The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sprint could roll-out its first WiMax-based phone at next week’s CTIA show in Vegas. According to the reports, the device will be produced by HTC and is dubbed the Supersonic. The phone will run on Clearwire’s WiMax network, in which Sprint holds a 56% stake.
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Archive for the ‘3G/4G’ Category
Rumors point to Sprint WiMAX phone unveiling
Sides line up as FCC looks to re-allocate valuable spectrum
A crucial side-battle in this week’s release of the National Broadband Plan – and likely a long, drawn out one at that – is the tussle over whether existing spectrum currently allocated to TV broadcasters should be dedicated to broadband services. We weighed in when this plan was first floated (see: Spectrum: Public trust or cash cow?) Now that the FCC has released its formal plan, it’s worth revisiting. The FCC is proposing that the government cutback the portion of spectrum allocated to broadcasters by about 40%, including calls to “reclaim” about 120Mhz of spectrum from broadcasters over the next five years and redirect it to mobile broadband deployment.
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Lagging Droid upgrade shows Google’s OS/device challenge
It looks like Motorola’s Droid device will finally get a long-awaited upgrade to Android 2.1, starting today. Android 2.1 first debuted with the launch of Google’s Nexus One, which as we noted earlier this week is significantly lagging the Droid specifically and the overall Android market in general in terms of sales. Android 2.1 includes some key new features, including adding multi-touch capabilities across the device as well, bringing it up to par with the iPhone, as well as the ability to enter text via speech recognition across the advice as well, something the iPhone lacks. That makes the 2.1 release an important one for the future of Android.
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AT&T goes green with bills, chargers
In moves seemingly timed to catch a little “green” glow for the company, AT&T this week announced a new paperless billing initiative – targeting 1 million new customers – as well as a new more energy efficient cell phone charger
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Spotify comes to the U.S. — CEO, not the service
We’ve covered Spotify in some detail in the past, and the streaming music service “in the cloud” continues to capture interest in the U.S. – even as it continues to try to negotiate rights deals to actually launch its service here. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek made a typical tech “star” turn at the South by Southwest show, telling an audience of 2000 attendees its hoping it can bring its service – available today in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. – to the U.S. someday, calling for a tech/creative alliance to make it happen. Not to be outdone, other competitors, such as MOG, used the same show to roll out mobile music apps of their own.
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Apps trump CDs — but do we really need 38 app stores?
The momentum behind app stores shows no signs of slowing. A study this week from app store GetJar (actually fielded by Chetan Sharma Consulting) predicts the market for mobile apps growing to an astounding $17.5 billion in the next three years, overtaking the market value of music CDs predicted to be sold then ($13.83 billion). On a pure app level, the study predicts mobile app downloads to grow from seven billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012. Another take on the study emphasized the sheer number of app stores around these days, noting there are now 38 mobile app stores operating today – with more appearing every day.
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A peak inside AT&T’s preferred ‘domain’ supplier list
AT&T’s closely watched preferred supplier domain project gathered a bit of buzz this week as financial firm UBS updates investors on its take on AT&T’s progressing in choosing key vendors. Among UBS’s key takeways: even as AT&T tries to trim its preferred lists of suppliers to two at most per technology area, UBS believes it continue to tap at least three vendors – Cisco, Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent) for portions of its IP equipment contracts. That seemingly “expanded” vendor roster is mitigated by the fact that IP is everywhere in carrier networks like AT&T – in the core, at the edge and as a key component of its emerging 4G networks.
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Are AT&T SXSW Austin upgrades a model for its future 4G network?
Some interesting details have filtered out about how AT&T upgraded its network in Austin, Texas, to support the masses at the South by Southwest event. This is no small requirement: if AT&T were to have mucked up 3G access at the show, thousands of blogs and tweets would have rained hellfire down on them day after day. So what exactly did AT&T do in Austin? How unique was it? And can it be replicated, or are such changes already on the drawing board, elsewhere on its network?
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The strange story of Android vs. Droid vs. Nexus One
Some seemingly contradictory bits of news today: Android devices are seemingly selling like gangbusters, with the first 74 days (what an odd number) of sales of phones running Google’s Android OS outgunning the sale of Apple iPhones over the same introductory period. So all is well in the land of “goog-phones,” then, right? Not so fast. Sales of Nexus One, the Android device that Google is selling directly have, it appears, tanked. So what’s the story here? (more…)
TeliaSonera’s LTE milestone: Peak network speeds top 100 Mb/s
Sweden’s TeliaSonera said today its LTE network in Stockholm will soon be upgraded to reach “practical” speeds of 80 Mb/s and up to the highest “theoretical” speed possible of 100 Mb/s. With 3G networks topping out in the single digits, and even the proposed speeds of many 4G networks still hovering in the teens, Telia’s play at delivering true broadband wireless is worth noting. (more…)
