Hasta La Gadget!

Sprint‘s just announced some more markets for its planned 4G expansion, among them Los Angeles and Miami, plus Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis. That’s right: WiMAX is coming to penetrate the Steel Curtain. In addition to the markets previously announced at the end of February (New York, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC), the list is starting to look a lot like that “many markets” we’ve been promised. While we’re still not getting launch dates, it’s clear that Sprint’s on an aggressive path here — and an apparently leaked internal email we just got from a tipster confirms that pretty blatantly. Supposedly penned by Joe Whited, the Manager of Corporate Communications at Sprint, the email appears to have been aimed at pumping up Sprint employees based on this morning’s announcement: “Let AT&T and Verizon yak about maps and 3G coverage, we’re moving forward with what customers really want — lightening [sic.] fast internet and uncapped 4G service.” Fighting words, friends — and the addition of major markets like Los Angeles and Miami are surely an upping of the game. Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Sprint announces seven new WiMAX markets, says ‘Let AT&T and Verizon yak about maps and 3G coverage’

Sprint announces seven new WiMAX markets, says ‘Let AT&T and Verizon yak about maps and 3G coverage’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Birds fly, grass grows, and the FCC auctions off wireless spectrum. It’s just one of those inevitable facts of life. In 2008, the Commission sure sold plenty of the stuff, with both AT&T and Verizon trading billions of dollars for enough building-penetrating 700MHz bandwidth to start LTE networks (that’s 4G, vaquero!) as early as next year. One huge chunk of spectrum didn’t sell, however: the infamous Block ‘D,’ subject to a unique FCC mandate that required it to be shared with first responders and government agencies for public safety. Last we heard, ‘D’ was in limbo awaiting a new auction, but Reuters reports that said wait may be nearly over. According to Jamie Barnett, the FCC’s Chief of Public Safety, the entity could test the waters as early as this summer, and start Auction 76 in earnest by Q1 or Q2 of 2011. Who might bid at that late date is still uncertain — would-be 4G competitors will be way behind Verizon and AT&T by that time — but it seems a mighty fine idea for paramedic phones to work while buried under rubble, regardless.

FCC expects 700MHz ‘D Block’ to see auction in 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 07:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like the kids at T-Mobile USA are well aware that their company’s future will depend on offering both compelling handsets and a competitive network for them to ride on. Reuters reports that the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary has been exploring all its options with regard to the provision of 4G services, including potential joint ventures with cable companies and even spectrum sharing with AT&T, though the likeliest candidate for the moment remains Clearwire’s WiMAX infrastructure. Asked about a potential merger with Sprint, who controls more than 50 percent of Clearwire, T-Mobile’s CEO Robert Dotson declined the idea, explaining that “what you never want to do is take one company that is going through challenges and take another company going through challenges.” Reports of ongoing discussions between Clearwire and T-Mo have been around since last September, and the latest from Dotson suggests that his company is keen to get a resolution either way as soon as possible.

T-Mobile and Clearwire mulling 4G partnership originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s hardly anything here that we didn’t already know, but an unveiling date of “next week” sure catches our eye. A new report over at The Wall Street Journal confirms earlier details that were fed to us over Sprint’s first-ever WiMAX smartphone, and now we’re learning that the HTC Supersonic will be officially revealed to the world at CTIA next week. We’ve heard before that the carrier anticipates selling a 4G phone “this summer,” but you can bet we’ll be digging for a hard ship date and price tag when we hit the scene in Las Vegas in just five short days.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

WiMAX-enabled HTC Supersonic rumored to debut on Sprint at CTIA originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know how you pay a fixed monthly fee for your phone, and can check email and Twitter, surf the web and the Yelp app anytime you like without counting minutes or megabytes? Yeah, well that’s all gonna end.

Yesterday, Verizon CTO Tony Melone said that the days of all-you-can-eat data plans are ending, echoing something AT&T’s boss said a week ago, that metered (or variable) pricing was ahead.

The bigwigs talk of fairness—why should the weekly email checker pay the same as the out-and-about Pandora and video streaming junkie?

They talk of transparency: “It’s one thing to say all you can eat is gone,” Melone told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s another to have consumers worrying, ‘Can I stream this radio?'”

This isn’t going to be abrupt, and it won’t affect all people equally. But one thing’s for sure, if you use your phone’s data plan a lot, you’re going to start paying more than $35 per month for it. And even if the “unlimited” plan remains, it’s certainly going to cost more, and be one of a multitude of levels or options.

Once upon a time, the home ISP business went through these similar phases: The dial-up age when we kept track of specific hours given away free on shiny, shitty AOL discs gave way to the strange time of the single device with unlimited data. ISPs meant that to be for a fixed machine but Wi-Fi routers and wired routers soon split that up to many many machines in the home and perhaps even in the apartment building. This happened to the chagrin of broadband providers. And now, in this moment, most of us pay a fixed rate for unlimited data, capped by speed rather than maximum downloads. But as all of you pirates know full well, there are maximum-download caps out there too, and more and more people are becoming eligible for that taxation. Who dares to guess how low that threshold will go?

You may say, “Phew, I’m definitely not a target.” You may think you’ll never use wireless like you use your home broadband connection, that your phone is just a phone—one that, sure, streams songs and stuff, but big deal, right?

But think about the MiFis of the world, the little portable hotspot which turns broadband meant for cellphones to Wi-Fi for almost anything. Better still, think of Sprint’s Overdrive WiMax-to-Wi-Fi router, the next generation high speed network equivalent of the MiFi? And what about the next-generation of WiMax and LTE phones, which will hopefully be able to be used as Wi-Fi hotspots? Not following? Here: If your phone can give connectivity to your computer—and whatever else you have within 30 feet—you’re gonna have to pay for that. And God help us all if the Hulu iPhone app ever shows up, because we’ll use a ton of broadband, they’ll charge us a ton for that broadband or they’ll go out of business not doing it.

My fear is that metered pricing will feel like a gotcha, like when you go over talk-time minutes. The problem with those minutes is that you have to provide a “best guess” of how much you’re going to talk, and if you go over, they nuke your wallet. Sprint tried a plan that just charged different reasonable amounts of money depending on how much or how little you used your minutes. Both of these are flawed. The best guess is often based on nothing, and the variable pricing is too confusing: you never know what you’re going to be paying month to month.

As these carriers roll out their metered plans, hopefully they will combine these two types of billing. We need helpful constant monitoring. (At the moment, the best way to keep track of an iPhone’s downloads requires AT&T’s optional app.) We have to be aware of our usage, comfortably not naggingly, and when we go over, we need to be treated like fans of the service, not like criminals stealing cookies from the wireless-broadband cookie jar.

All You Can Eat neon by Jeremy Brooks/Flickr, used under CC license