Items Tagged: AT&T

The website Cult of Mac states that T-Mobile is going to be hosting the iPhone 4 on their network in September of this year. The launch of the T-Mobile iPhone 4 is going to be followed by the Verizon iPhone 4. This is a rumor that’s plagued the internet news and forums for many months. The reports of Apple giving access to the iPhone contract to other carriers besides just AT&T has come in the wake of decline in popularity of the AT&T services.
The antenna issues that the iPhone 4 has went through lately has put an additional burden to Apple and has caused them to start looking for additional options. The most notable fact is that, unlike in the past, Apple is saying nothing, no confirmation nor rejection of any of these reports. Whether it is coming this year or early next year it looks like this time it might actually be happening.
With Verizon being the biggest network for wireless service within the United States, it puts them automatically towards being one of the very best and first choices for the iPhone. The experts think and it’s hard to deny that an Apple and Verizon union would definitely be very beneficial for both companies.
Apple would definitely get a revenue spurt when their iPhone would be incorporated with the better quality of Verizon’s services. There were previous reports that claimed that Jobs, Apple’s CEO, isn’t happy at all with AT&T. Other reports claim that Jobs had tried to sack AT&T up to as many of six times but on all of those locations AT&T managed to get away.
The experts think that the upper hand could actually go to T-Mobile instead of Verizon even though they’re only the fourth largest wireless provider in the country. The reason for this is that T-Mobile runs on the same technology which is supported by the iPhone 4, GSM technology; however, conversely, Verizon supports the CDMA technology.
With that in mind there are some people that believe Verizon is soon going to be launching a CDMA version of the iPhone. The CDMA concept of an iPhone is very good as many of the experts have already given the go ahead to the possibility of the project. So more endless hope or is it an actual reality? Keep your hopes up even though T-Mobile is probably going to be the first.

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A federal court judge has approved a lawsuit which alleges that both AT&T and Apple abused their power when they locked the iPhone. The judge moves the case onward now as a class action lawsuit which can include anyone that had bought the iPhone along with a two year contract.
What the case claims is that Apple formed a secret monopoly with AT&T when it gave the carrier five years of exclusive iPhone rights in the United States. Additionally, the claim is that this stifled the competition and drove up the prices.
Basically the customers would in essence be locked into a five year relationship with AT&T even if their phone contract isn’t for five years due to the fact that they couldn’t use their iPhone with any other provider during that time due to the fact that there’s the exclusivity pact in place.
So the court has now allowed multiple plaintiffs to actually represent over 20 million consumers who’ve been forced into using AT&T for their iPhone data and voice service plans despite the fact that there’s an agreement which would allow the termination and carrier switching at any time.
In the court documents, which were filed last week, the United States District Judge Ware stated that there were portions of the case which deal with antitrust law violations and that it would continue on as a class action suit involving those consumers who purchased their iPhone with a two year AT&T contract.
This includes the iPhone:
•    4
•    3GS
•    3G
•    2G
In addition the lawsuit seeks an injunction of Apple selling any locked iPhone in the United States.
Apple states that the disclosure of the exclusivity with AT&T was widespread and that there was absolutely no suggestion by either Apple or anyone else that their iPhone would ever be unlocked after the initial two year agreement. They went on to state that it’s total speculation and completely illogical that not disclosing the five year exclusivity term would ever produce any monopoly power.
In the recent weeks both AT&T and Apple have faced many suits and those additional ones stem from the reception and antenna complains on the iPhone 4.

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Although a cell phone contract will give you a free or virtually free cell phone most of the time it will also force you into a contract and if you want to go off of your contract you’re going to have to pay a hefty termination fee. Going with a pre-paid wireless plan though is going to give you service without the contract and also an affordable plan. The only caveat though is that you’re going to have to pay more for the phone.
The following is a listing of the pre-paid/pay as you go plans with the major carriers of non contract in nature. The following features the plans from the following carriers:
•    AT&T
•    Boost Mobile
•   Consumer Cellular
•    MyCricket
•    Jitterbug
•    Kajeet
•    Platinum Tel
•    Straight Talk
•    T-Mobile
•    TracFone
•     Virgin Mobile
Take a look at what the different carriers and their plans have to offer and make a decision on which pre-paid route is the best for you.

