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 »
Despite the dust up over FaceTime, not all carriers see blocking or restricting over-the-top communications services as their option. VoIP player Sidecar thinks carriers will try and match the features of OTT apps, while T-Mobile says it actively encourage the use of competing IP communications services. Read more »
Clearwire is starting its LTE build in the next two weeks and will ramp up its network in the fourth quarter. Once complete next year, Clearwire will sell capacity to other 4G carriers in city-centered hot zones. First, however, Clearwire needs to get compatible devices. Read more »
Despite the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated connected car platforms, those systems remain largely closed to developers due to safe driving concerns. While those platforms will eventually open up, automakers have to be wary of placing too many limitations on development today. Otherwise consumers will ignore them. Read more »
T-Mobile USA’s new CEO John Legere has a tough job ahead of him given T-Mobile’s shrinking customer base. But if he continues down the path T-Mobile has laid — challenging the status quo of AT&T and Verizon, Legere could help reshape the US mobile market. Read more »
OpenSignal has collected 2.5 billion signal strength measurements from networks around the world. Now its collecting $1.3 million from a triad of investors to help it put all of that crowdsourced data to use. Read more »
Six rural carriers will have launched LTE networks by the end of 2012 thanks to Verizon’s LTE in Rural America program. That will give Verizon customers 4G service in small towns well beyond its 400 market footprint. But the Verizon’s rural partners benefit plenty as well. Read more »
Sprint has transferred the familiar chirp of its Nextel push-to-talk service over to its core CDMA networks. While it hasn’t succeeded in recapturing every single of the Nextel customers fleeing after its shutdown of the iDEN network, it has managed to resign 1 million of them. Read more »
NSN has pulled off another speed test record, pushing 1.6 Gbps of bandwidth through an LTE network. The technology is hardly ready for commercial use, but unlike many of the other concept networks vendors design, this one might actually get built. Read more »
Ford is joining Chevy in offering a smartphone-based navigation app that integrates with its connected car platform. TeleNav’s new Scout for Sync AppLink doesn’t have all of the features or a full-bore nav system, but it could fundamentally change the in-vehicle mapping game. Read more »
The FCC proposes to dedicate 100 MHz of airwaves for small use, but not exclusively. Carriers would need to share it with existing government users. The high-frequency band would be ideal for small cell deployments, but carriers don’t like sharing. Read more »
Reports are coming in that T-Mobile will start selling the nano-SIM in October, and you know what that means. It will be able to activate unlocked iPhone 5s on its network. Most customers will still be limited to 2G speeds, but that’s changing quickly. Read more »
A new research study shows that carriers may be charging for mobile data that you don’t actually consume. A test of two U.S. mobile networks found that carriers count every byte they ship you even if your phone is incapable of receiving that data. Read more »
FCC documentation reveals there are two more LTE bands hidden within AT&T’s version of the new iPhone 5: PCS and cellular. The thing is there are no networks at either frequency today that could connect to the device. Could AT&T be planning a massive network overhaul? Read more »
U.S. Cellular has added Wi-Fi to its mobile data toolbox. But rather than build or lease time on expensive managed hotspot networks, the Chicago carrier is working with Devicescape to tap into its virtual network of nearly 8 million open access points. Read more »
Apple is abandoning its usual deference to the big carriers, making the iPhone 5 immediately available to regional players. LTE support, though, is a toss up. Some have no 4G networks. Others don’t have the right bands. Cellcom, however, has all its 4G bases covered. Read more »
Sweden’s TeliaSonera was the first carrier in the world to launch LTE, but after nearly three years of waiting it finds its networks unsupported in the new 4G iPhone 5. In fact, most of Europe gets left out in the cold. Read more »
No iPhone for T-Mobile, but exasperated T-Mo customers, take heart. The iPhone 5′s configuration aligns perfectly with the new network upgrades T-Mobile is rolling out today. It will take a year for the network to be fully LTE compatible, but T-Mobile isn’t waiting that long. Read more »
Apple has designed different versions of the iPhone 5 in order to capture all of world’s different LTE networks. It’s a huge break from Apple’s single-device strategy and could have major ramifications for carriers Apple has eschewed in the past like China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo. Read more »
Apple’s wholesale support for LTE across its devices means that 4G network deployment can really get rolling. As these new networks go online, carriers will be forced to start lowering the price of mobile data. It won’t happen immediately, but it will happen. Read more »
Sweden’s Anyfi wants to turn any Wi-Fi access point into a virtual extension of mobile networks. By breaking the bond between physical radio and the Wi-Fi network, the startup will make it easier for carriers to build expansive hybrid Wi-Fi grids to offload their data traffic. Read more »
Boingo and Google have been gradually expanding a free Wi-Fi experiment across the country, using a sponsorship model to open up public hotspots to consumers. But today they scaled big, announcing 4000 new hotspots in the program. There’s a catch though: it’s not available to iPhones. Read more »
The Rural Cellular Association is now the Competitive Carriers Association. The name change acknowledges the new reality that not all nationwide mobile carriers are created equal — T-Mobile and Sprint have more in common with tiny regional operators than with the country’s two wireless superpowers. Read more »
In the year 2020, today’s smartphones will like the glorified PDAs of the last decade, according to AT&T SVP Jeff Bradley. What should consumers expect? Handsets with nearly 30 GHz of processing power, terabytes of internal storage and half-gig connections to the mobile network. Read more »
