Hasta La Gadget!

It almost goes without saying that Sprint has probably been opposed to AT&T’s recent proposed purchase of rival cell phone carrier T-Mobile.

Now it’s official.

On Monday afternoon, Sprint issued a press release publicly condemning the potential merger between the two carriers, asking the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. In the release, the company claims a takeover of this proportion “would reverse nearly three decades of actions by the U.S. government and the courts that modernized and opened U.S. communications markets to competition.”

The argument cites an approval as very bad news for Sprint, which would rank in last place in U.S. wireless providers behind Verizon and AT&T if the deal went through:

AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers. If approved, the proposed acquisition would create a combined company that would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue and would entrench AT&T’s and Verizon’s duopoly control over the wireless market. The wireless industry moving forward would be dominated overwhelmingly by two vertically integrated companies with unprecedented control over the U.S. wireless post-paid market, as well as the availability and price of key inputs, such as backhaul and access needed by other wireless companies to compete.

But the statement reads as an appeal almost as much to the general public as it does to the government agencies monitoring the case. The company claims the “Ma Bell duopoly” created by the potential takeover will harm consumers “at a time when the country can least afford it.”

AT&T’s statement of intent, issued on March 20, defends the deal in a more attractive appeal to rural cellular subscriber, claiming the extension of coverage to “95% of the U.S. population,” or an “additional 46.5 million Americans, including [those] in rural, smaller communities.”

The deal is still being reviewed by the DoJ and the FCC.

See Also:

• AT&T’s Purchase of T-Mobile Will Face Opposition, Thankfully …
• AT&T to Buy T-Mobile, Becomes No. 1 U.S. Wireless Company …
• With AT&T/T-Mobile, Wireless Net Neutrality Should Be Back on the …
• Ingenio to Keep its NSFW Holdings in AT&T Deal?
• Verizon ‘Not Interested’ in Sprint: CEO

In case you had any doubts about where the war in Libya is going, the Pentagon has admitted today that two new weapons are now part of the coalition forces: The A-10 Warthog and the AC-130 Spectre. More »

It was a release candidate just about a week ago and today it’s all ready to go. Firefox 4 for Android has just been released from the Mozilla labs and is now prowling the mobile internet. You can get yours at the Android Market, in no less than 10 languages, though there’ll be no Flash playback. Still, tabbed browsing, extreme customizability, and bookmark / tab / history coordination between desktop and mobile (via Firefox Sync) are all nice to have, as is the promised threefold improvement in speed over the stock Android browser. Pretty nice list of improvements for some freebie software, wouldn’t you say?

Continue reading Firefox 4 for Android launched, ready to Sync and speed up your browsing

Firefox 4 for Android launched, ready to Sync and speed up your browsing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen many a theoretical demonstration of lightning-quick networks, but most use some rather special purpose hardware — like lasers and such that your average ISP doesn’t have hanging around. However, this new benchmark of 448Gbps is a little more impressive because it was achieved on commercial fiber hardware. A few teams of researchers were the ones shoveling the bits, including the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, the National Inter-university Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), and good ‘ol Ericsson. It’s said to be the world’s first transmission line operating at that speed, and what’s most impressive is that it’ll be tested on further network segments in the coming months ahead of becoming an actual product at some point in the not-too-distant future. Not soon enough.

Researchers manage 448Gbps on commercial hardware, coming soonish to a trunk near you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Tom’s Hardware  |  Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna  | Email this | Comments