Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re wondering why T-Mobile doesn’t have 3G in the middle of the Mojave, the answer’s pretty simple: it’s hard for any of the Big Four to justify spending millions of dollars on infrastructure in sparsely-populated areas. Rather than ignore it and leave the spectrum blank, though, Verizon’s asking other companies to step in and share the responsibilities — sort of — by letting partners do most of the hard work (build towers and operate backhaul) while Big Red chips in its 700MHz spectrum holdings and “core LTE equipment.” Presumably, Verizon will help itself to a share of the proceeds, which from their perspective, makes it look like a win-win scenario: they’re helping to bring 4G technology to underserved areas, doing less work and spending less capital than they’d have to otherwise, and profiting off the spirit of an initiative that FCC chief Julius Genachowski is pushing very, very hard at the moment. And hey, we bet you’ll be getting some insane throughput when you’re rocking the LTE modem in the middle of nowhere.

Verizon looking to partner up for rural LTE deployments originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d not-so-secretly hoped that carriers would be looking to dispense with those troublesome 5GB caps on so-called “unlimited” 3G data plans, but there’s a big problem with that: spectrum is still limited, and even though 4G technologies help use it more efficiently, it’s still a constraint that the FCC is going to need many years to solve. We’re not sure how much the spectrum crunch really factors in here, but in addition to his comments on Droid Incredible inventory problems, Verizon Wireless boss Lowell McAdam mentioned at a Barclays Capital conference this week that he hopes to move away from unlimited plans altogether for the company’s LTE network, instead charging for “buckets” of megabytes, just like in the olden days — despite the fact that it’ll cost it a half to a third of what it costs today to transmit the same amount of data.

On a happier note, McAdam said that the company expects to be using its LTE network for voice by 2012, which comes just after its first volley of LTE-capable handsets in early 2011. He also mentioned that at least some of those devices will be shown off at CES 2011, and naturally, we’ll be there — not just to check out the phones, but to raise some hell at the notion that unlimited data is a thing of the past. At this rate, how are we ever going to run the Engadget servers on a wireless connection?

Verizon looking at non-unlimited plans for 4G data, will use LTE for voice by 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 12:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No matter how much T-Mobile wants to pretend, HSPA+ is not on the same upload / download pay grade as LTE and WiMAX. Still, that isn’t stopping the company from calling its new technology rollout “4G speeds,” much to the dismay of another major HSPA+ supporter, AT&T. Cue Ma Bell spokesman Seth Bloom, who recently told Fierce Wireless, “I think that companies need to be careful that they’re not misleading customers by labeling HSPA+ as a 4G technology.” Of course, AT&T itself is rolling out that technology as an intermediate step between current 3G and LTE, and we know they want to reserve the 4G nomenclature for the latter’s unveiling. Hey guys, can we just label it 3.95G and call it day?

AT&T cries foul over T-Mobile’s ‘HSPA+ is 4G’ talk originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 May 2010 20:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t wait to get your hands on an EVO 4G? Then it looks like you can now at least settle for the next best thing that’s not actually anything like the real thing: the final, shipping version of the EVO 4G ROM. That’s just been released into the wild courtesy of Conflipper, and is ready to be downloaded for use however you like — and at your own risk, of course. Hit up the source link below for the download link, and let us know in comments if you manage to work any magic with it.

[Thanks, Marcos]

Shipping HTC EVO 4G ROM released into the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 19:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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