Hasta La Gadget!

Regional carrier MetroPCS is ticking three more checkboxes today as it keeps pushing its ongoing LTE network rollout, and they’re big ones: on top of Sacramento, they’ve added Boston and none other than New York City. That makes the carrier second to launch LTE in the Big Apple — Verizon’s already there — but you can’t take away from the fact that MetroPCS beat the big guys with their first live commercial markets by several months. As for hardware, it’s the same as usual: the Samsung Craft dumbphone is your only option, which means that if you’re looking to blaze on your notebook with a next-gen USB stick, you’re still going to have to head to Verizon anyway. Follow the break for the full press release.

Continue reading MetroPCS brings its LTE network to Boston, Sacramento, and New York City

MetroPCS brings its LTE network to Boston, Sacramento, and New York City originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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America can’t say that it wasn’t sniped by Malaysia Airlines when it comes to having iPads in the airport, but we’ll take late over never any day of the week. New York’s JFK airport is now home to 200 iPad tablets, all of which are located within Delta’s terminal. They’re being installed in cooperation with OTG Management, mostly in eateries — “Croque Madame, a French restaurant at Gates 21 and 22 in Terminal 2; and Bar Brace, a casual Italian restaurant at Gate 15 in Terminal 3.” As you’d expect, customers can order food from the iPad in order to have it delivered directly to them. It lacks that certain Sonic Drive-In appeal, but the ability to also use the iPad to check your email, have a look at the latest sports scores and attempt to jailbreak it for the next patron more than compensates. OTG doesn’t plan to put a time limit on the usage here (you’ll still need to make your connecting flight, remember?), and its hoping to engage in a similar installation over at LaGuardia in due time. No word on whether these things will censor any and all Google searches on “uncomfortable TSA pat-downs,” though.

Delta’s JFK terminal now home to 200 iPads, a few more enticing eateries originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We gave a fortunate sect of consumers a taste of WiMAX during our recent reader meetup in the Big Apple, but now it’s available to all: as promised, Sprint has just gone live with New York City’s first 4G network. With the holiday sales season just around the bend, this honestly couldn’t have come at a better time, and considering the bandwidth strain that hamstrings the city, it could very well make things easier on everyone if the adoption rate is high. Moreover, Sprint has blessed Hartford, New Haven, New Brunswick, Trenton and Tampa with WiMAX as of today, bringing the grand total of lit cities to 61. So, LTE — whatcha waitin’ for?

Update: Naturally, Clearwire has launched 4G in NYC as well. Of course, we’re splitting hairs with branding by now, but there it is.

Continue reading Sprint and Clearwire light up first 4G network in New York City, among other locales

Sprint and Clearwire light up first 4G network in New York City, among other locales originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Horror, shock, surprise! Microsoft CEO and prime fanboy of all things Windows and developer-related, Steve Ballmer, will be the keynote speaker at Microsoft’s New York launch event for Windows Phone 7. He’ll be joined on stage by AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega and when the pep rally is over, we’re promised opportunities to finally handle the official incarnations of retail Windows Phones for ourselves. We know all this because Microsoft has just dropped a kind little invite into our inbox urging us to attend its October 11 get-together. We will, of course, be there live, but don’t forget Microsoft’s also holding a London event on that day, ostensibly for the same reason, so make sure to be up nice and early next Monday if you don’t wanna miss a thing.

As we reported last night, the company is also holding a gathering centered around T-Mobile WP7 handsets, though details are more scarce on that event. We saw an official invite from the folks in Redmond, but it looks like that showing may be smaller in scale. We have to imagine that AT&T and their GSM competition don’t want to share the stage, but as this is a Microsoft launch, anything is possible. Regardless, if there are multiple carriers showing hardware come October 11th, we’ll have all the goods.

Steve Ballmer and AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega to headline Windows Phone 7 launch event in NYC on October 11 — we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX service has been making occasional cameos throughout the five boroughs since at least June, but now it’s official: the service has been launched, closing up one of the most conspicuous holes in coverage so far. This matches up nicely with the San Francisco go-live we reported on earlier today, so you’ll now be able to take your red eye from the Big Apple to the City by the Bay without fear that your EVO’s going to get slow when you go wheels-down. Plans run from $25 a month (for the iSpot) all the way up to $55 for a mixed-mode WiMAX and EV-DO data stick, which works out to somewhere between 0.00001 and 0.0003 percent of your housing costs in Manhattan. Glass is half full, y’know.

[Thanks, Marcus]

Update: We’ve just been contacted by Clear and told that New York’s still in the “operational readiness” phase of the go-live, which means hardware’s only being offered to customers in limited areas and not all hardware is available (notably, the iSpot isn’t yet being offered). Same goes for Los Angeles. San Francisco, meanwhile, isn’t yet there — we’re told there might be some limited pockets where service is showing up, but Clear hasn’t commercially launched there, even on a limited scale. For what it’s worth, all of these areas are still expected to go fully live in 2010, they’re just not quite there yet.

Clear WiMAX is live in New York City (updated: semi-live) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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