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With the new spending increases for AT&T their spending raised a total of 15%. This comes as both Verizon and AT&T are opening up the floodgates and letting the money flow for the lobbying efforts in the first quarter. Read the rest of this entry »

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There is a lot of criticism towards AT&T for the spotty service they are getting from their iPhone. AT&T is very quick to blame it on the cell phone tower shortage near businesses and homes. Never fear! They have a solution; put a mini cell tower directly into your living room.
So what’s the catch? You’ll have to pay for it and that is making a lot of customers pretty angry.
The size of the mini tower is no bigger than just a couple of playing card decks and they both look and act like a Wi-Fi spots that you’d see at a cafés. They will redirect the cell phone call from the congested phone towers directly into your home connection.
It’s really a good idea when you can’t get the service but the fact that you have to pay for it because of their lack of coverage is really fairly insulting to the consumer. A lot of customers are already paying in the mid $100s to get their iPhone service but they aren’t able to get or make calls from their apartment on the 5th floor of an Upper East Side apartment in New York City as just one example.
So what this does is really begs the question, how much does one really have to pay to get the needed iPhone service in order to actually use a phone?
Regardless of the complaints though this is something that is really poised to make a splash in sales mostly due to price drops but also the market entrance of AT&T. The other companies like Verizon have already marketed a mini tower to the niche customer that has a limited signal in a basement or in their home if it has really thick walls.
AT&T is looking to help the customer that can’t get a consistent signal. They plan on selling their micro towers for around $150.
The calls are going to be offloaded to an ISP but even though that is the case the AT&T customer is still going to have to pay for the minutes they are using their phone within their existing wireless plan. Is there an out? Of course pay more money, an additional $20 gets you unlimited calling for the month.
When it really comes down to it the mini towers are much better for AT&T than for the consumer. The mini tower is something that directly addresses the deficiency that really gave a black eye to AT&T over the iPhone. The other thing is it really gave the company the chance to lock customers into new deals that include these mini towers. When it comes down to it it’s really definitely a better deal for AT&T than it’s ever going to be for the consumer.
A lot of the consumers feel that they are just trying to find a new way to make money off of them rather than actually spending the money to make their service better and servicing them for the money that they are already paying. They are trying to find a way to turn a profit from their weakness.

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AT&T is looking at some expansion in terms of getting into the small gadget market and is currently making plans to sell a dog collar that works wireless and would help the owner to be able to reconnect with a pet this is lost.
This product of the wireless dog collar is just a small fraction of a much broader plan to profit from on small gadgets that can run on the AT&T data network.
In Las Vegas, during the CTIA yearly wireless exhibition, AT&T stated that their plans to carry an overabundance of fresh devices. Their hope is that as many of these devices as possible are going to catch on with current and new consumers like that of the wireless dog collar, which is made by Apisphere. With the wireless dog collar what will happen is you’ll receive an SMS message or an email if your pet should stray outside of a particular area. The device allows for the continuous tracking to make sure that the owner is able to find their pet from their computer.
The carrier based out of Atlanta, Georgia, state that they are far from stopping here as there are a lot of other products in the works. Another one of them being a pill box which will remind wirelessly for people to take their medications and another is a device that would keep track of the product pallets for shipping companies as well as an entertainment system for passengers.
AT&T is laying expectations that these new gadgets, which will run on the AT&T data network, will bring in around $1 billion in revenues annually over the next 5 years. AT&T also has plans to make upgrades to their 3G network through the use of a technology called HSPA-plus. There are still plans to move ahead with a 4G network but they have their plans to make some upgrades before moving forward with their 4G plans.
Over the past months wireless operators have been making plans and looking at the expansion beyond mobile devices to add more revenue wherever it is possible.
For example, Sprint, who already handles wireless book downloads for the ever popular Amazon Kindle reader, has been in consultation with many consumer gadget makers like that of Garmin, Eastman Kodak and SanDisk in regards to being able to deliver wireless internet service for their consumer products.
AT&T has stated that it will soon be revealing more information about their wireless dog collar by a little later time and this will include the pricing and when it will be released.
While phones are going to remain big business it is going to be interesting to see all of the products that are going to come out from AT&T and the other mobile phone carriers.

