Jul 31
A Federal Appeals court has ruled that search warrants are not required by law enforcement agencies if they wish to seize cellphone records.
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Jul 23
If you recall, the day after AT&T unveiled its Next upgrade plan, which allows users to pay for a device monthly with various terms for upgrading, T-Mobile sent out some vocal statements challenging the program. This spiraled into a sort of back-and-forth bickering betwixt the carriers, each lauding their respective programs, and now T-Mobile has fired off another jab at its competitor, tossing Verizon’s recently unveiled Edge plan into the mix.
The jabs come in the form of two print ads, one of which goes out today, and another that is slated for release on Thursday. In the ads, T-Mobile features some snippets from various media sources that have likewise criticized AT&T’s Next plan, calling it “underhanded,” “sneaky,” and other sorts of passive jabs. In addition, the company’s CEO Mike Sievert also gave a lengthy criticism of both AT&T Next and Verizon’s Edge.
Said Sievert: “Had AT&T with “Next” and Verizon with “Edge” really taken our lead and unveiled offerings worthy of serious consumer consideration, we’d have to give them credit … On the surface, their programs look okay. For the first time, these old guard phone companies seemed to be acknowledging that a certain segment of customers hates being locked into the same phone for 730 days. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll see they don’t get it at all. Or they don’t want to.”
Under AT&T Next, subscribers have an option of taking on a device without down payment for a monthly fee, which ranges from $15 to $50. The payments must be made for the duration of 12 months, at which point the device can be turned in for an upgrade, or for 20 months if the user wants to keep the device. Using the GALAXY S 4 as an example, which has a monthly price tag of $32, the subscriber would end up paying $640 total if they chose to keep the device, or $384 for 12 months.
Under Verizon’s Edge, users can get a device and have the full retail price of the handset spread over 24 months. If the user wants to upgrade, they can do so at the 6 month point, being required to pay half the cost of the smartphone’s full retail price.
T-Mobile’s criticism of these plans is that they fail to factor a discount into the monthly service price that results from the carrier not having to subsidize the price of the handset by using a contract. With a contract, the cost of the phone is reduced and rolled into the monthly price for the duration of the contract. Without the subsidization – meaning when consumer’s pay full retail price for the phone – the natural assumption is that the monthly price for the plans should decrease to reflect this. And that is where the crux lies.
SOURCE: T-Mobile
T-Mobile calls out AT&T Next again, criticizes Verizon Edge is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jul 16
Less than a week after T-Mobile announced its new upgrade-at-will Jump plan
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Jul 15
Droid Life got their hands on internal Verizon slides that reveal that Verizon has plans to let its customers upgrade their phones more often. Yeah, kind of like T-Mobile’s Jump plan
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Jul 12
AT&T has announced that it will be acquiring Leap Wireless for the hefty sum of about $1.19 billion, something that will bring the prepaid service Cricket under its ownership. The move still needs to be approved by regulators, but one source who spoke to The Wall Street Journal states that there are “pretty good” odds it will go through.
The announcement was made by AT&T today, with the carrier paying $15 per share for the company, more than double its current stock price of $7.98 per share. Leap Wireless is currently the sixth largest company in the industry, while AT&T holds position as fourth out of the four major U.S. carriers. Such a merge, as many have pointed out, will further centralize the wireless carriers in the country.
Leap Wireless currently has in excess of 5 million subscribers, all of which will be transitioned under AT&T’s wing if the merger goes through. As part of the acquisition, the buyer will be taking over Leap’s wireless spectrum, boosting its 4G rollout, as well as the carrier’s retail stores and its substantial $2.8 billion worth of debt.
In addition, AT&T will be retaining the Cricket name while giving those users access to its 4G network, as well as expanding service under Cricket to additional US markets. Overall, Leap will bring with it spectrum that covers approximately 137 million people in the US, which is said to be “largely complementary” to what it already has.
Such a move comes at a time when other carriers have been involved in various acquisitions, such as T-Mobile US taking over MetroPCS earlier this year, as well as SoftBank Corporation nabbing Sprint Nextel. Presently, AT&T has about 107 million subscribers.
SOURCE: Android Community
AT&T purchase of Leap Wireless brings Cricket under new ownership is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jul 10
These speeds aren’t indicative of what T-Mo’s LTE network—which just went live in NYC and elsewhere
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Jul 10
When you sit down and read the rules involved in the current web of oddities known as smartphone contracts, it’s easy to find surprisingly complex ins and outs. T-Mobile has suggested several times over the past several months that they will be aiming to take an axe to tradition, making way for their own, much more “consumer friendly” rules. Here with what they’re calling “Jump”, T-Mobile says they’ll be turning the upgrade process on its head, allowing consumers to upgrade from their current smartphone to a new phone with the same prices a new customer would pay.
