Samsung and Apple looking at new waterproof smartphone tech
Stuart Miles, PocketLint, 1/16/2012
A new technology that could save your phone from getting water damaged could be included the next wave of smartphones about to be made by Samsung and Apple.
Called HZO, the technology creates a nano-scale film barrier which has special water repelling properties once applied to the inside of electronic gadgets.
Done during the manufacturing process rather than by you once you’ve bought your phone, this isn’t a clumsy case or a sealant but a way of protecting gadgets from getting wet.
To help show off the capabilities of the technology, the company has already applied the tech to a number of different devices like the iPhone, as well as other phones from Samsung and Motorola. At this year’s CES in Las Vegas Pocket-lint witnessed what looked like an ordinary iPhone being repeatedly dunked into a fish tank full of water.
The company is hoping to sign big deals with all leading manufacturers. A spokesman for the company told Pocket-lint that it is in the process of signing up a major smartphone partner and a headphones maker in the very near future.
The plan for headphones is that they wouldn’t be damaged by sweat when running or water when swimming.
“We showed the Samsung Chairman the technology with a Samsung Galaxy S that we had coated with HZO and he couldn’t believe his eyes,” a representative of the company told us. “Samsung is really excited by the tech.”
The company has told us that they are also talking to Apple as well, hoping to be able to let Apple make the iPhone 5 waterproof.
“We expect HZO to be in next season’s phones,” HZO told Pocket-lint rather confidently.
In: iPhone, Mobile Technology · Tagged with: Motorola, Samsung
Sprint drops WiMAX phones for LTE, ‘all’ to get NFC
Electronista, 1/14/2012
Sprint to move phones wholesale to 4G and NFC
Sprint in commentary during CES confrimed that it was dropping WiMAX on smartphones. The initial LTE smartphones were ultimately representing a full-scale switch to the technology for 4G phones, PCMag was told. The carrier was being more aggressive than it had suggested before and, when promising LTE in mid-year, had meant between January and June, Owens explained.
Simultaneously, consumer product marketing VP Trevor Van Norman mentioned to Light Reading that the company planned for NFC (near-field communication) to be a standard feature in every smartphone. While there would be some edge case free or low-end phones tat wouldn’t have it, every other smartphone would get it from now onwards.
The planned switch may have given clues as to future iPhone releases. Sprint has committed to a multi-year deal with Apple to carry the iPhone and would have to either make a special exception for a 3G phone or else knows to expect LTE, NFC, or both. Both technologies have usually been left to Android, where Google takes a piece of Google Offers discounts.
Sprint regularly adopts basic technology first. It picked 4G well before other carriers were ready to deploy. Google helped it become the first to ship with a full NFC payment system in place through Google Wallet on the Nexus S 4G and now the Galaxy Nexus.
On Windows Phone, Owens said the HTC Arrive had sold poorly enough to reduce reasons to “jump back into the fire.” A return might come in August or September, although with who wasnt mentioned.
In: Android, Mobile Technology · Tagged with: 4G, HTC, LTE, NFC, Sprint, WiMax
WiGig promises low-power 2Gbps wireless device communication by 2013
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica, 1/13/2012
The WiGig Alliance is moving full steam ahead with its plan to enable devices to communicate wirelessly at mulit-gigabit speeds using unlicensed 60GHz spectrum. WiGig Alliance President and Chairman Dr. Ali Sadri sat down with Ars at CES to explain where WiGig fits among various wireless standards, and when we can expect the technology to become widely implemented.
The WiGig MAC specification was published in June 2011, and the standard is currently in draft stage with the IEEE as 802.11ad. WiGig operates on unlicensed 60GHz spectrum; it won’t propagate through walls and has a range of about 10 meters. As such, isn’t necessarily meant as a replacement for 2.4GHz or 5GHz WiFi. However, operating at 60GHz offers advantages in terms of power consumption and data rates, particularly for mobile devices.
“The wavelength at 60GHz is about 5mm, and antenna elements are half a wavelength, so we’re talking roughly 2.5mm,” Dr. Sadri told Ars. “When you compare antenna elements for Wi-Fi, those are 5cm versus 2.5mm. So I can actually, in the same device, put multiple 2.5mm antenna elements for the same one antenna for Wi-Fi. I can get a lot of gain from the 60GHz antenna, which allows me to do beam forming—I can direct transmission in a specific direction,” he explained.
