AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has hinted that the company could follow T-Mobile’s lead and offer handsets under a finance plan. T-Mobile has said they’ll be eliminating handset subsidies later this year, meaning users can either buy a device outright, or tack an additional monthly charge on to their bill until the handset is paid off. Stephenson says AT&T is busy looking at the option. “I kind of like the idea, commend them for trying it,” [...]

In addition to T-Mobile announcing that they’ll start selling Apple products in 2013, is the potentially more interesting fact that they’ll stop selling subsidized phones. Speaking at Deutsche Telekom’s annual investor conference, T-Mobile CEO John Legere confirmed that subsidized phones will no longer be a part of the company’s business model next year, with consumers either paying full price for devices, or choosing to pay the device off in installments. T-Mobile will offer the iPhone [...]

Contrary to rumblings of a December launch, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam this week stated that Verizon’s streaming video joint venture with Redbox had been delayed until early 2013. According to the CEO the service needs more testing before launch, with McAdam telling reporters that he expected the service to launch late in the first quarter or early in the second of 2013. Recent leaks suggested a December 17 launch was originally planned. The leaks also [...]

Residents of Kansas City are closely tracking Google’s deployment of fiber services, Google only having recently lighting up its second neighborhood in the area. Smaller businesses are relocating to the areas that are first to get the symmetrical 1 Gbps services, impacting property values despite the fact that the services have barely gotten off the ground. “It just makes life easier,” the CEO of one relocating startup tells the Kansas City Business Journal. The $70 [...]

Earlier this year we noted how French ISP Iliad was shaking up the French wireless market with some creative pricing, which included an introductory basic free tier of service (an idea that’s taking root in the States now). With the offering clearly popular among users tired of paying an arm and a leg to France’s uncompetitive incumbents, those incumbents recently started to try and shut Free down through higher rates, arguing the upstart was causing [...]

Intel has announced that the company will be providing access to a network of free Wi-Fi hotspots for users who buy Ultrabooks and tablets that include Intel’s latest chipsets. The offers comes as part of a deal with Devicescape, who operates more than 7 million public hotspots worldwide. Using the Intel’s Smart Connect Technology, Intel devices will automatically connect to this network to get e-mails, latest updates (or hey, malware) — even if the device [...]

After product delays, multi-continent unexplained service outages, drunken employee scandals and consistently lackluster product offerings, Research in Motion (RIM) finally decided to shake up their CEO spot, replacing co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with new CEO Thorsten Heins. However, a consistent lack of quality product in the age of Android and Apple has the company continuing to flounder under new leadership. The company’s parade of bad tidings continued this week, as RIM announced they [...]

NEW YORK — Verizon Communications posted another quarter of customer and revenue gains for FiOS fiber-optic services — which in turn contributed to the company’s overall double-digit growth in year-over-year quarterly earnings and increased cash flow. In first-quarter 2012, Verizon’s total operating revenues were $28.2 billion on a consolidated basis, an increase of 4.6 percent compared with first-quarter 2011. ‘On Track to Continue to Deliver Strong Results’ Lowell McAdam, Verizon chairman and CEO, says the [...]

Recently Sprint’s board voted down an acquisition of MetroPCS despite the deal being something Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was interested in. The move suggested, in part, that the Sprint board isn’t all that confident in Hesse’s plan to not only continue improving Sprint’s fortunes, but also upgrade the entire network to LTE while also integrating a new company. The Wall Street Journal is running a story suggesting that Hesse is on quite a short leash [...]

Charter this week unveiled their fourth quarter earnings, which show the company took a fourth-quarter loss of $67 million, down from $70 million one year earlier. The company lost 45,500 basic video subscribers during the fourth quarter, but managed to add 67,700 residential Internet customers. Charter’s new president and CEO Tom Rutledge spoke publicly for the first time since leaving Cablevision, noting in a conference call that the company has deployed faster DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades [...]