AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are reportedly poised to invest $100 million in their joint mobile payment venture called Isis, a near field communication-based contactless payment system that will do battle in the increasingly competitive mobile payments market that includes Google Wallet, Square and others. Read More »
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AT&T is doing away with its $10 tier for 1,000 text messages a month for new customers, making it a choice of between a $20 unlimited plan or 20 cents per text message. AT&T said the new text messaging pricing won’t affect existing customers. Read More »
Verizon’s turning on its LTE network in 15 cities and expanding 4G coverage in 10 cities, bringing more than half the U.S. population under its next-generation wireless network on Thursday. Since its launch in December, Verizon’s LTE network now covers 160 million people in 117 cities. Read More »
AT&T activated 3.6 million iPhones during the second quarter, with Android and BlackBerry devices making up the remaining 40 percent of Ma Bell’s smartphone sales. Those high-end handsets are generating more money for AT&T in other ways — such as increasing texting and MMS revenue and… Read More »
Isis, the carrier led near NFC mobile payment platform, revamped its approach this spring in favor of a more open system that invited credit card companies to join its digital wallet. Today, Isis announced that it’s signed up Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover as partners. Read More »
A report shows that by 2018, the traditional phone system is going to be reaching less than 6 percent of U.S. residents. It’s perhaps time to rethink the very notion of what a phone is and what defines the classic phone network. Read More »
On Tuesday, iPass introduced a new Wi-Fi roaming service that is one of many data points in Wi-Fi’s slow transition from home networking tech for geeks to must-have for every mobile device to perhaps another source of carrier revenue. Will carriers charge for Wi-Fi? Read More »
Cablevision is now offering its cable customers cable modem speeds over its Optimum Wi-Fi network of hotspots, hitting 15 megabits per second down and 4 megabits per second on the uplink. The upgrade is a vast improvement over the previous speeds, which hit 3 mbps down… Read More »
Third-place U.S. cellular carrier Sprint filed a petition with the FCC today formally requesting a block of the AT&T-T-Mobile merger saying it would harm consumers, competition and the broadband economy and would produce little to no tangible public interest benefits. How will AT&T respond? Read More »
AT&T is reportedly preparing to turn on its LTE 4G network on in New York City by the end of June and then flip the switch on Los Angeles less than a month later. That would be consistent with previously announced plans for an LTE roll-out. Read More »
Rather than scaling back on its plans for its own NFC payments network, the carrier-led Isis joint venture is ramping up and welcoming more credit card companies and banks. And that, Isis believes, will make the carrier venture even more critical to the success of NFC.… Read More »
T-Mobile USA struggled in the first quarter, reporting a loss of 99,000 subscribers in the quarter, and increased churn compared to the year before. Revenue was flat, while income fell. It highlights the challenges for the fourth-place carrier, which is preparing to merge with AT&T.… Read More »
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