Verizon has unsurprisingly scotched Tuesday’s rumor of a record-breaking takeover – in concert with rival carrier AT&T, no less – of Vodafone. Voda’s shares have dropped a couple percent in response. Read more »
Now that Verizon is quickly moving customers to its LTE network, what can it do with the older 3G airwaves? Use them for two new prepaid plans and make a little new money on old resources. Read more »
Touring Verizon’s booth wasn’t quite what I expected, but that’s not a bad thing. Instead of focusing on new consumer devices, the company is using the venue to show off partner products from its Innovations Center, illustrating the benefits of connectivity where you’d least expect. Read more »
Samsung’s Galaxy Camera with Android 4.1 debuts in Verizon’s online store on Dec. 13. If you want a 16 megapixel sensor, 21x optical zoom and integrated LTE radio, this is the camera for you. But beyond the $549 price tag, expect to pay $5 monthly.. Read more »
Barclaycard US is the latest card issuer to back Google Wallet. The company also backs Isis, the mobile payment joint venture between Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile, illustrating that not even the traditional banking companies know yet which mobile payment standard will be successful. Read more »
Having passed on the popular 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note, Verizon Wireless will sell the Intuition by LG later this week: A 5-inch Android 4.0 handset that blurs the lines between smartphone and tablet. Will consumers like the 4:3 aspect ratio or will it be a turn-off? Read more »
Smartphones can enable an amazing level of connectivity, but they can also allow that activity to be monitored and used in controversial ways. But for mobile marketing to realize its full potential, consumers may need to sacrifice their privacy to one degree or another. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Starting in June, five U.S. carriers will begin selling Samsung’s Galaxy S III: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular. Samsung’s entire strategy for its new phone is very Apple-like, including one model, which should help constrained production: The company can build 5M per month. Read more »
Verizon Wireless is partnering with Color to highlight the power of its 4G network. The carrier will offer its customers the chance to use an enhanced version of Color, which will enable live video streaming with audio and double the existing frame rate. Read more »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Starting April 22, Verizon Wireless customers upgrading to a new phone will pay a $30 fee. The carrier suggests the fee is needed to continue providing helpful consumer service. To me, the fee is Verizon’s rising cost to do business being passed along to consumers. Read more »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
One reason to get the new iPad is to take advantage of the 4G LTE wireless connectivity option. But what if you already have an iPad and a data plan for it? Here’s how you can transfer that plan the day you get your new iPad. Read more »
T-Mobile expects to be the first U.S. carrier to offer 4G phones with integrated LTE radios and antennas. T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray made the prediction, which is important because the LTE phones of today drain a device’s battery too quickly for a number of reasons. Read more »
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE tablet on Verizon will cost $499 with a two-year data contract at a minimum $30 per month. Plans for each device have to go, and it’s time for carriers to adopt a pay-per-use plan for all tablets, not just the iPad. Read more »
Want to know what’s going to happen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week? Why not ask the organizers? I got on the phone with the GSMA, and here’s what they told me to expect: connectivity in everything, NFC and, of course, LTE. Read more »
Several companies and nonprofit organizations filed their opposition to Verizon’s planned $4 billion buy of spectrum owned by the cable companies on Wednesday. But this isn’t an industry fight. This is a fight that should involve everyone from consumers to Internet companies. 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 »
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 »
It was only a matter of time before a major operator abandoned its territorial notions about mobile voice and adopted a true ‘softphone’ service, and that operator appears to be Rogers Communications. It’s severing the bond between the mobile phone number and the mobile phone. Read more »
When AT&T first started throttling unlimited smartphone data users plans last fall, it claimed it had to limit the “extraordinary” consumption of its greediest customers. It turns out extraordinary is only 2 GB – a full gigabyte less than it sells customers under its most-common data plan. 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 »
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 »
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 »
The country’s largest mobile operator and largest cable provider bringing their “quadruple play” service to San Francisco and the Bay Area, jointly marketing Comcast residential TV and broadband and Verizon mobile service. In the process, they’re poking a needle in the eye of mutual enemy AT&T. Read more »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hilton Head is an island full of sandy beaches, manicured golf courses and lush green trees. But one thing the island community doesn’t have is good cellular coverage. By working with RootMetrics to crowdsource testing of its local cellular networks, it hopes to change that. Read more »
The AT&T-Mo saga wasted countless dollars and resources, dominating the attention of regulators and the wireless industry for a year, but AT&T’s failure more than made up for those losses. We now have more fearsome regulation and a greater awareness of the mobile market’s precarious competitive state. 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 »
Comcast claims it tried but failed to build a wireless business multiple times before it sold out to Verizon. Assuming Comcast is being honest, its failure has big implications for U.S. mobile competition. If Comcast can’t make wireless work, what hope is there for a newcomer? Read more »
The ITU has approved the LTE-Advanced standard, and the web understandably got excited, proclaiming the arrival of ‘5G’. We’re also pretty amped up about LTE-Advanced and the huge gains in speeds, capacity and network efficiency it will deliver, but we also think the party is a bit premature. Read more »
On Sunday, AT&T is reconfiguring its mobile data plans in a way that will anger many customers but may actually please others. It’s raising its smartphone and tablet data plan rates, while simultaneously offering customers a better deal on the data they do consume. 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 Galaxy Nexus will finally get Google Wallet, though it will have to wait until mid-year when Sprint launches its LTE service. When Sprint unveiled its future LTE device portfolio at CES, it revealed that its Nexus will come with the mobile payments software embedded. Read more »
At CES, Motorola announced a new Droid for Verizon’s LTE network that appears to be a combination of all of its Android smartphones released to date. Meanwhile, LG got cinematic with LTE’s video stream capabilities, announcing a new HD phone, while Samsung unveiled its Tab 7.7. Read more »
In 2012, a “turbo” button will appear on mobile phones, making it the first of many new options that allow customers to customize their data plans by quality of connection, rather than megabytes consumed. We may even see the resurgence of the unlimited plan, with a catch. Read more »
At an analyst conference, Sprint CEO let slip a change in Sprint’s data policies that could have a big impact on iPhone and other smartphone customers lured in by Sprint’s unlimited plans: the carrier has been throttling back speeds to the heaviest consumers of smartphone data. 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 »
