T-Mobile USA may have had a horrible fourth quarter while its merger with AT&T suffered its death throes, but the operator is definitely taking advantage of the aftermath. T-Mobile is using the breakup fee and spectrum won from AT&T to build an LTE network in 2013. Read more »
Verizon’s struggles to keep its LTE network running consistently continue. Wednesday morning, Verizon reported on its Twitter feed that it is looking into customer complaints about the 4G service going down, and multiple blogs are reporting network outages in several markets ranging from Phoenix to Indianapolis. Read more »
Qualcomm says the only quad-core Snapdragon smartphones we’ll see at Mobile World Congress next week will be concept devices, but Qualcomm is promising we’ll get a glimpse of something even more elusive: an LTE phone that won’t eat your battery for lunch. Read more »
At MWC, Nokia Siemens Networks plans its most ambitious mobile network design yet: a system of 100 small cells that behaves like a single cell site. This has huge implications for the heterogeneous networks of the future, which aim to create a sea of cheap bandwidth. Read more »
Your LTE phone is just as adept at eating battery power as it is at eating bandwidth. Last week, I wrote about the many ways that LTE devices are far more power hungry than their 3G predecessors. Now let’s look at what’s being doing about it. Read more »
LTE phones are the fastest things on the airwaves, but they can also suck a battery dry in a few hours. Here are five reasons why your new Samsung Galaxy Nexus or HTC Vivid is going dead right after lunch time. Read more »
We’ll have to wait another year for the LTE network Clearwire has long been promising. At its quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch said the WiMAX carrier’s first batch of 5,000 LTE cell sites will be switched by June of 2013. Read more »
FreedomPop plans to give away mobile data access to most of its customers for free, charging only premium users a monthly fee. If can it can make the math work, it could potentially shake up the wireless market, extending mobile data to broad swathes of the population. Read more »
At this year’s Mobile World Congress, you would expect LTE to hog the spotlight, but LTE might find itself overshadowed by a less sexy technology: Wi-Fi. As telecom vendors prep their new porfolios for MWC in two weeks, there is a preponderance of Wi-Fi products. Read more »
Telus will launch Canada’s third LTE network on Friday, rolling out the mobile broadband technology in 14 cities from Vancouver to Halifax. It plans to expand the network throughout 2012 to cover 25 million Canadians, 71 percent of the country’s population, by year end. Read more »
For the first time in six years, Sprint’s aging Nextel and wireline businesses didn’t overwhelm all positive gains from its primary CDMA business in its quarterly results. Still, Sprint is anxious to shed the Nextel albatross and Wednesday detailed its plans to shut down iDEN. Read more »
Verizon Wireless will begin selling the latest version of its long-running Droid line on Friday, offering the Motorola Android handset for $200 with a two-year contract. Unveiled at CES, the Droid 4 is a cross-breed of many of the Motorola devices that have come before it. Read more »
It’s no secret that Sprint plans to shut down its iDEN network in 2013, but until recently the details of how it would sunset it were a secret. Over the weekend, new maps appeared on the Sprint website that identify the individual cell sites being decommissioned. Read more »
On average, 100 million people watch the Super Bowl. With connected devices everywhere, we’ll be tweeting about it and sharing thoughts on social networks. So will fans at the game. Here are some staggering numbers showing how Super Bowl 46 is ready for such mobility. Read more »
Qualcomm and Ericsson have successfully passed a voice call from an LTE network to a 3G one, paving the way for mobile carriers to begin migrating their voice traffic onto all-IP 4G networks. Once that happens, operators can start shutting down their 2G and 3G networks. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Next month, consumers in smaller towns and cities across the U.S. will have access to their first LTE network as U.S. Cellular ramps ups its commercial 4G service. The regional CDMA operator will start selling a tablet in March and a Galaxy smartphone in April. Read more »
Japan’s eAccess isn’t deploying any old LTE network. It’s going for broke, pushing the upper limits of the technology to launch a network that can support speeds of 300 Mbps. That makes Verizon’s LTE network, which can breach 25 Mbps on a good day, seem pokey. Read more »
Did you know that Bulgaria has the highest level of broadband adoption, at 96 percent? Or that the average connection speed in South Korea is 16.7 Mbps versus the global average connection speed of 2.7 Mbps? Some findings from Akamai’s latest “State of the Internet” report. Read more »
We often see third-party device teardowns, but Samsung bucks the trend by showing breakdown of its 5.3-inch Galaxy Note. Those who say Android screens are getting larger mainly because of LTE radio size need to take a closer look at this dissection. I think they’re wrong. Read more »
Wondering why AT&T smartphone data rates just went up? Because the operator was denied its acquisition of T-Mobile – at least that’s what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson implied Thursday. Ma Bell is still bitter about AT&T-Mo’s failure and it’s taking it out on its customers. Read more »