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If one thing Apple is staying consistent and it looks like they are at it again. No it’s not another product it’s Apple exercising further editorial judgment in terms of the applications that will get onto their iPhone.
The difference from some of the past application censorship is that this time it isn’t the bare breasts and games of violence.  This time the problem is about a denied application that would allow a user to see the level of radiation that their iPhone is emitting.
When Apple was asked for comment their spokesman declined comment on the issue.
Friedlander, the Tawkon co-founder, talked about how Apple had responded just a few days after the application was submitted by Tawkon to be an application within the iTunes Store. The response was stated that the graphical user interface was a good one but that through supplying information to consumers about radiation levels through the application could cause a significant amount of confusion.
Friedlander additionally talked about the fact that they are very clear about the fact of they will make the content decisions on whether or not they want to post something or not.
Of course any company has a right to censor content for their products but the apparent move from Apple comes as there is mounting research, mostly coming from Europe, that puts an indication of linkage of cell phone usage and cancer. Part of the concern is whether or not this information is actually factual and would the application actually give a false positive of some sort, etc… The United States phone carriers, manufactures as well as groups, with one being the NIH (National Institute of Health) concluded that the research at this point doesn’t make a clear connection from someone using a cell phone and cancer/cancer risk.
There are some public health experts and other consumer advocates that are talking about the exponential growth of cell phone usage, especially among that of teens starting usage at an early age, warrants much more study in regards to whether or not there is an actual link between cell phone use, radiation and cancer.
One of these people is a health expert by the name of David Carpenter. David Carpenter is a physician and professor at the University of Albany. Dr. Carpenter spoke recently at a hearing at the legislature in Maine on whether or not the state should put out a mandate that puts a warning label on cell phones.
The application from Tawkon would give the user a reading on the level of radiation that is emitted by the iPhone which would be dependent on environmental changes as well as the distance they are from cell towers.
Some of the criticism though is that the phone doesn’t actually measure any radiation and that it does nothing more than an estimate calculation based on the phones parameters and that the estimate is by no means exact. With that in mind I really can’t blame Apple for denying this application.