WiGig also uses time division multiplexing, so a device can transmit multiple data streams to different devices, each in a specific direction using a specific time slot. To get an idea of how this works, imagine a WiGig-enabled smartphone sends a video stream to three WiGig-enabled displays in the same room. In the first time slot, it sends a chunk of the video stream to the first display. In the second time slot, it sends a chunk of the video stream to the second display. Then, in the third time slot, a chunk is sent to the third display. The next slot will transmit more video data to display 1, then next to display 2, then display 3, etc.
The combination of TDMA and directional transmission offers significant power savings, particularly important for mobile devices. WiGig has 2GHz of bandwidth per channel, which allows simpler modulation techniques, which in turn saves power. WiGig’s multiple antennas also have significant gain, requiring fewer radio elements and conserving more power.
“If Wi-Fi wants to get to 2Gbps, you need at least 3×3 antennas, and much wider bandwidth, maybe consuming 3 watts,” Sadri said. “2Gbps using WiGig in a handheld device will consume about 500 to 600 milliwatts. That’s five times the efficiency of Wi-Fi.”
Trying to shoehorn such a configuration into a handheld device would also be physically limiting. “You cannot imagine in handheld devices having three or four 5cm antennas; maximum one, or maybe two if you are lucky,” Sadri explained. “But you could certainly have multiple arrays of 2.5mm 60GHz antennas, giving you 2Gbps.”
WiGig also presents a protocol-agnostic transport layer to send data between devices. So USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, PCI Express protocols can be used to communicate with various peripherals. One scenario where this could be useful is completely wireless “docking” between a tablet and an external display, keyboard, and mouse. Imagine having a tablet that, while at home, operates like a traditional desktop. On the go, however, it works like a touchscreen tablet. Take it to work, and you could again “dock” the device with peripherals in your office.
“Form factors of laptops and other mobile devices are getting smaller and smaller,” Sadri told Ars. “The industry has taken a first step towards addressing that with Thunderbolt—a single compact port that provides a transport layer for various connection protocols. But you’re still leashed by wires; you’re still constrained by the physical size of the port. WiGig takes that one step further by getting rid of the wire altogether.”
With all its advantages, will WiGig supplant Wi-Fi? In some cases, it may be possible, even advantageous. Access points could operate at 60GHz, for instance, but operating distance would be limited. Multiple low-power access points could be strategically arranged around larger spaces. Since the range is lower but directional, each access point could connect to, say, the ten nearest devices. This makes it possible to avoid the congestion typical when hundreds of devices try to connect to a Wi-Fi access point in a large office, lecture hall, or CES press room.
In most scenarios, however, the wider range of Wi-Fi will be more practical. Sadri said that he sees WiGig and Wi-Fi as being complementary, rather than competing, technologies. Devices can use WiGig to communicate with each other at shorter ranges, and Wi-Fi for Internet access or longer-range connections.
Sadri told Ars to expect wide availability of WiGig-enabled devices in 2013. The spec is still undergoing some fine tuning at IEEE, but a few companies have already announced “draft” spec devices. The WiGig Alliance is working towards having a full testing and certification program ready by then end of this year. “Mass production and deployment of certified products will happen in 2013,” Sadri said.
In: Mobile Technology · Tagged with: Hotspot, WiFi, WiGig
Two-Way PIM Sync for Android and Windows Phone Devices Announced at CES 2012
Michelle Ruhfas, MobileBurn, 1/12/2012
CompanionLink Software announces two-way synchronization of contacts, calendars, tasks, and memos between popular CRMsolutions and the latest smartphones and tablets announced at CES 2012 in Las Vegas. Over 25 new devices on both the Android and Windows Phone platforms were announced, including the Samsung Galaxy Note, Sony Xperia S, EeePad Memo 7″ tablet, Motorola DROID 4, Nokia Lumia 900, and many others. “The months that follow CES are a busy time for us as we update our products to ensure compatibility with the latest mobile devices”
CompanionLink offers four sync options: USB, Wi-Fi, Hosted Wireless, and via Google®. New smartphones and tablets can sync with a variety of CRM platforms such as Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com, Sage ACT!, Google, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, Highrise, GoldMine, and more. “The months that follow CES are a busy time for us as we update our products to ensure compatibility with the latest mobile devices,” said Rushang Shah, Director of Marketing at CompanionLink.