Verizon plans milk as much revenue off of its 3G and LTE networks as possible, becoming the “premium” mobile data operator, but its plan could backfire. Despite the increase in 4G sales, Verizon is still primarily a 3G operator, and 3G doesn’t justify its steep prices. Read more »
Intel’s wireless ambitions go beyond smartphones and tablets. It’s set its sights on the guts of the mobile network as well. By embracing a new network design concept called Cloud-RAN, Intel believes it can reshape wireless network to make the best use of its chips. Read more »
Super Bowl 46 is around the corner, and Verizon is taking huge steps to ensure the mobile broadband flows as fast the beer at Lucas Oil Stadium. Here’s a video look at the effort, which includes a 600 antenna Wi-Fi system for up to 28,000 people. Read more »
LightSquared accused the commercial GPS industry of “rigging” government tests on the potential GPS interference problems of its LTE network and called for new rounds of tests from independent labs with no participation from GPS device makers. Read more »
Apple is only weeks away from hosting a special iPad event, according to sources speaking to Japanese blog Macotakara Tuesday. The sources claim we’ll see the iPad 3 and iOS 5.1 put on public display as early as the beginning of February. Read more »
Adding T-Mobile support to the iPhone may sound simple, but it’s a much more difficult task than it appears. New bands don’t just necessitate new antennas, but a complete phone redesign. T-Mobile’s Apple moment may come with the iPhone 5, but don’t hold your breath. Read more »
A new report from Bloomberg says Apple’s next iPad has indeed begun production. The new iPad will have a sharper screen, according to the new report, but also “LTE access,” something we’ve yet to hear much about in early iPad rumors. Read more »
Verizon is putting LTE chips in TouchTunes’ new digital karaoke machines, but that’s not all. At CES, Verizon seemed determined to embed its latest wireless network technology into anything that could conceivably need an Internet connection, including ATM machines, robots and photo booths. Read more »
According to a Verizon executive, Big Red will no longer accept smartphones and tablets unless they have LTE connectivity. The revelation shows just how aggressive Verizon is pushing its 4G strategy and almost certainly indicates the next iPhone will have LTE. Read more »
The number of mobile subscribers is growing steadily across the globe, but each continent tells a different story about 3G and 4G penetration, market saturation and the rate of future growth. This report looks at the global mobile landscape over the next five years, forecasting the number of subscribers and the penetration of 3G and 4G services by both continent and country. In particular we look at new markets such as China and India, possibilities in developing countries in Africa and the Middle East, and saturation in the first world. Companies mentioned in this report include HTC, Motorola and Samsung. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
During my CES show floor travels, I swung by Motorola’s booth and see the Droid Razr Max. Why? Because battery technology hasn’t changed much and Moto claims a 21-hour runtime for it’s latest Android smartphone. But it’s still only 8.99 millimeters in thickness! Read more »
Apple isn’t one to talk about its future plans, but that doesn’t always stop partners or potential partners from sometimes spilling the beans. Case in point: T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray told Cnet in an interview Tuesday that Apple’s “next chipset will support AWS.” Read more »
AT&T used the first day of CES as a launch point for a bevy of devices for its LTE network. The new Android devices now number six, including Samsung’s wide-bodied stylus-driven Galaxy Note, an ultra-cheap Pantech tablet and a pair of HD video phones. Read more »
Sprint will launch LTE in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and six other smaller markets by mid-2011, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse revealed Thursday. He also went into more detail about how it planned to grow its initial low-bandwidth LTE network into a big fat one. Read more »
AT&T has turned on its 4G LTE service in 11 new markets, but that expansion may not be quite so big as it appears. AT&T is only covering large cities like San Francisco and New York partially, explaining why it’s only reached 74 million in coverage. Read more »
Networking silicon vendor Mindspeed aims to become a big player in wireless infrastructure in a very small way. It is purchasing femtocell system-on-a-chip (SoC) maker Picochip for $51.8 million, creating what Mindspeed hopes will be a powerhouse in the so-far disappointing miniature base station market. Read more »
If AT&T-Mo’s failure taught us anything it’s that big U.S. operators can no longer grow by acquiring each other. Instead they’re going to have to buy up what unused spectrum is left on the market to stockpile fuel for their future mobile broadband networks. Read more »
Sprint has given its partner LightSquared 30 days to get regulators to green-light the launch of its controversial 4G service, but it may not be enough. If Sprint pulls out of the network-sharing deal, LightSquared’s costs multiply, almost certainly killing its rollout plans. Read more »
Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse talks about how AT&T’s attempted acquisition of T-Mobile set off all sorts of alarms, and made him realize just how tenuous the competitive situation in the U.S. wireless industry is. Read more »