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The newly released Motorola Backflip from AT&T is powered by MOTOBLUR and Android. It will also be offering a newly designed BACKTRACK touch panel.
Released as of March 7th, 2010 this is just one of the many smartphones promised to be released from AT&T this year. With the release of the Backflip it is the first of its kind to be formally unveiled. It features a very exceptional form-factor with a unique reverse flip design along with the BACKTRACK touch panel and a QWERTY keypad.
The key facet of the Motorola Backflip is its MOTOBLUR interface. The interface synchronizes your posts, contacts, photos, messages and much more from a variety of sources like:
•    Facebook
•    Twitter
•    MySpace
•    Picasa
•    Gmail
•    Last.fm
•    Your work and personal email
All of this is delivered to the home screen through widgets.
The Motorola Backflip is also going to be a perfect option for the users that need multi-tasking capability through the advantage of being able to both talk on the phone, access applications and surf the web simultaneously.
The MOTOBLUR is something that is going to make it possible for the user to find either lost or stolen devices through an information portal which is both secure and personal. It will allow for GPS to be used to locate the lost or stolen device. One single username and password will be able to bring back the users contacts as well as messages and the connectivity to all previously configured email providers and networks.
This is the first device form Motorola that is featuring the new BACKTRACK feature which is something that gives the user the ability to be able to quickly navigate through websites, menus and much more through a touch panel, which is located behind the screen, when the device is folded open. The BACKTRACK feature also offers a new way of scrolling through SMS messages, the web, emails and your news feeds while still not obscuring the home screen.
In addition to that, in order to access the multimedia capabilities, like watching videos or listening to music, viewing pictures, the keyboard can be flipped backward to allow for a tabletop mode. It can also be used as a digital alarm clock in this mode.
Specifications for the Motorola Backflip
•    5 megapixel camera that has flash and autofocus
•    3.1 inch HVGA touch screen
•    3.5mm audio jack
•    Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
•    Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity
•    Talk time all the way up to 6 hours
•    Powered by the Android 1.5 and upgrade capability to the Android 2.1
•    2GB MicroSD memory card out of the box
•    The memory slot will support up to a 32GB card
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New figures just released from the company comScore have shown that the Android has made an exceptionally large leap in terms of the United States market share of smartphones through the month of January. Most of this market share gain was for the most part at the expense of Windows Mobile.
The comScore market and media analysis firm’s figures that were just released for the United States mobile phone market were for the months of Oct 2009 to Jan 2010. The released results gave the Android figures that showed that it made huge bounds in the smartphone market share by the 2.8-7.1% jump that it made from the Oct 2009 to Jan 2010 time span. That’s a 4.3% net point change in comparison to the entire market and the share gain is over 150% comparative to the Oct share.
With the comment made earlier about the Androids growth being at the expense of the Windows Mobile platform from Microsoft, let’s put it into perspective. Over that same date range period of Oct 2009 to Jan 2010 the Windows Mobile lost 4% of the total market share. The previous share was 19.7% and that dropped to 15.7%.
The market share leader though, results from comScore, still remains the company from the Canadian RIM (Research in Motion) which saw that its shares of the popular Blackberry platform come from 41.3% to 43% pulling in a 1.7% net gain over its already massive market share. Apple is still the number two in market share with their iPhone. The iPhone took in 25.1% with a small net gain from the 24.8% they had in the previous Oct. The Android and Microsoft were the next two and the Palm was number five having a 2.1% net decline of 5.7% from its previous 7.8% share.
According to the figures from comScore the United States smartphone market came in on average of at right about 42.7 million people from Nov to Jan which was an 18% net increase from the Aug to Oct 2009 figures.
With the declines that came in for both the Palm and Windows Mobile devices their market share declines might come in with as much at fault with product cycles than just the popularity increase of the Android.
The current Windows Mobile 6.5 is long overdue for a refresh. Microsoft is finally bringing this refresh in for 2010 with the Windows Phone 7 Series. It’s important to note though that this series is not backward compatible so for any users that are really seeking out a new device they are likely to start to migrate to another platform.
In regards to the decline in the Palm market share that could possibly be attributed to the Palm users beginning to trade up from their older Palm Treo and Centro devices to newer smartphones.
The one thing to know for sure if the Palm and Windows Mobile users are starting to trade in for new mobile devices the one thing that we know for sure is they aren’t all staying with Palm OS or Windows Mobile smartphone platforms.

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The Motorola Backflip was unveiled during CES 2010 and remains an odd duck in many ways. For one, it’s the first Android phone for AT&T (though we highly doubt that it’ll crowd out any of the iPhone’s market share as far as AT&T phones go). Secondly, in spite of being an Android 1.5 phone, it’s more a Yahoo! phone than a Google phone. AT&T opted to integrate Yahoo’s search capabilities into the Backflip, which doesn’t handle local as well or voice searches at all. Read the rest of this entry »