CompanionLink licenses start at $49.95. A 14-day free trial is also available. Free phone support, free updates, and a 90-day money back guarantee are included with every license. To learn more about CompanionLink, visit www.companionlink.com/.
About CompanionLink Software
CompanionLink Software, Inc. is a pioneering developer of data synchronization solutions for mobile phones and CRM software and services. They also develop a business-class CRM app called DejaOffice for Android, iPhone, and iPad devices. For over 15 years, CompanionLink has helped mobilize information across devices, computers, applications, and web-based services. For more information, please visit www.companionlink.com or www.dejaoffice.com. To watch a video explaining CompanionLink, visit www.companionlink.com/videos.
In: Android, Mobile Technology, WinPhone · Tagged with: Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, WiFi
Visa certifies NFC-equipped Android, BlackBerry smartphones for payWave
Joseph Volpe, Engadget, 1/12/2012
Despite repeated industry attempts to build a buzz, buzz, buzz around NFC, growth of the promising communication tech has only been stilted by limited, real-world implementation — not to mention a dearth of enabled devices. This stunted consumer adoption hasn’t put a damper on Visa’s stride towards a contactless payment future, as the company’s just announced a list of smartphones, both here and in Europe, that officially support its payWave system. Owners of the Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900 / 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9360 / 9380 can now count themselves among the privileged few that can swipe to pay with the application. If you happen to be rocking any of the phones listed above and are keen to propel your preferred method of payment into the future, you can now pass GO.
In: Blackberry, Mobile Technology · Tagged with: NFC, Samsung
PayPal Mobile Payments Skyrocketed to $4 Billion in 2011
Angela Moscaritolo, PCMagazine, 1/11/2012
Online payment company PayPal processed nearly $4 billion worth of mobile payments in 2011, an exponential increase from the previous year.
To put this figure in perspective, the company processed $750 million worth of mobile transactions in 2010 and $141 million in 2009, David Marcus, vice president of PayPal Mobile, said at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The huge growth in mobile payment volume is the result of an overall increase in mobile commerce, combined with the availability of more useful mobile payment apps, Marcus told VentureBeat.
PayPal had originally kicked off 2011 predicting $1.5 billion in mobile total payment volume for the year, a company spokesman said. As the year went on, the company upped its projections three separate times, to $2 billion in February, $3 billion in June, and $3.5 billion in October.
“Over the course of [2011] we raised our initial prediction by a total of $2 billion, and still managed to surpass our goal by a wide margin with a total of $4 billion,” a PayPal spokesman said in an email.
PayPal has actually seen mobile payment volumes ratchet up each year since at least 2006, when it processed less than $1 million in mobile transactions. In 2007, it hit $7 million and by 2008, it reached $25 million.
Despite the huge growth in mobile payment volume seen by PayPal, those in the payments industry do not expect the new transaction method to reach ubiquity this year. A group of mobile payment executives in September said consumers will be quicker to embrace mobile payments than merchants, who have been slow to accept such transactions.
Some merchants have been early adopters, however. Starbucks, for example, in July unveiled a new mobile payment system available in all U.S. stores for BlackBerry and Apple iOS users.
In: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Mobile Technology
Google’s Mobile Search Becoming More Valuable Than Traditional PC Search
Forbes, 1/11/2012
Capitalizing on a booming smartphone and tablet market, we expect that Google’s mobile search segment adds almost as much value to the company’s stock as its PC search division. While monetization on mobile search is still low for Google, smartphone/tablet growth in emerging markets as well as bandwidth improvements should help mobile search queries match PC levels in the next five to six years, which we account for in our discounted cash flow analysis.
We recently updated our model for Google, dividing its search business into PC and mobile-driven search.
While we retain our price estimate of near $627 for Google’s stock, our forecast estimates indicate that mobile search is comparable to PC search in its contribution to Google’s overall value, with both divisions contributing around 32%-34% towards the stock.
