Hasta La Gadget!

Good news, Asia — the PlayStation Network is finally coming back. Today, Sony announced that it will restore its gaming network across the continent, more than a month after falling prey to a crippling data breach. The company’s PSN services are already up and running across other parts of the world and, beginning tomorrow, will light up once again in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and even Japan, which had been harboring serious reservations about the network’s security. Gamers in South Korea and Hong Kong, meanwhile, will have to wait a little longer before returning to normalcy, though Sony is hoping to completely resolve the issue by the end of the month. The company certainly seems eager to put this saga to bed, and for understandable reasons. The incident has already cost Sony an estimated $171 million in revenue — not to mention the untold numbers of suddenly wary consumers.

Sony says PlayStation Network will return to Asia, starting tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 06:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wireless tower.  Photo: Woody Thrower/Flickr

We’ve been waiting on wireless 4G technology to further expand coverage across the United States since telecoms began promoting it years ago. Finally, we’re starting to see results.

AT&T will roll out its 4G LTE network this summer across five major cities — Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio. The company says it will expand LTE coverage to 10 more markets by the end of the year.

“We’re positioning to deliver a great mobile broadband experience in the near term with HSPA+ and a growing LTE footprint,” AT&T CTO John Donovan wrote in a blog post Wednesday morning.

Loosely defined, 4G stands for the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. Data upload and download speeds on different networks vary, but 4G networks can see speeds averaging 10 times faster than those on current 3G networks. LTE stands for “Long-Term Evolution,” and is one of a few competing technologies in the 4G space (Wi-Max being the other main contender). LTE networks are built atop existing CDMA-HSPA wireless networks.

Currently, most of the AT&T’s 4G network is HSPA+, a technology once considered “3.5G.” It has since been upgraded to be considered 4G by the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency that addresses and defines global telecom standards.

AT&T often claims its HSPA+ includes “enhanced backhaul,” which essentially gives a higher data-throughput rate to cell sites that include the upgrade. But an AT&T spokesperson recently told PhoneScoop that the vast majority of its cell sites do not yet include enhanced backhaul. AT&T expects to have the majority of its sites enhanced by the end of the year.

Competing 4G network Verizon has a head start on nationwide LTE deployment. In December, Verizon launched its LTE network in 39 cities. The company claims it will expand to more than 145 markets by the end of 2011.

But despite the growth in coverage, the of LTE-enabled–device choices remain relatively sparse in the market. Verizon currently offers only three LTE-enabled smartphones — the HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung’s Droid Charge and LG’s Revolution (which debuts today) — and one LTE-ready hot spot.

AT&T plans to add more than 20 4G devices in 2011, according to Donovan’s post, but speed demons take heed: Only some of those will be LTE-capable.

Verizon recently ran into problems with its LTE service, as the network went down for more than 30 hours in late April. The downtime occurred directly before the scheduled launch of Verizon’s second LTE-enabled phone, the Droid Charge. The outage delayed the launch of the phone for about two weeks.

Sprint’s 4G network — which uses Wi-Max, a competing technology in the 4G realm akin to Wi-Fi — was the first to launch in 2010 with the HTC Evo 4G, available in 33 markets at the time. The company currently covers more than twice that number of markets.

AT&T is currently poised to buy competing Deutsche Telekom company T-Mobile, which would expand AT&T’s reach drastically, making the company the largest wireless carrier in the United States. The two companies recently defended the merger before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. The deal has yet to go through, and many are making noise to block the merger, including Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, who is one of the potential merger’s most vocal opponents.

Cox Communications had some grand designs on the cellular market, but they’re not panning out quite as the company planned — FierceWireless reports that though Cox already poured cash into rolling out 3G equipment, it’s going to scrap the whole thing, in favor of continuing to pay Sprint for borrowed airtime. Cellular service in the original three launch markets will reportedly continue, though a quick peek at Cox’s website shows the current phone selection is getting a bit stagnant. While we’ve yet to hear any particular reasons why Cox would want to stick it out as an MVNO, we imagine that mandatory roaming agreements make it a tad easier to offer those “Unbelievably Fair” contracts. There’s also the possibility that with all the 4G fervor, Cox has decided there’s no point in moving forward with CDMA equipment when LTE is ripe for the picking — and when Cox has $304 million worth of 700MHz spectrum waiting for such a network.

[Thanks, Phil]

Cox ditches 3G network infrastructure, sticks with airwaves borrowed from Sprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon Wireless customers will be able to jet on to the LTE network in nine new cities, taking advantage of lightening-fast speeds on their HTC Thunderbolts and 4G mobile hotspots. The expansion includes Mobile and Montgomery (AL); Greater Fairfield and New Haven (CT); Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee (FL); Fayetteville-Lumberton (NC); and Bryan-College Station and Temple-Killeen (TX). We also have access in Albany, though VZW has yet to confirm launching LTE in New York’s capital city. The carrier has also expanded coverage in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, so if you haven’t been able to connect in the past, dust off that enable-4G button and give it another shot. This week’s additions bring the list of LTE cities to 55, so we’re just over the 35 percent mark towards the carrier’s goal of 147 cities by year’s end.

Continue reading Verizon adds 4G LTE to nine more cities, expands coverage in Chicago, Philadelphia

Verizon adds 4G LTE to nine more cities, expands coverage in Chicago, Philadelphia originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a classic romantic tale of “network meets OS, network disables OS,” and just like any love story, this one is building up to a happy ending. Fourteen months after AT&T introduced a lineup of crippled Android phones that weren’t allowed to install third-party apps, the carrier extended an olive branch to fans of the OS by quietly slipping the sideloading capability onto the Samsung Infuse 4G; now, the network is reportedly updating three members of its Android lineup — the HTC Inspire 4G, HTC Aria, and Samsung Captivate — sometime today. We’re sure there were many Atrix users scanning this short list with fingers crossed, but unfortunately your phone did not make the cut this time. No word on why your favs were left out, but at least four devices with Amazon Appstore access is still better than zero. At present time we haven’t seen the updates get pushed to our phones, however, so we’d love to hear if any of you have seen differently down in comments below.

Select AT&T Android devices may get app sideloading as early as today originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 17:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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