Apple has entered into the "Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment" with HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and others, to curb the smartphone theft epidemic that has been plaguing many city streets.
Under the voluntary agreement, the manufacturers are planning to add several new security features to their smartphones going on sale after July 2015, to make for an industry standard.
Under the Commitment, manufacturers' smartphones must:
T-Mobile announced today that it has plans to upgrade its entire 2G/EDGE network to 4G LTE. The carrier, which is the fourth largest in the US, says it hopes to be halfway complete with the upgrade by the end of 2014 and expects to be substantially complete by the middle of next year.
The promise to quickly bring its network up to speed with its competitors should help appease customers, who complain of lower speeds in rural and suburban areas. While T-Mobile currently has LTE in many major US cities, a lot of its coverage map is still made up of EDGE and HSPA...
Verizon last September announced that it has reached an agreement with Vodafone to buyout its 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless in one of the largest corporate acquisitions in history.
In December, the Big Red carrier won necessary approvals from the Federal Communications Commission and today the company announced that the acquisition has been completed - Verizon now owns 100 percent of the "industry-leading U.S. wireless carrier"...
Caving in to competitive pressure, the nation's top carrier Verizon Wireless today launched a more competitive shared data family plan which comes with unlimited international messaging, double the monthly data allowance, a complimentary 25GB of cloud storage and more.
Unimaginatively dubbed MORE Everything, the new plan doubles the monthly cap from 500MB to 1GB for Verizon's $40 a month plan. The $50 plan has gone from 1GB to 2GB and the $60 plan doubles your monthly data cap from 2GB to 3GB.
But that's not all as Verizon has decided to introduce line discounts for customers enrolled in its Edge early upgrade program. If you're using up to eight gigabytes of data per month, Verizon will treat you to a line discount of $10, or $20 in the case of plans that include ten or more gigabytes of data per month...
Verizon Wireless, the nation's top wireless carrier by subscribers and revenue, announced Wednesday its same-day delivery service is now available in an additional ten cities in the United States. The expansion comes on top of the five launch markets.
In July 2013, Verizon became the first wireless carrier to offer this service with a pilot program in Philadelphia, which was then expanded in October to include New York City, Dallas, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The Big Red carrier charges $19.99 to get your mobile device delivered the same day, with delivery guaranteed by 7pm local time...
J.D. Power and Associates published its bi-annual report on wireless customer care performance this week, ranking the top 4 US carriers based on various stats related to customer service.
The marketing research firm asked more than 7,000 subscribers how satisfied they were with the customer service they received from their cell phone provider, and here is how they scored...
Verizon Wireless, the nation's top wireless carrier, on Tuesday reported its earnings for the 2013 holiday quarter. Despite notable gains from T-Mobile, whose attention-seeking CEO earned his company a lot of coverage while lambasting competitors, Verizon has managed to add 1.6 million new contract subscribers during the Christmas quarter of last year, pushing its total subscriber count to 102.8 million customers.
Quarterly net income of the wireless division was $5.07 billion on $21.1 billion in revenue, or $7.9 billion on $31 billion in revenue for Verizon Communications.
The figure compares favorably to a massive $1.93 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2012, attributed to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and rising costs in employee pensions. More tidbits below the fold...
As first hinted back in November, Deutsche Telekom-owned Un-carrier, T-Mobile USA, just bought $3.3 billion worth of spectrum from Verizon Wireless, the nation's top wireless carrier announced yesterday. The newly gained 700MHz spectrum licenses from Verizon should allow T-Mobile to take advantage of the low-band airwaves in nine of the top ten U.S. markets and 21 of the top 30.
What's in it for you? Think better 4G coverage in rural areas and inside buildings. T-Mobile paid $2.36 billion in cash and $950 million worth of spectrum, by the way.
Oh, and T-Mobile's CEO John Legere trolled AT&T’s CES 2014 party like a boss and got thrown out in the process. More on that right below...
The nation's top wireless carrier, Verizon Wireless, last month admitted its strained network in major cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago was underperforming, with many users experiencing their 4G data throughput dropping to slower 3G speeds.
Verizon yesterday blamed the sub-par network quality on “capacity constraints” and argued these data throughput hiccups are now a thing of the past as the carrier has successfully fixed its network in New York City...
Back in September, Verizon announced that it had reached an agreement with Vodafone to purchase its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless. The carrier, which was founded in April of 2000, has thus far been a joint venture between the two companies.
With a purchase price believed to be approaching $130 billion, the deal will go down as one of the largest acquisitions in history. And it looks like it will be happening sooner, rather than later, as the FCC has just given the transaction its approval..
It is no secret that T-Mobile USA, the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier, could use some additional spectrum to expand its network and improve the quality of its coverage.
According to Reuters, the Deutsche Telekom-owned telco is mulling the possibility of buying $3 billion worth of additional spectrum from its rival Verizon Wireless.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters yesterday evening that T-Mobile might agree to the price as it needs more to bolster up its network coverage and quality...
When was the last time you heard a major United States wireless carrier admit that its network is facing pressure to meet the needs of its users? That's exactly what Fran Shammo, Verizon's chief financial officer, said in response to reports that its LTE network is folding under pressure in major cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
The network strain results in some users in metropolitan areas seeing their data throughput dropping to slower 3G speeds. Verizon blames its deteriorating network quality on "capacity constraints."
The company has promised to allocate more resources toward fixing the network in high-congestion areas so that these slowdowns dissipate by the end of the year...