Android’s Mobile OS Dominance and Emerging Markets to Drive Growth
Android recently crossed the 50% global market share barrier in the mobile OS market helped by both its wide range of manufacturer-partners as well as its free and open source roots. Google’s mobile OS is also becoming the preferred choice for cheaper tablet versions in emerging markets like India, with the $35 Aakash tablet being a prime example. Developing economies are expected to be a growth hub for mobile devices due to their current low penetration levels especially in non-urban areas. It is this potential future market that places mobile search in the limelight for Google, despite the relatively modest revenues of $1 billion Google generated from mobile search in 2010.
Having said that, patent litigation from arch rival Apple continues to threaten the Android’s market share through sales bans and injunctions on Android-based devices. Google’s mobile search could also be seeing some competition from Apple’s interactive search tool Siri, which employs not just Google, but competitors Yahoo and Bing as well.
In: Android, Mobile Technology
T-Mobile launches VoIP services for iPhone
Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service, 1/10/2012
T-Mobile is offering a calling service for iPhone and iPad users, even though it doesn’t sell those devices.
The operator is expanding its free voice-over-IP service, called Bobsled, to iPhones, iPads, and Android phones. Users with the app can make calls to mobile or landline phones in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico without incurring charges. Users can make the calls over cellular data networks, which typically charge for the data usage, or over Wi-Fi, which could be free.

T-Mobile’s Bobsled for iPhone
The new services are an expansion of the Bobsled service that T-Mobile first launched early last year. Initially, it let people make calls only to Facebook friends from PCs. In October, it began letting people make calls from Facebook to mobile devices and make calls from PCs to U.S. mobile and landline phones.
T-Mobile is also separately launching a Bobsled Messaging app on Tuesday for Android phones, with plans to also offer it for iPhones and iPads later this year. That app lets users send group text and multimedia messages.
Key to both apps is that they are tied to a user’s mobile phone number. That means a user can download Bobsled Messaging on their Android tablet and tie the app to their mobile phone number, so that when they send a message, the recipient will see that the message is coming from the sender’s regular phone number.
Users will find some benefits to downloading the app on multiple devices. For example, a user can read conversations on their tablet that were started on the phone. They’ll also be able to access their contacts list from the app on both devices.
In the future, T-Mobile plans to start issuing phone numbers along with Bobsled. That means someone with a Wi-Fi-only iPad, for example, could attach a phone number to the tablet that friends would recognize when the user made calls and sent messages from Bobsled.
T-Mobile has a number of reasons for wanting to get into the VoIP business, said Brad Duea, senior vice president of marketing for T-Mobile. VoIP traffic is only expected to grow, he said. “It might cannibalize some revenue, but we think it’s a much greater opportunity. We don’t have a fixed-line business to protect. So we’re saying, ‘cut the cord, here’s how we can empower you,’” he said.
Some other mobile service providers that have landline businesses are often less keen to promote VoIP because it competes with traditional landline phone service.
For now, T-Mobile isn’t saying much about how it will make money from the service. It plans to bring some new business models to the market, including ad-supported services and contextual advertising, he said. The company will talk more about that in a couple of months, he said.
In: Android, iPhone, Mobile Technology · Tagged with: MMS, SMS, T-Mobile, WiFi
CES: Gigabit Wi-Fi takes center stage
John Cox, Network Worl, 1/9/2012
Goodbye Wi-Fi … at least as we’ve known Wi-Fi.
At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, next-generation radio chips will finally make real what most people have only imagined for the past three years: Wi-Fi connections that measure their data rates in gigabits per second.
And if you’re in Las Vegas at CES 2012, vendors will show next-generation Wi-Fi in two different frequencies: 5GHz, for what will eventually be the IEEE 802.11ac standard, and 60GHz, for what will eventually be 802.11ad. The former can reach data rates of 1.3 gigabits per second, the latter, up to 7Gbps.
Usable throughput for the new Wi-Fi will be less, and the actual rate, and resulting throughput, depends on a range of factors including the width of the channels and the number of data streams and antennas. And initial products, due as early as mid-2012, likely won’t achieve the maximum data rates. But by contrast, 802.11n typically has a data rate of 150 megabits per second.
Initial products, likely a blend of infrastructure devices such as residential routers, access points and the like on the one hand, and client plug-in dongles for PCs and flat panel TVs, are expected as early as mid-2012. Both new specifications are backward compatible with the existing Wi-Fi standards, so your 11n tablet or smartphone will connect to an 11ac wireless router, even though you won’t get the benefit of an end-to-end 11ac boost. Likewise, your new 11ac dongle for your laptop will still connect at 11n or 11g rates to an existing access point.
