Articles about Wireless

That's the gist of an advertisement running at CNET right now. It's the "first 4G LTE phone from Sprint", according to the banner advert, on the carrier's, ah, coming-sometime-really-soon LTE network. I dunno if the ad spills a pending CES 2012 announcement or what. But leaks don't get much funnier than this.

On the other hand, Sprint held a little event late this afternoon announcing big, splashy LTE network deployment. I suppose the carrier could offer Galaxy Nexus with LTE capability ahead of the bigger pipes. But the handsome smartphone may look a little old in the tooth when quad-core beauties start selling around the time Sprint offers LTE.

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AT&T LTE is now available in San Diego, which means I'll soon conduct speed test comparisons around the city against Verizon's 4G network. It will be the Wilcox household network speed test face-off, the wife's Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket against my Galaxy Nexus.

San Diego joins 10 other cities, which LTE service AT&T announced today. They are: Austin, Texas; Chapel Hill, N.C.; New York City metro area; Los Angeles; Oakland; Orlando, Phoenix; Raleigh, N.C.; San Diego; San Francisco; and San Jose. They join 15 others: Athens, Ga.; Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Oklahoma City; San Antonio; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington, DC. AT&T claims its LTE network reaches 74 million people; Verizon, 200 million.

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Verizon's claim of being the nation's most reliable network sure took a hit this month. At least three separate outages occurred during December, frustrating customers. The carrier's statement, however, could not be more non-committal, as it blames the outages on the perils of building out its 4G LTE network.

"Being a pioneer comes with growing pains", the carrier says in a statement. "The recent issues that affected our customers' 4GLTE service were unforeseen despite careful, diligent planning, deployment and ongoing upgrade programs". Each of the three outages were blamed on different issues, which engineers have since remedied to prevent those issues from occurring again.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday approved the first database of all the unused wireless frequencies known as "white spaces" in the United States and has given the green light to the first hardware that will use them.

White space, or the wireless spectrum that was freed from the transition from analog to digital television, would be available to use without requiring a wireless license, similar to the way wi-fi works today. The problem, of course, is that the wireless frequencies that fall in this white space varies from market to market. This is why the database was required.

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Verizon 4G customers are experiencing issues with connectivity for the second time this month as the carrier struggles to restore the network. Issues are being reported throughout the company's nationwide 4G LTE network, although the cause is not immediately known.

"Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning, after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today", the company says. "Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally".

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I offer a hat tip to Gizmodo, which has put together a list of smartphones that have Carrier IQ. The company disclosed the information as part of a US Senate inquiry. Sprint subscribers are the most likely to have the spyware installed -- 26 million, or nearly half of them. Verizon: None. The information is also available in a statement from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), just not as quickly scannable.

But not all phones where Carrier IQ is installed have it active. Android developer Trevor Eckhart uncovered Carrier IQ last month, offering detailed explanation how the rootkit-like software works. I followed his instructions to see if the software was active on my Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, and it appeared not to be. Days later I installed Carrier IQ detectors from BitDefender and LookOut Labs, which found the software but didn't indicate its status. Apparently, Skyrocket is one of the phones where Carrier IQ is installed but not active. Same is true of HTC Vivid, AT&T's other LTE phone.

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Verizon Wireless says that network expansion planned for tomorrow will bring 4G LTE to 200 million Americans. That's not the news we were waiting for. Google-branded, Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus, a LTE phone, is rumored to be launching tomorrow. How about a peep or two about that, Verizon? Wassup with these delays?

On December 15, Verizon will flip the LTE switch in Dover, Del.; Lafayette, Ind.; Fitchburg/Leominster, Mass.; Duluth, Rochester area and St. Cloud, Minn.; Manchester/Nashua, NH; Poughkeepsie, NY; Findlay/Tiffin and Youngstown/Warren, Ohio; and Indiana, Pa. Coverage will expand here on the West Coast in San Diego and San Francisco and Eastward in Savannah, Ga.; Chicagoland, Ill.; Baltimore and Hagerstown, Md.; and Washington, DC.

