Unfiltered

Like its prepaid compatriot MetroPCS, Leap continued to grow off of its new budget smartphone services. It’s just not growing as quickly. Leap added 331,000 Cricket customers in Q1, compared to Metro’s 726,000 (Unfiltered: MetroPCS smartphone momentum grows as do costs), and Leap likewise reported many of the same trends as Metro: increased smartphone penetration, rising average subscriber revenue from data plans, a drop in churn. (more…)

Smartphones were again good to MetroPCS last quarter, as the contract-free, low-cost wireless provider lured in new higher-dollar mobile data users and managed to turn a hefty portion of its voice-only and feature phone subscriber base into smartphone converts. The result was not only a record quarter of net subscriber additions—726,000 to be exact—but also increased revenue per subscriber and lower churn to boot. (more…)

AT&T has begun dishing out high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) to smartphones with the feature previously disabled, boosting upload speeds from a few hundred kilobits per second to a theoretical peak of 5.7 Mb/s. Starting with the HTC Inspire last week and moving next to Motorola Atrix in coming weeks, AT&T will presumably push software updates to other devices with HSUPA turned off, like the Samsung Focus. (more…)

If there’s going to be a scandal over Apple and Google’s tracking their smartphone customer’s movements, then Verizon Wireless doesn’t want any part of it. In a letter sent to U.S. Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward Markey, who have been investigating how smartphone makers and service providers use customer data, VZW stated it would begin to slap a sticker over the screen on all new devices that support location-based services. (more…)

Verizon Wireless appears to have resolved its long-term evolution (LTE) network problems (Unfiltered:Verizon’s LTE network suffers first big outage). On arriving at work this morning, my Novatel MiFi switched from purple to green (indicating an LTE signal), and shortly afterwards VZW’s official twitter feed popped out the following message: “4G LTE up and running. Thank you for your patience.”

When contacted, Verizon Wireless spokesmen said the company isn’t providing any more information about the extent or causes of the outage for now, so we’ll just have to wonder for the time being. The outage seemed to affect the entire network based on comments we’ve seen on Unfiltered and other blogs, so the problem couldn’t have been some localized software glitch in one vendor’s base stations or evolved packet core. It must have been an issue deep within the network if it took the whole system down. (more…)

The Rural Cellular Association, Rural Telecommunications Group, Sprint, MetroPCS, Cincinnati Bell, Ntelos would rather fight one battle with AT&T rather than two. The two trade associations and four operators have asked the FCC to review both AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA and its purchase of Qualcomm’s 700 MHz FLO spectrum in a single proceeding. (more…)

VZW’s LTE network went down today in several of its major markets, including Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago, forcing many of its new 4G subscribers to drop down to CDMA coverage. The networks were down most of the day–at least since Engadget spotted the problem this morning.

As of 6 PM ET today, Verizon hadn’t brought the networks online, but it acknowledged the problem this morning in its twitter feed, saying it was working on a fix. At 4 PM ET, Verizon said in the same feed its engineers had identified the source of the problem and were working with its LTE vendors to address it (I wouldn’t want to be Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent or Cisco right now).

Verizon Wireless’ launch of long-term evolution (LTE) perhaps was a little too perfect if you ask me (on time, to the scale expected and with all of the devices promised). There was bound to be a glitch at some point. Assuming Verizon gets the problem fixed tonight, it probably won’t suffer two heavy a backlash. The LTE network is still sparsely populated and its Thunderbolt smartphone and mobile broadband customers still had the 1X voice and EV-DO networks to fall back on. No one’s service was cut off completely. It’s better this happens now rather than 6 months from now when VZW has several million LTE customers.