Both of the formal IEEE standards are still in process, and won’t be final until probably 2013. But, as with previous wireless standards, vendors and the Wi-Fi Alliance are forging ahead with products that track the current standards closely. At this point, most observers expect any IEEE changes to be minimal, and that software updates will bring the products up-to-date.
The huge data rate increase will enable wireless in these unlicensed bands to speedily transfer vastly larger video, photos and data files, or to transfer the same amount of data in a fraction of the time compared to 11n and the still older 11g connections. And “advances in technology inherent in 802.11ac should result in improved range, reliability, coverage, and battery life over .11n,” according to Network World wireless blogger Craig Mathias.
“I’m expecting very rapid uptake of 802.11ac once products are available,” Mathias writes. “I don’t expect much of a price increase over 802.11n …”
First products are just months away
Chipmaker Broadcom last week announced that samples of its new family of 11ac chips are in the hands of a range of customers, including carriers. The company offers chips that support one, two and three data streams, with data rates respectively of 433Mbps, 867Mbps and 1.3Gbps. The press release quotes executives from nearly a dozen equipment manufacturers and other vendors, from Asus to ZTE.
Several vendors, such as Buffalo Technology, will be running 11ac “technology demonstrations” using the Broadcom chips at CES, and some of them will be announcing products for release later in 2012, perhaps as early as mid-year. The Wi-Fi Alliance is expected to make an 11ac announcement, likely dealing with the organization’s planned certification of products implementing the new very high-throughput Wi-Fi standards.
Buffalo Technology has said it will show a technology demonstration of a 5GHz product late Monday night, Jan. 9, Las Vegas time, but declined to go into details beforehand. The product uses Broadcom’s new family of 802.11ac chips.
(Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek revealed details of a powerful new system-on-a-chip that’s designed to handle processing and other chores for new gigabit Wi-Fi access points and routers using 802.11ac radio chips, including MediaTek’s own.)
Another group of vendors will demonstrate a complementary Wi-Fi standard running in the 60GHz band. The higher frequency means 802.11ad has less “penetrating power” than its lower frequency cousin. But 11ad has much more available spectrum, and still wider channels, and hence a much larger “wireless pipe” through which energy, and data, is being pushed. By relying on this spectrum, 11ad avoids the need for some of the innovative, but necessarily more complex, features in 11ac to maximize performance. Radios based on 11ad will forge short-range, very high-throughput connections between clients and access points and among client devices themselves. An example is in-room video distribution, between a set top box and various displays, or between a tablet and a large flat panel TV.
How do the specifications get their big data rate boosts?
The 11ac spec does it by improving a variety of technologies introduced with 802.11n. It uses the multiple data streams and multiple transmit and receive antennas (a technology called MIMO), but it uses more of them compared to 11n, up to eight data streams versus four for 11n, for example.
With 11ac, the wireless connection will make use of an even wider channel, or “pipe,” for data. In a conventional 20MHz channel, 802.11n with one spatial stream supports 72Mbps. Doubling the channel size to 40MHz boosts that data rate to about 150Mbps. By contrast, 11ac channels will be 80MHz, with an option to go to 160MHz: each stream has a data rate of 430Mbps, with three data streams reaching 1.3Gbps.
The wider channels will eventually pose a challenge for WLAN administrators. “At 80MHz, channel layout once again becomes a challenge, even in the relatively expansive 5GHz spectrum,” according to Matthew Gast, director of product management, Aerohive Networks. “Manufacturers will need to adapt automatic radio tuning capabilities to offer higher-bandwidth channels only where necessary to conserve spectrum.”
As did 11n, 11ac boosts the efficiency of the data transmission by using a much denser way of physically encoding the data on a carrier signal, in this case a radio wave. The encoding is done by changing (“modulating”) features of the signal, in this case using a scheme called quadrature amplitude modulation, usually called just QAM. 11n uses what’s called 64 QAM, but 11ac quadruples the density to 256 QAM.
11ac Wi-Fi will operate only in the 5GHz band, where for now there are many fewer devices and much less interference than in the 2.4GHz band.
