An Alaskan WiMax service offered by AT&T that you probably never knew about is shutting down. As we noted in 2007, AT&T’s Alascom subsidiary started offering Juneau, Alaska, residents WiMax broadband service starting at $19.95 a month, and while AT&T initially had plans to expand WiMax further, the evolution of LTE sidelined those plans. Stop The Cap directs our attention to the fact that AT&T’s now shutting down that service January 31, and users will [...]

Given Verizon’s FiOS expansion has stopped in most places (unless you’re somewhere with franchise obligations), the only way DSL users will be getting FiOS is if your regional core infrastructure is upgraded and your line is perennially problematic. During yesterday’s earnings call Verizon stated they migrated some 223,000 “troublesome” lines from copper to fiber, most of those in regions impacted by Sandy. The company says they plan to migrate another 300,000 copper users in 2013. [...]

A new IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Special Report predicts that the global LTE subscriber total should surpass 100 million users sometime this year. According to the firm, that number is then expected to skyrocket to 198.1 million in 2013, which would be a 115 percent jump from the 92.3 million subscribers seen last year. The lion’s share of that growth is courtesy of Verizon here in the States, with AT&T steadily gaining ground. Both Sprint [...]

Stat farmers Deloitte are again predicting an Internet capacity apocalypse, even if every single past prediction of this type has proven to be incorrect. In their latest compilation of predictions, Deloitte insists that carriers simply aren’t going to be able to keep pace with the data demands of smartphone users. The result will be Internet capacity and performance issues becoming widespread in just the next several years, with carriers jacking prices sky high to manage [...]

As we’ve noted, AT&T’s recently announced U-Verse upgrades are less significant than the company’s recent announcement made it appear, given the “expansion” involves simply pushing U-Verse out to an additional 3 million or so users they’d already intended to upgrade (the majority in San Francisco, where debates over VRAD cabinets stalled upgrades). Last week AT&T stated that some of their U-Verse expansion will also use LTE as a delivery mechanism, though the company’s just not [...]

Speaking at CES this week, Verizon stated they began this new year with 473 LTE markets, covering 273.5 million potential customers. Verizon’s LTE network currently covers close to 89% of their United States wireless footprint, and by the middle of the year LTE will be available in every market currently seeing 3G (EVDO) service. “Using LTE…we’d love to broadcast the Super Bowl in the 2014 time frame,” CEO Lowell McAdam said at CES. Verizon has [...]

Sprint has confirmed previously leaked plans that the company will be offering new pay-as-you-go prepaid service on January 25. Those leaks stated that Sprint would be offering all you can eat (talk, text and data) for smartphones for $70 per month, or $50 per month for feature phones — albeit with a limited selection of phones. Sprint has now confirmed those leaks, noting that contrary to early reports at least one of the phones will [...]

Next-generation LTE radios are expected to trim back energy consumption by 50%, a needed energy savings for power-hungry smartphones and carriers eager to embrace Voice over LTE (VoLTE). According to a new whitepaper released by ST-Ericsson, a slew of design improvements should be responsible for those battery savings, particularly addressing the current problems with VoLTE. Numerous recent reports have highlighted the huge battery drain of VoLTE, largely due to the lack of active dual-mode operation [...]

Buffalo, New York has been named the worst wireless city in America, according to data collected throughout 2012 by research firm RootMetrics. The firm compiled speed test data taken throughout 2012 from the 75 largest wireless market and found that Buffalo performed the worst in terms of speed. After averaging the average results provided by six carriers, Buffalo clocked it with an average downstream speed of 3.6 Mbps across six different carriers. The firm did [...]

LONDON — Almost every smartphone shipped today has an embedded rear camera and one in three smartphones have a front-facing camera, according to the latest report on imaging technology in mobile devices from ABI Research, which provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. The number of media tablets with two cameras is even greater. Purchasers expect to be able to take photos with their devices and the [...]