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Just a couple of days ago AT&T completed what was a trial for the next generation of technology, the 100GB IP backbone. AT&T announced that the field trial was completed successfully and was tested in a live network environment.
Through the completion of this field trial it means that the next generational development of the new backbone network technology is coming and this is something that will support the fast growing numbers of both wired and wireless internet and data traffic for years to come.
Through the field trial AT&T was able to field test the innovative Cisco CRS-3 which is a carrier routing system. Additionally they were able to conduct a single flow and standards ready 100GB tech trial within that of a live network environment. In order to complete the test AT&T used 100GB CFP client side modules produced by Opnext as well as an analyzer and 100GB traffic generator from Ixia.
What this field trial was able to also demonstrate was that a single carrier 100GB transmission done with a real time consistent processing through a 900km deployed ultra long haul Louisiana to Florida transport link using optical equipment from Opnext.
The successfully completed trial is just one in the latest of innovation examples from AT&T in terms of their advanced IP networking technologies. Back just a couple years ago in 2008 AT&T completed the largest deployment in the world of the then industry standard 40GB network technology which was its current United States IP backbone network.
Additionally, in both 2008 and 2009 AT&T lead teams that were able to complete two different trials in the lab of the 100GB technology which actually set new records at both trials in terms of bandwidth transmission. What’s so exciting is that the 100GB technology is only going to be a few more years before it’s completely ready to be deployed commercially. With the exciting field trial that was just completed it looks like things are right on track.
The Chief Technology Officer for AT&T expressed that the successful trial was a key landmark in the company’s ongoing efforts to be able to deliver the most capable and advanced IP backbone network through the entire industry. He stated that, “The AT&T IP backbone network today carries nearly 19 petabytes (a petabyte is a quadrillion bytes, 1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes and carries the abbreviation PB) of traffic on an average business day, supporting our wireless, wired and enterprise customers ever growing demand for wireless and wired broadband applications.”
The R&D developments that are being met by AT&T, like the 100GB trials, are working to ensure that the AT&T network is always going to be able to meet the needs of their customers now and especially into the future.
Before we end there are a lot of notable achievements that the field trial met, lets note some of those now:
•    A successful 100GB transmission from a single carrier with a real time coherent processing
•    Demonstrated the capacity of a 100GB single flow router
•    A field demonstration of a 100GB traffic generator
Those are only a few of the achievements met with this field test. We definitely are living in interesting technological times; I can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Android has upped the ante in the battle of the smartphones and many consumers are torn between the iPhone and the sleek new Android phones running Google’s mobile operating system, particularly Verizon Wireless’s HTC Droid Eris and Nextel/Sprint’s Samsung Moment. These are all fine phones packed with all the features and functionality you need from a next generation smartphone, including unlimited data, corporate email connectivity, social media and messaging and seamless 3G web browsing.  But in light of the touch economic times, the X factor for most family cell phone plans (and individual cell phone plans) will be the cost of service. To help you choose the cheapest smartphone cell phone plans, we’ve put together a quick reference breakdown of the major costs and fees for today’s latest and greatest smartphones. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Consumer Reports wireless customer satisfaction will be released this week, the results are in. Here’s how the top 4 stack up:

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AT&T has partnered with Nuance Communications to provide the AT&T Voicemail to Text service. For just $9.99 a month, you get: Read the rest of this entry »

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Nearly everyone can be reached via BlackBerry these days; only this device can do a lot more than send and receive emails. BlackBerryOS is just as capable as fun as it is work, and even gives a iPhone OS, Android (Samsung Moment with Google) and Windows Mobile (Palm Treo 850) phones a run for their money occasionally. If you haven’t had a chance to explore the multi-faceted BlackBerry apps, then you are really missing out. Here are some of the top BlackBerry apps that definitely shouldn’t be overlooked.

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AT&T is once again waiving its activation fees for the last week of this month: Nov. 25th to December 1st. It is the same offer as AT&T’s previous free activation campaign seeing AT&T no longer charging its $35 activation fee for all new lines.  At cell-phone-plans.net you can purchase up to 4 lines through a family plan saving up to $140 from this offer!

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You’ve seen the coy adds spoofing the iPhone and touting all the covetous features that Android packs that Apple’s smartphone doesn’t. But now that the more Android phones have hit the shelves, we’ve had an opportunity to get a hands-on look at what Android actually does that’ll make your life easier besides working out latent bitterness over Apple fanaticism.

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