Hasta La Gadget!

It ain’t as crazy as you may think. If you’ll recall, we actually heard last month that Deutsche Telekom was mulling the idea of spinning off T-Mobile USA from its portfolio, and now it looks as if one carrier in particular is interested. According to the inimitable “people with knowledge of the matter,” Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that Deutsche Telekom has gone ahead with talks to “sell its T-Mobile USA unit to Sprint in exchange for a major stake in the combined entity.” Granted, there’s no guarantees at this point that the two will actually reach a deal that sits well with both boards, and up until now, they haven’t been able to come to terms with T-Mob’s valuation. As the story goes, Deutsche Telekom has purportedly said that it could sell “all or part of the US business, and all options are open.” Meanwhile, Sprint’s remaining mum. A merger of these two would combine the number three and four players in America, but if that doesn’t pan out, T-Mobile USA may end up buying wireless spectrum from Clearwire as an alternative. We’re hearing that an outright sale of T-Mobile in the US is pretty much off of the table, but considering just how many backroom talks are apparently going on in both camps, we won’t be surprised until they tell us to be.

Deutsche Telekom thinking of merging T-Mobile USA with Sprint? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phone Scoop  |  Bloomberg Businessweek  | Email this | Comments

Just to throw a little more fuel on the fire, it turns out that directing your browser to now.sprint.com/nexus takes you to a landing site where you’re told that “this page will be ready soon.” Certainly sounds more likely than ever that Sprint’s preparing to launch its own variant of the Nexus S — and if our sources are correct, it’ll be called the Nexus S 4G, likely with both CDMA and WiMAX on board. Interestingly, both now.sprint.com/evoview and now.sprint.com/evo3d — the other two devices in our rumor three-pack from earlier today — redirect to Sprint’s home page rather than giving you an HTTP 404 error, suggesting they’re also real. CTIA kicks off in just over two weeks’ time where these things are likely to be revealed, but who knows? Maybe they’ll give us a little tease ahead of the show.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Sprint’s Nexus website is ‘coming soon’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sprint  | Email this | Comments

J.D. Power, that well known arbiter of human opinion in the United States, has just released its latest study on customer satisfaction with wireless carriers. It addresses such things as (the lack of) dropped calls, failures to connect, voice distortion, echoes, static, and late-arriving text messages, and ultimately churns out a rating out of five stars relative to the regional average and other carriers. In testing done between July and December last year, Verizon had the best or tied for the best satisfaction ratings in five of the six studied areas, while AT&T and Sprint traded blows for second and T-Mobile had to admit defeat as the laggard of the top four. US Cellular managed to score highest in the North Central region, but J.D. Power’s overall assessment isn’t very rosy for any of the carriers — the stats collector says growing smartphone usage, heavy texting and more indoor calls are collectively causing call quality to stagnate, and even warns that “increased adoption of smartphones and wireless tablets may continue to compromise the quality of network service.”

Continue reading J.D. Power: Verizon has best call quality nationwide, T-Mobile consistently below average

J.D. Power: Verizon has best call quality nationwide, T-Mobile consistently below average originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  J.D. Power  | Email this | Comments

HTC also brought along a Sprint-branded Arrive to our San Francisco reader meetup, and while we’re already familiar with this Windows Phone 7 slider from our time with the HTC 7 Pro it’s still nice to see a CDMA WP7 device in the flesh. Oh, and the keyboard is pretty fantastic — not only does it feel great, but the dedicated number row alone is reason for keyboard fans to give this thing a look. The best part? The demo unit was loaded up with the Windows Phone 7 copy and paste update, which is the first time we’ve seen it in the wild. The system worked well, but we noticed that you once you paste out of the clipboard your text is gone, so you can’t multiple paste. It’s a little odd — we’ll have a video up shortly.

Update: The video is up — check it below!

Update 2: Okay, so you can multiple paste! The paste icon just disappears after the first paste, which is super confusing. You can just swipe to the right to bring it back, though. We’d suggest Microsoft re-think this implementation a little for an update, since it wasn’t clear to anyone here at first glance.

Continue reading Sprint HTC Arrive with Windows Phone 7 copy and paste first hands-on! (video)

Sprint HTC Arrive with Windows Phone 7 copy and paste first hands-on! (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Bloomberg is citing “three people familiar with the talks” (it’s not often that we get a specific number!) as saying that LightSquared is in active negotiations with Sprint to use its network infrastructure as it builds out its L-band LTE network. As you might recall, LightSquared is the would-be 4G wholesaler that is in the process of repurposing some satellite spectrum for terrestrial LTE use — a concept the FCC has approved, but concerns over GPS interference could end up delaying or derailing the strategy altogether if they aren’t solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Of course, building out any sort of national terrestrial wireless network is a multi-billion dollar, multi-year type of venture, and presumably a tie-up with Sprint to use some of its hardware would help move matters along. What this means for Sprint’s existing dealings with Clearwire is unclear; the two operate a WiMAX network together, after all, but the carrier has made it clear in the past that LTE could definitely be an option in the future.

Sprint allegedly talking to LightSquared over 4G infrastructure deal, Clearwire should be sweating originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Bloomberg  | Email this | Comments