Unfiltered

The latest 4G devices connecting to Verizon’s LTE network aren’t the kind of gadgets you’d show to your friends and roommates, but they do show how businesses may look beyond the smartphone, tablet and laptop to utilize the networks mobile broadband capabilities. CradlePoint has upgraded its family of broadband routers to tap into VZW’s LTE network, allowing businesses to use the network as a redundant Internet access solution and create ad hoc networks anywhere an LTE signal is available (Briefing Room: CradlePoint partners with Verizon)

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If LightSquared fails to get approval for its controversial long-term evolution (LTE) network deployment, the 4G strategies of a lot of rural and regional operators, communications service providers and even one nationwide provider will be left hanging. The satellite operator-turned-mobile-broadband-wholesaler revealed that ClearTalk will buy LTE and satellite capacity from LightSquared to serve its wireless customers in Southwest. Last week, business and residential voice and data provider PowerNet Global also revealed it would become a LightSquared wholesale customer. (more…)

When Nokia Siemens Networks first revealed its intention to buy Motorola’s commercial networks division last July, CEO Rajeev Suri said he had no plans to scale back the business unit’s considerable staff (CP:NSN keeping Moto Networks local). That was then. This is now: NSN will cut as many as 1500 positions globally in the wake of the acquisition, according to Bloomberg. (more…)

You can still buy a mobile broadband access plan from Leap Wireless if you want to, but Leap isn’t going to bend over backwards to sell it to you. In the second quarter, Leap’s Cricket Communications lost 132,000 subscribers, and it wasn’t sorry to see them go. Leap is trying to winnow down the number of customers that subscribe to its 3G-modem driven laptop broadband service due to the high amount of bandwidth they consume. Instead, it wants to focus on more profitable—and more network friendly—smartphone plans. (more…)

Sprint has decided to act as a middleman between its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) partners and Clearwire’s 4G network, wholesaling the WiMAX service it already buys wholesale from Clearwire (Briefing Room: Sprint Becomes First U.S. Wireless Carrier to Make 4G Available to Wholesale Customers). Sprint said this week it will be the first wireless carrier to make a 4G service available to virtual operators, who until now have been stuck with the operators’ 2G voice and 3G data networks. (more…)

CTIA is asking Obama administration to clear unused government spectrum below 3 GHz for mobile broadband. A letter CTIA sent to President Obama today and signed by CTIA’s carrier members asks him to direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the government’s frequency manager, to make reallocating unencumbered spectrum a priority in order to fuel the wireless industry’s “virtuous cycle.” (more…)

LightSquared may have designs on a terrestrial LTE network, but it isn’t abandoning its old customer base. As Donny Jackson reports in our sister publication Urgent Communications, LightSquared has promised to maintain the satellite-based push-to-talk service and interagency communications platform it started under SkyTerra and its mobile satellite services predecessors. In an interview with UC, LightSquared said that as its network makes a generational leap so will its first responder/public safety services:

“LightSquared is transitioning to next-generation services, and wants people to know that includes push-to-talk capabilities,” LightSquared spokesman Chris Stern said in an interview. “They just want to assure folks that, everything they have now, they’ll have in the future.” (more…)