A related change, noted by tech blogger Anand Lal Shimpi, writing at AnandTech, is one that will remove an on-device bottleneck created by the SDIO I/O interface, used in the Secure Digital specification, and its drivers. Currently, he notes, smartphones or tablets with 11n typically operate at 2.4GHz with a single spatial stream, for a maximum data rate of 72Mbps, and about half that for actual throughput. Though SDIO has a maximum bandwidth of 100Mbps, its software stack can limit that to the 30-40Mbps range, according to Lal Shimpi.
11ac will support an additional, more modern USB interface, High-Speed Inter-Chip or HSIC, with a maximum throughput of 480Mbps (it also uses half the power and takes up 75 percent less board area than conventional USB, according to the Wikipedia entry).
“Given that smartphones and tablets are expected to use single stream 802.11ac at 433Mbps, HSIC looks to be the appropriate SoC interface,” says Lal Shimpi.
11ac will draw more power, yet it could actually improve average power consumption in some cases, according to Lal Shimpi, in a separate introductory post on 11ac. The reason? “The specification is simply more complex and supporting things like wider channels requires more power,” he writes. “Although 802.11ac chipsets built on the same process as their [11]n counterparts will draw more active power, their higher performance should allow the WiFi stack to go to sleep sooner. Idle power in a well designed 802.11ac solution should be comparable to 802.11n, and a race to sleep generally results in improved average power.”
The 60GHz Wi-Fi products will be, relatively speaking, simpler than 11ac. More spectrum and still wider channels create a larger wireless pipe, supporting eventually the near-7Gbps data rate, though the first group of products, also expected around mid-2012, will likely be 1-2Gbps.
Blogger Mathias argues that this virgin spectrum, coupled with the new channel allocation challenges 11ac will create in the 5GHz band, mean that 11ad could have a role as an infrastructure connection in the enterprise. That could mean future Wi-Fi products that can switch, or be forced to switch, between 11ac and 11ad as needed, depending on what the client wants to do, the type and volume of data, other contending client devices, and the surrounding RF environment.
But if you’re in Las Vegas this week, you’ll have a chance to see a not-so-distant future with the first demonstrations of next-generation Wi-Fi.
In: Mobile Technology · Tagged with: WiFi
AT&T Mulls Price Increase as Spectrum Crunch Looms
Forbes, 1/9/2012
AT&T switched on 4G access in 11 areas over the holidays, but speedy service is likely to strain spectrum and raise prices for users.
AT&T Business Solutions chief John Stankey announced AT&T 4G now reaches New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Austin, Los Angeles, Oakland, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh and San Diego, as the company marches to complete total coverage by the end of 2013.
However, Stankey also echoed the industry’s concerns about spectrum pressures caused by increasing wireless demands, and warned if the situation remains unchanged, pricing will rise.
Like other carriers, AT&T is scrambling for options as the spectrum crunch looms, but the company’s one big attempt to shore up its airwave allocation by purchasing T-Mobile was scuttled by federal regulators, citing antitrust concerns late last year.
The Federal Communications Commission did, however, approve the smaller, $1.9 billion deal for the Dallas, Texas-based company to buy spectrum from Qualcomm.
AT&T will gain much-needed spectrum from its Qualcomm purchase, but the carrier is expected to seek out other deals, including a rumored scaled-back joint venture with T-Mobile or an acquisition of another company like Dish Network.
Dish has broadband spectrum to spare since it acquired two satellite networks last year, and the satellite television provider is expected to explore its options in 2012. A deal with Dish, which isn’t direct-carrier competition, will likely invite less regulatory scrutiny, a reason other carriers are likely eyeing the company.
Stankey pointed out customers’ video streaming represents 30 percent of mobile data traffic, an amount he characterized as “unsustainable” because of costs.
Stankey, speaking at the Citi Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference, questioned how much longer consumer demand can exceed capacity without affecting pricing, hinting the carrier will have to raise prices to manage the spectrum shortfall.
Still, the 4G expansion will help AT&T catch up with number-one carrier Verizon, whose high-speed network covers 200 million people and continues to expand.
Verizon’s network is growing ahead of schedule, giving it a distinct competitive edge, but recent 4G outages in December raise speculation the carrier is building out too quickly, creating a possible opportunity for rival carriers like AT&T to gain ground this year.
In: Mobile Technology · Tagged with: 4G, AT&T, FCC, T-Mobile

