6 million Series A to a nearly half-billion-dollar acquisition. Read more »
Multilevel marketing MVNO Flash Wireless uses Wi-Fi to expand data reach
photo: Flickr user Suttonhoo
ACN’s wireless arm Flash may not have the most compelling rates today, but with a new deal with Devicescape it may be setting the stage for cheaper data plans in the future. Read more »
AT&T scoops up the remnants of Alltel to harvest its spectrum
photo: AT&T
AT&T is buying up the remaining piece of Alltel still in operation for $780 million. Though the deal gives AT&T 585,000 new subscribers, judging by the price Ma Bell seems more interested in its airwaves. Read more »
Verizon sees big Q4 influx of 4G activations including 3.1M LTE iPhones
LTE devices drove Verizon’s fourth quarter. It activated 7.3 million LTE devices in three months and sold 6.2 million iPhones. Half of those iPhones were Apple’s newest LTE-enabled model. Read more »
Networking startup Vasona shapes mobile traffic one cell at a time
Santa Clara startup Vasona has a new mobile network optimization technology that targets congestion at individual cells rather than reshaping the entire network’s traffic indiscriminately. Read more »
RIM revamps BlackBerry app store, adding music and video
photo: RIM
BlackBerry App World is becoming simply BlackBerry World as RIM prepares to revamp its mobile storefront. In addition to apps and games, RIM will be selling multimedia. Read more »
Why we love the Sprint-Softbank deal: The TV ads
Forget financial metrics and economies of scale. If Softbank succeeds in taking over Sprint this year, we just want to see one thing: Softbank’s bizarre but highly entertaining TV advertising on U.S. screens. Read more »
What would AT&T gain from going multinational? Not much
photo: Flickr / ToastyKen
AT&T apparently is revving up the acquisition machine once again, this time targeting Europe mobile carriers. Buying an overseas mobile arm might be a good investment, but it does little operationally for Ma Bell. Read more »
Rhapsody goes a la carte on MetroPCS but at half the regular cost
Rhapsody has retooled its relationship with MetroPCS. Instead of bundling its music subscription service in all upper-tier Metro smartphone plans, it’s selling the service for $5 a month to any Metro customer. Read more »
Tracking trees: How M2M is being used to prevent deforestation in Brazil
The Brazilian government is working with the private sector to shut down illegal logging operations in the Amazon by connecting trees. If a monitored tree is chopped down, environmental authorities can track it all the way to the sawmill. Read more »
Nokia Siemens’ US prospects improve with new LTE deals
photo: NSN
The U.S. has been a sore spot for Nokia Siemens Networks for the last several years. Try as it might it hasn’t been able to convert its international success into U.S. 4G contracts. That changing with two LTE rollouts for T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular. Read more »
JiWire serves up location-based ads over airport Wi-Fi
As consumers become increasingly reluctant to pay for Wi-Fi in public spaces, hotspot providers are looking for other ways to monetize wireless connections. Airport Wi-Fi provider AWG is working with location-based ad company JiWire to trade access for advertising views. Read more »
At CES the connected car became truly connected
photo: Shutterstock / Mopic
Ford and GM opened up their closely guarded connected car platforms to developers at CES, which means we’ll soon see a plethora of apps appearing in our dashboards. But the automakers aren’t Google. They’ll be careful about what exactly they’ll let into the vehicle. Read more »
Report: There are now 1.6 billion 3G/4G connections in the world
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 »
MetroPCS rejiggers its plans again, restoring $60 unlimited tier
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 »
Forget apps, Ford’s OpenXC project will produce open-source car hardware
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 »
FreedomPop’s iPhone sleeve shipments held up awaiting FCC approval
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 acquires VirtuOz, potentially lending a voice to online virtual agents
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 »
Can LTE-broadcast dam the mobile video deluge?
photo: Shutterstock / Peter Sobolev
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 set to release more spectrum to feed our need for Wi-Fi
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 »
Looks like we’ll see a T-Mobile iPhone (with LTE) this spring
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 says LTE now touches 89% of the population
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 challenges Sprint’s takeover of Clearwire with unsolicited bid
photo: Flickr / Dave Lindblom
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 »
AT&T, Verizon had record 4th quarters thanks to the smartphone
photo: Shutterstock / Stanislav Komogorov
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 »
Can the creation of music be crowdsourced? Ericsson and DJ Avicii think it can
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, textPlus team up to offer freemium voice, SMS service
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 »
CES 2013: AT&T eschews new handsets for softphones, connected homes and VOD
photo: AT&T
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 to create a universal voice assistant, bridging phones, TVs and cars
photo: Shutterstock / brem stocker
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 »
With new LTE super antenna, SkyCross aims to defragment the 4G airwaves
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 »
Cisco, NXP invest in autonomous-car startup Cohda
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 »
MVNO Red Pocket experiments with bring-your-own visual voicemail
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 »
Pinterest gets serious about recipe inspiration with Punchfork buy
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 »
Wi-Fi Alliance gobbles up WiGig; plans to certify devices this year
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 »
Survey: Despite initial missteps, mobile payments will boom in 2013
photo: GigaOM
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 Maps navigates its way into Kia, Hyundai connected cars
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 »
CTIA combines its shows as carrier influence over phones, apps declines
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 »