Of course it makes sense – if you’ve got a T-Mobile phone with one of their current new-age plans, you’re not paying a subsidized price for a smartphone. You pay an up-front cost then a monthly cost to pay off the rest of the smartphone. While other carriers include this monthly cost in with the data and voice plans they’re attached to, T-Mobile shows the cost clearly, this cost disappearing once the phone is payed off.
When “Jump” is brought to the market, the obvious becomes true.
Switching from one phone to another with T-Mobile will cost the same as it very well should, sensibly, given the company’s current rule set.
Once you want a new phone, you pay T-Mobile for the phone, the same cost you’d pay if you were a new customer. If you were a new customer, you’d pay X amount then Y per month until the device is paid for in full. With AT&T and Verizon, to give two fine examples, there are two approaches:
Approach 1. A new customer gets the cost of the device as advertised, X amount attached to a 2-year contract with Y cost rolled in on the monthly data cost.
Approach 2. A customer that’s currently inside a 2-year contract, currently under contract as they are, must pay an additional cost to get out of that first contract and into another – the full “unsubsidized” price of the new smartphone, that is.
With T-Mobile there’s also a cost you may want to consider: the cost of the first phone. No matter what you do, once you’ve been locked in with the phone you’re purchasing, you’re still responsible for the full cost of the phone. I
f you’re switching over to a new phone and still intend on only paying T-Mobile for one line of service, the original phone must still be paid for in full. Switching to a new device still means you’re paying the full cost of the phone (though the final cost may be ever-so-slightly different from AT&T or Verizon’s “unsubsidized” price) – so there’s no good reason for T-Mobile to penalize you for wanting to jump in on another purchase, is there?
Also note – this upgrade system only works twice per year, so if you’re planning on upgrading every time you see a new device – think again!
T-Mobile “JUMP” unlimited upgrades and what it means for consumers is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jul 10
People who keep up on the latest smartphones (that’s you) have a problem: You wait and wait until the best new phone comes out, then you drop your money on that new hotness. But what happens? Six months later the newer hotterness is out, but you’ve got another year and a half before your next upgrade. T-Mobile is finally, mercifully fixing that. This is cause for rejoicing.
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May 27
Last week at CTIA, we sat down with Lixin Cheng — CEO of ZTE USA — for a candid discussion about the company’s future in the US. The conversation started with ZTE’s current portfolio in the US, which consists of 18 SKUs — primarily inexpensive Android smartphones (most with LTE) for the prepaid market. Mr. Cheng mentioned that the company’s doing quite well in the US thanks to an 85.7 percent year-to-year growth in market share. ZTE is now in third place among prepaid handset manufacturers with a market share of 17 percent. He explained that carriers are seeing revenue growth from prepaid services which now account for 22.5 to 29 percent of revenue. This puts the company in a strong position for the future, despite last year’s investigation by Congress. So we asked Mr. Cheng if and when ZTE would bring flagship phones like the Grand S or Grand Memo to the US in partnership with the four major carriers. His reply:
I have promised you at CES that we’re going to bring the Grand S or Memo series into [the] US, and we are working on that, and I think that very soon we will announce some good news.
That’s good news indeed. Hit the break for more, including our video interview and full transcript.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
May 21
Survey says Verizon is best at customer satisfaction… among the big four, anyway
Posted in: Today's Chili
The results from the American Customer Satisfaction Index are in, and parroting a recent study by Consumer Reports, Verizon Wireless is named the front-runner with the most happy subscribers among the big four carriers. The survey takes a number of factors into account, such as call clarity, dropped calls, network coverage, data speeds, helpfulness of in-store staff, diversity of plans and the quality of the carrier’s websites. As the dust settled, Verizon notched a three-point gain to chart a score of 73 (out of 100), whereas ACSI’s previous front-runner, Sprint, held steady with a score of 71. AT&T is portrayed as “in a statistical dead heat with Sprint,” which climbed one point to chart an ACSI score of 70. Meanwhile, satisfaction among T-Mobile customers fell a point, which caused the carrier to pull up the rear with a score of 68.
On the whole, ACSI suggests that subscribers are generally more satisfied with regional providers and MVNOs, as the little dogs hold an aggregate score of 78. Speaking in broader terms, the ACSI reports that the wireless industry has reversed its two-year trend of sliding customer satisfaction to hit a benchmark score of 72, which matches the industry’s 10-year high. Naturally, improvements still need to be made across the board, but at least things seem to be moving in the right direction.
Via: FierceWireless
Source: ACSI
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