Hasta La Gadget!

EE‘s just released its Q1 2013 earnings, giving us a look at its first full quarter with 4G services. The carrier says it’s on track to its goal of a million 4G customers by the end of the year, thanks to the addition or migration of 318,000 LTE customers since the service launched.. Despite those more profitable clients, however, total service revenue (excluding hardware sales) was down 1.5 percent for the period over last quarter, to £1.42 billion. On one hand, the number of 4G additions could be seen as disappointing considering the company’s strong marketing push of the service — though on the other, the company’s only just activated numerous regions, making that one million 4G subscriber goal seem more likely than not. We’ll just have to wait a bit longer to see if Brits are really in love with LTE’s extra zip — and willing to pay for it.

Update: This article originally stated that EE added 318,000 4G customers in Q1 this year, but that figure actually represents the number of users the carrier has added since launching its 4G service. five months ago

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: EE

Verizon has offered Clearwire up to $1.5bn to buy its wireless spectrum, news has leaked, with Big Red hoping to use the airwaves to broaden its own 4G deployment. Word of the proposed deal broke on Friday after a regulatory filing by Clearwire that kept the identify of its potential suitor anonymous; however, as first reported by the WSJ, sources claim that buyer is in fact Verizon.

The news puts Clearwire’s business back under the microscope, and is timely given the announcement by Dish Networks earlier today that it was bidding on carrier Sprint. Dish already had a standing bid in on Clearwire, though has blamed regulatory red-tape for the deal not going through, though the company’s chairman did confirm today that the offer was still standing and had not been withdrawn.

Clearwire currently offers 4G service in selected areas across the US, covering approximately 130m people by population. Although best known for its WiMAX network, the carrier has been building out an LTE network for the future; most recently, Sprint announced a plan to buy Clearwire in a deal worth $2.2bn.

According to the filing, Clearwire will discuss the proposed deal – exact terms of which have not been revealed – with Verizon (which it identifies only as “Party J”) and Sprint. The $1.5bn tag would be reduced by the current value of what Clearwire itself pays to lease the spectrum, something which the company has warned could be a “substantial” figure.

“On April 8, 2013, the Company received an unsolicited, non-binding written proposal from Party J, a strategic buyer, in which Party J offered to acquire Clearwire spectrum leases generally located in large markets that cover approximately 5 billion MHz-POPs at a gross price of approximately $1.0 to $1.5 billion, less the present value of the spectrum leases which could be substantial. The Special Committee will, consistent with its fiduciary duties and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, evaluate this proposal and any other proposal and engage in discussions with each of Party J and Sprint, as appropriate” Clearwire SEC filing

Adding to the complexity of the spectrum shuffling is the ongoing bid by Japanese carrier SoftBank for Sprint. The purchase is contingent on Sprint acquiring Clearwire, among other things.

Verizon offers $1.5bn in Clearwire spectrum grab is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sprint has been teasing for weeks that its LTE network would soon launch in Los Angeles. If a fresh leak from Phone Arena proves true, we may at last be down to the final hours before the Now Network officially flicks the switch for those Angelenos — and a good chunk of the US population, for that matter. The staff memo reportedly has LTE formally launching in 21 markets on April 12th, with LA being joined by larger cities across the US like Charlotte, Memphis, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Newport News. Its schedule also has a number of sizable cities joining the mix across 10 states, with multi-city expansions on the way in California, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and (as you likely noticed) Virginia. Although the faster 4G service still won’t be ubiquitous on Sprint if the rollout goes ahead as claimed, the expansion could be a very convenient complement to the HTC One launch.

Update: Much like San Francisco, LA will be something of a soft launch: Sprint has noted that bits and pieces of the LTE network are in testing.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Sprint

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Source: Phone Arena

AT&T has powered up its LTE service in six new locations in the US, taking its grand total to 182 markets, and revealing plans for another boost in availability in the coming months. The broader roll-out means that Jackson, Tennessee; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Napa and Santa Rosa-Petaluma, California; Rocky Mount-Wilson, North Carolina; and Orangeburg, South Carolina will all have 4G service from today.

Meanwhile, AT&T says it intends to broaden its service even further, with 77 new markets set to get blessed with LTE by the summer. The network also has widespread HSPA+ coverage, it points out, for when users step outside of LTE service: in fact, AT&T says almost 100-percent of its existing network offers HSPA+.

Nonetheless, on LTE service alone, AT&T still finds itself behind Verizon. The CDMA carrier started its 4G deployment earlier than AT&T, and boasts more than 485 cities where LTE is offered.

Wireless isn’t AT&T’s sole plan for high-speed connectivity, of course. The company also revealed plans to take on Google Fiber, with a fiber network of its own in Austin. That, offering speeds of around 1Gbps, will be used as a test-bed for trialling new home and commercial internet technologies, though there’s no public timescale for when the rest of the US might get a taste.

AT&T lights up six more LTE locations with further 77 this summer is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

4G carrier EE has announced plans to double the speed of its UK LTE network, taking peak downloads to as much as 80Mbps+ in ten locations by summer 2013. The “turbocharged 4G” trial – which, if successful, will see the network boost rolled out to all across EE’s service – should see an average download rate per user of 20Mbps, the carrier says, and is part of a number of enhancements EE plans for its service in the near future.

The first ten cities to get the double-speed LTE are Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Sheffield. Trials in Cardiff have already been underway, with EE seeing higher than 80Mbps rates in its own testing; in a perfect, lab setting, the system could go as high as 130Mbps, though that would never be achieved in the wild.

To achieve all that, EE is doubling the 1800MHz spectrum its 4G service can use, up to 20Mhz. That means not only higher speeds but more capacity, something the carrier says will be vitally important as 4G adoption increases: its research suggests data traffic over the next three years will jump by up to 750-percent.

In response to the expected climb in demand, EE will also be trialling carrier aggregation before the end of the year, part of the LTE-Advanced feature set, which joins together spectrum in different bands for more performance. That will see the carrier make use of its newly-acquired spectrum holdings, bought in the recent UK 4G auction, in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz frequencies.

Meanwhile, there are also plans for voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) along with video and voice calls over 4G/LTE (VoLTE), though there’s no timeline for their launch. The speed improvements will come at no extra cost to subscribers, as EE prepares itself for rival UK networks launching their own 4G service, something expected to happen within a matter of months.

EE doubling UK 4G speed: 80Mbps peak in ten city summer trial is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.