Hasta La Gadget!

Vodafone is the largest mobile carrier in Europe and AT&T reportedly wants a piece of it. Bloomberg reports today that AT&T’s employees are internally “laying the groundwork” for a takeover of Vodafone as soon as next year. Apparently both companies have yet to enter formal negotiations, but AT&T is said to be focusing on which Vodafone assets it would retain and which could be sold off to others if a takeover does go through. The carrier is reportedly also preparing a strategy to bolster Vodafone’s operations in Europe, UK’s EE is said to be its alternative takeover target.

This isn’t the first time that AT&T has been rumored to be interested in Vodafone. Back in April this year, it was said that both Verizon and AT&T might team up to takeover Europe’s largest carrier, however Verizon denied the reports back then. A couple of months ago, Big Red announced that its buying out Vodafone’s stake in its business for $130 billion, making it the third largest corporate acquisition. If AT&T and Vodafone reach an agreement, and the former is able to pick up the latter, the takeover would have to wait until Verizon’s buyout of Vodafone’s stake is completed. Both AT&T and Vodafone have yet to comment on this report.

AT&T Reportedly Considering Vodafone Takeover original content from Ubergizmo.

After prematurely breaking cover in the US, Vodafone’s Smart 4G appears to have fled to Italy, where it’s allegedly been spotted again on one of the network’s local flyers. If the image above is to be believed — and the light spec list is pretty standard to this kind of marketing material — we now know a little more about Voda’s first own-brand LTE handset. Namely, its rounded-corner design, 4.5-inch display, 8-megapixel camera, Snapdragon processor and Jelly Bean Android build. Oh, and that in Italia, it should cost €5 per month on prepaid plans, or come free with two-year contracts. The FCC docs that originally outed the Smart 4G don’t list an LTE band compatible with Vodafone’s Italian network, suggesting the device could come to several European countries (at least) in a few radio variants. We’re still certain it’ll feature on a low-cost 4G contract in the UK, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s wait for the formal announcement, which has to be coming soon.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: @flapic (Twitter)

Vodafone Germany announced today that its servers were targeted by a hacker recently, which resulted in an illegal intrusion. The hacker was able to steal data of more than 2 million accounts. Data included names, date of birth, gender, bank account numbers, bank sort code and addresses. Vodafone says that despite the intrusion, customers’ credit card data, passwords, phone numbers and call data was not stolen. The carrier believes that this was an inside job and it has already alerted the authorities in Germany.

The carrier is now in the process of alerting customers that have been affected by this hack. Vodafone Germany advises affected customers to be wary against phishing attacks and even fake direct debit applications which can be sent to their banks, customers can reduce the risk of the latter by alerting their banks. Vodafone is going to provide affected individuals with an independent fraud protection service free of cost. Despite its claims that the intrusion could not have taken place without inside knowledge, the carrier says that only a fraction of its 36 million German customers have been affected, whereas those in other regions aren’t affected at all. Vodafone hasn’t mentioned exactly when the intrusion took place, it was apparently barred by German authorities from making any disclosures before the initial round of investigation had been completed.

Hacker Steals Details Of 2 Million Accounts From Vodafone Germany’s Servers original content from Ubergizmo.

Rogers’ patience in finding a replacement CEO has paid off in spades. The Canadian telecom giant has just confirmed that Guy Laurence, Vodafone UK’s current chief executive, will be its new leader as of December 2nd. The hire gives Rogers a CEO who’s not only well-versed in mobile and media services, but has a reputation as a reformer — he shook up Vodafone UK’s corporate culture shortly after taking the reins in 2008. While it’s not certain that he’ll repeat history at Rogers, we wouldn’t expect him to maintain the status quo for very long.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Wireless, HD, Mobile

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Via: The Globe and Mail

Source: Rogers

The dust has settled on Apple’s 2013-era iPhone launch, so it’s time that we delved into what the damage is here in ‘ol Blighty. EE, along with its buddies Orange and T-Mobile, has confirmed that it’ll carry both the iPhone 5s and 5c from launch. LTE contract users who are six months into their EE deal will also be able to take advantage of the conveniently-announced Swap service. O2 has said that customers will be able to use O2 Refresh to upgrade their handset from launch, and Vodafone and Three have both given the thumbs-up to carrying the pair of handsets. No-one’s talking about specific contract pricing, but we expect carriers will drip-feed this information in poker-faced chunks between now and the September 20th launch date.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Apple