Hasta La Gadget!

US Cellular may not have the biggest 4G LTE network, but it’s working on expanding the service to more of its customers. The carrier announced today that they’ll be expanding their 4G LTE network in several states in the US, as well as introducing LTE to brand new states, including California, Nebraska, and Kansas.

States that currently have US Cellular’s 4G LTE service that will see an expansion include Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Currently, the carrier’s LTE coverage covers 61% of its customers in the US.

Some of the cities that will receive US Cellular’s 4G LTE coverage include Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; Manhattan, Kansas; Eureka and Ukiah California. As far as what other cities are on the list to get the upgrade, US Cellular didn’t say, so cross your fingers and just hope that it’s your city that gets the faster service.

US Cellular currently offers 10 devices with LTE capabilities, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, as well as several Motorola devices. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when US Cellular will start knocking out its list of cities to get LTE, but we’re guessing we should be seeing steady roll-outs all year long.

US Cellular to cover 87% of its customers with LTE in 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to the BCM21892. It may sound like every other piece of Broadcom silicon we’ve covered, but it actually represents an important move from a company that is eager to start pecking at Qualcomm’s lunch. First and foremost, this is a 4G modem for flagship phones rather than any budget fare, with support for LTE-Advanced and data speeds of up to 150Mb/s. To deliver that kind of performance, carriers either need 20MHz of contiguous bandwidth — a rarity these days — or they need carrier aggregation technology, which allows a modem to exploit separate chunks of bandwidth simultaneously. The BCM21892 boasts that spec too, not to mention compatibility with most of the popular network standards in use around the world, from the TD and FD types of LTE right down to HSPA+, TD-SCDMA and EDGE/GSM. Finally, through a combination of small transistors (28nm) and clever algorithms, the chip is claimed to reduce power consumption by 25 percent compared to rival devices, and also to take up less space — potentially leaving more room for other goodies (Broadcom suggests NFC). The chip is still only at the the sampling stage, however, so the folks at Qualcomm shouldn’t have too much to worry about until at least 2014.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Wireless, Mobile

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The UK’s first 4G network continues to expand coverage, this time extending its catchment to more than 65 towns and cities in total. New LTE locales include the likes of Oxford, Stevenage, Guildford and… Blackpool (check the full list of towns after the break) with EE announcing that it currently covers 45 percent of the UK population — setting up in big cities will do that. This new roll-out should bring it up to 55 percent later this year, although around the same time it’ll finally see some healthy competition for 4G customers from Three.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: EE

AT&T is continuing its rollout of 4G LTE to newer markets, and today the carrier announced several new additions to the LTE heat map. Six locations in all now have AT&T’s blazing-fast data speeds, including Northwest Georgia; Albany, GA; Cecil County, MD; Norfolk/Portsmouth/Virginia Beach in Virginia; Montgomery County, PA; and Bucks County, PA.

With these new areas now blanketed with 4G, this brings AT&T’s total LTE coverage to 141 markets covering some 170 million people. It’s always great to see AT&T expanding their network, but they’re still far behind Verizon in terms of coverage. Big Red currently covers more than 470 markets and over 270 million people.

However, Ma Bell seems to be picking up steam more and more as the months go by, with the carrier announcing new markets every week it seems, and as far as how many new markets get announced every month, AT&T is clearly on top, while Verizon is beginning to wind down a bit as it gets closer to completely blanketing its 3G network.

AT&T recently acquired Alltel late last month in order to bolster its spectrum and gain more customers. While Alltel wasn’t a huge carrier by any means, the acquisition saw a boost in AT&T’s spectrum and user base by a few million. And even though the carrier reported a huge net loss last quarter, they seem to be trekking on, announcing over the weekend that they saw record usage during the Super Bowl.

AT&T adds several new markets to LTE network is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you like the very best, you’ll be happy to hear that the biggest capacity, most expensive iPad yet has now landed at the Apple Store online. US customers can pick from AT&T, Sprint or Verizon to power their 128GB LTE model ($929), although AT&T has a reduced waiting time of 1-3 days, compared to 3-5 business days for the other two carriers. Expect the WiFi iteration ($799) to arrive within three days — that is, if you place your order at the source today.

Filed under: Tablets, Apple

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Via: 9to5Mac

Source: Apple Store