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New data from NPD confirms something I claimed in February: "The real reason Android tablets don't stand a chance against iPad -- onerous monthly data fees". American consumers simply aren't opting for 3G/4G, preferring WiFi for tablets instead. That's good news for Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad, particularly, but doom and gloom for Motorola Droid XYBOARD and other tablets requiring onerous, two-year data contracts from cellular carriers.

In April, NPD surveyed tablet owners about their wireless connectivity. Sixty percent said WiFi-only but 5 percent planned to add cellular broadband within six months. Fast forward to December and 65 percent are WiFi-only. So much for buying/adoption intentions.

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Network infrastructure joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks announced on Wednesday its plans to cut more than a billion Euro in overhead by the end of 2013. These plans involve refocusing on mobile broadband infrastructure, and cutting its global workforce by 17,000 workers.

As of November first, Nokia Siemens Networks employed 74,000 globally, so this will constitute a 23% reduction in workforce.

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AT&T is alerting affected customers to an "organized and systematic" attack on its website that attempted to steal their data. The nation's second-biggest carrier says in a letter to those customers that it "[does] not believe that the perpetrators of this attack obtained access to your online account or any of the information contained in that account", but decided to warn users "out of an abundance of caution".

Less than one percent of the carrier's 100.7 million customers are affected, but that still puts nearly one million at risk due to AT&T's size. Hackers employed an automated script to see if cellular numbers were linked to AT&T accounts, which the script tried to pair with logins. All attempts appear to be unsuccessful.

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The Chinese are coming, and their first target is your wireless phone. China Telecom announced Thursday that it plans to offer wireless service in the United States beginning early next year. The state-owned communications company is aiming its services at Chinese-Americans, students and tourists who frequent both countries.

Customers will have two numbers for their phones, a Chinese and American number. Pricing has not been disclosed, but China Telecom Americas president Donald Tan told Bloomberg that it will be "competitive".

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Verizon Wireless wants its customers to upgrade their phones and take advantage of the carrier's next-generation LTE network, and is sweetening the data pot to get them to do so. Beginning Tuesday, Verizon will double the data allotments for customers for the same price as its traditional data plans.

The $30 2GB plan is now 4GB, the $50 5GB plan will have 10GB allotment, and the $80 10GB plan a cap of 20GB. A Verizon spokesperson confirmed the offering, first reported by CNET, saying it will last "through the holidays", but declining to offer specifics.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution called the Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2011 late Tuesday, which seeks to put a five-year moratorium on new wireless taxes; including those placed on consumer services and property, and also those placed on providers.

The resolution, unsurprisingly, sprung from the heart of the U.S. high tech world, Silicon Valley. The bill's co-sponsor is Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic representative for the 16th district of California, an area which includes the City of San Jose, and Santa Clara County. The bill's Republican sponsor is Trent Franks, of the sixth district of Arizona.

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Let's face it: these days, a lot of us are accessing the Internet via smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices. It makes good sense that website owners respond to this trend, and ensure their sites play nice with mobile browsers.

Google knows this, and is launching a new initiative called "Go Mo", aimed at assisting developers in optimizing their content for mobile devices. The Mountain View, Calif. company has included site testing tools, best practices for creating mobile sites, and information to assist companies in locating qualified mobile web site designers.

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iPhone 4S users on Sprint's network have flooded the carrier's support forums with complaints of slow data speeds, leading some to consider returning the device before Friday to avoid the $350 early termination fee.

Complaints appeared on support forums on October 14, the day the iPhone 4S launched at retail. Tests indicate that in some cases data throughput was as slow as .25Mbps -- only a little faster than a 2400 baud modem. The issue also seems mostly limited to the 4S itself: other Sprint phones tested side-by-side are unaffected although scattered reports of bandwidth issues are appearing elsewhere.

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