Wireless Carrier, Cell Phone | featured news

AT&T has announced the first cities that will get its 4G LTE service. These cities, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio, will see AT&T's version of LTE this summer. Verizon's LTE service, which launched in real (non-beta testing) form late last year, though sans handsets, has vowed to get its LTE service into 175 markets...

Looking at AT&T and its planned acquisition, it’s fair to suggest that it could not attract the financing necessary to complete the purchase if its plan was to raise prices. Not only would such a move be unrealistic given the existence of Verizon and other smaller competitors, it would also be self-defeating for high prices signaling to those outside the mobile-phone space a potentially profitable competitive opportunity.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, speaking at the CTIA trade show, said he's concerned AT&T's plan to take over rival T-Mobile USA would stifle innovation and hurt consumers. The chief of Verizon Wireless said he isn't interested in buying Sprint.

To the average consumer, the intricacies of the wireless technologies used by cellphones and other mobile devices are confusing. Fortunately, cell phone carriers have made it easier on us by inventing the “G,” a nebulous standard that makes people think they understand what they’re getting when they sign up for that two-year contract. The bad news: The carriers themselves typically don’t care about what a 3G or 4G network should actually be. And now, as proof of concept, AT&T has re-branded their existing 3G network as a 4G network.

Evidence continues to mount to support expectations that Apple's iPhone 4 will finally launch on Verizon this coming January.

It was speculative before given the lack of independent confirmation, but now apparently Apple has gone on record to confirm that the original deal signed with AT&T for iPhone exclusivity back in 2007 was a five-year deal.

A senior AT&T executive dismissed speculation that the company is planning to change the way it prices data plans for its wireless customers, but said it will give customers incentives to limit their use of its wireless network for surfing the Internet or downloading mobile applications.

An aggressive TV ad campaign from Verizon Wireless is adding to the support building for a software package from Google Inc. that is shaping up to be the most formidable challenge yet to Apple Inc.'s iPhone.